The Intercept

When Anti-War Candidates Become War-Monger Presidents

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Sen. Bernie Sanders forced a vote on Wednesday to block the sales of bombs and bulldozers to Israel. The resolutions failed mostly along party lines with a handful of defections to the Republican side, but a record number of Democrats voted against sending weapons to Israel.

“A supermajority of Democrats oppose this war, are generally against America’s global military interventions,” former Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss tells The Intercept Briefing. Yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined 11 Democrats in voting against the measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to Israel, and seven Democrats against the sale of bulldozers used in Israel’s military occupations.

“We do have a Democratic Party leadership that still is part of this very small — and thankfully dwindling, though not fast enough — hawkish faction that is wedded to this idea of American global military domination,” says Duss.

This week on the podcast, Duss speaks to host Akela Lacy about how Democrats should use the overwhelming unpopularity of the war to push an anti-war agenda that brings about real change.

“There’s a real constituency here for this message,” says Duss. “We need a foreign policy for this era that is based around building peace rather than making war, that is focused on foreign policy that benefits American communities and American workers, but also does not export insecurity and poverty onto others in the world. And I think this is a really opportune moment for it.”

The watershed moment in the Senate came against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s hyper-aggressive military adventurism.

“My concern about blaming this all on Israel is that it lets Washington off the hook,” says Duss. “We have a foreign policy establishment that is addicted to militarism, that is addicted to war, who often work at think tanks that are largely funded by the military–industrial complex. They are funded by weapons manufacturers. We have a political class that is really deeply committed to an almost religious degree to American primacy in the world, to American global hegemony. Which means that we are up in everyone’s business all over the place all the time.”

“This Iran war is the most egregious and horrible expression of trends in our foreign policy that have been building for a long time, so are these boat strikes,” he says, referring to the Trump administration’s ongoing assassinations of alleged drug traffickers. “We’ve been killing people with flying robots in the Middle East and Africa and elsewhere for decades now.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter for The Intercept.

Ali Gharib: And I’m Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept.

AL: We are well over a month into the U.S.-Israel war on Iran and about a week into a ceasefire that, depending on which side you’re listening to, has either held or not held. Ali, walk us through the latest developments. What’s the status of this war?

AG: When the talks broke down over the weekend, a lot of bluster started to be exchanged between Iran and the U.S. The U.S. imposed its own blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, which is almost, like, comically perfect if it wasn’t so tragic — that the U.S. started this war for unclear reasons, and then Iran punished the U.S. and the world by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Then the U.S. made the war about opening the Strait of Hormuz. Iran agreed to do that under certain conditions, and the U.S. has rejected Iran’s terms, though, as the U.S. tells it, Iran rejected their terms.

But either way, we came to an impasse. And now it is the U.S. that is blocking the Strait of Hormuz. So that’s the Kafkaesque state of affairs in the straits these days.

But for the moment, the ceasefire is holding. The U.S. and its allies — Israel — are not, so far, attacking Iran, and Iran has not been launching weapons at Israel and the U.S.’s Gulf allies and U.S. military assets.

One of the most interesting things about the state of the ceasefire right now is that even though the U.S. imposed this “blockade” — I’m doing air quotes now — on Iranian ports, the Iranians have not forced the issue when the U.S. has ordered ships coming from Iranian ports to turn around. They have complied, and Iran has not been firing on U.S. naval assets in the strait. So far, everybody is complying. There was word from thinly sourced reporting that our colleague at CNN, Leila Gharagozlou — who, full disclosure, also happens to be my cousin — had mentioned that there had been a U.S. request to Iran, according to the Iranians, for another round of talks coming up.

So diplomacy may indeed be proceeding. We don’t really know, but that’s the state of things right now is that — and I think we can all be thankful for it — is that there’s a lot of bluster, there’s a lot of talk about “They won’t accept our terms, and it’s gonna be bad for them,” on both sides. But so far, there’s been no major escalations in the fighting.

AL: Our listeners know that Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon and Gaza is powered by U.S. money and weapons. And there was a historic vote in the Senate on Wednesday when Sen. Bernie Sanders forced a vote to block more than $450 million in sales of weapons and bombs to Israel.

This is the latest in a series of votes that Sanders has introduced to block these kinds of weapon sales to Israel. The latest vote failed, as did the previous two in April and July of last year. But just as the last vote, a historic number of senators voted for this measure. The last vote to block these weapon sales to Israel in July had a record number of senators vote for it, 27.

But the vote on Wednesday saw an even greater number of senators move to support this bill, bringing the total to 36. That includes Sanders and another independent senator, Angus King. Zero Republicans voted for this measure. But what’s notable here is that several people who voted either against the last iteration of this resolution, the joint resolution of disapproval, or the previous one, either voted against it or voted present.

Several of the senators who voted against it or voted present have voted for this bill now. This is part of what Sen. Sanders said after the vote is a major shift among Democrats on the topic of Israel and U.S. military support for Israel, particularly during the genocide in Gaza, but also as the war on Iran continues to escalate, and both Republicans and Democrats face increasing criticism over the U.S. entanglement in this war side by side with Israel.

I also want to note several notable Democrats who did sign on to this bill: Cory Booker, who has been a longtime ally of AIPAC, who’s recently sworn off AIPAC money in his upcoming Senate race as part of a broader pledge to reject corporate PAC money. John Hickenlooper, who is facing a progressive challenger who said that she won’t send money to Israel while it’s committing genocide in Gaza. Adam Schiff, who previously voted no on this. Elissa Slotkin, who also previously voted no on this.

Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly were some of the names who stood out to me here. With the exception of Gallego, who started out as a progressive and tacked pretty moderate during his Senate race, these are the bread and butter of the centrists of the Democratic Party. We’re talking about Adam Schiff, Elissa Slotkin, Michael Bennet of Colorado.

AG: Mark Kelly, I think, was a really telling one because he has been such a staunch supporter of Israel and, I think, has the ambitions and maybe also the profile that makes him more viable — and just on a personal judgment level is less silly than the Cory Bookers of the world.

AL: Less silly. He’s an astronaut, he can’t be silly. [Laughs.]

AG: [Laughs.] Well, Kelly is a guy who has voted no on these resolutions again and again and again. Here’s a guy — staunch supporter of Israel — he hasn’t previously voted for any of these resolutions before, and now he is. His logic was interesting because he came out and said that, I am a supporter of Israel, and this is our ally, and we need to be helping them. But we also have to recognize that what’s going on right now in the Middle East is not normal. His phrase was, “Not business as usual.” And he said, “It’s not making us safer,” and the U.S. and Israel are in this war, and there’s no end in sight. That’s what seemed to have turned him against the [bombs and bulldozers].

And I think that coming from maybe one of the more legit presidential contenders in Capitol Hill is pretty significant, Akela.

AL: Yes, I agree. So this vote was broken up into two measures: one which was to block the sale of bombs, the other which was to block the sale of bulldozers, which garnered more support. Ali, tell us about that.

AG: This one, to me, was really interesting. Forty Democrats voted for this. I mean, that is about 80 percent of the Democrats in the Senate. That’s a remarkable number. Maybe not as remarkable as the shift to 36 senators on the bombs. It’s significant nonetheless. What was really interesting here, and our colleague Matt Sledge had reported about this in his article, was that it seemed like these Democrats had an easier time voting against bulldozers than voting against bombs, which doesn’t make sense at first blush.

But how we see the bulldozers actually work in practical application — in southern Lebanon today, in the occupation in general, in the efforts to annex the West Bank — has been to use it to destroy villages and homes and change the realities on the ground to create Israel hegemony over what’s left of the rubble of Palestinian and, more recently, Lebanese villages.

So that, to me, was an interesting development, because having so many of the Democrats overwhelmingly oppose these things that I think that there is for, maybe not by the twisted logic of an AIPAC-infused Capitol Hill, but to the wider world, you’re like, “Wait a second. Bulldozers?” And actually, these are weapons of occupation and annexation and the apartheid system in Israel.

AL: It speaks to the thinking or the process by which senators are able to talk themselves out of the line that they previously walked on what is considered self-defense for Israel. It’s easier to say, “Yeah, we support an Iron Dome” than “We support bulldozers that we’re seeing used to raze people’s homes and buildings.”

AG: In some ways, it is a much more clear war crime to be razing entire villages than dropping bombs. The Israelis, the Americans, everybody always comes up with these bullshit excuses that are like, “Oh, they were targeting military assets,” and this whole cockamamie collateral damage argument and stuff.

There’s no dispute that when Israel razes an entire village on the Lebanese border — and they said they were going to do this — that is a prima facie war crime. That’s what it is.

“In some ways, it is a much more clear war crime to be razing entire villages than dropping bombs.”

So even though that’s not what Capitol Hill is saying, what Democrats on Capitol Hill are saying, when they voted for this resolution; it’s just interesting to me that that’s the avenue that we’re starting to go down now, even on Capitol Hill.

AL: We talk about all of this and more in today’s episode with Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who introduced the measures to block the bombs and bulldozers that we’ve been discussing. Duss was also the former president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and a national security and international policy analyst at the Center for American Progress.

AG: I, for one, am really eager to hear this conversation. Thanks, Akela.

AL: Thank you, Ali.

Matt, welcome to “The Intercept Briefing.”

Matt Duss: Thank you. Great to be with you.

AL: Over the weekend, Vice President JD Vance left negotiations he was leading to end the war in Iran and open the Strait of Hormuz without a deal. Talks fell apart over U.S. demands that Iran suspend uranium enrichment for 20 years; Iran agreed to five. For context, former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran — that Trump proudly shredded in his first term — took nearly two years to negotiate.

To start, Matt, can you bring us up to speed? What is the latest on this war that the U.S. provoked and is now trying to find a way out of?

MD: We’re about a month and a half into this war that began at the very end of February, launched by the United States and Israel together. I think that is notable, as opposed to last June’s so-called 12-Day War, which was begun by Israel bombing Iran. Then days later, the U.S. joined in, dropping its biggest bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities.

This is very much the United States and Israel acting together from the beginning, and they’ve done enormous damage. They bombed a lot of buildings, destroyed a lot of nuclear and military infrastructure, destroyed much if not most of Iran’s navy, killed a lot of Iranian leaders, including notably the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the first day of the war.

But it has not achieved anything like a victory because no one had any doubt that the United States and Israel could do a lot of damage militarily to Iran, but Iran’s security and defense doctrine has always been based on that understanding and has been built around creating the ability to inflict pain in other ways, economic and otherwise. That is what we are seeing with Iran shutting down shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a very narrow waterway in the Persian Gulf through which a large amount of global oil shipping flows.

This pain is being felt in the United States with gas prices going up, but, more importantly, by the rest of the world. Even though the U.S. population is feeling the pain, the worst consequences of this war are already being felt and will continue to be felt by some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Which is to say the worst consequences of this war will fall upon those who didn’t start it.

AL: On Wednesday morning, Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that the U.S.–Iran war is “very close to being over.” We’ve heard that before, several times in the last few weeks. Do you think that Trump will use the ceasefire period to end U.S. involvement at this point?

MD: I would hope so. The best way for this war to end would be for the people who started it to stop, and that is the United States and Israel. They launched an unprovoked and illegal — and in my view, a strategically counterproductive — war of aggression. But I think the question here is, at what point does Trump either get bored of this war or decide he needs really to get out of it? We’ve seen some reporting indicating that Trump is starting to realize, if not already, that he really miscalculated here, that he was led to believe that this war would be much quicker and easier than it actually was.

“At what point does Trump either get bored of this war or decide he needs really to get out of it?”

I think he was looking at Venezuela as a model. He came to believe in the magical powers of the American military and special forces to do things and achieve goals. And certainly he had people around him, like Lindsey Graham, like Tom Cotton, and obviously Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who were feeding him this information to say, it’s going to be amazing and quick. It’s going to be glorious, and you’ll demonstrate once again the greatness of Donald Trump. He’s clearly frustrated that it has not gone that way.

The United States has the ability to inflict enormous damage on Iran or any country, but Iran has also shown that it has ways to respond. And it has not relented, it has not agreed to Trump’s demands, particularly on its nuclear program.

These are the demands that were presented by Vice President JD Vance in Islamabad last weekend, which Iran did not accept because those demands have not changed. You referenced the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran, and I think what led to the breakthrough there that led to that agreement being signed in 2015 was the United States’ acknowledgment that Iran has a right to enrich uranium. That is a right that Iran had long claimed. It does have a valid argument under the non-proliferation treaty — of which it is a member — which guarantees signers of that treaty the right to peaceful nuclear energy. Iran interprets that to mean they have a right to enrich on their soil. There may be some dispute on that. But Iran, for its own nationalist and political reasons, has always asserted that right. And the Obama administration acknowledging that is what led to what was, I think, a very good nuclear agreement.

As you noted, Trump withdrew from that, that led to this moment. I think until the United States is willing to accept some formula that doesn’t require Iran to give up that right. Iran could agree to not enrich for the time being, while still retaining the right to enrich. It’s possible to see some language that they could come up with that both sides could be satisfied with. But as long as the U.S. continues to press these same demands, we are not going to resolve this issue.

“The United States has the ability to inflict enormous damage on Iran or any country, but Iran has also shown that it has ways to respond.”

AL: One follow-up here. Iran has characterized the falling apart of these latest round of talks led by JD Vance as a result of the U.S. moving the goalposts and insisting on Iran suspending uranium enrichment after that not having led the strikes under that demand. What’s happening here? Obviously, the nuclear question is always in the background when we’re talking about Iran. But is it fair to say that the U.S. moved the goalpost here?

Matt Duss: I think it’s fair to say that the U.S. moved the goalpost once Trump was convinced to make zero enrichment a condition of talks; this was ongoing last year. I think you saw conflicting information from Steve Witkoff, who’s the real estate dealer, who Trump has decided for some reason to make his lead negotiator everywhere. Witkoff at one point was saying, no, we’re not going to require them to give up all their enrichment.

“We should understand this was designed to prevent an agreement because these people understand that Iran will not agree to that.”

Some of us heard that and we’re like, OK. That means there’s a possibility of a deal if they want other guarantees — inspections. It’s possible. But once Trump made zero enrichment a demand — and again, you had Netanyahu pressing him on this, you had people like Lindsey Graham, you had a bunch of hawkish think tankers in Washington pressing this on him — we should understand, this was designed to prevent an agreement because these people understand that Iran will not agree to that. That is why they press Trump to make this demand because they understood it would lead to no agreement, and they would get the war they’ve always wanted, which is of course what has happened.

AL: You recently wrote a piece for Foreign Policy about why blaming Israel for the war on Iran lets Washington off the hook. Part of your argument is that war-hungry members of both parties have been pushing for this war just as hard as Israel has, including Democrats. I want to talk about those Democrats. Who are they, and what responsibility do they have for this war?

MD: The point I made in the piece, I acknowledge, it’s very clear that this war would not be happening without pressure from Israel. It would not be happening without pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular, and without pressure from the Israel lobby in Washington.

But also, as you noted, I think my concern about blaming this all on Israel is that, yeah, it lets Washington off the hook. We have a foreign policy establishment that is addicted to militarism, that is addicted to war, who often work at think tanks that are largely funded by the military–industrial complex. They are funded by weapons manufacturers. We have a political class that is really deeply committed to an almost religious degree to American primacy in the world, to American global hegemony. Which means that we are up in everyone’s business all over the place all the time. This war that we are witnessing right now is an expression of that — it is one of the most horrible possible expressions of it.

But my concern about blaming it all on Israel, it distracts us from the problem being here in the United States. It is here in Washington. This is what we need to reform about our own foreign policy rather than locating blame in other places.

“My concern about blaming it all on Israel, it distracts us from the problem being here in the United States. It is here in Washington.”

AL: Are there Democrats who you think hold particular responsibility, particularly for this iteration of the Iran war? We had reporting about Democratic leadership trying to slow walk this war powers resolution and all this sort of stuff. And our listeners are very interested in knowing actually who bears responsibility for this.

MD: You mentioned, we have the Democratic leadership — Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House — even though they eventually came out in support of the war powers resolution that Senator Kaine and Senator Paul offered a few weeks ago. Actually, they announced their support just days before the war began.

That’s good. I’m glad they came around to the right place. But in my view, it just took way too long. It took too much work to support something that a supermajority of Democratic voters support. A supermajority of Democrats oppose this war, are generally against America’s global military interventions in general.

Yet we do have a Democratic Party leadership that still is part of this very small — and thankfully dwindling, though not fast enough — hawkish faction that is wedded to this idea of American global military domination.

I’d also note here too, we need to hold the Biden administration responsible for some of this too. Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 on a commitment to rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump withdrew from in 2018. It was pretty unequivocal. He wrote a piece, or a piece was written under his name, that was published in October of 2020 that laid out, here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to rejoin this deal, and here’s why.

A lot of us were very encouraged by that. Yet, once taking office his administration hit the brakes, decided we’re going to take our time to rejoin this agreement in the hopes of using the sanctions that Trump had imposed as leverage and get a longer and stronger deal.

They didn’t do what they promised. Now, in my view, and many of us were advocating this at the time, the thing to do would’ve been just rejoin the deal, remove the sanctions. The U.S. committed to this along with its allies — and then we withdrew from it. So first, rejoin the deal, and that creates an environment where the Iranians are like, “OK, Biden is doing what he said he’d do. Maybe we can talk about a longer deal. Maybe we can keep engaging to address a broader range of issues between the United States and Iran.”

Instead, Joe Biden showed the Iranians that you cannot trust Joe Biden. And we lost, I think, a really important opportunity. After a few months, Iran had its own presidential elections coming up. That current administration that had signed the nuclear agreement under President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif were replaced by a much more hawkish, hard-line president and foreign minister that drove a much, much harder bargain. That made it much more difficult to come to any kind of agreement to getting back into the JCPOA. And of course that failed. We have to acknowledge it was basically the Biden administration that lost the JCPOA and put us on the path to where we are now.

AL: I also just have to mention John Fetterman because we just have to.

MD: Do we? OK.

AL: [Laughs] I’m curious while I have you, because you were in the Senate at a point in time, and he has been, pretty openly calling for blood thirsty retaliation against Iran.

Now, the latest is that he’s backing Trump’s peace talks. But what do you make of his, I don’t know if you can really call it an evolution, because he seems to have been this way for quite some time. But yeah, what is your analysis of his position?

MD: Yeah, I don’t really have a great read on it. He basically seems to have been handed a set of talking points about Israel as the good guys and Iran as the bad guys and the Palestinians as the bad guys. And that’s good enough for him. He just has shown no real understanding of these issues. No understanding of the history here or of the policy.

From what I understand, he really resents a lot of the pressure, but that’s tough luck, man. You’re a U.S. senator. That’s part of how this works. If you support bad inhumane policies, get ready to be protested.

As far as I can see, he has just decided he’s just doubling down. And he doesn’t want to talk about it. I know people who have tried to talk to him about this issue. I’m not one of them. But they have reported he just won’t even consider his position, regardless of the evidence. He’s just made this part of his identity, and I think that I think is very weird and regrettable.

AL: I love that description, “weird and regrettable.”

[Break]

AL: You worked in Congress at a time when there was a major shift on norms in foreign policy and an increasing willingness by some members, including your former boss, to oppose foreign wars. I want you to tell us about that time and what you saw as prompting that shift.

MD: I think we have seen a really important movement over the past few years. But let’s also remember that Barack Obama was elected in 2008 because of his opposition to the Iraq War. That is really what distinguished Obama in that field. There were some other things, but even he himself and the people around him understood that, one of the strongest arguments, if not the strongest arguments for his presidency, was the fact that he opposed the Iraq War when everyone else in Washington was supporting it, falling in line, either because of their ideology or because they were just political cowards.

He showed that when it mattered, he was able to stand up against the tide. Now, Obama’s project of changing foreign policy obviously ran into some strong headwinds. People can argue that he didn’t try as hard as he should have. I think that’s probably true in some cases, but I think there were some important achievements. The Iran nuclear agreement was one. I think changing Cuba policy was another; withdrawing from Iraq. We can run down the list of mistakes he made as well.

“The lesson from [Obama’s] two terms was, there is a deeply entrenched foreign policy establishment in both parties.”

I think the lesson from those two terms was, there is a deeply entrenched, foreign policy establishment in both parties and in Washington broadly — a bipartisan establishment that is, as I described earlier, just committed to this idea of American global military hegemony. Changing that is very difficult. But yet American voters continue to show that they’re supportive of a change.

I wrote a piece in The Guardian last year in the wake of Kamala Harris’s election loss that argued that Trump had won in part because he presented himself as an anti-war president. He and Vance really in the last few weeks before the election made a pro-peace argument.

Now, of course, they were lying. We should have known they were lying at the time. We, of course, know for a fact they were lying now. But my point is not that we should have believed them. My point is that Trump and Vance were at least smart enough to acknowledge that there is a real anti-war constituency in this country.

If you go back every election since the end of the Cold War, every election since 1992 — with the one exception of 2004 — the more anti-war candidate has won. Now I think that’s just an interesting data point. I’m not going to say that’s why they won, but I’m also saying that what it does show is that there’s a real constituency here for this message.

“Trump and Vance were at least smart enough to acknowledge that there is a real anti-war constituency in this country.”

I want Democrats to realize this is an opportunity to really lean into this argument. We saw Bernie, when he ran in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, again, as with Obama in 2008, a big part of his argument was that he had also opposed the Iraq War. He had the courage to stand up against the tide, and because he rightly predicted it would be a disaster. Even Biden. Going back to 2020, Biden promised to end the forever wars.

In the wake of these different things that I mentioned, I do think you’ve got a more energetic, a better organized set of organizations, journalists, analysts — let’s just say that there’s a larger anti-war policy community that’s been built over the past 25 years, especially since the Iraq War. We have more champions in Congress who are saying this message, who believe that American foreign policy needs to change.

But obviously, as we see, this war is an expression, as I said earlier, of how deeply entrenched this pro-war establishment remains. So there’s so much work left to be done.

AL: The point that no matter what their policy ends up being, that anti-war candidates have been largely popular, is a really crucial one. I wonder how can we account for any effect that this shift has had on foreign policy, if anti-war candidates are doing different policy once they actually take office?

MD: I think the key is to have first a candidate who is generally committed to an anti-war position. And then staffing that administration with anti-war officials and making clear that this is the policy we’re going to execute as president. We’ve not really had that.

Like I said, Obama did some really important things, but for various reasons, including the fact that he made Joe Biden his vice president, and he made Hillary Clinton his secretary of state, his foreign policy apparatus in his administration was largely populated by Clinton and Biden folks — let’s just say many of whom did not share Barack Obama’s views about shifting American foreign policy.

I don’t want to impute that they were going against him. I’m just saying, you’ve got a whole cohort of people who have been raised in their whole professional career with these assumptions about American power and how American power should work and the importance of America being everywhere all the time.

And I think the way you really change that is to have a president who understands we’re not going back. We need a foreign policy for this era that is based around building peace rather than making war, that is focused on foreign policy that benefits American communities and American workers, but also does not export insecurity and poverty onto others in the world. And I think this is a really opportune moment for it.

AL: One of the latest developments here was that J Street came out in support of phasing out U.S. military funding for defensive weapons for Israel. While I think there is a fair criticism to be made here that the distinction between offensive and defensive weapons is really one without a difference, the broader point is that this is something that J Street has never done before. This comes on the heels of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez making the same policy commitment earlier this month. I know you’ve been vocal about this, so please, what are your thoughts?

Matt Duss: I think ending military aid not just for offensive weapons, but for all weapons — taxpayer aid — is absolutely right. Now there’s a debate about will we still sell them weapons to commit these atrocities that we’re all witnessing every day, all the time? Some people are calling for a weapons embargo — a full embargo. I think that makes total sense.

But I’ve also made the point, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made this statement that, when it comes to sales, we need to enforce our own laws, which prohibit these sales as well. So that’s important to note too because I think it’s a very fair argument. If we’re not going to give them these weapons at taxpayer expense, why do we sell them to continue carrying out these same atrocities?

But I would also note that J Street’s shift is a reflection of a lot of really important work that’s been done by the progressive movement, by the Palestinian rights’ movement, by activists and advocates for a long time.

Some people have pointed to the announcement or the reports that Benjamin Netanyahu also supports phasing out taxpayer aid to Israel. I think that’s right. The way I read that is that Netanyahu understands that we are in a moment right now. Netanyahu, for all his faults and he has many, does have a pretty savvy read on American politics. And he understands that negotiating a new [Memorandum of Understanding], which provides billions of dollars every year in U.S. taxpayer support for weapons for Israel, is going to be extremely politically contentious.

This is not 2015 anymore. It’s even a real question whether this could pass. I think it really couldn’t, but at the very least he understands that a contentious process around aid to Israel would be bad in his view for Israel. He’s right. Zeroing out the aid makes some political sense from his point of view.

But I also think it’s worth noting, and this is a point I made as well, is that no country is going to turn down free money. What I’ve seen some indications of is that they’re going to try and reprogram and rebrand this taxpayer aid into “joint research projects,” which is a way of tucking this money away. It’s still going to support and subsidize the Israeli weapons industry and tech industry. It’s still going to be a way to funnel money to U.S. defense contractors for Israel’s benefit. But it’s going to be rebranded in this different way.

But ultimately the goal is the same to get taxpayer aid to Israel and keep it away from the political process. So I think that’s a really important thing to watch for right now.

“What I’ve seen some indications of is that they’re going to try and reprogram and rebrand this taxpayer aid into ‘joint research projects,’ which is a way of tucking this money away.”

AL: Going back to the world stage. I was struck by the fact that in the midst of this war in Iran, where JD Vance has been leading key negotiations, he also took a quick trip to Hungary last week to try to help save Viktor Orbán from losing his elections over the weekend.

MD: Huge success.

AL: [laughs] It did not work.

MD: Yeah. Oh, wait. No?

AL: No, it did not work.

MS: Oh, yeah. No, it did not.

AL: [laughs] For our listeners, Orbán lost after 16 years in power, leaving behind him a legacy of eroding democratic institutions and undermining press freedom in his country, a model championed by right-wing movements in Europe and the U.S.

The libertarian think tank Cato Institute said, “Orbán’s Hungary is a cautionary tale of what results from an unrestrained executive with strongly centralized power, crony capitalism, and the systematic dismantling of the rule of law.”

What is your understanding of what, if any, implications this loss has for not only the rise of right-wing authoritarianism around the world, but also for Trump, and the fact that his No. 2 was out there trying to push him over the finish line and it did not work?

Matt Duss: Yeah, no, I think it’s great news. We don’t get a lot of that these days, but it’s really great news that Orbán lost — not that he lost, but that he lost resoundingly. That his opponent, Péter Magyar won, didn’t just win, but has a strong enough presence in the legislature now that they’ll actually be able to make real change. So this is really important.

So Orbán had been serving for his many terms, as a model of an illiberal democrat — as people have various terms — but someone who had been slowly and steadily and quite aggressively refashioning the institutions of government in Hungary to ensure as much as possible a permanent ruling majority by himself and his party and his interests and his populist right-wing authoritarian allies. Of course many around Trump see this as a very attractive model. Steve Bannon is someone who has been working on these issues for many years and promoting this is the way we do it.

We see parties in other countries. We see, for example, the AFD in Germany, which is a very right-wing party — fortunately, does not have a majority or anything close to it — but they have been steadily increasing their support in the country.

I think the fact that Orbán finally failed because of his corruption and his failure to deliver basic democratic things. But Hungarian voters just decided, OK, this guy really is too corrupt. Whether their concerns were about basic economic issues, jobs, corruption or ideology, protection of democracy, at the end of the day, they decided to give a strong majority to Orbán’s opponent.

Now, we shouldn’t imagine that Péter Magyar is some huge progressive. He is not. He was someone who was part of Orbán’s party until relatively recently. He’s just less conservative than Orbán. It does seem that he is more committed to real democracy.

AL: In waging this war on Iran, the U.S. has pit itself even more aggressively against a range of global actors, including Russia, China, and India. In the backdrop, Trump has used his second term to increasingly isolate the U.S., alienating even our allies by imposing tariffs and threatening to leave NATO, the trans-Atlantic military alliance between the U.S. and Europe. Where does all of that leave the U.S. and other major world powers geopolitically right now?

MD: What we’ve seen since Trump took office this time, we saw this a little bit in the first term, but in his second term, we’ve really seen an aggressiveness and a sharpening of the way that the United States is using its power. It’s using the dependence of allies and the rest of the world on the United States as a weapon to pressure them, to get them to do things we want.

Trump’s “basically like, if you don’t do what I want, I’m going to tariff you.”

I forget where this is from, I should probably know this. The idea of diplomacy is getting other countries to see your interests as their interests. Trump dispensed with that. He’s basically like, if you don’t do what I want, I’m going to tariff you. If you don’t do what I want, I’m going to, I don’t know, maybe I’ll invade you. You just have to wait to find out.

The United States has so many tools by virtue of our multiple partnerships, by virtue of the fact that we play such a major role in the global economic and financial plumbing, so to speak. We can use so many levers and tools to create economic pain for other countries to coerce them.

Now, it shouldn’t be surprising that countries don’t like that. Listen, it’s fine for the United States to state its interest to say, listen, we want to do this, and if other countries want to do a different thing, OK, let’s talk about it and see what we can work out. But Trump has simply decided that the United States is powerful, and as a powerful country, we get to do what we want and force others to do what we want as well.

That’s just how he understands foreign policy and global politics. We see this reflected a bit in his approach to Russia, to China and also to Israel. I don’t think he sees the world as divided up amongst great powers, per se. I think Trump really does have a belief in American dominance.

Trump “sees the world in terms of a mafia arrangement, in which the United States is the most powerful mob family, and gets to determine the order of how people behave.”

It is a different form of American dominance that was shared by previous administrations — America as the unipolar power, upholding the rules-based order by virtue of its great might and strength. Donald Trump doesn’t believe in a rules-based order. He doesn’t really believe in rules. He believes that the United States is strong and it gets to do what it wants. And other countries that are strong get to do what they want.

He sees the world in terms of a mafia arrangement, in which the United States is the most powerful mob family, and gets to determine the order of how people behave.

But other powerful mafia families get to do what they want too, whether it’s Putin in Russia, whether it’s China, or in the Middle East. Still the United States remains dominant. But Israel is treated as the U.S. enforcer in the Middle East by virtue of Israel’s military and economic power.

AL: Do you think that Trump’s approach to foreign policy has opened the door for another country to step in as a more reliable partner in some of these relationships, like maybe a China or Russia?

MD: I don’t think any country is able or interested in stepping in to take over. This is one of the concerns I had with some of the Biden administration’s approach. Their approach to the Middle East in many ways seemed like it was designed to box out China from coming in and establishing any kind of influence in the region. My response to that was like, why would China, watching the United States for two and a half decades constantly tripping over itself and bleeding resources and attention and wasting all this energy, why would China want a piece of that? It never made sense to me. I think that’s still true.

China clearly wants influence. It expects to play, and I think it has a right to play a major role in shaping global affairs. There are people who disagree with this. Their view is ultimately, China does want to replace the United States as the global hegemon, but at least in the short term, I don’t see anyone doing that.

But what we do already see is other countries, including longtime allies of the United States, as hedging against the United States. They now see the United States as a predator. They are building and strengthening relationships with as many other countries, including China, as they can because they understand, listen, we need options. We have invested and believed for so long that, whatever disagreements we might have with the United States, ultimately we share some basic principles about how the world should be ordered.

“What we do already see is other countries, including longtime allies of the United States, as hedging against the United States.”

But now it’s clear, and frankly, I think it took them way too long to realize this. But now it’s clear that that’s all wrong. So we need to find ways to protect ourselves. We need to create options for ourselves, alternatives to the United States.

AL: I think this is a really interesting distinction because it puts the previous order where there’s a hegemon at the top and everyone else falls into line on its head and raises the question of — I don’t think it’s a new critique to say, why do we keep asking like whether China or Russia’s going to step into this whatever, to this role that the U.S. played? And that the global stage and the relationships in foreign policy are just changing as the world advances and as society changes. I think that’s interesting. I will say that Trump is currently scheduled to visit Beijing in May to meet with President Xi Jinping.

MD: This summit has already been delayed once. It may very well be delayed again because of this war. The Chinese government has just recently issued some of its strongest statements yet about this war in response to Trump’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump responded to Iran’s blocking the strait by blocking the strait, I don’t know what that’s all about.

It’s interesting because China is the more reasonable actor here. China right now is the government that is standing up for the rules-based order, standing up for international law. When you look at what Israel and the United States are doing here, they have an argument. And that argument has a lot of appeal to countries around the world. So we’ll see.

“China right now is the government that is standing up for the rules-based order, standing up for international law.”

I think many have been surprised, especially, looking at the first Trump administration, which really focused Washington’s attention on China as the competitor for the United States. Some have been surprised, including me at how relatively little he’s focused on China in this second term. But clearly they have been building to this, but the fact that they’ve had to delay this summit once already goes back to the point that Trump just miscalculated with this war.

I’m sure he imagined he would’ve wrapped this up already and forced Iran to put up a new government that loved the United States and loved Donald Trump, and he could just move on to dealing with China. But now he’s bogged down in precisely the sort of war that he promised he would never get into.

AL: And because you mentioned it. China’s President Xi Jinping on Tuesday made the first public statement about this war. As you said, Matt, China is the rational actor or the more reasonable actor in this, demonstrated by this quote, “Maintaining the authority of international rule of law means not using it when it suits us and abandoning it when it doesn’t.” That was Xi Jinping.

Before we go, I also just want to add that because of the war and the significant ripple effects it’s having, not just here in the U.S. but around the world, other issues that are just as important have received less attention in this current news cycle. Like the fact that the Trump administration is continuing to kill civilians in the Pacific and the Caribbean striking what he claims are alleged drug smugglers. These extrajudicial killings now exceed 170. And on Monday Trump threatened to use the “same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at sea” against ships that approached its blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.”

MD: It’s just staggering. It’s just straight murder. That is what we’re doing.

They have never provided any evidence — either in a public or a classified setting — that these people were even carrying drugs, let alone that they posed a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. They have not bothered with any of these steps. Anytime they have tried, they have met in a classified setting with members of Congress, those members have almost always come out and said, they didn’t give us anything.

In the same way that this Iran war is the most egregious and horrible expression of trends in our foreign policy that have been building for a long time, so are these boat strikes. We’ve been killing people with flying robots in the Middle East and Africa and elsewhere for decades now. Now one can argue, OK, those assassinations were done with more of a legal process. I’m not convinced or comforted by that at all. I’m sorry.

So really what this goes to in my mind is that we still need a very serious reckoning with the global war on terror. We need to bring it to an end. We need to dismantle our security state.

“We still need a very serious reckoning with the global war on terror. We need to bring it to an end. We need to dismantle our security state.”

This is a huge political project. And going back to what I said about this being a moment for a real anti-war movement and anti-war president, I want a president who’s going to commit to doing that. It’s not just because it would be nice to have. This is a core thing for our security and our prosperity and for global security. We need to pull ourselves back from this.

We need to hold American officials accountable. Not just for the Trump administration, but for multiple administrations who had a hand in these kinds of policies. If we really want to prepare a U.S. foreign policy that’s fit for this new era.

AL: That’s a good place to leave it. Matt, thank you so much for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.

MD: Glad to do it. Thank you for everything you do at The Intercept. I love it.

AL: And that does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.

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Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

The post When Anti-War Candidates Become War-Monger Presidents appeared first on The Intercept.

Amy Goodman on the Media’s “Access of Evil”

The Intercept Briefing — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

As talks to end the U.S.–Israel war on Iran break down and President Donald Trump demands a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, journalist Amy Goodman says that in times of war and conflicts, “What I care about is the answer, and I care that people in this country don’t get health care at the same time that money goes to kill others in another country.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Goodman speaks to host Akela Lacy about a new documentary called “Steal This Story, Please!” The documentary follows Goodman’s life, journalism career, and the building of the independent news program “Democracy Now!” which just celebrated its 30th year. Recalling times when networks used their video footage, says Goodman, “I encourage that. Steal this story, please. It’s a failure if it’s an exclusive. We are covering these critical issues of the day, and we want to ensure that these stories get out because independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society.”

Many journalists and news outlets don’t ask tough questions to maintain what she calls the “access of evil — trading truth for access,” and to that, Goodman says, “Then it’s not worth being there at all. It’s our job to hold those in power to account.”

She adds, “We can’t have weapons manufacturers, who provide millions to networks to advertise determining our coverage of war. We can’t have oil, gas, and coal companies determining our coverage of climate change, or banks and other financial institutions determining how we cover inequality. We need an independent media.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, your host, and a senior politics reporter at The Intercept. We’re bringing you a very special episode today. If you know anything about independent media, you’ve likely heard of the famous show “Democracy Now!” and its intrepid and fearless host Amy Goodman

[Clip from “Steal This Story, Please!”]

Rush Limbaugh: Radical leftist TV program called “Democracy Now!” …

Unknown speaker: I’m not asking again. That way, or you get arrested.

Amy Goodman [montage]: From ground zero … From East Timor … As we deplane in Haiti … From Georgia’s death row prison… We’re in occupied Western Sahara … We’ve walked across the border … We’re in the middle of Trump Tower … This is “Democracy Now!,” the war and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman.

AL: “Democracy Now!” has opened the door for so many independent media outlets doing investigative reporting and asking tough questions, including The Intercept and many other outlets that we admire. Amy Goodman is a journalist who I have incredible respect and admiration for. And today, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing her about a documentary on her life’s work.

We’re also joined by one of the filmmakers of the documentary, which is out now — “Steal This Story, Please!” — which follows Amy’s life and career in journalism and the building of the independent journalism Goliath that is “Democracy Now!”

Amy Goodman, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Amy Goodman: Akela, it’s an honor to be here.

AL: Tia Lessin, welcome to the show.

Tia Lessin: Thanks so much for having us.

AL: Amy, as someone who has long covered U.S. wars and global conflicts, what do you make of how mainstream media is covering the U.S.–Israel war on Iran? Is it any different from how the media covered the 2003 Iraq War, which is something that comes up a lot in the documentary?

AG: Akela, our motto is “Go to where the silence is.” And that’s what the rest of the media, I think, too often misses. When it came to 20 years ago, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, hearing the voices of everyday Iraqis — almost absent from the mainstream media. And today, as Israel and the United States attack Iran, hearing the voices of people in Iran and the Iranian diaspora.

I am particularly moved by those who stood up against the regime, those who were imprisoned against the regime, those thousands of people. Of course, there are thousands who’ve lost their lives, but those who survived their fierce criticism of what the U.S. and Israel has been doing. It’s really important that we understand history, how the rest of the world sees us.

In the case of Iran, 1953 would mean nothing to most people in the United States. But for the people of Iran, the seminal moment when their leader — their democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh — was overthrown by the U.S. and Britain really ultimately for BP at the time, for British Petroleum. That led to this series of events that led to the shah and his secret police known as the SAVAK, which then led to the overthrow and the Iranian revolution in 1979. Many of those who fought the shah would then be imprisoned under the ayatollah.

It’s people who’ve been fighting for democracy who say bombing their country — let me quote President Trump — “to the Stone Ages,” will not further democracy in Iran. That’s what we so often don’t hear is the Iranian people.

AL: Recently, when we saw all this coverage of the U.S. rescue mission of this downed airman, as this incredible feat that took the brawn and the American ethos of war fighting. That was a quote that I heard from a mainstream analyst about this event that had wall-to-wall coverage on the networks —

AG: Let me say something Akela.

AL: Go ahead, please.

AG: When you talk about the airmen, the lives of these service members matter — of every one of them — as do the lives of civilians here in this country in Israel and Iran. It is critical that we understand what’s happened to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of U.S. soldiers, once President Trump announced — along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — this unprovoked war on Iran. It’s critical to understand that a number of U.S. service members have died.

You know how reporters were castigated when they raised the service members. It is really important to question, because we’re talking about lives — life and death — whether we go to war, which is why it’s critical for Congress to debate this issue and determine whether the U.S. should go to war. We have to be able to discuss these issues, and the media is the place to do it. I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. Anything less than that is a disservice to the service men and women of this country. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society.

“I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day.”

AL: This is a good segue to touch on the title of the documentary, which is “Steal This Story, Please!” which speaks to the idea that you want mainstream media to start covering the topics that you cover that they might ordinarily ignore or gloss over. But that even when they do, they don’t always connect the dots to what’s driving these issues or to these questions that you’re asking about accountability. The premise that that this was an unprovoked war is lost in a lot of this coverage, even if some of it has been relatively critical.

So I just wonder if you could speak to how it’s beneficial for all of us when the media does pay attention to these issues. But what difference does it make if they’re not connecting it to these broader questions of accountability and power?

AG: Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the filmmakers who made “Steal This Story, Please!” chose that. It’s our motto at “Democracy Now!” We have a few mottos. To be the exception to the rulers. That’s our job in the press. The other is to go to where the silence is. Because the fact of the matter is, it’s not really silent there. People are organizing, they’re raucous, they’re rowdy, but it doesn’t hit the corporate media radar screen.

When it comes to stealing this story, please — because we are forever polite — covering these stories like as they covered in the film, the standoff at Standing Rock. We should not have been the only journalist there covering when hundreds of Indigenous people, Native Americans, First Nations people from Canada, Indigenous people from Latin America, and their non-native allies started taking on the Dakota Access Pipeline.

We were there at one moment when they saw bulldozers excavating their burial grounds. And they were concerned about the pipeline going under the Missouri River, the longest river in North America, endangering the lives of millions of people. That’s what they were concerned about.

They saw these bulldozers. They went on the property, and the DAPL — Dakota Access Pipeline — guards unleashed dogs on the protesters. They were biting them. They called themselves water protectors, not protesters. We captured that dog with its mouth and nose covered in Native blood, and we posted online what was taking place. Within 24 hours, 14 million views.

Any corporate executive, so many. When I go into the network studios, — not only Fox; but MSNBC at the time, now MSNow; CNN — saying, why don’t you cover climate change more for these decades? The executives say it doesn’t capture enough eyeballs. Well, I think any of these executives would drool for that kind of response. Fourteen million views.

“It’s a failure if it’s an exclusive. … We want to ensure that these stories get out.”

People really do care. But because we’re the only ones there, all the networks took our video, and I encourage that. Steal this story, please. It’s a failure if it’s an exclusive. We are covering these critical issues of the day, and we want to ensure that these stories get out because independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society.

AL: Tia, I want to bring you in here, too. You opened the film with Amy holding a microphone, following a Trump official, persistently asking him questions about why he’s at a climate conference when Trump has called climate change a hoax, among other environmental policy questions.

[Clip of film]

AG [in film]: Hi, I’m Amy Goodman from “Democracy Now!” Can you tell —

P. Wells Griffith III, then-Trump climate adviser: I’ve gotta go to another meeting.

AG [in film]: Can you tell us what you think about President Trump saying climate change is a hoax? You could answer the question, are you not speaking to the press here?

PWG: Excuse — I’m sorry, I’m running late for a meeting. Thanks.

AG [in film]: Right, but you weren’t running late when you were just standing there.

[Clip end]

AL: Tell us about that scene, and why you chose to open with it.

TL: It was quintessential Amy Goodman there. She was going up and down the stairs, in and out of corridors, following, chasing after the Trump administration’s representative to the conference who would not stop to answer her questions. And she was just doing what a good reporter does, and she was unstoppable.

“She’s doing this for us. She is working in the public interest to get these answers from elected officials, from corporate CEOs.”

She understood that her listeners wanted to know these answers, and she was going after them. To me, it just showed everything you need to know about Amy Goodman. And it really, I think, makes the audience root for her because she’s doing this for us. She is working in the public interest to get these answers from elected officials, from corporate CEOs.

We see that throughout the film: She’s often chasing after billionaires and politicians, and oftentimes getting answers that no one else is, to questions that no one else is asking. I will say, we were going to call the film “Chasing Amy,” or “Amy Chasing” or “Chasing Amy Chasing,”

AL: I love that. “Amy Chasing –––.” Fill in the blank. [laughs]

TL: The title was already taken. But I will say that, to go back to your previous question, I think of the words that Amy’s co-host Juan González said to us when we were talking to him about the coverage of the Iraq War in 2003, or let’s say the invasion of Iraq. And the cheerleading that the commercial media did, “Democracy Now!”’s reporting was pretty unique in raising questions that journalists weren’t asking. They were taking Bush’s proclamations at face value.

Twenty years later, lots of mea culpas on the part of the press, “we were wrong.” Even people like David Remnick, we’re sorry we were wrong. Juan González put it perfectly when he said, to paraphrase him, it’s not enough to say 20 years later we were wrong. You need to stop the injustice when it’s happening, or at least report on it.

That is something Amy does and Juan does and her team does every single day.

[Break]

AL: There was a ton of discussion in Trump’s first term about how the media should cover someone like him. And we didn’t see many journalists doing what we saw you doing, which is, and we don’t see that today really, running people down and asking them hard questions. Often I feel like nowadays that’s associated with — I have images in my head of viral videos of reporters trying to do gotcha questions, and that’s not the kind of journalism that we’re talking about.

We’re talking about finding people in power and asking them hard questions. So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about what mistakes you think journalists made in covering Trump in his first term, and whether you think that we’ve learned anything from that in this second term?

AG: I think that journalists engage in the what I call “access of evil” — trading truth for access — playing on the old “axis of evil” term. This goes way back, and it’s not just with Republican presidents, it’s with Democratic presidents as well. You don’t ask a tough question because you’re afraid you then won’t be called on again. But I say, then, it’s not worth being there at all. It’s our job to hold those in power to account.

Trump is “doing that to intimidate because there’s a bigger question he doesn’t want asked.”

Right now, the stakes are so high. When President Trump tries to censure AP for not going along with Trump and calling the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.” Or his particular attack on women journalists, and particularly women of color, is grotesque. Every single time, the entire press corps should walk out, or object when he calls on the next person, when he says “Quiet, piggy” or talking about the “ugly” reporter. It’s critical reporters stand together. He’s doing that to intimidate because there’s a bigger question he doesn’t want asked, whether it’s about the Epstein files or grifting.

The amount of money his family is making, especially now during the second term, we’re talking conservatively about billions of dollars. The Wall Street Journal has done great reporting on this; the New York Times has done great reporting on this. “Democracy Now!,” I always say we prevent stories from being “priv-ished.” The word is published and maybe a story is published, but often it’s behind the refrigerator ads or it just doesn’t get a lot of attention in print, and to broadcast it is really important. Raising these issues continually.

Trump is a master of media manipulation. He sues the media. He sued “60 Minutes” for editing a Kamala Harris interview. We all do interviews for an hour, then cut it down to 10 minutes. It’s our job. Unfortunately, we don’t have limitless time.

So of course in that lawsuit, I think “60 Minutes” and CBS would’ve won, but their owners were engaged in trying to merge two corporations, Paramount and Skydance, and it wasn’t worth it to them to go through this exercise that would antagonize President Trump. So they essentially paid him off. They say the money goes to the Trump library. What was it? $15, $16 million. But what they get in return is something like a $6 billion, $7 billion merger approval.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos saying that President Trump was found civilly liable for rape. This was in the case of E. Jean Carroll, who President Trump had a trial and was found guilty of sexual assault. The judge in the case said in common parlance, that would be rape. I think George Stephanopoulos and ABC would’ve won. But again, their corporate owners wanted a larger corporate merger — I think it was between Nexstar and Tegna — and it was worth billions of dollars.

So paying $15, $16 million to the so-called Trump library was pennies for them.

Now, this is extremely serious, especially for less financially well-off networks; you can’t afford these kinds of lawsuits. So it was a real lesson to everyone, and it’s absolutely critical that they be fought.

AL: Talking about this solidarity, or lack thereof rather, in the White House press corps around setting norms around how to handle an official like Trump. There’s a scene from the documentary I have in mind where you’re in the White House briefing room, and you’re asking tough questions about the U.S. arming and training the Indonesian military that carried out the massacre in East Timor that you were present for.

[Clip from film]

AG [in film]: Will President Clinton push for the sale of F-16s to Indonesia when Congress returns in January? José Ramos-Horta says it’s like selling weapons to Saddam Hussein.

Mike McCurry, White House Press Secretary: That’s not the view of the United States government. We make arms transfers of that nature when they’re in the interest of the United States.

AG: You’re supporting the military dictatorship by doing it.

MM: Well, you’re also advancing U.S. strategic interests in the region.

[Clip ends]

AL: The press secretary sort of makes a joke at your expense, and you see the rest of the reporters start laughing with him. What was that experience like being surrounded by that press corps? Did you ever question your approach? How was that for you?

AG: This was about the 1991 massacre, which Indonesian soldiers armed by the United States with M-16s. Indonesia invaded East Timor December of 1975, and they would go on to occupy East Timor for two decades. They killed off a third of the population.

My colleague, journalist Allan Nairn, and I survived a massacre on November 12, 1991, which the Indonesian soldiers opened fire on innocent Timorese civilians. They killed over 270 of them. They beat us to the ground. They fractured Allan’s skull. They put the guns to our heads, U.S. M-16s. And only when we convinced them that we were from the United States — the same place their weapons were from — did they pull the guns off our heads, and we were able to get away in a Red Cross Jeep with dozens of Timorese jumping on top of us, on top of the van to flee this killing field. 270 Timorese killed in one day. But ultimately during that time, 1975 to 2002, a third of the population of East Timor was killed.

So when I came back to the United States after the ’91 massacre, that was President Clinton, and the press spokesperson was Mike McCurry. Congress had decided to cut off military training aid to Indonesia, the fourth most powerful army in the world — armed, trained and financed by the United States overwhelmingly. They cut off IMET, that’s international military education and training, funding. And the question was President Clinton going to restore it. And I kept asking that question to get an answer, and when I asked it again and said I know about the massacre, I survived that massacre, he ultimately said, “The turnip is dry.”

I don’t know if that was a code I was supposed to give to another country. But that’s when all the journalists laughed. Because a lot of times the administration can use peer pressure, but I don’t care about that. What I care about is the answer. And I care that people in this country don’t get health care at the same time that money goes to kill others in another country. So we just persisted.

AL: What have you learned from being that person in the room, particularly surrounded by people who often have that access, but don’t use it to ask tough questions?

AG: You just have to keep going. It’s like talking about the corporate media for 30 years. “Democracy Now!” has just celebrated its 30th anniversary.

AL: Congratulations.

AG: We had a great time recently at Riverside Church, that amazing place where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his speech against Vietnam in 1967, a year to the day before he was assassinated, against the war in Vietnam. The mainstream media, like Life Magazine said he had done a [disservice] to his cause and his people; that he sounded like he was reading a script from Radio Hanoi because he was against the war in Vietnam, he should stick to civil rights. Even those in his inner circle, some felt that way. But MLK persisted, and he said, no, these issues are connected. So in the same way the corporate media goes after him, it’s really important to see and cover these leaders who either their speeches, their messages don’t get heard, or they get misrepresented.

But for 30 years, we’ve been criticizing the corporate media. Today, there are many journalists within the corporate media who might have bristled in the last 30 years at what we said, but now are saying, “You didn’t say enough.”

Look at the Washington Post newsroom. It’s been cut by a third by a tech billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, bought the Washington Post, is trying to curry favor with President Trump, stood behind him with the other tech billionaires when he was inaugurated. And now has sliced and diced this newsroom to the horror of not only great journalists at the Washington Post, but to people who live in a democratic society and who do believe, go by that motto of the Washington Post, that “Democracy dies in darkness.” The U.S. has now attacked Iran, and almost the entire Middle East division of the Washington Post is gone. The reporter in Ukraine, she gets an email that she’s laid off as she’s covering the war on the front lines.

These are really serious times. It’s critical we continue to sound the alarm and build independent media, a media that’s brought to us by those who are hungry for authentic voices. In the case of “Democracy Now!,” it’s the listeners, it’s the readers, it’s the viewers. And for 30 years, we have depended on this global audience. Many of whom we reach on the internet at democracynow.org and now on social media platforms.

Because we can’t have weapons manufacturers, who provide millions to networks to advertise, determining our coverage of war. We can’t have oil, gas, and coal companies determining our coverage of climate change, or banks and other financial institutions determining how we cover inequality. We need an independent media.

“We can’t have oil, gas, and coal companies determining our coverage of climate change, or banks and other financial institutions determining how we cover inequality.”

TL: And that very same week that Jeff Bezos lays off how many hundreds of Washington Post reporters, columnists, editors is the same week that the documentary about Melania Trump comes out. It came out on Amazon, they put it in the theaters. How much did they spend on it? $30 million to make it, an additional $45 million to market. Or is it the other way around, I can’t —

AG: $40 [million].

TL: Either way, it’s an obscenity. First of all, it’s just a commercial for Melania and her fashion industry. But worse than that, it’s just a bribe to the Trump administration. So the fact that those two things happened at the same time, I think, is just, it’s outrageous.

AL: Amy, you created “Democracy Now!” at a time when corporations were building these huge monopolies, privatizing news media. For both of you though, can you talk about — we keep talking about independent media, but I wonder if you could talk about what does that actually mean to you, and what it was like being an independent journalist in that media landscape at the height of all these consolidations?

AG: We’re the same then that we are now, and it is independent. I found at the beginning of my career, WBAI in New York, part of the Pacifica Radio Network, which was founded in 1949 in the Bay Area by a man named Lew Hill, who was a war resistor, came out of the detention camps and said, there’s got to be a media outlet that’s not run by corporations that profit from war.

Or as George Gerbner, founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, former dean at the Annenberg School for Communication, said, a media not run by corporations that have nothing to tell and everything to sell that are raising our children today.

So we started with this deep belief that independent media serves a democratic society. It has just become increasingly corporatized to the point where many of those within these corporate structures are saying they’re losing their jobs and are saying we can’t sound the alarm loud enough. At this point, a lot of the legacy media is, to say the least, losing its power, is diminishing. A lot of these newspapers are going by the wayside, and it’s an enormous loss.

We’re speaking to you actually on Local News Day, a very important day because we have lost so much local news. That’s where everything starts. When you care about what your city council decides or your school board decides, and then you go to a larger level. A lot of our stories — international, national stories — start with local news coverage that we read about and find the people who are closest to the story. Not these pundits, who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.

“Social media platforms are extremely important in challenging the traditional gatekeepers, but they can also be a global rumor mill.”

We need to hear more of that. I don’t know the form, the social media platforms and the kind of journalistic formations that will be, but we have students coming to “Democracy Now!” every day, classrooms watching the broadcast in the morning, 8 to 9, and talking with them after. And I say there couldn’t be any more noble profession than journalism. I’m not sure the different shapes it will take, but I can just say, “You should do it.”

We need to be fair. We need to be accurate. You’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. It is critical that we understand that the internet is extremely important, and social media platforms are extremely important in challenging the traditional gatekeepers, but they can also be a global rumor mill, and we have to ensure authenticity and truth.

AL: I’m not sure that the average person totally understands the effect that corporatization of media has on the journalism itself. I think a lot of us have been inured to the idea that because Politico Playbook is sponsored by BP, that doesn’t necessarily affect the journalism. But I think that’s —

TL: And it’s not only journalism. It is certainly journalism, but it’s not only journalism. I think about the world of documentary filmmaking: The number of platforms and outlets that our work airs on has shrunk in this media consolidation. So that means that not only are there less commissions and less money for making films, but the films that we make, that I make, the political documentaries don’t get funded, particularly by commercial media that is looking for corporate sponsors or is accountable to their corporate boards that are trying to kiss up to Donald Trump.

In this case, I think we’re finding a very narrow market for political films. In our case, we are distributing “Steal This Story, Please!” independently, and we’re excited about doing that. We have seen time and time again on the festival circuit, there is an appetite for political content for films that speak to this moment, for this film about Amy Goodman and “Democracy Now!” and independent media. And I think a lot of the distributors would have you believe that all that audiences care about are true crime stories and celebrity biopics. We are out to prove them wrong.

“A lot of the distributors would have you believe that all that audiences care about are true crime stories and celebrity biopics. We are out to prove them wrong.”

AL: The film “Steal This Story, Please!” is screening in theaters across the country. Visit stealthisstory.org to find showtimes near you. Amy and Tia, thank you so much for joining me on The Intercept Briefing. It’s been an honor to speak with you both.

AG: Thank you so much.

TL: Really appreciate the time. Thank you so much.

AL: Before we go, we’d love it if you help The Intercept Briefing, win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. I’ve already heard from at least one listener who told us that they voted for us, in addition to my fiancé. So please vote for us! We’ll add a link to vote in our show notes. We thank you so much for your support.

That does it for this episode. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show and legal review by David Bralow.

Slipstream provided our theme music. This show and our reporting at The Intercept do not exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the Intercept Briefing, wherever you listen to podcasts, and leave us a rating or a review. It helps other listeners to find our reporting. Let us know what you think of this episode, or if you want to send us a general message, email us at podcast@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

The post Amy Goodman on the Media’s “Access of Evil” appeared first on The Intercept.

Putting Fuel on a Ceasefire: Israel Tries to Kill U.S.–Iran Talks

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Vice President JD Vance is set to lead renewed negotiations with Iran this weekend to bring an end to the U.S.–Israel war on the country that stretched into a second month. The talks come after a roller coaster of a week, which began with President Donald Trump threatening genocidal war crimes against Iran.

“A whole civilization will die tonight,” he wrote on social media, “never to be brought back again.”

Trump urged Iran to make a deal with the U.S. and fully open the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET. Then, shortly before the deadline, Trump took to social media again to say Iran and the U.S. had reached a two-week ceasefire agreement brokered by Pakistan. Trump said the U.S. received a workable 10-point plan from Iran to begin negotiations on a durable ending to the war. In the meantime, Iran said it would allow for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Israel, however, immediately intensified its attacks on Lebanon, jeopardizing the already tenuous ceasefire. More than 300 people were killed in Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes the day after the ceasefire was announced.

The terms of the plan are not yet clear but there are some key factors for Iran, says Narges Bajoghli, a professor of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

“One is that Iran is asking for non-aggression from the United States into the future. It won’t take the United States’s word for it. It’s already been burned by the U.S. multiple times,” Bajoghil tells The Intercept Briefing. “Then the other big thing is sanctions relief.” But “Iran’s biggest red line is its sovereignty and independence.”

This week on the podcast, Bajoghil speaks to senior Intercept editor Ali Gharib about the path that led the U.S. back to the negotiating table with Iran. This war has proven, Bajoghil says, “both to the decision-makers in Iran, to the Iranian population, and then more importantly to the international world, is that Iran’s real deterrence actually doesn’t come from a potential nuclear bomb, but it comes from the ability to be able to stop or regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.”

She notes, “In many ways, what actually has potentially led to this ceasefire is the fact that Iran is able to create a chokehold over 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas trade. That is an extremely powerful weapon that they have in their hands and in many ways can force shifts to happen geopolitically in a much faster way than a nuclear bomb can.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Ali Gharib: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept.

Akela Lacy: And I am Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at the Intercept and co-host of the Intercept Briefing.

AG: Akela, how are you doing? It’s been a pretty wild week. We’ve had genocidal threats. We’ve had ceasefire agreements. Now we have a shaky ceasefire agreement. Traffic opened up in the Strait of Hormuz. It closed back down. How are you viewing all this?

AL: I am struggling to keep up with the fast-changing developments, but my overall takeaway this week has been thinking about what, if any, recourse our institutional democracy provides for this kind of thing, or is supposed to provide? We have a lot of Democrats coming out and talking about invoking the 25th Amendment and instituting articles of impeachment. It feels like we’ve seen all of this before.

So it’s kind of like, yeah, we have a crazy genocidal maniac running the country. People keep telling me the checks and balances are working. I’m not convinced that the checks and balances are working.

AG: Well, tell it to the people in Tehran and all over Iran and in central Beirut that these checks and balances aren’t working, and the madman theory of conducting foreign policy seems like a much bigger gamble when it’s an actual madman.

OK, well, let’s talk a little bit about that. Obviously, we had this last-minute ceasefire agreement on Tuesday night between Iran and the U.S. through Pakistani mediation that came just on the precipice of the deadline expiring for Trump’s threat to, let’s call it what it is, commit genocide against Iran.

Almost immediately, the ceasefire came under strain by a few residual tit-for-tat attacks. The Iranians said that they faced a couple Israeli attacks on energy infrastructure, and the Emirates said that the Iranians were still hitting them with drones and missiles. And in short order, however, those attacks slowed down, and by all accounts, the Americans have stopped bombing Iran.

What seems to be the biggest strain on the ceasefire at this point is an incredible, almost mind-numbing level of assault that the Israelis launched against Lebanon. Can you talk a little bit about what happened there and how this has played out in public bickering between Iran and the U.S.?

AL: Something that I think has been not lost in the coverage, but under-appreciated about this war is that while the U.S. and Israel have been bombing Iran, Israel has been waging war around the world basically since October 7, pretty unchecked. Multiple acts of aggression that we covered on this podcast — obviously the latest of which is razing Southern Lebanon.

On Wednesday, there were more than 200 people killed in just one day. That’s a small fraction of the total number of people who have been killed in all of these strikes that we’re talking about.

But my reaction to this is that it feels like Israel is able to get away with this aggression, particularly against Lebanon, because we write it off because of Hezbollah, or we don’t consider the retaliation against regional countries as part of the war, even though people are being killed every single day with the implicit approval of the U.S.

“People are being killed every single day with the implicit approval of the U.S.”

AG: Yeah, with U.S. bombs as part of the U.S. war. That has been the key sticking point. When the Pakistani prime minister announced the ceasefire, or rather made the request of the Trump administration for a ceasefire — with a tweet that the New York Times later reported had been approved in advance by the Trump administration — we saw that he included Lebanon in the ceasefire. Of course, the Israelis quickly came out and said Lebanon was not involved in the ceasefire and kept going.

JD Vance immediately sided with the Israelis, and now he’s going to be the guy who’s going to be going to Pakistan along with our two favorite real estate agent Trump aides: Steve Witkoff, who was involved in the original Iran talks that were interrupted by this war, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has no official role in the administration, but is extremely close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and could very easily allow Netanyahu and Israeli aggression to play spoiler in these talks.

AL: The other thing that I found maddening was that this week, I mean the day that Trump sent this tweet calling for genocide in Iran, where was JD Vance? In Hungary trying to help Viktor Orbán not lose his election this upcoming weekend.

Then there was this huge puff piece in the Times centering JD Vance as the person who really tried to stop the president from dragging us into war with Iran. Now he’s being put forth as the negotiator in these ongoing talks. I mean, when you have a Cabinet full of evil villainous characters, these are the people who are running the world.

I don’t even know the word to describe it — the fact that he’s being upheld as this person who was trying to keep Trump from going to war with Iran, while he’s halfway across the world trying to save another far-right authoritarian figure from losing because he is so unpopular, and yet we’re praising him at home in the paper of record. The framing of this was that he did something huge and valorous, when really it was showing modest opposition and, at the end of everything, agreeing to go along with it. So what are we celebrating here?

AG: Yeah, there’s a tiny bit of room to be optimistic in a world where every option is like a complete pile of crap. It’s like, maybe this is our one shining pile of crap that we can look to. It might be that he was the only guy that said something. But yeah, it doesn’t inspire much confidence that he has been like every other official who’s gotten anywhere near Trump’s circle of power: a complete sycophant of the president, has gone along and agreed with what the president says, and in the end, we still have this complete madman calling the shots.

So I spoke this week with Narges Bajoghli about the ceasefire, about the 10-point plan, and what this looks like for regional dynamics going forward. Narges is an associate professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University. She’s written several books including “Iran Reframed” and “How Sanctions Work in Iran.” Her upcoming book is called “Weapons Against Humanity.” It’s about how the Middle East became the physical, political, and moral workshop for the global weapons industry.

AL: That sounds fascinating. Let’s hear that conversation.

AG: Narges, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.

Narges Bajoghli: It’s lovely to be with you.

AG: The pleasure is all ours.

So before we get started, I just wanted to note that we’re speaking on Wednesday morning. This is the day after Iran and the U.S. reached a temporary ceasefire agreement following Trump’s threats to annihilate the whole civilization of Iran. So let’s jump right in from there.

OK, just to quickly recap the week. On Tuesday morning, Trump threatened this genocidal war against Iran. Basically said he wanted to do war crimes and wipe out the whole civilization of Iran. He said, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” The warning came hours before a deadline that Trump had put on Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

That deadline was set for Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. About an hour and a half before that Trump announced this ceasefire. The terms of it aren’t exactly clear, but it does seem that it was brokered by Pakistan. Iran had introduced this 10-point plan. The ceasefire is to last for two weeks. The straits are to be reopened. Those are some basic things we know.

So in this 10-point plan, as far as we can tell, and in the ceasefire agreement, what’s Iran asking for and how likely is it that they can get there from the Trump administration? What does the Trump administration want from them?

NB: Two key things. One is that Iran is asking for non-aggression from the United States into the future. It won’t take the United States’ word for it. It’s already been burned by the U.S. multiple times. This is potentially where China’s involvement in this Pakistan-mediated ceasefire might play a big role. And it’s been reported that it has.

Then the other big thing is sanctions relief. If Iran ends this and goes back to its sanctions pre-war status quo, that’s going to be unacceptable to Iran. So a big component of this is going to be lifting of at least a very large number of sanctions against Iran.

AG: We should just say that this is a sanctions program that’s been on since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but really kicked into high gear about 15 years ago. Then when Trump came into his first term, started this program of “maximum pressure” that totally crippled Iran — impoverished it.

The sanctions have been over Iran’s nuclear program. That’s also part of what the Trump administration says that it’s getting from Iran as part of this plan, though that didn’t appear in Iran’s readout of the 10-point plan. I saw in the FT on Wednesday morning that a diplomat had told the paper that the version of the 10-point plan that they were getting wasn’t exactly the version that Iran had put out publicly.

How likely is it that Iran would be willing to compromise on its nuclear program? For example, remove it entirely, which has been a red line for them this entire time — especially given as you said, that they’re not likely to trust a U.S. non-aggression guarantee.

NB: Iran’s biggest red line is its sovereignty and independence. Within that, the nuclear program is part and parcel of it. Will it concede to certain kinds of negotiations on the nuclear program? Yes, of course. This was also part of the negotiations that were ongoing prior to the start of this war. But will it give up its high-enriched uranium completely and give it up to the United States? I find that to be a very difficult thing to be happening after this war.

It’s important to note that from the Iranian perspective, in many ways its infrastructure has been really battered. Its residential buildings, its economic hubs have been really battered throughout all of this bombing of the past 40 days.

“Iranians and the Islamic Republic understands that they can continue to withstand extreme amounts of pain in order to sustain Iran’s sovereignty and independence.”

But from Iran’s perspective and many Iranians themselves, they see that they are coming out of this victorious simply because no real regime change has taken place, Iran’s territory has not been shifted, and Iran’s state has not collapsed, nor has Iran fractured. These are all of the things that at different points in time, the Israelis or the Americans were saying were a part of this war effort.

In the face of that, Iranians and the Islamic Republic understands that they can continue to withstand extreme amounts of pain in order to sustain Iran’s sovereignty and independence. They will not give up things, whether it is complete control over the Strait of Hormuz or the nuclear program in order to please Trump at this stage.

AG: This obviously has been one of the hairiest issues here. I want to talk about the government’s resilience in a moment, but just to get back to this nuclear issue.

When we’re talking about the nuclear issue, of course, the U.S. and Israel have maintained for decades that Iran is building nuclear programs. Iran says that this is an energy program, but that terrain seems to be shifting throughout the course of this war with the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who is the cleric in charge of the government, who had issued a fatwa — a religious declaration — saying that nuclear bombs were not permitted. But Iranian officials have seemed to be reconsidering that, according to some news reports.

When we talk about the nuclear program and what Iran’s willing to give up — can you just give us a little brief primer on how that became such a point of tension, and where you think things might be likely to go from this point as far as what Iran might have its eyes on? Is there something to the fact that they think that they might need a nuclear weapon to defend their sovereignty, which as you said is the top priority? Is that going to become a non-starter because of whatever negotiations happen from here forward?

NB: First of all, Iran began developing the infrastructure for nuclear energy prior to even the revolution, during the shah’s time. Then after the revolution, especially after the Iran–Iraq War, it began to invest again in the development of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

As you stated, the main purpose of it was for internal scientific and energy reasons. As I think many people now realize, even though Iran has been under all of these severe sanctions for upwards to close to five decades, investment in science in Iran, investment in medical advancement, in engineering — all of this has been very important for not just the Islamic Republic, but I think the Iranian nation as a whole.

The way that they have talked about the nuclear program and the way that even it has been verified over and over by U.N. agencies and others is that there has not been evidence of it moving toward a weaponization of this. Netanyahu himself has been, obviously, for close to 30 years now, keeps saying that Iran is weaponizing and is just a little while away from the bomb. But all of the inspectors seem to disagree with this.

Now, in this war, as you said, and also during the 12-Day War last June, there has been increased conversations within both Iranian decision-making circles as well as the general population that maybe Iran needs to go for a bomb in order to establish real deterrence against Israel and the United States. That is very much a debate that is alive right now.

However, I think one thing that this war — that currently we are under potentially a ceasefire on — has proven both to the decision-makers in Iran, to the Iranian population, and then more importantly to the international world, is that Iran’s real deterrence actually doesn’t come from a potential nuclear bomb, but it comes from the ability to be able to stop or regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

So in many ways, what actually has potentially led to this ceasefire is the fact that Iran is able to create a chokehold over 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas trade. That is an extremely powerful weapon that they have in their hands and in many ways can force shifts to happen geopolitically in a much faster way than a nuclear bomb can.

“ Iran’s real deterrence actually doesn’t come from a potential nuclear bomb, but it comes from the ability to be able to stop or regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran’s decision makers have also studied very, very closely what happened in Iraq and Libya and other countries, Syria, around the region that attempted to go toward building of potential nuclear energy. So Iran, especially from 2003 onward, has utilized the nuclear program as a lever that they could bring onto the international stage, especially with the United States, to negotiate.

So the nuclear program for Iranian decision-makers — yes, it has importance for development of scientific knowledge within the country and energy infrastructure. But more importantly, it was really used as a thing that could bring the United States to the negotiation table.

Today, what is becoming apparent is that, in many ways, the nuclear program before this war hit was a dead end. It actually became a bigger liability for Iran then the ability to be able to bring the United States to the table. Today, what they’re faced with is the fact that actually the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s control over it is what is not only bringing the United States to the table, but has the ability actually to bypass U.S. sanctions and be able to force other countries to deal directly with Iran economically than to even have to worry about the U.S. sanctions.

So I think in many ways the calculation here about the utility of the nuclear program for international diplomacy is beginning to lessen, as Iran is beginning to realize that the biggest card they have in their hands is the Strait of Hormuz.

AG: Fascinating. That also would seem to open the door exactly to a compromise on the nuclear issue in order to get the relief that they’ve been pushing for from this sanctions regime.

Now I want to talk about the idea of the Strait of Hormuz and the regional picture, because you wrote a great piece in Foreign Affairs called “Iran’s Long Game,” about the history of the Islamic Republic over about the past half decade or so, has proven to the country that it’s on its own and that they won’t be able to compete on conventional grounds with foreign militaries.

That’s especially true of course, in this war, we see Israel and the U.S. have this overwhelming firepower. And Iran, after years of sanctions, has been hobbled, both its economy, but also to some extent its ability to large-scale industrial mass production — but that hasn’t affected so much the weapons program. Of course, we’ve seen that one of the goals of this war for Israel and the U.S. has been to degrade Iran’s missile program, and while the amounts of missiles being fired has certainly been reduced, Iran clearly has some material left in its arsenal that have still been hitting Israel, Gulf countries, U.S. installations, and some of that has begun to slip through more and more missile defense systems.

Can you just talk about what the after-effect of this war and whatever has happened to Iran’s industrial capacity might mean for that long game going forward? Is this going to become a thing that becomes more focused on the strait? Or is this going to continue to be the broad-based regional program for Iran that is going to be small missile drone attacks on regional installations to heighten the cost for its neighbors of their alliance with the U.S.?

NB: The lessons Iran took from the Iran-Iraq War was that the way that it was viewed in Iran was that this was a war by the United States and the West using Iraq in order to weaken the new revolutionary state at that time.

AG: We should say this was a nearly a decade[long] war between a young Islamic Republic and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where Iran was fighting on its own, and Saddam Hussein was backed by the West, basically, had the conventional edge, and Iran, very improbably, with great sacrifices, held on and preserved the Islamic Republic.

NB: Exactly, and that’s really important background to have. So how did Iran fight that war was that it was forced in many ways to fight it asymmetrically. And Iran then made the decision that it could not invest and create an air force that would be equal to Israel or the United States.

“How Iran could move forward in its defense posture was to create asymmetric warfare as central to their defense posture and central to their strategy militarily.”

That in many ways how Iran could move forward in its defense posture was to create asymmetric warfare as central to their defense posture and central to their strategy militarily. That then became tested again once the global war on terror started after September 11, when the United States invaded Iraq. Very famously, they said that next on the book would be Iran.

In order to prevent that attack from happening, Iran’s Quds Forces or the IRGC — the Revolutionary Guards’ extraterritorial forces — which at the time were later led by Qassim Suleimani, they developed also then asymmetric warfare to deal with the Americans in Iraq, later in Syria, later also, and obviously throughout all this time with Lebanon and Israel.

So asymmetric warfare is really cemented within how the IRGC has developed its weapons program, as well as its strategy moving forward. It has realized that these missiles and these drones are an effective way of, yes, Iran will sustain a lot of damage — as it has this past month and moving forward — but it is also able to inflict damage whether to its neighbors or to Israel or, importantly, to America’s military bases.

What it has also done is taken that idea of asymmetrical defense of the country, as we see in like this mosaic defense that they have created throughout the country where they have decentralized decision-making. The way in which, for example, Iran’s electricity — even though Trump was threatening to hit these power plants — the reality is, even if Trump had hit the largest power plants in Iran, that only supplies a little bit above 2.3 percent of the population because they have decentralized how electricity is run in the country. Because they understand that an Iran that demands sovereignty and independence is a threat to the United States and the U.S. posture in the Middle East.

“The way that Iran will fight any of these wars going into the future, if it continues, is that it knows that time is on its hands.”

So it has decentralized and taken that asymmetric warfare across all kinds of planning. That also includes the manufacturing of its drones and its missiles, which are deep underground in Iran’s mountains. So in essence, no foreign intel agency really knows how many missiles and drones Iran has. It doesn’t know where all of the different manufacturing sites of these are in these mountains.

This, again, is something that Iran has developed in order to be able to have a long fight of attrition against the United States and Israel. Because the way that Iran will fight any of these wars going into the future, if it continues, is that it knows that time is on its hands. Time is in its favor. And that by being able to do all of these things in an underground fashion, it has a particular kind of power, in a conventional sense, it would not have.

[Break]

AG: On Tuesday, we had this threat to annihilate Iranian civilization, and leading up to that the threat had been all about these broad-based attacks on power, on bridges, on infrastructure. And as we’ve seen from a decade and a half of these extremely stringent sanctions, and also in the aftermath of last June’s war and the continued Israeli and American pressure put on Iran, that the ones who’ve always seemed to suffer from this were Iranian people before any of the Revolutionary Guard, the government suffered.

Then you had this big [New York] Times story the other day and which had come out in bits and pieces before that about how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really pitched this war to Trump as, I don’t want to say a cakewalk, but that it would be a relatively assured effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program, its missile program, and especially to foment some revolution that would overthrow the Islamic order. That has not played out.

So if I can ask you with apologies for the two-sided question in two parts, how the government has survived and how they remain so strong despite what Israel and the U.S. had hoped to do? And what that might mean for Iranian people going forward in terms of repression, and what it means to have a government that has now survived this assault?

NB: So one thing to understand is that Iran’s infrastructure, and importantly its governmental systems, have been on the books for a little bit over a century. It predates the Islamic Republic.

You are dealing with an infrastructure and a bureaucracy and systems of power that regenerate and have been regenerating for close to a century now. Many of that has nothing to do with just the political establishment. You are also dealing with a civilizational state here that has a very clear understanding of itself and its history, and that despite the threats that Trump may make of obliterating this civilization, the fact of the reality is it’s millennia long. Iranians know that. They take huge amounts of pride in that.

Now, the Islamic Republic also has been institutionalized very deeply within Iranian society. It has also fought these wars across the Middle East for over four decades now. It knows that one of the biggest ways in which, especially Israel, but also increasingly the United States, fight these wars across the region, is through assassination of leaders at the top. It has watched this happen. It has happened to its own commanders as well. So Iran has established four to five successors for each major role within both its military and political establishment. That’s one part.

The other thing that I think is really important for people to understand is that Iranians have been struggling for over a century now for the independence and sovereignty of the country vis-a-vis both the West and, at the time that the Soviet Union existed, the East. For Iranians writ large, across political and social lines, to have Iran remain sovereign and independent — that is not a demand of the Islamic Republic, that’s a demand of the Iranian population. It has been a demand of the Iranian population for many decades now.

So when we saw this war begin, and also in the June war, many Iranians are extremely angry at their governing establishment for a whole slew of very valid reasons. But they also have seen the way that the United States and Israel have acted these past three years in particular, but also over the past many decades on Iraq, which is their neighbor on Afghanistan, which is their other neighbor, and they do not want to be succumbed to that.

So rallying around the flag is not rallying around the flag of the Islamic Republic. It is rallying around this idea that Iran as a territory and as a nation stays sovereign and independent. That means that in essence, and the Islamic Republic also repeats this often, is that their biggest deterrence is its population.

The fact that the population is resilient and will not give in to saying, “OK, we don’t like our governing establishment, so therefore let’s welcome what comes from the outside” — that is just incongruent with any understanding of modern Iranian history. This is why Bibi Netanyahu’s strategy has failed.

“The Islamic Republic has proved now in three wars … that it is able to defend Iran’s territory.”

This is also why, actually, before we even got Trump and [Pete] Hegseth, much of the top brass of the American military understood this. Both understood any real war with Iran is almost impossible because of Iran’s size and because of its topography; it’s surrounded by mountains. But then the other fact is that you’re dealing with a civilizational state. And that is a very different war to fight than a war that America has been used to fighting in the Middle East, which is with states that have been carved out by colonial powers over just the past century. So that makes it very different.

Then what do we see in the aftermath of all of this moving forward? The Islamic Republic has proved now in three wars — from the 1980s to the 12-day War to today’s war — that it is able to defend Iran’s territory. That means that coming out of this war, it is coming out in a position of victory and in a position of strength. That does not bode well for a lot of civil society actors inside of the country. Because you now have an emboldened military and IRGC, you also have a new generation of them, which has come to power because many of their fathers have now been assassinated throughout this war.

This is one of the reasons why Iranian civil society actors have been so against both sanctions and war because they understand that those only create further internal repression. But at the same time, the same way that I’ve been saying that Iranians have been demanding sovereignty and independence, they’ve also been demanding dignity from their governing establishment for over 150 years. Those demands will continue, but they will shift in how they make these demands now because they are now dealing with, in many ways, a younger and more entrenched and victorious Revolutionary Guard and governing establishment that has come out of this war.

AG: Part of Netanyahu’s plan was to foment this regime change, and it seems that there were some efforts to instigate more street protests and even to arm protesters, and that would seem to, as you said, even give more reason to the security establishment to clamp down on protesters, more propaganda justifications for its internal population, and justifications for the regime to itself for doing this.

“What Iran’s war strategy has done is really shake the Arab Gulf states’ relationship with the world economy and especially with the U.S.”

I also want to talk about this related issue of Iran’s regional push. Part of Netanyahu’s pitch to the Trump administration was to degrade Iran’s ability to project its power. This has been both through its weapons program, obviously its relationships. It seems to me that this has really backfired. What Iran’s war strategy has done is really shake the Arab Gulf states’ relationship with the world economy and especially with the U.S. It’s created fissures in the NATO alliance that even we saw that Israel’s war in Gaza wasn’t able to create.

It’s really broken things up and I don’t know how much we can say it has a direct bearing on it, but a part of that certainly has been this intense online propaganda campaign, which you just wrote about for New York Magazine, fascinating article about these videos that Revolutionary Guard-linked production houses have been putting out that are AI-generated videos.

They often use Lego characters for the main players. There’s been a couple that used AI to project the faces of popular Western actors on American politicians that was like a political suspense movie trailer. And it’s been really fascinating to watch Iran bring out these contradictions — the hypocrisies. One of the themes that they kept hitting was [Jeffrey] Epstein. Certainly they’ve hit a lot on the idea of Israel controlling the U.S., of dragging the U.S. into war. That’s been a narrative that’s really caught on with good reason in U.S. political discourse.

Part of what you wrote about was exactly the concept of, as the more stodgy, older old guard of Islamic Republic figures, especially the IRGC, that had this very reserved demeanor and took everything extremely seriously, has started to pass away, it’s the younger generation that’s come through and recognized that the old propaganda was sort of a flop, and they needed to really be able to speak to the world on the world’s terms. If you could talk about how that happened and the effect that you think it’s had, and what that might mean going forward for how Western populations especially but also in the region view Iran and their own relationships with the U.S.?

NB: Those of us who have studied Iran in the United States very closely, I had hoped this war would never come, but I assumed it would one day come, just because of the trajectory of everything.

But I thought that when this war would happen, the regularly scheduled program was something that was created from 1979 onwards with the Iran hostage crisis and Ted Koppel and “Nightline.” This idea that Iran is this really irrational theocratic state run by these old school mullahs who want to take Iran back to the seventh century. Iran actually broke through that and really went viral across the internet.

For anyone who spends any time on any platform on the internet these past 40 days, they have been seeing Iran’s Lego videos or any other AI content and short-form videos that they’re putting out. It has shifted the way that people are thinking about Iran, and it has also shifted what they think Iran now stands for.

Wars are fought, yes, on the battlefield. Another big part of the way that wars are fought is in the communication sphere and the narrative war. And in the narrative war, Iran has really come out on top.

“For anyone who spends any time on any platform on the internet these past 40 days, they have been seeing Iran’s Lego videos.”

Why and how did this happen? The IRGC has created, for 40 years now, a really robust media sphere. It contains different kinds of production studios, university programs. It’s humongous. But one of the biggest things that I always saw doing field work in these sites was that there was a huge generational clash between older generations of the IRGC and pro-regime media makers, who, as you said, wanted very serious films about what Iran stands for and what martyrdom means, but they didn’t even work within the Iranian population. They definitely did not work internationally.

These younger media makers really wanted to use humor in what they were doing. They wanted to do faster cuts. They wanted to do away with forefronting martyrdom, and their elder generations kept saying no. What we saw happen in this war is, again, because of these decapitation strikes, you had many of that older generation be assassinated. So in that space — in that vacuum — these younger people came in and they began to really fill in what their fathers would not let them do.

Now here’s what the important thing is. These younger folks, they’re millennials, and they’re Gen Z. They have lived their lives online just like many of us who are their generational cohorts around the world. So why has Iran’s stuff gone viral in this moment? It’s because they’re not inventing anything new.

Anyone who spends any time online knows that in order to make your content go viral, you don’t say something new. You add things into the conversation that is already being had, that is already being had online. So when this war started, much of the conversation across the political spectrum and across the world was about the Epstein files. Iran tapped into that; this is not a conversation Iran created. Iran tapped into that by essentially tapping into this idea that Trump is starting this war in order to prevent further Epstein files from coming out. That resonated with the MAGA world very quickly.

It also then began to say, and this again, it picked up from the MAGA world because it’s paying attention — just like anyone else who’s online all the time is paying attention to different discourses. It picked up on the fact that there’s a big contingency within that world that is saying that these are not America’s wars. These are Israel’s wars, and that this is not an America-first presidency, it’s an Israel first presidency. Again, Iran didn’t create this narrative, but it began to play into that narrative and show how this is playing out in this war.

Then most importantly, instead of using real-life people — which Iranians have been depicted and Muslims in general have been depicted in a particular way for about 50 years in America’s political imagination and popular imagination — instead, they chose to use cartoons. They chose to use Lego videos. The Lego movie franchise is all about the creation of a resistance movement against tyrants and oligarchs. So it tapped also into that. These are Gen Z filmmakers in Iran who grew up on these Legos movies just like they did across the world.

So they are now utilizing all of these in order to further their message. Then importantly, their message is not about the importance of Shia martyrdom, which was what their fathers were creating. Their message is about imperialism, it’s about the Epstein class, it’s about the raping of women and children, it’s about a genocidal state — meaning Israel —going forward with settler colonialism, not just across Palestine, but attempting to do so across the Middle East. So it is tapping into a 21st-century language that anyone who has been paying any attention, especially since the genocide in Gaza over the past three years — that is the language of the internet.

Then the way that I really think about this is that the United States and Israel have failed in their communications. Throughout this war, mainly because for the most part, the U.S. and Israel’s legitimacy came through — for many years — traditional media outlets. But traditional media outlets failed Gaza. They failed to be able to really explain what was happening in those past three years, and there was a huge disconnect over mainstream media’s coverage and then what everyone was seeing on their phones through a livestreamed genocide.

Gaza shattered the way in which we understand what is going on in the world and the type of trust that we put into media institutions. Into those cracks is where Iran’s younger media makers came, and then they are now up against, in essence, older forms of media makers from Israel and the United States where that generational shift has not yet taken place. So in my understanding, it’s like 20th-century leaders trying to compete with these young millennials and Gen Z leaders in Iran at this moment in the media war living in 2026. Twentieth-century media just doesn’t work anymore.

“The U.S. and Israel’s legitimacy came through — for many years — traditional media outlets. But traditional media outlets failed Gaza.”

Ali Gharib: Yeah, it’s funny when you watch the Trump administration’s AI-generated, jingoistic movies. It’s still AI-generated, but it’s a totally different language, and they do seem like they’re all made to get the retweet from one guy, which is Donald Trump. In sharp contrast, like the Islamic Republic, these Lego videos are clearly not made for Iran’s ayatollah leadership.

I want to ask about, and this is something that you’ve written about — that is, as an Iranian has been certainly one of my hobby horses — which is the Iranian opposition politics. It’s funny that one of the few audiences with which Netanyahu’s message and his plan have really resonated, which he seems to have vastly overestimated, was that royalist faction in exile and its support inside Iran.

To be fair, the frustrations of living under the Islamic Republic for many Iranians and young Iranians — who, like their IRGC-oriented young counterparts, don’t remember the early days of the Islamic Republic. They don’t remember certainly pre-revolutionary Iran and have this nostalgia for the mini-dresses and cocktails at the Key Club that I know my parents grew up with in Tehran, and really latched on to Reza Pahlavi, who’s the exiled former crown prince of Iran. His father was the last shah. He really is a product of the U.S. He grew up there and has lived there for many years. And only in the past few years when he began meeting with the Israelis was propped up as this potential opposition leader. We have to say that he did gain some support.

I think the Israelis were absolutely way off base when they posited him as a potential leader for a new regime in Iran. Obviously, none of that has anywhere close to come to fruition yet. But one thing you’ve written about a lot was the sentiments of people more so inside Iran, but also I would add that in the diaspora as well, who have also latched onto this royalist fever dream of reinstalling the shah.

We’ve seen reports in the Western media about these views shifting. The New York Times did an article the other day, the FT had a pretty good one a couple weeks ago. So I just wondered how much you’ve been picking up inside Iran on disillusionment with this program? Have people changed their minds now that the war has continued and this gambit has failed? What does this mean for opposition politics inside Iran and in exile going forward?

NB: The first maybe 10 days of the war, there was still hope among those who were supporters of Pahlavi that the Americans and Israelis would hit just military installments or things belonging to the Islamic Republic. They even went so far — similar to what happened early on in Gaza — to say that the strike on the Iranian school in Minab that killed over 170 children at school was IRGC’s doing, which later proved out to not be true. But it began to really shift when Israel hit multiple oil depots surrounding Tehran and it created this really toxic air. It was this mass chemical campaign in many ways because of all the petrochemicals that went up into the air and then there was acid rain the next day. At around that same time, Trump then began to say that Iran’s territory and its map might shift during this war.

Then as the war continued, then Americans and Israelis were hitting critical infrastructure, and really importantly, Iran’s universities. That began to shift folks’ feelings because that then started to become a war against the Iranian nation and not just the Islamic Republic.

It began to brew a certain “We want to change, but this is destroying the country and this is destroying the future of the country.” Then the other fact of the matter is that Reza Pahlavi and all the bets that they were making actually did not turn out to be true. The Islamic Republic turned out to be much more resilient than they thought that it would be. And with now the ceasefire — and we’ll see if it holds — but the fact of the matter is, it seems like the Trump administration wants to have negotiations with the Islamic Republic. You also have the younger son of Khamenei now in charge, and that the Islamic Republic feels that it is coming out of this victorious. So in many ways, in all the ways, I would say the Pahlavi gambit failed.

Then there’s also a bigger story to this. Other forms of Iran’s opposition movements in the 1980s, namely the Mojahedin, which was a big organization at the time, and had a lot of support within Iran in the revolutionary period. Their leadership also sided with Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq War, and that became their death knell within [the] Iranian population. They were seen as being traitors to the country during a time of war.

“No other Iranian leader, especially ones connected to past rule, have ever called for foreign powers to invade Iran.”

The same thing is happening right now, which is that the more that Iranians were getting killed, the more that Iran’s universities and critical infrastructure was being targeted, Pahlavi was not out there condemning this. In many ways, he kept asking for more help from the Israelis and the Americans.

Again, Iran is a civilizational state, and Iranians have a lot of sense of patriotism across the political spectrum. This has nothing to do even with the governing establishment. So now increasingly, Pahlavi is being seen as being a traitor to the nation. No other Iranian leader, especially ones connected to past rule, have ever called for foreign powers to invade Iran. This is a new thing in Iranian history. That stigma is going to stick with him.

What does that mean moving forward? It means that I think any opposition tied to bringing back the former monarchy in essence is done. But I think he has also really done a huge disservice to opposition movements in Iran because now they will be targeted and stamped with this idea that you are playing with or playing good with foreign powers in order to bring change in Iran.

This is something that I think various forms of civil society actors and opposition movements in Iran are going to have to contend with and are going to have to work past. This episode in many ways has pushed back opposition movements in Iran. It’s going to be an uphill battle, unfortunately.

Pahlavi “has also really done a huge disservice to opposition movements in Iran because now they will be targeted and stamped with this idea that you are playing with or playing good with foreign powers in order to bring change in Iran.”

AG: Narges, thanks so much for speaking with us today. I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time. I can’t recommend enough that everybody follow your writings. They’re always fascinating, and you cover so many different topics, and it’s just such an interesting picture of what’s going on in both international relations and the geopolitics of Iran as well as inside the country itself.

Thanks again for joining us on The Intercept Briefing.

NB: Thanks so much for having me, and I love the work that you guys do, so thank you.

AG: We’re going to leave it there.

But before we go, we’d love it if you helped The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. So please vote for us.

We’ll add a link to vote in our show notes. Thanks so much!

And that does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief and Maia Hibbett is the managing editor of The Intercept. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer, and Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. And the legal review was done by the illustrious David Bralow.

Slipstream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.

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Until next time, I’m Ali Gharib.

The post Putting Fuel on a Ceasefire: Israel Tries to Kill U.S.–Iran Talks appeared first on The Intercept.

Trump’s Holy War Abroad and at Home

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

After more than a month into the U.S.–Israel conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump addressed the nation directly for the first time on Wednesday about why he dragged the country into an unprovoked illegal war. During his wide-ranging speech, Trump made numerous false claims, including repeatedly emphasizing the nuclear threat Iran posed.

The reasons the Trump administration have given for partnering with Israel in this war have been varying and at times include religious undertones, especially from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth regularly infuses Christian right rhetoric in how he speaks about the war on Iran and the military more broadly.

During a recent religious service at the Pentagon, Hegseth prayed for God to give U.S. troops “wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

“Hegseth belongs to a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. … [He] believes that he is carrying out a spiritual and actual war to vanquish a Christian nation’s enemies and protect and promote a Christian nation,” explains investigative journalist Sarah Posner, who covers the religious right, on The Intercept Briefing. “For Hegseth, biblical law is the only law he feels obligated to obey. The law of war, international law governing military conflicts, and human rights and civilian rights in war — he believes don’t apply to him.”

This week on the podcast, Posner speaks to host Jessica Washington about how various factions of the Christian right are shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policies.

“I don’t think the mainstream media has ever taken the Christian right seriously enough. They have consistently viewed Trump’s relationship with white evangelicals as ranging from harmless to purely transactional. When in fact, I think that they’re very deeply ideologically embedded with one another,” she says.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.

Akela Lacy: And I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at the Intercept and co-host of the Intercept Briefing with Jessie.

JW: Before we jump into the news of the week, we have some news too. The Intercept Briefing has been nominated for a Webby Award for best news and politics podcast; help us win by voting for us, please.

AL: Yes, definitely vote for us if you like what we’ve been doing with this podcast. We’ve been working really hard to make it better for you, so show us some love.

JW: You’ll make our day. We will add a link to vote in our show notes.

Now onto the news.

On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump addressed the nation directly for the first time about why he dragged the U.S. into an unprovoked, illegal war with Iran.

During his rambly 20ish-minute speech, he made numerous false claims, including repeatedly emphasizing the nuclear threat Iran posed. Trump’s own intelligence agency reported last year that “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”

Akela, what did you make of Donald Trump’s speech?

AL: He sounded less energetic than he typically does. The overall tone was, again, as you said, rambling, non-committal, and saying obviously extreme things with this very apathetic tone, which I found interesting. There’s a lot of rumors that he’s not in the best of health, so that was running through my mind through this.

But stepping back a little bit, thinking about what was the purpose of this speech, it was obviously an attempt to agenda set and shape the tone on this war — saying that we’re winning the war, that Iran is decimated, both of which we know are not true, but part of the administration’s attempt to control the narrative on this issue and also combat criticism that the president who has campaigned and thrust himself forward as anti-interventionist is doing exactly the opposite.

JW: The war clearly has been getting to Donald Trump. You can see it in his energy, as you just mentioned. We can also see gas prices are rising. Obviously, the Strait of Hormuz being closed as a result of this war is something that is having catastrophic financial impacts. We also have midterms going on.

This is definitely having a broader political impact. Last week, I did a story on Melat Kiros, who is being endorsed by the Sunrise Movement as a part of their broader anti-war campaign. We’re definitely seeing candidates latch onto this idea that you can’t take AIPAC and defense money and be meaningfully anti-war.

Akela, how are you seeing it play out in the midterms and in politics more broadly?

AL: This is becoming a huge midterm issue. There’s a wave of insurgent candidates who have been vocal against the war on Iran and challenged both Democratic leadership and incumbents on their stances, including support from the leading pro-Israel lobbying group, which has backed Trump’s war on Iran, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

We’ve also reported on the effort by progressive groups to get Democrats to exploit what is a growing rift among Republicans, both on Iran and on Israel. We reported that the pro-Palestine group Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project has been urging Democrats on this issue. They’re also planning to spend $2 million on ads this cycle, hitting Republicans in toss-up districts on Israel, but using that as part of a broader strategy to hit Republicans on rifts on foreign policy, which is obviously the bulk of that being on criticism on Iran right now.

This group, IMEU Policy Project, is one of the groups that met with the Democratic National Committee over concerns about how Gaza could hurt Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. This was part of that big story from Axios on Democrats having this secret autopsy on Gaza. Progressive groups are really looking at how to take advantage of this issue in the midterms and take over what they see as a vacuum where Democrats are refusing to do that and leaving opportunities on the table.

That sort of investment on ads from this group is one of the biggest investments from pro-Palestine groups on ad spending this cycle in a cycle where we’ve seen unprecedented levels of outside spending in midterm races where these issues are playing a big role with voters.

JW: You’re right. We’re really seeing this play out in so many different races, this cycle. And Akela, I believe you had a story out this week that also touches on that.

AL: We reported exclusively that Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed State Assembly Member Claire Valdez on Thursday in New York’s 7th District Democratic Primary, which is of interest to our audience because it is really one of the biggest contests where progressives and socialists and various factions of the left in New York City are battling over who will determine the future of the left under [Mayor] Zohran Mamdani.

So this race has pit progressive groups against each other. Outgoing Rep. Nydia Velázquez has endorsed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who has backing from progressive groups like the New York Working Families Party, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and several city council members.

Then on the Sanders side, where he just jumped in the ring on the side of the socialist faction of the left, which is backing Valdez, including Mamdani, Democratic Socialists of America, and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.

This race is not heavily focused on Iran, but Claire Valdez and Reynoso have both been very vocally opposed to the Iran war. We know Bernie Sanders has long been vocal against this war as well. It’s just another example of how this is becoming a new litmus test — again, for mostly progressives, but they’re also using it to put pressure on the broader party.

JW: It’s clear from your story and other reporting from The Intercept over the last month that the war on Iran is really creating political pressure for Republicans and Democrats.

Obviously, we’re mostly talking about a lot of those divisions on the left. But on the right, there are also these real religious pressures that we haven’t spoken about as much. But on the podcast today, I spoke to Sarah Posner, an investigative journalist who covers the religious right about how the Christian right’s apocalyptic views of end times are shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policies.

Sarah is a contributing writer at Talking Points Memo, host of the podcast Reign of Error, and author of the book “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.”

This is our conversation.

Sarah, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.

Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me.

JW: There’s so much I want to talk to you about, so let’s dive in. The U.S.–Israel war on Iran has been going on for more than a month now, and its end appears illusive.

Last week, during a religious service at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a prayer a chaplain gave to the team who raided Venezuela and kidnapped the former President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Let’s hear a clip.

Pete Hegseth: Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield. Protect the innocent and blameless in their midst. Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.

JW: So Hegseth regularly infuses Christian rhetoric in how he speaks about the war on Iran and the military more broadly. And here, he prays for overwhelming violence and no mercy.

Can you talk about the religious messaging that Hegseth has invoked throughout this war and in other military missions the Trump administration has taken?

SP: Hegseth belongs to a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. It is a denomination that adheres to the tenets of a Christian movement called “Christian Reconstructionism.” They believe that the Bible — and in particular, what they consider to be biblical law — governs every aspect of life: your personal life, your life at work, your life as a public figure, your life in civilian life, your life in military life, all of it. It’s a very aggressive Christian supremacist ideology in which Hegseth believes that he is carrying out a spiritual and actual war to vanquish a Christian nation’s enemies and protect and promote a Christian nation.

So for Hegseth, biblical law is the only law he feels obligated to obey. The law of war, international law governing military conflicts, and human rights and civilian rights in war — he believes don’t apply to him.

He expects — I think, through his public statements and these monthly prayer gatherings that he has at the Pentagon auditorium — to have the military follow not just Christianity, but his particular brand of Christianity.

JW: What you just said is really interesting to me. Obviously, muscular Christianity, war-mongering Christianity isn’t new; we can go back to the Crusades. But is there something new, though, in what Hegseth and his ilk are talking about?

SP: It’s not new in terms of the religious right. This idea of Christians taking dominion, not only of America, but the world, has been a driving force of the Christian right’s view of foreign policy and their role in politics domestically. But I think what’s new about Hegseth is how unabashed he is about declaring this in public spaces and enforcing it, or attempting to enforce it in the military.

Another big difference is that we are more accustomed to hearing the popularized Christian Zionist message of “We need to go to war with Iran because they’re an enemy of Israel, and it’s our biblical obligation to defend Israel, and potentially, this is one piece of a series of events that will trigger the end times and the return of Jesus.”

Hegseth comes from a slightly different religious tradition where they don’t adhere to that rapture, tribulation, Armageddon narrative. Instead, they believe that they are on a divine mission to establish God’s kingdom on Earth, and then Jesus will come back.

So for him, it’s a much more muscular, aggressive, imperialist kind of messaging. So when you hear him talk about the military action in Venezuela or potentially Greenland and now in Iran, it’s much more focused on that, as opposed to something that centers Israel and centers the Armageddon narrative as the reasons why we might be doing this.

JW: I want to dive deeper into that side of things, the kind of Christian Zionist side. You’ve written about John Hagee, a televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel, who thanked Trump for entering the war while he was standing behind a sign that read “God’s Coming … Operation Epic Fury.”

Who is Hagee, and how does he view the war, and how widely held is that view among the Christian right?

SP: So I think Hagee’s view is more widely held than Hegseth’s view. So Hagee is an 85-year-old megachurch pastor and televangelist from San Antonio, Texas. He’s extremely influential in the evangelical world, and he has been extremely influential in Republican politics.

In 2006, he founded the organization Christians United for Israel, which is the political side of his religious arguments about why Christians should “support Israel.” For many years, he’s argued that Christians have a biblical obligation to support Israel, and by that he means support an Israeli right-wing government, support settlers, and occupation, support the war on Gaza, et cetera.

All of this is very tied up in his view of a Bible prophecy about the sequence of events that will happen prior to Jesus’s return. Now, he would argue that he’s not trying to hasten that return, that all of that will happen on God’s timing, but he’s been arguing that the United States should go to war with Iran for at least 20 years.

The political side of the argument is Iran is acquiring a nuclear weapon. He has argued that whether it was true or not. Then, on the religious side, he argues that a war with Iran will trigger a series of events that will lead to the second coming of Jesus. So he has played both sides of this very successfully.

So he makes the religious plea from his pulpit, and sometimes the political plea from his pulpit too. But then through CUFI — through Christians United for Israel — he makes these political arguments as to why it’s the U.S. obligation to defend Israel from aggression from Iran, or go to war with Israel to preempt aggression from Iran.

But he has built this organization in 20 years to encompass many, many evangelicals who are predominantly Republican voters across the country. He had the ear of the Bush White House, and he had the ear of the first Trump White House. He delivered the benediction when they had a ceremony, when Trump moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

He has boasted of his strong connection to Trump, and that Trump understands the importance of centrality of Israel, not only to American foreign policy, but to this religious narrative in which Hagee argues that when Jesus comes back, he will rule the world for 1,000 years from a throne on the Temple Mount.

JW: I came across Hagee for the first time covering Daystar, which I’m sure you’re very familiar with. For those who don’t know, it’s essentially an evangelical Christian broadcasting network that hosts a bunch of different televangelists. They’ve got various scandals over the years that we won’t get into, but the important thing to know about them is they’re very much a part of the kind of constant drumbeat of pro-Israel, of this is a sign of the end times, and very much pushing U.S. foreign policy in a direction that is pro-Israel and fueling war in the Middle East. I guess, at least that’s what they’re pushing.

But my question is, how influential are these people, really? How much is this kind of prophesizing around the end times actually pushing U.S. foreign policy?

SP: Evangelicals and particularly charismatic evangelicals like Hagee, people who believe in these prophetic statements, believe that they can receive direct prophecies from God. People who believe that in our midst are modern-day prophets and apostles who are receiving revelations from God that they need to then carry out in their personal or public life. This is a very significant part of the Republican base, and in particular, a very significant part of the Trump base.

In contrast to other Trump supporters and other religious Trump supporters, they’re far more devoted to Trump. They are probably the most loyal to Trump, in part because they believe that he has been very loyal to them, and because they believe that he’s anointed by God to save America and the world.

Those two things are actually very tied together because of the way that both his presidencies have been very influencer, celebrity-driven. Being close to Trump for a burgeoning charismatic influencer is very important, because if you get a little boost from Trump, then more people will watch your YouTube, and more people will follow you on X, or whatever your social media platform is.

Those things are very tied together. It’s not just a one-way street. But Trump is very intermingled with that world. His top religious adviser and director of the White House Faith Office, Paula White, she comes from that world of televangelism and prosperity, gospel preaching, and signs and wonders and miracles — that charismatic Christian world.

So in many ways they are the most influential religious block on Trump, and that obviously is causing a little bit of consternation in the MAGA base currently.

“Being close to Trump for a burgeoning charismatic influencer is very important, because if you get a little boost from Trump, then more people will watch your YouTube.”

JW: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One question I have, and this is a little bit of an aside, but is there a penalty for these people to continuously predict the end times?

That seems to be a large part of what we’re talking about with wars in the Middle East. Does anyone pay a price for that?

SP: Almost never. Typically, in this world, once somebody is considered a prophet and they make a prophecy, sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. I think that’s why somebody like Hagee is so careful to say this is all God’s timing. A lot of them are careful to say things like, is this a sign of the end times? Might we be experiencing the end times? They phrase it in the form of a question instead of saying, “This is the thing that is definitely going to trigger the end times.”

I think from a marketing standpoint, consistently raising it as a question, it generates a little bit more anticipation and excitement. They’ve been doing this for decades, not just with regard to what’s going on in Iran, but just other things that might be a sign of the end times. So nobody really pays a price because their followers are invested in this world where anticipating and getting ready for, and thinking about and wondering when the end times will happen is just very much embedded in their culture.

JW: I’ve been wondering about the end times and these predictions. My mom is a former Catholic, so I was raised a little bit Catholic, a little bit Unitarian. So there was not all this lore.

SP: Yes, this is definitely very much an evangelical thing and not a Catholic thing, and that is part of the reason why there is friction in the MAGA base over not just the Iran war, but Trump’s closeness with Netanyahu.

JW: You can see this growing division on the right more broadly among some of the loudest MAGA voices, questioning Israel’s influence in American politics. That criticism has been increasing as the Trump administration pursues its illegal war on Iran.

Recently you wrote about Candace Owens and Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who resigned in opposition to the war.

Sarah, what do you make of the growing number of critical MAGA voices, and how they’re framing their opposition. What do you make of Owens in particular and her messaging? What’s the end game?

SP: Candace Owens is a raging antisemite. Every discussion of Owens needs to acknowledge that. So when she talks about being anti-Israel or being anti-Zionist, her criticisms are not just legitimate criticisms of the Israeli governments and the Israeli military’s actions. All of her criticisms are imbued with antisemitic conspiracy theories and rank antisemitism, Holocaust denial, that sort of thing. Just so that we’re on the table with that.

JW: Good disclaimer.

SP: But I think that she and some of her colleagues and allies in the far-right Catholic MAGA world are trying to do a sort of horseshoe thing, where they want leftists who are anti-Zionist or anti-Israel, to give them a pat on the back for being the right-wingers who have come out against Israel’s actions and Israel’s policies, and the American relationship with Israel. Owens and her allies are making this not just about Israel, but also about Catholics and evangelicals.

For most mainstream Catholics, even conservative ones — ones who you might think of as being George W. Bush Republicans, they’re anti-same-sex marriage, anti-abortion, that sort of thing — but the Israel stuff just isn’t that important to them. She is trying to make it important to far-right Catholics. So she’s trying to make it important by starting a little intra-MAGA war between Catholics and evangelicals over this issue.

She and her allies have tried to make the argument that it’s a violation of their religious freedom to have to submit to or agree with these kinds of policies that Christian Zionists promote because that is not part of their Catholic faith.

Now, it’s true that the whole end-times scenario that someone like John Hagee promotes is not part of the Catholic faith, but Owens always doubles down on the antisemitism on top of that. So it’s a complicated world.

“White evangelicals make up a huge part of a very important part of Trump’s base, and they’re very homogenous in this way.”

The other thing about trying to determine how big is this MAGA rift, really. One thing that’s important to understand is that white evangelicals make up a huge part of a very important part of Trump’s base, and they’re very homogenous in this way. Eighty percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, and a huge segment of them are Christian Zionists.

Catholics are more split 60-40, 50-50 on whether they’re Democrats or Republicans. And Catholic converts like Candace Owens, who are extremely far right, make up a very small segment of Catholics as a whole, even a small segment of Republican Catholics.

So I think when we’re trying to assess her influence, in a way we’re comparing apples and oranges because we’re trying to compare someone who has had a podcast and a huge following on Twitter for a few years with a movement that has spent decades making this end times theory, or this end times narrative, a core part of what their followers believe.

[Break]

JW: So now I want to talk about another kind of Christian right influencer: the Heritage Foundation, obviously the people behind Project 2025, but their new report is receiving less attention. It’s called “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation For The Next 250 Years.”

This report outlines a vision that “restores” what they call the “natural family,” defined as marriage between a man and a woman, and how that mission is fundamental to saving America’s future. Can you talk about how we’re seeing that vision show up in policymaking and in bills like the SAVE [Safeguard American Voter Eligibility] Act?

SP: In terms of policymaking, I think that they’re trying to [push] a lot of small bore things through, say, the Department of Health and Human Services or the FDA. They want to try to ban mifepristone so that abortion will be inaccessible to people. They want to do things to promote adoption by Christian families instead of non-Christian families or instead of same-sex couples.

Every anti-LGBTQ policy is a furtherance of this “natural family” policy in that Heritage Foundation document. They want to, through anti-abortion measures, enforce motherhood for women and also create an image of the “natural family marriage between a man and a woman.”

It’s an explicit anti-LGBTQ agenda, and they’ve been extremely, explicitly anti-trans. From their perspective, trans people threaten their whole idea of a binary sex — men and women, and that’s it. It explains a lot about why they’re going so hard after trans people’s rights.

With regard to the SAVE Act, I’m not sure what they’re doing there. Because the SAVE Act would punish women who took their husband’s names because then you wouldn’t be able to register to vote unless you got your birth certificate, which then your birth name wouldn’t match your current name. So it creates a whole host of problems. That to me is an odd thing for them to be pushing right now, but it’s also in line with a segment of the religious right, including Pete Hegseth’s pastor that believes that women shouldn’t even vote. But I feel like they’re stepping all over themselves with what they’re proposing in the SAVE Act.

JW: Yeah, and I wanted to get into that. The report doesn’t explicitly mention transgender people. They just say gender ideology throughout their entire Save the Family report. But it’s essentially just ragging on transgender people, queer people. A lot of ragging on feminists, birth control.

There’s obviously discussion of how to have more families, more kids. But it almost seems more focused on enemies than it does on actually promoting kids and families. Should we understand it as a document that actually is trying to push for more kids and families, or is this about mandating a specific type of Christian lifestyle?

SP: The latter. In order to do that, they have to marginalize other people. So in their view, if trans people exist, then there is no binary between men and women in which these gender roles are very clearly defined and delineated.

JW: To you, it’s much more about, OK, how do we make people live the lives that we want them to live? And how do we find enemies who we can terrorize to make that happen?

SP: Well, think about it this way, that what they are proposing runs counter to the way American culture has been for the last 50 or 60, 70 years and runs counter to — not Dobbs, obviously, that’s an exception — but it runs counter to things that have become more accepted, like marriage equality and I wouldn’t include trans rights in that category because it hasn’t been accepted. I think that is what is driving them to create enemies, in order to make this “traditional family” seem more appealing to people or seem under threat by something.

“I think that is what is driving them to create enemies, in order to make this ‘traditional family’ seem more appealing to people or seem under threat by something.”

If the traditional family is the ideal — where there’s a man and a woman and kids, and the woman stays home and doesn’t go to work and all of that — then all of these other people, women who don’t get married, single moms, trans people, same-sex couples, they’re a threat to that. They see it as a threat. They would consider a threat to their religious freedom because they think that their religion demands these kinds of family relationships. And so it’s a very radical document. I think that there are people within the administration who take it very seriously.

JW: We haven’t discussed race yet, and I think that’s always the kind of underlying thing in the corner when you’re talking about Christian nationalism, specifically white Christian nationalism. In this document they only mention Black people so much as to say, not enough Black people are getting married, that’s a problem, and then leave that to the side. They don’t mention race generally, but how do you view race in this vision?

SP: Overall, the Trump regime has attempted to completely eviscerate civil rights for Black people. I mean completely. Dismantling the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, dismantling the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. So I think within the context of this pro-natalist argument, it’s a paternalistic view. “It would be better for Black people if they also adhere to this traditional family structure.” I feel the 1980s are hovering over us right here, and that was when a lot of this pro-family, pro-natalist stuff of the modern religious right was hatched.

But I think that it is a clear broadside just against any kind of culture that they consider to be non-compliant with their idea of the traditional family whether that’s women who have chosen not to get married, moms who’ve chosen not to get married. When you see how they’ve tried to marginalize, say, trans people from public life, this gives you a lot of insight into how they view, let’s say, non-complying people with their view of what America should be.

JW: While we’re talking about the Save the Family and the religious right’s views on marriage and family and race, in that regard, I also wanted to ask you about their views on immigration and race. How do you perceive the Christian right when it comes to this issue?

SP: White evangelicals are among Trump’s staunchest supporters when it comes to immigration. When you look at the polling data about their views of his position on immigration, in general, and in particular, the ICE crackdowns in Minneapolis and other cities, white evangelicals are among his staunchest supporters. And this is very much tied into their view of what a Christian nation is, and their acceptance of the argument, their embrace of the argument that undocumented people are necessarily criminals because just the act of having come here “illegally” is a crime. That is very much tied into their perception that America was founded as a Christian nation. Somehow that was taken away from us by many things that happened over the course of the 20th century, including immigration, including the Civil Rights Act, including women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, all of that. So when they talk about restoring the Christian nation, what they’re really talking about is restoring a white Christian nation.

JW: I want to get into the deeper, the broader impact of these groups. Your podcast Reign of Error illustrates how the Christian right isn’t a fringe movement, but how its various figures, groups, and sects are in the halls of power shaping policies and remaking America from local offices to the White House.

Can you talk about the infrastructure the Christian right has been able to build over the years to wield that level of influence and policymaking?

SP: I think a lot of people think of the religious right as being a lot of megachurch pastors at the pulpit telling people how to vote and that it’s just people getting instructions every November and going to the polls and hitting the lever for the Republican candidate.

“They have built mechanisms for creating and enforcing this political ideology, not only in their churches, but through television shows, conferences, books … YouTube, X, TikTok.”

It’s much thicker and deeper than that because they have built mechanisms for creating and enforcing this political ideology, not only in their churches, but through television shows, conferences, books, and with the advent of social media, of course, YouTube, X, TikTok, all of the social media that they have at their disposal, and so you have that element of it. You have political organizations that work with religious leaders to recruit religious people, and even pastors to run for office and to organize voters to go to the polls on Election Day.

You have organizations that were created to counter institutions that liberals and the left had built. So to counter the ACLU, they founded the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has litigated most of the cases, producing some of the Supreme Court’s worst precedents in recent years, including the Dobbs decision. ADF was behind challenging the ban on conversion therapy in Colorado that the Supreme Court ruled on recently.

So you have all of these things together. You have the Heritage Foundation, which was created back in the 1970s to counter the Brookings Institution — which is not really like a leftist organization by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s how they perceived it. So you have these different layers of convincing people and keeping them engaged in the political project and the political process.

Then you also have on the legal front, not just these legal organizations, but Christian law schools that are educating the next generation of Christian lawyers who will go out and litigate these cases, maybe become judges. So they have built an infrastructure, a multi-layered infrastructure that is intended to be intergenerational, that’s intended to last for decades. That’s not intended only to run from election cycle to election cycle.

They spent 50 years to overturn Roe vs. Wade. They didn’t give up. They chipped away for many decades. When you think about that, they worked at the state level to chip away at it. They worked the legal process to chip away at Roe at the state level. They chipped away at abortion rights.

At the same time, when I talk about the multi-layered, they had institutions and organizations that helped train judges to rule from these right-wing perspectives, that would advocate for judges that were nominated to the bench by George W. Bush or Donald Trump to become District Court judges, appellate judges, Supreme Court justices. That’s what I’m talking about when I say it’s a multi-layered infrastructure because you have all of these things working together. There’s never a sense of victory like, “Oh, we got that done, yay us, and now we’re gonna take a break.” No, they did not even stop for a minute after they overturned Roe vs. Wade. Now they’re on to trying to ban mifepristone.

It’s important for people to understand that they never see any victory as their final achievement. It’s just one piece in a long road that they’re very dedicated to trotting.

JW: Given this relentlessness that you’re describing and the level of influence that we’re talking about here, especially even within the Trump administration, do you think that mainstream media is taking the Christian rights seriously enough?

SP: I don’t think the mainstream media has ever taken the Christian right seriously enough. They have consistently viewed Trump’s relationship with white evangelicals as ranging from harmless to purely transactional. When in fact, I think that they’re very deeply ideologically embedded with one another.

It’s partially a function of a little bit of nervousness about even touching religion, that they don’t want to be seen as being critical of somebody’s religious beliefs or religious practices. But I think it has taken a long time for the media to wake up to how extreme they are and how successful they’ve been at capturing, not just the Republican Party but Trump in particular.

JW: That was really informative and pretty alarming, but we’re going to leave it there. Thanks, Sarah, for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.

SP: Thank you, Jessica.

JW: To keep up with how the Christian right is shaping policy in the U.S. today, follow Sarah’s work at Talking Points Memo and her podcast Reign of Error, which I highly, highly recommend.

Before we go, we’d love it if you helped The Intercept Briefing win its first Webby Award for best news and politics podcast. So please vote for us. We’ll add a link to vote in our show notes. Thanks so much!

That does it for this episode.

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Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post Trump’s Holy War Abroad and at Home appeared first on The Intercept.

Protesting the Smash-and-Grab Presidency With Nikhil Pal Singh

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Donald Trump’s second term has been broadly defined by an overwhelming sense of chaos. Every week the U.S. finds itself in a new crisis of the president’s making. The war in Iran and the broader Middle East is stretching into its fourth week, as the administration prepares to send thousands of troops to the region for a possible ground invasion. The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba has plunged the country deeper into a humanitarian crisis. The Department of Homeland Security sent ICE to airports across the country on Monday to allegedly assist TSA agents who have gone without pay due to a partial government shutdown over congressional efforts to apply the most minimal of reforms to ICE. Meanwhile, Trump’s sons are backing a new drone company vying for a Pentagon contract as the president and his family have amassed about $4 billion in wealth this term, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“It’s a constant stream of violence, corruption, spectacle,” Nikhil Pal Singh tells The Intercept Briefing. “They smash, grab, move on. But I think now they’ve actually broken something.” The professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and the author of several books, including “Race and America’s Long War” joins host Akela Lacy in a conversation about protests and movement-building in the latest Trump era.

Trump “said the real enemy — the real threat — was within. He reversed the Bush priority, which said, we fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home. And instead said, no, we actually have to bring the fight home. And he brought the fight home,” says Singh. “The idea there then also is that Americans themselves — that is us — we need to be governed violently first and foremost.”

“What we saw in Minneapolis and in Chicago and other places is almost like a really spontaneous emergence of that civic energy where people are basically like, ‘No, this is not OK in my city,’” says Singh. With the upcoming nationwide No Kings protests on Saturday, Lacy brings up the challenges of protesting under the second iteration of the Trump administration, and whether it’s fair to question the efficacy of protests at a time when they’re being met with paramilitary forces.

“We’ve lived through a period where the protests against the war in Gaza were pretty brutally suppressed by the Democratic Party and by the very institutions that the Trump administration is trying to destroy,” notes Singh. For there to be long-term meaningful change during this increasingly hostile environment to dissent or opposition, big alliances are needed, including with parts of the Trump coalition, he says. “Those kinds of cross-class alliances that cross the parties that are oriented around what we might call left economic populist politics and anti-war politics are going to have to be built.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.

Jessica Washington: And I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at the Intercept and co-host of the Intercept Briefing with Akela.

AL: I don’t know about you, Jessie, but I honestly feel like I’ve had constant whiplash the past few months. Maybe it would be helpful for our listeners if we start with just breaking down exactly where we are right now in the world. I’ll do a quick recap.

We are, as many people know, in a full-blown war with Iran after being told for years that that would effectively mean the beginning of the end. The U.S. has killed more than 150 people in boat strikes around the world and successfully kidnapped the Venezuelan president and his wife. Trump has consolidated the nation’s largest paramilitary police force and unleashed it on U.S. cities and now airports. The number of people being detained by ICE is at an all-time high. Federal agents have killed two protesters, and more than a dozen other people have died this year alone at the hands of ICE.

At the same time, prices are soaring. The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent, in case you missed that, which I certainly did. The government is still partially shut down, and Trump and his allies are still withholding documents from the public on Jeffrey Epstein.

And in case anyone forgot, we’re knee-deep in a midterm cycle that’s seen unprecedented levels of dark money and efforts by corporate lobbies to influence elections. So how are you feeling about all of this? How are you processing all of this?

JW: Yeah, it’s a lot to process as a journalist and a person in the country.

The way that I’m thinking about this is really in the context of protests, and whether or not we’re going to see a real resistance to the Trump administration emerge. Obviously, what we’ve seen in Minneapolis has been a real resistance to their efforts from everyday people. What I’m thinking about now is just how can we exist in this society and push back against some of these really awful things, when there’s so much repression of protests and of activism in general, and of journalism?

AL: The conventional wisdom for moments like this is that this is when the opposition should theoretically be at its strongest. Is that the case right now? What is the opposition right now, and how are regular people responding to this, and is it having any effect?

JW: Yeah, we can talk about poll numbers. Certainly Donald Trump is historically unpopular, so we are seeing people react in that way. But I think we have to take into account the real ways in which the Trump administration, but also the Biden administration — and if we’re going to talk about college protests — university administrators really clamped down on college campus protesters, on protest in general. And we’ve seen the indictment of protesters in the Cop City case; we’ve seen the indictment of protesters in the case in Chicago, where we saw Kat Abughazaleh indicted. So there’s a real risk to protest.

I mean, we interviewed Momodou Taal on this very podcast, a Cornell student who had to flee the country in order to escape being detained by the Trump administration because of his actions on college campuses. So there’s real fear.

I think there’s also real movement organizing. We’ve seen it in Minneapolis, we’ve seen it in even deep-red places like Hagerstown, Maryland, which I’m interested in talking a little more about.

There’s certainly still activity, but there’s a lot of fear and a lot of that fear is understandable.

AL: Jessie, you mentioned the Cop City case, and I think those indictments were obviously an effort to intimidate those protestors. I will just note that a judge dismissed most of the charges against them, but the Georgia attorney general is trying to appeal that dismissal. So the intimidation tactic continues, whether or not the charges were dismissed.

JW: No, I think that’s a really good point that a lot of the early intimidation we’ve seen of protesters has been unsuccessful in terms of actually getting them detained and locked up. We’ve also seen many of the students who were detained by the Trump administration for protesting have since been released or have fled the country and are no longer within the administration’s grasp. But nonetheless, it still has this chilling effect on protest on college campuses, but obviously across the country when people have to worry about whether or not they’re going to end up in prison for trying to protect their neighbors, I think that becomes a really difficult decision for a lot of people.

AL: Specifically on this question of protest or how communities are responding to the increasing state violence that we’re seeing, you’ve been doing some reporting on a rapid response ICE watch group in a red county in Maryland. Is that right?

JW: Yes. I have been covering the potential development of an ICE facility in technically Williamsport, Maryland, but the closest, largest city would be Hagerstown. But what’s been really fascinating about this story — the ins-and-outs of how this warehouse is going to become habitable for human beings is a large part of what I’m focused on. But we’ve seen in this county, which is Washington County, where the warehouse ICE facility would exist — it’s this deep red county where they’re trying to build this ICE warehouse, and you’ve actually seen massive resistance.

So first, I would really point to this Hagerstown Rapid Response group. There’s this group that emerged really in the wake of what they watched in Minneapolis. They saw the successful ICE observers and ICE watches that were going on in communities in the Twin Cities, and they wanted to build something similar to that. So they developed the Hagerstown Rapid Response.

But over the course of developing their group, they realized that there was this ICE detention facility that was going to be potentially built in their community. So they really organized these pinpoint protests against the county commissioners where they live. So they’ve held weekly protests outside of the county commissioner’s office, but they’ve also worked to surveil the warehouse. They have drones they have used to get images to send out to the press, to the public, to really raise public awareness about this issue.

So we are seeing people in communities, even in conservative communities, really coming together and finding ways to protest and organize against ICE and against the Trump administration.

AL: We touch on all of this and more with our guest today, Nikhil Pal Singh, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and the author of several books, including “Race and America’s Long War.”

Nikhil, welcome to The Intercept Briefing

Nikhil Pal Singh: Thanks for having me.

AL: Trump’s second term has been broadly defined by this overwhelming sense of chaos. As we speak, the war in Iran and the broader Middle East stretches into its fourth week. The U.S. oil blockade on Cuba has plunged the country deeper into a humanitarian crisis. The Department of Homeland Security sent ICE to airports across the country on Monday to — it’s unclear exactly how — assist TSA agents who have gone without pay due to a partial government shutdown over congressional efforts to apply even the most minimal of reforms to ICE.

Meanwhile, Trump is minting a new coin with his face on it, continuing to renovate the White House, and his sons are backing a new drone company vying for a Pentagon contract as the president and his family have amassed about $4 billion in wealth this term, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s a lot to keep up with. You’ve written that the question facing the American public today is less about whether what we’re seeing is unprecedented and more about what purpose the chaos serves, and how we respond to it. But what effect has this constant whiplash had on the public and its ability to organize or to respond?

NS: It’s a good question, and it’s where I began the piece that I wrote. You didn’t even mention “Operation Total Extermination” in Latin America and Ecuador, which Nick Turse wrote about this week. And of course, the signs that insiders have been trading on information in Trump’s tweets, making directional trades against them in the oil market and in the futures markets.

AL: Right.

NS: It’s a constant stream of violence, corruption, spectacle. The term that the Trump administration likes to use, and Pete Hegseth’s favorite term, is “kinetic action”: We’re moving fast and breaking things all the time and showing and asserting our dominance over every situation. Those of us who try to comment upon this, report on it, analyze it, are always trailing behind it, trying to keep up, trying to make sense of the next thing — it does induce a state of whiplash. It does induce a state of paralysis by design.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do is to try to think about: How do we create a broader framework to understand what’s happening? Not a framework that tries to say this all makes sense, or it has some rationality, because there is a substantive irrationality to all of this, but I do think there is a method in their madness. And that method is really about keeping us off balance.

“Everything they do has a short-term calculus associated with it.”

It’s about allowing them to continue to raid the Treasury. It’s about destabilizing the institutions that create a sense of organization, order, coherence within our society that then allows them to have more room to maneuver, at least within the short term. It’s hard to say what the long term’s going to look like, because everything they do has a short-term calculus associated with it.

I think the long term looks quite grim for them and for us, especially if we can’t get a handle on this. I think that’s part of what we need to try to understand. We need to almost not take a step back, but balance ourselves against the impulse to constantly be shaken and reactive in relationship to everything that they do and the next thing that they do and the next thing that they do.

I will say, as a last point in this opening, that I think in the Iran war they might really have met their match. That smash and grab, which has essentially been the mode right? “We’ll seize Maduro. We’ll send an ICE team into Minneapolis.” Of course, they met their match in Minneapolis too, and we can come back to that.

AL: Yeah, we will.

NS: But they smash, grab, move on. But I think now they’ve actually broken something. That is going to have long-term consequences for many, many, many of us, and political consequences for them that they’re not going to be so easily left behind.

“We need to … balance ourselves against the impulse to constantly be shaken and reactive in relationship to everything that they do and the next thing that they do and the next thing that they do.”

AL: This is a great segue into what I wanted to ask you about.

So for our listeners, we’re talking about this essay you wrote for Equator magazine in January, really central to which is the idea of “Homeland Empire” that you write about. This notion — which is linked with your last point about the long-term ripple effects in Iran and beyond that we can’t necessarily account for yet — this notion that you cannot understand Trump’s project if you separate the realms of the domestic and the foreign.

That what we’ve heard for years about the U.S. turning its global wars back on its own citizens is happening now. That it’s more than a disturbing phenomenon. It’s a symptom of this broader rot at the core of U.S. institutions, which Trump is an outgrowth of.

You write, “Trump’s real innovation has been to marry the archaic geopolitics of a settler empire to the modern legal frameworks devised by his liberal predecessors. What distinguishes his latest regime is its effort to reimagine and remake the borders of American state power, collapsing the foreign and the domestic in a single domain of impunity: Call it ‘Homeland Empire.’”

What is the utility of that specific framing, and what does it tell us that we don’t already know or understand about Trump?

NS: I do think that the concept of the “homeland,” which really comes into focus in the global war on terror. And there’s a great book by Richard Beck called “Homeland,” which has been really important for me. It’s suggested that national security and the security complex needed to be in some ways reshored.

You have the development of the Department of Homeland Security, which is a massive government reorganization, creating a whole new government department that you might even think of as being on par with the creation of the Department of Defense after World War II. So there’s the beginning of a reorientation institutionally in terms of policy. Of course, [George W.] Bush frames it in a very telling way. He says, we have to be able to fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here. That’s still within the old model, even though the model is shifting.

It’s the old model which tells us Americans are going to be safe as long as we keep our power projection and fighting the enemies and the bad guys all around us. That idea that there are threats everywhere, and that the United States has this global mandate and remit to fight them — that really does go back to the end of World War II and the Cold War. So there’s a long arc of that thinking. But what begins to shift in the global war on terror, and partly because of the attacks of 9/11, is this sense that the homeland is actually under a real threat. That it actually can be attacked. It can be destabilized.

Now, that doesn’t just come out of 9/11. If you think about the period since the end of the Cold War, the search for new enemies dissipates. If you’re as old as I am, you remember when they were promising a huge peace dividend. Of course, the wars in the Middle East immediately begin to ratchet up. But the other thing that begins to ratchet up is the war on crime and the war on migrants. If you track the government spending — that precedes the origins of the Department of Homeland Security — on the prison complex and on the border–control complex, those are also going through the roof. They’re being imagined, again, in terms of this primary sense that Americans are being rendered insecure by street criminals, by migrants coming across the border, and now also by terrorists who might infiltrate.

If you remember back to the war on terror period when Bush was fighting in Iraq, some Republican congressmen then were already running ads saying terrorists and migrants were essentially the same thing — that brown people coming across the border wanting to do us harm. So the idea that the terrorists, the migrant, the criminal represent this new nemesis that is actually now much more proximate, that has been building up for a long period of time. It’s been helping to produce spending streams, funding streams, institutions. And Trump has cemented it into a single ideological complex.

“The idea that the terrorists, the migrant, the criminal represent this new nemesis … has been building up for a long period of time. It’s been helping to produce spending streams, funding streams, institutions. And Trump has cemented it into a single ideological complex.”

One of the things Trump was very, very clear about, even though he promised that he was going to be a peace president and wind down the wars and the forever wars, not be involved in overextension of American power overseas, et cetera, et cetera, which he numerously described as foolish, reckless — even though he did support the Iraq War, let’s not forget that.

He also said the real enemy — the real threat — was within. He reversed the Bush priority, which said, we fight the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them at home. And instead said, no, we actually have to bring the fight home. And he brought the fight home. He began to imagine bringing the fight home through the framework of a mass deportation campaign through the idea of making what was already a paramilitary organization in a sense — Customs and Border Protection, but more or less confined to the border — bringing that into the interior of the country. Adding huge amounts of funding to DHS to build up an immigration police with paramilitary characteristics.

We’ve seen the results of that over the last year. The idea is that it’s only the illegals who are being governed violently or the only the criminals. They’re always careful to say that, but that’s actually not how it’s played out at all. The idea there then also is that Americans themselves — that is us — we need to be governed violently first and foremost.

AL: Right. The end result is the expansion of state power and state violence.

NS: Right.

AL: So this brings us to Minneapolis. We’re seeing this massive escalation of state violence at home and abroad, while the public is also weathering increasingly difficult economic hardship, which is being exacerbated again by the war in Iran.

That is the same issue that many people argued posed such an obstacle to former President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign, and what brought us a second Trump term, right?

NS: Yeah.

AL: This economic hardship issue, this is the time that you would expect the height of mobilization by the opposition. While we’ve seen massive public opposition to ICE raids. We have “No Kings” protests; there’s another one planned for this weekend. But we’ve also seen the state deploy intense violence in response to that opposition, obviously killing two protesters in Minneapolis.

Do you think that the state’s response has effectively crushed whatever opposition has come up? Whether the answer to that is yes or no, where does the opposition go in this increasingly hostile environment?

NS: I think it’s a good question, and it’s definitely one that I’ve been mulling over. We would all like to see the streets filled with people again like 2020. I do think Americans have proved more attuned to violence at home and violence against their own neighbors and in their own neighborhoods. I think that’s been amazing and inspiring.

It really gives the lie to what the Trump administration professes when JD Vance says something like, anybody would be uncomfortable, having someone next door to them who speaks another language. It’s actually not true. Actually Americans, even in small towns, even in rural spaces, have grown accustomed to living alongside people who are very different and figuring out how to either live and let live, or sometimes even more affirmatively, to cooperate, to play soccer together, to be in civic organizations, to go to church.

I’m not saying the United States isn’t still a segregated country, or that there isn’t racial animus or distrust or any of those things. But I think we really underestimate the degree of ordinary comity among people.

Obviously what we saw in Minneapolis and in Chicago and other places is almost like a really spontaneous emergence of that civic energy where people are basically like, “No, this is not OK in my city.” These might even be people who have sensitivities and anxieties about unauthorized migration, which is a legitimate issue to debate. But the violence and impunity and lack of due process and disruption is offensive to people. We’ve seen the results of that in public polling data. We see it in the ways in which people act on the streets.

I think wars overseas are more difficult for people in the United States. They feel more distant. The propaganda is so thick. You’ve been told for decades that Iran is some alien power that is irrational and in search of a nuclear bomb that might be eventually fired at like New York or something. It’s absolutely worthless propaganda, but it does its work. It’s very, very tied into the protection and safety of Israel, which is the most heavily propagandized topic in the U.S. foreign policy realm. People don’t really know what to think. And it doesn’t seem to affect them in the immediate sense — especially when you’re bombing from the sky and using remote warfare.

But now they’re really at a crossroads. They are amassing troops in the region. If American troops start going into combat situations and getting killed, you’re going to see people start to pay a lot more attention as gas prices rise, as the cost of everything increases.

“It’s very, very tied into the protection and safety of Israel, which is the most heavily propagandized topic in the U.S. foreign policy realm. People don’t really know what to think.”

Trump is going to be bedeviled with all the problems that Biden faced because people are going to feel that very profoundly. People who, as you say, are living paycheck to paycheck who are struggling to make rent, for whom a $1 increase in the price of gas when they have to commute two hours each day is actually a huge amount of money on a weekly basis. Trump owns that.

So they’re extremely reckless people, and I have to think that politically they will pay a huge price. They already are. As long as we — that is, those of us who are opposed to this — are able to exercise our civil and political rights both in the streets and at the ballot box. That obviously is going to be a real question. Is repression going to ramp up? Is there going to be chicanery around the elections? I think we can expect both of those things. Then we’re going to see where the balance of forces are. But I don’t think we should interpret the current quietness around the anti-war stuff necessarily as evidence that civic energies and oppositions has been beaten.

AL: To that point, these No Kings protests are taking place around the country on Saturday. Co-founder of the group, Indivisible, which organizes the protest, Leah Greenberg, told The Guardian, “Every No Kings is going to be about the issues that are driving people most at that moment and it’s also going to be about the collective ways in which they begin to harm our democracy.”

I want to talk a little bit more about the challenges. We touched on this a little bit, but I want to go a little bit deeper in the challenges of protesting under the second iteration of the Trump administration, and whether it’s fair for us as journalists and analysts to question the efficacy of protests at a time when they’re being met with paramilitary forces. I’ve seen some questions about the specific demands of the No Kings protests or lack thereof. I’m curious, what do you make of that?

NS: I tend to be a little bit on the side of, let a thousand flowers bloom. Anybody who wants to organize something and signal their opposition, that’s great. But I do think the opposition has to be sharpened and has to become more pointed around what the issues are.

I think, by necessity, the anti-ICE protests have become that way. There’s obviously synergies between these different things. People find their ways into different kinds of organization and different senses of action that may not always be strictly compatible with each other.

Again, the anti-war stuff is very specific. We’ve lived through a period where the protests against the war in Gaza were pretty brutally suppressed by the Democratic Party and by the very institutions that the Trump administration is trying to destroy. So the ways universities responded, the ways nonprofits and civic organizations often remained very silent on Gaza, the way the Democratic Party was obviously complicit fully with the genocide in Gaza — all of these things have left a mark on some of the most militant people who were out there in front and who were right, and who were correct in the positions that they were taking after October 7 about the Israeli response and the disproportionality of it, and the mass killing of civilians and the way in which it had the potential to unleash a regional war. And of course, Israel started this regional war three years ago.

That’s a huge problem for some of these big-tent protest projects, which are very tied into the Democratic Party — a Democratic Party that in some ways we are now engaged in a huge battle over. Israel has split the Democratic Party. We have one side, which is the side I would say that I’m on, that really thinks that there has to be an extremely hard red line around future funding for Israel, around AIPAC and the use of PAC money that is flowing into candidates and races on behalf of Israeli interests.

This is very divisive because of the way in which it pricks this whole set of arguments about whether it’s antisemitic and so forth, and it’s a real dilemma. But I think we have to be able to win this battle in the Democratic Party. Otherwise, we’re going to find ourselves in just another situation where even if the Democratic Party is back in power, it is still like the controlled opposition.

[Break]

AL: I wanted to touch on the same thing basically that happened with Gaza protests, we can map that back onto BLM protests in 2020, which is that Democrats were nominally supportive of this. But when it came down to brass tacks, they were still sending police to crush these protests. Then when it was time to actually pass legislation, at least at the federal level, there was basically like a do-nothing bill that Democrats calculated would pacify this movement for the long term.

Now we’ve seen that so much of that momentum was basically co-opted or diluted and that all the things that people were calling for in terms of police reform, the evidence that none of that happened, is the paramilitary police that we’re seeing respond to all these protests today.

NS: For sure.

AL: People still have a bit of that taste in their mouth of OK, even when Democrats were in control or even when these protests seem to be taking off, what was the legislative payoff? I’m curious today, whether we need to be thinking differently about what we are going to count as a positive result of a protest or as an effective protest, whereas we could argue that community resistance in Minneapolis and backlash to the agents killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti led to in some ways DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Officer Greg Bovino losing their jobs, while there’s still been very little change to DHS policy. So I wonder how we value those outcomes — those cosmetic outcomes versus long-term legislative change and knowing that the Democratic Party that we have is the one that we have? Does that alter the calculus with these protests or should it?

NS: When you think back to BLM, you could say they helped Biden win 2020, even as then, it not only translated into the very anemic policy wins, but then also there was a belated or delayed backlash, which exploited some of the weaknesses of the movement itself, of course. The ways in which it had already had some of these problems internal to it around leadership, around nonprofit funding, around internal corruption and so forth, and the sidelining of grassroots protests — that really going back to Ferguson — really emerged out of direct community action and need based upon the experience of being under police occupation.

We have to be able to learn from these cycles. I don’t think the lesson necessarily is that protest is ineffective or irrelevant. Protests are going to happen. We live in what my dear old friend who passed away last year, Joshua Clover, called the “age of riots.” People are under stress. A lot of this emerges very spontaneously. There’s obviously a viral environment that allows people to gather in outrage — the outrage is palpable throughout the society. It crosses left and right.

Public opinion is what they like to call thermostatic. It can change and switch very quickly. We haven’t really been able to figure out on the left how to harness that and develop that for a more ambitious and large scale transformation. To harness it for a larger-scale transformation, we really have to be able to start thinking across different kinds of divides. That would be my view.

The modalities of certain kinds of identity politics have not served us well, ultimately. The hierarchies of oppression have not served us well, especially when they’re advanced by people who are not actually interested in economic redistribution or anti-war politics. It’s quite easy and we’ve all encountered this, someone who will talk about priorities of anti-racism or anti-sexism or homophobia or whatever else. But actually basically just has mainstream Democratic Party politics at this point. So the Democratic Party succeeded in harnessing and appropriating protest energies that legitimately came out of the experience of people who are being racially brutalized. But people being racially brutalized — and this is something that, someone like even [Martin Luther] King, understood very well at the end of his life — need a big alliance to be able to make any real change in this country.

That big alliance is actually going to involve an alliance with poor white people, many of which who have been part of the Trump coalition, and have been hailed by a certain Trumpian politics. I’m not saying all poor white people. But those coalitions, those kinds of cross class alliances that cross the parties that are oriented around what we might call left economic populist politics and anti-war politics are going to have to be built.

In my view, there’s really not much hope for us without building those without some root through mass politics that allows us to change the dispensations of the political reality we live under, which, for all the ways in which people talk about polarization, there’s a lot of bipartisan consensus between the Republicans and the Democrats around war, around economic policy, around taxes around monopolies, around feeding donor interests and around a willingness on both sides to use a culture war polarization discourse to keep their own base close while not really doing much for them. Unless we can really demystify that and really think about solidarity and alliances even with people we don’t necessarily agree with on everything or even like very much.

AL: This is something we’ve been talking about in our newsroom as well, like this bipartisan consensus on these issues, even when it’s coming from the conservative movement, like with people like Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or even Megyn Kelly particularly criticizing the war in Iran and Israel’s influence. Sure, you can say that’s interesting, but I think the more instructive approach to thinking about something like that is OK, what do we take from this? Are people doing that because it’s politically expedient for them or because they’re trying to appeal to their base, or because they’re actually looking for a way to advance some counter policy at the national level? I feel like every other day I see news about the fact that these Republicans are breaking, but it’s like OK, does that actually matter?

NS: I want to be really, really, really clear about this. I think it’s a really important point to be clear about.

AL: Yeah.

NS: Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Kelly, Candace Owens. I’ll leave Marjorie Taylor Greene on the side. I’m not sure, something about the sincerity of her conversion convinces me a little bit more for whatever reason.

AL: Interesting. OK. Yeah.

NS: These are odious people. These are reactionaries. These are people who actually would want to advance many of the same policies that Trump is advancing, particularly around deportation and mass incarceration. But who knows? President Tucker Carlson might preside over the final war against Iran.

Trump was anti-war until he was pro-war. Once these guys get hold of the machinery of state, which is what interests them, they’re absolutely interested in prosecuting a vision of the country that does not include people like us. That is deeply and profoundly hostile to democracy. That’s deeply and profoundly hostile to the poor. That’s deeply and profoundly hostile to immigrants and people of color. That’s deeply and profoundly hostile to women. There’s no question in my mind that that’s true and that we shouldn’t be paying much attention to their antagonisms towards Trump and the splits within MAGA, except in so far as those become tactically useful.

What I’m talking about when I say, public opinion is thermostatic, people who voted for Trump, who are working class and poor and stressed, don’t necessarily have an absolutely ideologically sealed and impenetrable view of the world, that those are the people that have to be admitted as possible parts of a bigger coalition.

My model there would be Zohran Mamdani going out into Queens, the day after Trump was elected, and talking to people who voted for Trump and trying to figure out why and trying to say that he could offer something different. That to me is really different than saying that the Megyn Kellys of the world, these cynical influencers, are people that like we should take any sucker from.

AL: That we need in our coalition.

NS: Or that we need in our coalition. No, I think and I’m absolutely not saying that we don’t continue to draw really hard red lines around certain things. You’re not allowed to be racist, you’re not allowed to be sexist. Like these are not acceptable positions.

I don’t want to get back into an argument about whatever cancel culture and all of that, but that has been not useful ultimately, for our side, like we have to be able to be people who can allow an internal differences in dialogue, even over issues that are really contentious and painful to people and allow people to move forward and grow. That’s how you develop solidarity. That’s how you build it.

AL: I’ve spoken to people on the left who think that it’s a good idea to go on Tucker Carlson’s show because he reaches all of these people and I think we have to be able to differentiate between having an inclusive tent and allow for growth and allow for change. The difference between that and enabling people who will betray you when it’s convenient for them. And I think that’s difficult in some ways. I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule, but I do think it’s frustrating to me that I see so many people like, “You gotta hand it to these people for coming out against the Iran war.” Do we? I don’t know that we really have to do that.

NS: It’s a super tough question, and I don’t think anybody has a single clear program for how to deal with it. I remember back to when people on the left were condemning Bernie Sanders for going on Joe Rogan. I remember thinking at that time Bernie should go on Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan has some terrible attitudes and some terrible views and some very misinformed conceptions of the world. Maybe in an ordinary sense too, as a reactionary, the reactionary guys I like grew up with in New Jersey who I played soccer with or whatever. Just normal reactionary opinions that you encounter, if you talk to ordinary people. He’s like that and that’s why he’s popular. So should Bernie go on there and talk to him? I thought so, and a lot of people really condemned Bernie back then. I think that was when we were in a much more stringent cancel culture mode.

Now would I say the same thing about Tucker Carlson? No, because I think Tucker Carlson has serious political ambitions and is actually like a master manipulator of media. That’s my call, that’s how I would judge it. Somebody else might judge it differently.

I don’t think it’s super easy. I feel like we have to believe in the possibility of building bigger coalitions through dialogue, through change, through struggle sometimes. Yet I think the questions you’re asking and the way that we will pose these questions in public, we should be very clear about what we think.

AL: I’ll close with this question. I’m going to quote your wonderful essay one more time. For Equator, you write that the future is really up to the leadership of the opposition that Trump has turned America toward, “the vulgar, predatory, racist, great-power conflicts of old. He does not transcend history, but affirms what [Stephen] Miller calls its ‘iron laws.’ Reversing this will require something more than a return to normalcy, particularly as the American security state tends to be accretive – recent history suggests that it only metastasises. A more profound and comprehensive democratic renewal and reconstruction is needed.”

What does that mean? What does the democratic renewal and reconstruction entail? Who is involved and what are they doing?

NS: I think we’ve been talking about it. It’s clearly going to have to be at multiple scales. There’s a civic scale to all of this, a local scale to all of this, that I’m seeing in New York City where I live, and extremely, heartened by it. It also has its limits.

There’s a national electoral scale. Our government, which accesses billions and billions of dollars of our tax money to do all kinds of terrible things with it. We have to be able to transform and change that. A lot of people I know have given up on electoral politics altogether, but I don’t see any way to not work also at that scale.

So to me it’s always we’re all always thinking about something like a dual power struggle, like a struggle within civil society and civil society organizations, and a struggle to actually affect the dispensations of our government. For me, primarily right now, that is the struggle inside the Democratic Party to change what it is to make it a true opposition party in the current moment, to make it a party that will really actually try, actually, not try, but succeed in constructing a real majority for the kinds of policies that we would support, which would involve shrinking the defense budget, which would involve something like Medicare for all, which would involve investments in the ordinary things people need to live and work in this country, including various kinds of social insurance, including transportation, including energy.

There were some elements of this in the Biden program. I think it’s really clear how those went off the rails, particularly in the foreign policy arena. The foreign policy arena often does derail domestic reform in the United States. That’s why we need to think of these things together.

So I have an analysis, for what it’s worth. I don’t really have a program because we’re so far — it feels like we’re so far — from being able to affect the change that we need. That leads a lot of people to say “Well, let’s do the best we can. Let’s win this race or that race and maybe eke out another bare majority.” But I think every time we do that — and I think those of us who have lived long enough through enough political cycles see this — every time we do that, we’re left with something that’s just a little bit shittier.

AL: [Laughs]

NS: Now with Trump, I think we see that the bottom is potentially going to drop out here, Americans are going to be poorer after this war. They’re going to be more stressed, they’re going to have fewer resources, they’re going to be more afraid. The challenge then is going to be even greater politically because the ability of politicians to exploit these kinds of stresses and anxieties is obviously immense, particularly in this media ecosystem that is now essentially owned by billionaires and manipulated through algorithms. We really face a serious challenge. We have a lot of decentralized power, but we haven’t really been able to figure out how to get hold of some of the real levers of power in this country.

AL: The evergreen story of the left.

NS: Yes.

AL: Nikhil, we’re going to leave it there. Thank you for joining us. This was a wonderful discussion.

NS: Thanks for having me, Akela. I really appreciate it.

AL: That does it for this episode.

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The post Protesting the Smash-and-Grab Presidency With Nikhil Pal Singh appeared first on The Intercept.

“Liberate Their Bodies From Their Souls”: The Lies That Sell the Iran War

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0000

From the White House to Iran’s former crown prince, proponents of the U.S.–Israel war on Iran sell it to the American people — and Iranians themselves — as a crusade for liberation. Instead, the regime remains in place as the death toll grows, environmental hazards proliferate, and civilian infrastructure is decimated.

As if the destruction inside Iran itself wasn’t enough, the war is starting to have serious ramifications for the global economy and, more to the point, expanding into neighboring countries.

Lebanon, in particular, has come into Israel’s crosshairs, with increasing Israeli incursions and missile strikes deeper into the country. The number of dead there is approaching 1,000 with Israeli missiles razing entire apartment blocks in central Beirut this week and a ground invasion getting underway. More than 1 million Lebanese people have been displaced.

“I think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there’s not really anyone who’s trying to save them,” says Afeef Nessouli, a Beirut-based journalist, speaking to The Intercept Briefing. “They know that, and they know that they’re just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick along with Palestine.” He adds, “The fear is that [Israel] will occupy south of Litani [River] … and just take people’s homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country.”

“It’s been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of ‘This is a human rights intervention’ — and yet it’s accomplished through massive human rights violations,” says Ali Gharib, a senior editor at The Intercept. Commenting on Israel’s strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region, he notes, the Israelis “don’t need [Reza] Pahlavi to work. They don’t need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it’s not a threat to Israel anymore.”

“We’ve had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran,” says Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini, a veteran peace strategist. “The Iraq version of regime change ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would’ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would’ve challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam.”

It’s a region in upheaval, and at the center are Israeli and American fictions about liberatory bombs.

“I’ve been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they’re telling me the Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them,” says Naraghi-Anderlini, “And my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Ali Gharib: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Ali Gharib, and I’m a senior editor at The Intercept. The U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran is stretching into its third week, with attacks having started on February 28. The bombardment of Iran has remained relentless. At least 1,400 people have been killed and more than 18,000 have been injured.

Civilian infrastructure has taken a hit too, including Iranian hospitals, pharmaceutical plants, educational centers, and civilian energy depots. Iran, for its part, has retaliated by launching missiles and drones into Israel itself, as well as attacking U.S. bases in the region. It has also targeted energy infrastructure in the nearby Gulf Arab states.

Meanwhile, Israel has increased its attacks on Lebanon, killing more than 900 people and displacing more than 1 million, and it’s preparing for a ground invasion against the paramilitary group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

On Wednesday, Israel expanded its airstrikes into central Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, where it razed residential buildings.

Afeef Nessouli, is a journalist and Intercept contributor based in Lebanon, where he has been reporting since November. He joins me now from Beirut.

Afeef, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Afeef Nessouli: Yeah, thanks for having me, Ali. I appreciate it.

AG: Afeef, what can you tell us about what it’s actually been like in the parts of Lebanon where you’ve been reporting, since Israel increased its attacks on the country following the strikes against Iran?

AN: So I’m in an area of Beirut called Tayouneh. Tayouneh is hundreds of meters away from the evacuation orders that have been all over the southern suburbs — it’s just right north of the southern suburbs — so it’s very loud here. Right outside of my area, there’s hundreds of tents lined up.

It’s right outside of the park. Horsh Beirut is this public space, and families from the southern suburbs have just lined up their tents and have had to make do with such little resources.

It’s really so hard to see so many people without shelter. It’s just a catastrophic situation.

AG: It’s not entirely surprising to hear that you might be seeing people there in tent cities, given that, I think I read that 1 in 5 Lebanese people were displaced now, and especially with Israel expanding its attacks into Beirut and central Beirut, as we saw on Wednesday, decimating parts of central Beirut and imploding with missiles buildings in the center of town.

So what have you been seeing, what have you’ve been talking to people there, internally displaced people?

AN: So on Wednesday, Israeli airstrikes hit central Beirut. They killed at least 12 people, wounding 41 people.

Going to the strike areas is really just awful to see and awful to witness. Buildings are rubble. It’s causing panic and fear among people in places that were not told to evacuate.

I talked to a mother who was displaced from the southern suburbs, a neighborhood called Bourj Al Barajneh. She’s been staying under this huge statue of a crescent moon right outside of Al Amin Mosque in downtown Beirut. She’s mostly just worried for her kids — worried that they’re not getting enough to eat, worried about them just being terrorized, and also it’s just so cold.

You have to understand: Everything is all hands on deck. So a lot of schools are being turned into shelters. The stadium has been turned into a shelter.

One I visited in Ras, Beirut, which is in northwestern Beirut, over 200 families I think were in and out of that shelter. People are sleeping on the floors. I spend a lot of time with an organization called Truth Be Told that’s passing out hot meals from donations and prescription medication around Horsh Beirut, where all the families are lined up in tents.

What you’re mostly hearing is that people don’t have anywhere to go. They have nowhere to sleep. And everywhere they do have to sleep is incredibly uncomfortable. There are men sleeping in their cars. There are cars everywhere. People are struggling. They’re struggling to survive in an economy that was already just decimated from the last few years.

AG: I’m curious, on the geopolitics, Afeef — how do you think these attacks have affected Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group from the south of the country but has become a central player in Lebanese politics and obviously a group closely linked with Iran? Is your sense that Hezbollah has been weakened by these attacks? Is the group continuing to be diminished or are they holding pretty firm at this time?

AN: I can say that a lot of people inside of Lebanon and a lot of people outside of Lebanon had seemed to count Hezbollah out, for the most part. They had seemed decimated, especially after the Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was killed. It seemed like they were taking a long rest period.

So a lot of the criticism is, Israel had had over 10,000 ceasefire violations — and it took the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be assassinated for the group to push into the war and take decisive action.

AG: And of course, you’re talking about Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of Hezbollah who was killed by Israel during an earlier round of its war with Lebanon — [after] a pager attack that Israel lodged against Lebanon, where it loaded pagers with explosives and meticulously distributed them to Hezbollah officials, killing scores of Hezbollah officials as well as countless civilians. And Ali Khamenei was the supreme leader of Iran until he was assassinated by Israel at the outset of this latest war with Iran.

AN: After the supreme leader was assassinated, I went to the public mourning in Dahiyeh. It was literally the evening of when Israel started striking the southern suburbs, and you could tell that the emotion was palpable. People were crying, people were wailing, people were chanting, people were angry. It was extremely well attended, it was extremely big.

Ultimately, the same night, I was awoken in the middle of the night by two really loud strikes on Dahiyeh. It was really clear that Hezbollah had decided to take Lebanon into the war. And a lot of Lebanese people were pretty upset at that. They felt like they weren’t given any consent; they were not able to consent to this sort of act. It’s become a pretty polarizing subject.

A year ago, when Hezbollah entered the war on behalf of Gaza, I think people were more amenable to the idea. They understood that Israel wanted to make incursions into the country and occupy land. I think in the last year, having not really responded to a lot of ceasefire violations in the south, but responding to Ali Khamenei’s assassination was just a disappointment to a lot of Lebanese people who felt, “Well, are you acting on behalf of Iran, or are you acting on behalf of our best interest?”

It seems like they’ve lost some support on the ground. So there is that, there is a decimation of their reputation right now, from what I am at least gathering on the ground. But also there’s a lot of people who understand or the people who are on the front lines, they’re the ones who have to self-help when all of their houses are demolished. And there’s military access roads for Israeli occupation soldiers to literally making their demolished houses gone forever because now there’s military access roads paved on top of them.

“It feels like this big psychological operation done to Lebanese people for decades to separate them into sects, into tribes, and to get them destabilized.”

In Lebanon, there’s so many political opinions. And when something like this happens, it really feels like the people of the country are pitted against each other. It feels like this big psychological operation done to Lebanese people for decades to separate them into sects, into tribes, and to get them destabilized, while all of these outside forces are manipulating their lived experience, their day-to-day experience. I think most people really just want to have a Lebanon that they can depend on economically, that they can depend on politically, and that they can depend on in general for having a life that isn’t burdened by cycles of violence every few months.

AG: Touching on that a little bit, I’ve talked to my friends, Lebanese friends, who admittedly are probably very self-selecting, but it seems they have sensed a resentment. You were sort of touching on this, a resentment of the fact that between the so-called ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and the Israeli assassination of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, there were some tens of thousands of Israeli ceasefire violations recorded, and none of these prompted a response from Hezbollah. But their willingness to go in retaliation for the assassination of a foreign leader — do you sense that kind of resentment? Is that one of the things contributing to Hezbollah’s diminishing stature?

AN: Yeah, so I spoke to one woman last night. She’s in her mid-30s. She has family from the south. Someone who theoretically supported Hezbollah getting into the war on behalf of Gaza after October 7. Someone who understands having land in the south — family homes in the south — that have been under fire for, really, decades. She says that, in the last year and a half, since the so-called ceasefire was brokered, after 10,000 violations from Israel, after Hezbollah really didn’t respond to all of the violations, and yet they woke up on behalf of the supreme leader’s assassination — just doesn’t sit well with her. She doesn’t see the reason why Lebanon would have to be in this fight.

But on the other hand completely, there’s also this sophisticated understanding, obviously, that there’s a neighbor to the south that has occupied an entire country and wants to have the Litani River be its northern border. There is this idea that Israel has been manipulating and manufacturing this feeling for a while, that they are coming in and they were going to come in and they were attacking Lebanon much before Hezbollah had ever come around.

The fact of the matter is that Israel really does want to sow discord in the sectarian populations of Lebanon. They have dropped leaflets a couple days ago in central Beirut saying, “Lebanon is yours. You can inform on Hezbollah” and like they shared a QR code.

“What ends up happening is that a lot of people discriminate against people from the south, people from Shia backgrounds, because they’re basically afraid.”

And then they target residential buildings and say, “We’re coming after Hezbollah” and cause psychological damage and physical damage and ruin so much peace for so many people. Ultimately what ends up happening is that a lot of people discriminate against people from the south, people from Shia backgrounds, because they’re basically afraid that if they let them into their buildings or try to take care of them, they’re going to be around people that are affiliated with Hezbollah and are going to be targeted.

A lot of these people are just displaced. They’re unhoused in rain, their houses have been destroyed, and then their fellow patriots are literally just terrified that being around them or letting them in is going to result in Israel killing all of them. That’s a real fear on the ground right now.

It’s something that feels very beneficial to Israel and the U.S. to have: sects in Lebanon fighting each other all of the time not paying attention to the slow incursions — the slow pushing forth — on the southern border. Also, it’s probably beneficial to countries like Iran to pour money, pouring arms, have proxies that are fighting its battles.

Ultimately what happens is that the situation on the ground becomes unbearable. Everybody’s trying to pressure the people to orchestrate some heroic political ends that is impossible for the people to do because they’re obviously being manipulated by powers much larger than them. I think the Lebanese are suffering now, and there’s not really anyone who’s trying to save them. And they know that. They know that they’re just political pawns who are always at the worst end of the stick — along with Palestine. So, yeah, it feels really dismal in Lebanon right now.

“Most people really just want to have a Lebanon that they can depend on economically … and that they can depend on in general for having a life that isn’t burdened by cycles of violence every few months.”

AG: You mentioned in the south, the razing of people’s homes to make roads for Israeli military infrastructure as they increase their ground incursions and seem to be making preparations for a full-scale ground invasion.

Of course, this is all fraught with the history of the rise of Hezbollah in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, an occupation that lasted for nearly two decades with ongoing hostilities in the two and a half decades since 2000, when Israel officially left south Lebanon. What is the mood among people today in Beirut and also more broadly in Lebanon with regard to fears of what an Israeli occupation could mean for the future of their country?

AN: I think most people in Lebanon look at Israeli occupation as something that’s just unacceptable. While there’s a lot of opinions that are diverse politically in Lebanon, sometimes in contradiction of each other, one thing I think that is mostly true is that most Lebanese people do not want any normalization with Israel. There are some people who do, but it’s not many.

The fear is that they will occupy south of Litani — the Litani River is Israel’s northern border — and just take people’s homes, take their land, and never give it back, make settlements for their country. The feeling and the fear is that actually the more Israel does, the more it greedily takes up land, the less that anyone in Lebanon is going to stop fighting back. Because the fear is that there’s always going to be violence, and being caught in a cycle of violence and a cycle of economic destruction. I think most people really just want a Lebanon that is peaceful. I think they want a Lebanon that they can feel safe in. And now half of the country really feels like Hezbollah has dragged them into this war.

A lot of people know that Israel would’ve done it anyway, and a subset is always going to fight back on the southern border because that’s where they come from. So it just becomes a ripple effect for everybody in the country. Nobody wants the land to be occupied by Israel, but also not everybody at all wants to be in war constantly with Israel either.

So you just have different lived realities where there are people who are losing their homes, they’re displaced, they’re suffering, they’re fighting back as best as they can. Then there’s people in Lebanon who are living in a totally different reality and are really mad because, admittedly so, their city is getting bombed, their economy is degrading, they have no chance for a future that feels at all stable. So you just have a society that is at the highest level of tension — and everybody, without fail, is afraid of civil war.

Because the truth is that Hezbollah is part and parcel of society. So when the Israelis and the U.S. pressure the government to disarm Hezbollah, a lot of Hezbollah is in all sorts of society. A lot of them are in the army. So it’s not an easy fix here.

I think the idea is that the Israelis want to make it seem like the government can just easily disarm Hezbollah, and if they don’t, they’re going to get punished for it. But it’s obvious that’s impossible. So it’s made people feel completely disenchanted with all of the leadership that’s involved and the leadership in the state as well, because the response has been mostly inadequate. It’s just something out of a horror show.

AG: Given what we’ve seen, pretty clearly seems to be Israel’s strategy of making failed states out of its adversaries in the region, you have to wonder if Israeli’s strategic thinking is exactly to stoke that resentment. So yeah, a complicated situation.

Afeef, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It’s really a pleasure and really appreciate all your insights and also your excellent reporting. So thanks so much for joining us on the Intercept Briefing.

AN: Ali, I really appreciate you for covering Lebanon and having me on your show.

AG: After a quick break, I’ll be speaking to Sanam Naraghi Anderlini about Iran. Sanam is a peace strategist and founder and CEO of International Civil Society Action Network, or ICAN. She has served around the globe as expert for the U.N. on conflict mediation and was architect of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda.

We’ll be right back.

[Break]

AG: Welcome back to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Ali Gharib.

The war in Iran is deepening. Instead of finding ways to tone down the conflict, all the sides are doubling down on ultimatums and escalation. The cost has come in human lives, including to Gulf residents, Israelis, and American troops, but most notably in Iran, where Israel and America have been expanding their bombing campaigns, including carpet bombing in densely populated cities.

Joining me now to discuss all this is Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, a peace strategist and the head of the civil society network ICAN.

And full disclosure here: This is gonna sound familiar to members of the family WhatsApp group, because Sanam is actually my cousin.

She’s also a veteran peace builder and has been working on conflict resolution for decades. She intimately knows Iran and is an analyst on these issues as well. Thanks for joining us, Sanam.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini: Thank you for having me.

AG: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the trap that the war is falling into — this kind of logic of “escalation of all sides.” There are all these interested parties that are involved in the war — which is basically the Iranians, the Israelis, and the Americans — and they all have different interests. Can you talk about how all of those different interests right now point to this conflict escalating, rather than finding any off ramps?

SNA: So the way we have to understand this is that you have an Iranian regime that is basically focused on survival. They’ve always been — their logic has always been survival.

In a conflict like this, with two nuclear states, they are fighting a war of asymmetry. So their tactics have been, “How do you escalate the pain for the other side?” to actually bring it to an end quicker. We call it the “hurting stalemate”: How do you get into a stalemate of some sort that is hurting the various parties, so that you end up with some kind of resolution? But at the moment, it’s the logic of escalation to get to that point of pain.

For the Israelis, the logic has always been to try and decimate Iran as a regional power and as a power that would challenge them on the question of Palestine more than anything else. We saw that for them, the decimation of Iraq — or basically Iraq falling to its knees, as opposed to turning into a liberal democracy or Syria or Libya or any of these countries. Their fragmentation and essentially the destruction of the state in those countries was beneficial to the Israeli cause of both Greater Israel, but also vis-a-vis specifically the Palestinians.

So right now, with the Iran war going on, they also want to do as much damage as possible, and we’re seeing that on a daily basis. Hospitals have been hit, civilian sites have been hit, residential areas. When they went after Larijani, the national security adviser, over 100 civilians were killed.

We’ve just heard on Wednesday about a petrochemical plant that’s been hit. This is de facto chemical warfare now being played out, using the sources that are on the ground. So they are going full on and essentially escalating.

Iran is retaliating and is doing a sort of matching retaliation. You hit a petrochemical plant, they say, we’re gonna hit yours. So then comes the U.S. The U.S. — as we have repeatedly now heard from different U.S. officials — doesn’t really know why it’s doing this. Iran was not a threat to them. There was no nuclear threat, there was no ballistic missile threat. They got dragged into this war by Israel, and they are now in it.

The problem is that as a major power — as a superpower, frankly — they can’t be seen to lose. So it’s a little bit like the situation of Russia and Ukraine. Russia can’t be seen to lose to Ukraine. So the U.S. is now caught in that kind of trap. So they’re also escalating at the moment.

“The problem is that as a major power — as a superpower, frankly — they can’t be seen to lose.”

But actually what I’m really worried about is that there are no guardrails. We don’t have anyone standing and actually being the grown-up in the room saying, “There are nuclear plants. They shouldn’t be hit.” The implications of a Bushehr plant, which something was lobbed there. No damage was done. But the implications of this kind of damage and radioactive spillage for the entire Gulf region is really significant. And yet there is no real attention to this kind of escalation or trying to put, as I say, guardrails around essentially what are war crimes happening now.

AG: Sanam, maybe you can speak a little bit to what you see on the broader international scene, because I think there have been some shifts in the past week where we’ve seen Europe pushing back on a few things. But this has all been set up by a very long campaign that’s largely centered around human rights as an idea for justifying this sort of intervention and interventions like it before. We saw this in Afghanistan, we saw it in Iraq. We’ve seen it in a lot of places.

For you and I looking at this who’ve worked in this world — you more than myself — it’s been really stunning to watch that so many people fall for this idea of “This is a human rights intervention” — and yet it’s accomplished through massive, massive human rights violations. This targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilian facilities and homes and disproportionate casualties happening on things like the Larijani assassination.

Can you talk about how we got to this place where this rhetoric is built up around human rights to justify something like, if not quite a total war, at least a massive full-scale destruction of a country that we’re seeing in process right now?

“If Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would’ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine.”

SNA: We’ve had in the last 20 to 25 years, especially since the Iraq War in 2003, a lobby pushing for regime change in Iran. They did it in Baghdad. It used to be said that men go to Baghdad, real men go to Tehran. The Iraq version of regime change ended up being a catastrophe from a U.S. perspective, but actually from an Israeli perspective and from a Saudi perspective, and even from a UAE perspective, the decimation of Iraq has been a success because if Iraq had turned out to be a liberal democracy, it would’ve challenged Israel on the question of Palestine. It would’ve challenged Saudi Arabia on the question of Islam and what is Islam; we wouldn’t have ended up with all this sort of Wahhabi/Salafi versions of Islam being spread around the world. And it could have possibly challenged the UAE on being an economic powerhouse.

Iraq is an educated — was an educated population. They have oil, they were wealthy, et cetera, but it was decimated. And these other three powers rose.

Iran was always on their agenda, and especially on the Israeli agenda. And the first threat that was perceived was, let’s make it a question of a nuclear threat. OK, so that was the big thing on the table. Nuclear negotiations happened; 2015 JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] is achieved.

AG: The Iran nuclear deal.

SNA: We see a change in tactic. We started seeing massive propaganda using Iran International and other television stations into Iran with very gauzy nostalgic stories of the Pahlavi era. Then we see them co-opting the Women Life Freedom movement in 2022. It was meant to be some sort of coalition opposition movement that was again, trying to co-opt Women Life Freedom.

Now, Women Life Freedom was authentic. It was homegrown. It had nothing to do with the diaspora. The diaspora supported it because it was so beautifully nonviolent and so inclusive. It was women’s rights, and we had men standing with women. Life and the question of life is both around economic livelihoods and justice and so forth. And then freedom. The question of, can we have democratic freedoms and dignity?

The Iranian regime crashes down on that as they often do when they see protest movements. They crack down heavily, but ironically they also back down. So once the protest stopped, what we saw was that the mandatory nature of the hijab basically disappears. You see Iranian women walking around wearing whatever they want.

But the question of, how do we go about with regime change from the outside again? The focus shifts, and with Trump coming into power [in 2016] and getting rid of the JCPOA, that was about controlling and containing the nuclear program, but also removing sanctions so there would be economic relief for the Iranian public. Obama never got rid of the sanctions, and by the time Trump came in, he got rid of the nuclear deal — nuclear side of it.

The Iranians maintained and then they continued cooperating with the U.N. and the nuclear experts for a long time with inspectors. Then at some point it became clear that there was not going to be a new deal. And so the whole thing disappeared.

In the meantime, what was happening was that the shift in D.C. and again with Israeli support, became about “maximum pressure,” which is around economic pressure. It was really strangling the Iranian economy and really hitting inflation and affecting very poor people.

At ICAN, we did a report on sanctions in 2012. It was called “Killing them Softly,” and we were looking at the humanitarian implications of sanctions back in 2012. In 2017 onwards, it comes in really, really heavily. We’ve even had Nancy Pelosi in February of 2026 saying, we imposed these sanctions with the view of hurting the poor Iranians in rural areas so that there would be an uprising.

AG: It’s worth mentioning too that this strategy really came out of Israel’s closest allies in Washington, right? This was like the Foundation for Defensive Democracies — these Likud-oriented, right-wing pro-Israel think tanks that had literally called for a strategy of maximum pressure, which is what Trump put in place.

SNA: Exactly. This has been an ongoing fight between different think tanks, different leanings, et cetera. But of course those guys have a lot more money and a lot more resources because they’ve literally got the backing of the Israeli government behind them.

So you get maximum pressure. You get the protests back in December of 2025. They were economic protests. It was the bazaar and the traders and others, but people were really feeling the inflation level. So December protests start, and we don’t really hear that much about them. There isn’t really that much sort of repression of these protests. It’s very much a domestic issue.

Then all of a sudden we see Reza Pahlavi coming into this domain and calling out to people and saying, go out 7th and 8th of January, go out into the protest. Go out in your millions. We are with you.

AG: Reza Pahlavi, of course, the former crown prince of Iran, who’s become a central figure of the right-wing Iranian opposition, and who has claimed for himself the role as the head of the transition to a purported democracy that’s soon to be coming in Iran.

SNA: We start seeing Mossad or Israeli-aligned assets on Twitter saying, we’re there, we’re on the ground with you. We are there to help you. So these messages need to really be investigated. Because if you know the Iranian regime, you know that their instinct when feeling threatened is to crack down, and they will crack down heavily on their own population.

So how can you sit in Virginia or in Maryland and tell people to go out onto the streets and say, we’re going to be there with you, and actually expose them to what became a very violent crackdown coming on the back of the Twelve Day War, the Israeli American war in June?

Again, it had been during nuclear negotiations, and the attacks on Iranian leadership was pretty significant. So you’re dealing already with a regime that is going to be paranoid about infiltration. In January, you say to people, go out onto the streets. People’s kids are going out, and they go out into the streets, and then we see the internet blackout. Again, during the Twelve Day War, there was [an] internet blackout because banks were being attacked. There were cyber attacks against Iranian banks by Israeli assets. So you’re dealing, as I say, with a regime that is already on hyper alert and paranoid, and so they react very violently.

How many people were killed? This becomes a big topic of debate and discussion. The human rights organizations, and the one that I follow is an organization called Harana, they did a very meticulous verification of people who died, families verifying and so forth. They had reached the number of about 7,008 people who had been killed during those two nights of protests. That’s a lot of people. But the machinery of propaganda — news, whatever you want to call it — started inflating the numbers. And it became 12,000 and then 20,000 and then 30,000 and then 40,000 and then 50,000.

AG: The 7,000 number is bad enough.

SNA: Yes.

AG: Here we were in 2013 or whatever it was, completely outraged about Sisi’s counter-coup against the Muslim Brotherhood killing 1,500 protesters in one day. And that was outrage. We got talks in Washington about cutting off weapons to Egypt, cutting off Egypt from aid.

These numbers were already staggering. So to just watch it balloon out of proportion like this with no basis and evidence, it really showed you that some of the opposition at this point was really just absolutely going for it and willing to stop at nothing, in a very Trumpian way,

SNA: It was Trumpian, but it was also very — suddenly it started to look like the Gaza playbook, right? Because it was very much like the horrific things that happened on October 7 in Israel. It was using that horrific incident to then rile up and get emotionally charged around what the response should be.

In the case of Iran, it became about, well we need to go and protect people. We started subtly seeing Iranians in the diaspora using certain talking points. Because I was hearing it from different places. First it was somebody would say, “This is a war of liberation. These people who were on the streets were fighting a war of liberation.” That’s a dangerous thing to say, because if you’re claiming that the protesters who went out on a Friday night and a Thursday night out of frustration, out of anger, whatever, were soldiers and it’s a war — then you are putting them directly at risk.

AG: This is part of the opposition, from the opposition perspective, the Pahlavi perspective too. Pahlavi, as we know, has been traveling to Israel the past few years, is really — I think it’s safe to say at this point — has become a stooge of the Israelis. This was absolutely his strategy too. You heard him during the January protest crackdown.

The January protests were effectively a nonviolent movement. One of the things that was so shocking about the breadth of the crackdown was that this was a nonviolent movement. Sure, OK, setting the occasional police station on fire, but that is not what the movement was about.

And you had Pahlavi here saying everybody in the regime is legitimate targets, even civilian officials. That’s calling for a civil war. That’s calling for war crimes.

SNA: That’s the problem that you’re sitting, again, you’re sitting in Potomac, Miami, or wherever he happened to be when he said all this, and he’s sending out people. And either you know your opposition, you know the force that you’re fighting against the regime, in which case you have to be mindful of what you’re doing. We have known for 47 years that this is a regime that will use violence and it has used violence throughout time. So if you’re claiming to be the leader of the opposition, do you put your followers at risk like that? That, to me, is a question of responsibility. That’s definitely an issue.

If you don’t know the nature of your adversary, then that’s also admitting incompetence of some sort. How could you not know this could happen? So what was the intent of telling people to go out into the streets and then having all these Mossad voices on Twitter? What was the intent of it? Was the intent creating this space where this violence would come out so that then the next excuse for regime change becomes this is a regime that is killing its own people, it’s awful to its own people? We’ve had all the propaganda all these years. People, they’ve had it up to here with the economics, with the corruption, with all of the things that are going on, and the answer becomes well, yeah, it needs military attack.

AG: This is where you really see the Israelis start to step up and say, rise up. And for whatever reason, because of the desperation of Iranian people, people really latch onto this. It’s incredible for us to think, like many of our relatives have enough sense, certainly our relatives who are inside Iran, many of whom are geriatric and the rest of whom are just sensible, aren’t going out in the street and listening to Reza Pahlavi. But you listen to anecdotes from them about their friends. These people were actually listening to these messages and going into the street and being shot at and slaughtered. Meanwhile, Pahlavi and the Israelis are saying, do it, rise up, overtake the government.

SNA: Yeah.

AG: The people on the ground themselves can’t be blamed for thinking that there’s some sort of plan in place. This connects back to what you were saying about the Israelis, where this kind of is the plan, right? It’s that they don’t need Pahlavi to work. They don’t need him to go in there and become this democratic leader. They just need him to lead a movement that damages the regime enough to put Iran into some kind of fractured state or state failure where it’s not a threat to Israel anymore.

SNA: Yeah. So what I started seeing, and I think this is the situation we’re in now, unfortunately, is that you have a regime that has sacrificed the country and the nation for its own survival, and they’re continuing to do that. Then we have an opposition led by the Israeli sort of mentality — but now very much owned by Iranian diaspora themselves — that is so driven by getting rid of the regime that they’re also willing to sacrifice the nation.

The rhetoric that we hear it’s just heartbreaking because when the girls’ school was hit some people were saying, “Oh, it’s the regime’s own rockets.” Exactly like what we heard in Gaza when the hospital was hit. Then it became “This is collateral damage. There’s a price for freedom.” I find that really quite revolting because I’m thinking, it’s not your kid. Those children did not sign up to be the price for freedom, whatever freedom means.

Then we started seeing Israeli journalists. I’ve been on podcasts with Israeli journalists where they’re telling me, “The Iranians wanted us to go in and liberate them.” And my response to them is: Liberate their bodies from their souls?

AG: Liberate them from their pharmaceutical factories and their hospitals and their girls’ schools.

SNA: So many schools now, I think it’s 60 schools have been hit. Schools, homes, energy sources, flour depots for making bread and corn, food, water, energy. All of these things are being hit. Police stations.

Ali Gharib: Homes — residential towers with hundreds of apartments.

SNA: Thousands, right? So they’re hiding behind this language of freedom and this language of human rights and then causing incredible mass human rights assault going forward in terms of atrocities. It’s all war crimes as well.

Again, at the forefront of it, we have Reza Pahlavi, who to me, is not only a puppet, he’s like a pied piper. He’s the one who led this diaspora into: I’m gonna give you heaven. And it’s now pretty hellish for the people on the ground in Iran. So this is something that we have to reckon with. I think diasporas — I’ve worked on conflicts for many years — diasporas often play a significant role in terms of shaping the policy.

But what I always felt with Iranians was that no matter what differences we may have had politically, what drives us is a love of country. The targeting right now has been against the state and the nation. When you hear that something like 50 heritage sites have been damaged, for each of us, when we think about Isfahan or when we think about iconic buildings in Tehran, whether it’s the Azadi Tower or the Azadi Stadium, these are places and things that have meaning to us as a nation. They are part of how communities are formed and imagined and created. Iranians have a deep sense of nationhood, yet in this context, in the way that this polarization has happened, as I say, you have people who are saying, “Well, we will rebuild.” Are you now saying that in this war, another 30,000 people can die for freedom?

This is pretty despicable when you’re sitting outside the country. If you want to fight the war then by all means, fly to Istanbul, take the bus, and go straight to Tehran and be on the streets with the people. But to sit outside and wage war is horrific.

“Those of us who sit outside have a particular responsibility. … People living inside, they may not have the same information.”

Those of us who sit outside have a particular responsibility. We have seen what the United States has done in these countries. We have access to all of the information — whether it’s Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan — we know what kind of entity we deal with and in the international space, when these countries get embroiled in conflict. I think we have a particular responsibility in terms of trying to prevent that happening to our own country. People living inside, they may not have the same information. As I say, they are so traumatized by what the regime has done that it’s easy to say, “I want something else.”

One last point, which I think is really significant, is that there’s a generational issue here. My generation is probably the last generation that remembers the revolution and the Iran–Iraq war. I was 11 when that happened. And for the years that I was returning to Iran to do my research and understand what was going on, I remember in the 1990s, there were student protests. And the taxi drivers, I would say to them, “Did you go to the protests?” And the taxi driver would say, “No, ma’am, we’ve already been out there once to be against something. I’ll go out there when I know it’s for something.”

So this idea of everybody united against the shah, thinking the day after was going to be better and then they got the Islamists. People have been inoculated against that. They remember the Iran–Iraq war. That was a pretty horrific war for eight years, and Iran had no allies in the world except for Israel and Syria. Israel was giving weapons to Iran throughout the 1980s. So it’s interesting the shifts that have happened.

But what I’m saying is that I’m in my 50s now, so the generations that come after me, they don’t remember the revolution. They don’t remember the war. And this rallying around the Pahlavi name as an alternative to the regime — “whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than the regime.” That’s exactly the parallel that we’re seeing. And it’s a very dangerous one, I think.

AG: This is something that you said when we spoke on the phone earlier that I do want to get to because I think this is very important and it actually speaks to both sides. What you said is that inside of us all— And I think this both animates the people inside Iran who, I don’t want to take away their agency. There are people there who are calling for these bombs and celebrating them.

I think that now we’re getting to a point where some people are waking up to what that actually means. Something you’d mentioned before is that the Twelve Day War last June seems now like it might have been a prelude to calm people’s nerves, that this won’t be as bad as you think. So when the call for more bombs and war comes, “bomb this regime into submission,” people won’t get what it is — I think now people increasingly are starting to get a grip on it — but still there are people who are diehard for it. Diehard for Pahlavi. Part of this is polarization and information compartmentalization where people are watching Iran International, the Fox News of the Iranian diaspora that beams into the country. They’re getting bad information. There’s conspiracy theories about the girls’ school bombing — all this stuff that we don’t need to get into all this detail about. But those people really are just looking for something to grasp, to hope for, right?

Then you’ve got people on the outside throwing up their hands, and I think, like we’ve seen this in our family discussions where people say, “God, I hope it ends soon.” And what you said to me earlier in our pre-interview is that hope is not really a strategy. What can be our strategy on the outside that’s not just hope? How do we look at this conflict in a way that can advance things for the country and for the people inside that we think is morally sound for us to push?

SNA: I genuinely think that if we care about Iran and Iranians, we need to be really advocating for very serious guardrails around the type of weapons that are being used and the type of targets that are being hit. As I said, if they go after Bushehr nuclear plant, there’s going to be radioactive spillage in Iran and in the Gulf. This is dangerous. This is really dangerous. Petrochemical plants, oil plants, these are the kinds of things that have been hit, and Iran is retaliating. So there needs to be a collective voice of saying, “Enough, stop this, we have to put some limits on this.” The weapons and the targets, that’s number one.

“If they go after Bushehr nuclear plant, there’s going to be radioactive spillage in Iran and in the Gulf. This is dangerous.”

Number two is that at this point, I would like more of us — and those people who have a larger platform than I do — to be talking about the political prisoners. There are thousands and thousands of people who were arrested in January who need to be released, but there are also the long-term ones and the dissidents and others who have had the courage, despite everything that’s going on, to actually issue statements and speak out about what they want change to be.

So there’s been a pretty vibrant conversation inside Iran from within the regime and from the periphery of it and the opposition around referenda and changing things and so forth.

Third thing. We need to take a page out of the book of the countries that have done this before and learn some lessons. The first place I go back to is South Africa, where the opposition to the apartheid regime gathered together in the 1950s, all sorts of communists and ANC [African National Congress] and all sorts of liberation fighters and others. But they got together, and they articulated the people’s charter, and it was a vision of the South Africa they wanted to create. That document became a roadmap and a destination, if you want, for what they were fighting for. What is it that we are fighting for? What unites us? This is the kind of thing that I wish Pahlavi had done, or I wish that we could now do and actually open up the space for conversations.

“What is it that we are fighting for? What unites us?”

Related to that is the acceptance amongst all of us that Iran is now a country of 93 million people. Even if 5 percent of those people are regime supporters, that is a population of 4.5 million, 5 million people. We have to say that this is a country in which they also have a role. The future of Iran, I would like if it was my choice, I would like a future of Iran where I get to go and visit my father’s grave without fear of being arrested or being detained, where I could take my children to visit the country and see the beauty of my homeland without fear. But I also want other people to be able to go live back home there, and the folks that are living there, who have had to be part and parcel of the system that is there — for them to also feel safe.

All the horrors that this regime actually played out on us, I don’t want to become them. That to me is the question. So it’s really thinking about it in this way of: What does it mean to live with the lens of human rights and inclusivity and plurality? Then what do we do with the most egregious elements, whether it’s in the prisons and the torturers, whether it’s the leaders who ordered the violence, those kinds of things need investigation.

Again, South Africa had a tribunal. They also had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Other countries have done that. Yemen had a national dialogue process for two years where they brought people from all sorts of political parties and tribes and young people and women to actually imagine the future that they were going to have. These are the kinds of things that we need to have in Iran.

Let’s remove the embedded violence that has shaped this regime and has infiltrated into society, and actually bring it back to the Iran that we all love and the history of pluralism and frankly, secularism, that goes back 2,500 years. Secularism means Muslims — diehard Muslims — also get to live and practice their lives, right? It’s that kind of a vision that I think we need to be thinking about.

AG: And we’re going to leave it there. Thanks for joining us on the Intercept Briefing, Sanam.

SNA: Thank you, Ali.

AG: That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is the managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is the copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review came, as always, from the great David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you, our loyal readers and listeners. Your donations, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Ali Gharib.

The post “Liberate Their Bodies From Their Souls”: The Lies That Sell the Iran War appeared first on The Intercept.

Trump’s AI-Powered World Wars

The Intercept Briefing — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:00:00 +0000

In the last few days, President Donald Trump has said that the U.S-Israel war on Iran will end soon, after oil prices jumped and the growing regional conflict continued to shake markets. After a wave of heavy bombardments throughout Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised another round, “The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes.”

“Hegseth has, yes, said that it’s going to be basically death and destruction from the air, and they’re delivering that,” Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and journalist, tells The Intercept Briefing.

“Killing civilians is a hallmark of American air war. This particular campaign Operation Epic Fury is set apart by the relentlessness of the attacks,” adds Nick Turse, senior reporter for The Intercept. “The two militaries — U.S. and Israel — combined were striking a conservative estimate of 1,000 targets per day in the first days of the conflict. Around 4,000 targets were hit in the first 100 hours of the campaign. For another point of comparison, Israeli attacks in the recent Gaza war were also relentless, but this far outpaces the Israeli campaign by more than double the number of strikes.” On Wednesday, Trump told Axios the war would end soon because there’s “practically nothing left to target.”

This week on the The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy talked to Majd and Turse about the latest developments in the U.S. and Israel war on Iran and the growing number of conflicts the U.S. is engaged in. Senior technology reporter Sam Biddle also joined to discuss how artificial intelligence is being used in various U.S. conflicts.

“Airstrikes, air war generally is already so prone to killing innocent people even when you take your time. But whenever you try to hurry for the sake of hurrying — and AI is great at enabling that — you just increase over and over again the chance of killing someone that you didn’t intend to or didn’t care enough to avoid killing,” says Biddle. “So I think that is an immense risk of just accelerating the metabolism of killing from the air by drone, by airplane — with the stamp of ‘intelligence’ that these AI companies are really pushing.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.

Sam Biddle: And I’m Sam Biddle, senior technology reporter at The Intercept.

AL: Sam, this is your first time on The Intercept Briefing, correct?

SB: It is. I’ve been at the Intercept for 10 years. I finally got the call. I’m excited.

Akela Lacy: Welcome, we’re very glad to have you.

SB: Thank you so much.

AL: On a serious note, as we speak, the U.S. is engaged in war and acts of aggression on multiple fronts from the Middle East to the Caribbean and Central America. You have been doing some really important reporting on how the Pentagon is using artificial intelligence in wars and surveillance around the world.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Claude, an AI tool from the company Anthropic, was used to capture now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which set off a dispute between the company and the U.S. government, and opened the door for Anthropic’s rival to swoop in. The Wall Street Journal also reported that Trump has used those same tools in strikes on Iran. Tell us more.

SB: So what’s been reported is that the Pentagon has made use of a system it has called the Maven Smart System, which is operated by Palantir, the semi-infamous data mining firm. We know based on multiple reports at this point that they’re using the Maven system to essentially accelerate the selection and subsequent destruction of targets on the ground.

This is a way of executing airstrikes at a greater speed potentially, not necessarily more intelligently or with greater accuracy, but I think just faster. And I think people at the Pentagon would probably say, more effectively, more efficiently finding things to destroy and people to kill.

“Target selection is a labor-intensive task.”

Target selection is a labor-intensive task. If you can have an LLM like Anthropic’s Claude system — we’ve all seen how quickly they can generate a huge wall of text, of questionable accuracy — can bring that same hyper-speed to creating lists of buildings to destroy and people to kill. I think that is proven to be the biggest value — not just to our military, but to militaries abroad as well.

AL: Sam, what do we know about how the Pentagon is using AI tools in the Trump administration’s various wars?

SB: Under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, there has been a huge, very aggressive push to integrate AI really wherever and whenever possible.

I think that you’re seeing the Pentagon under Hegseth mimic a lot of tech industry rhetoric, which is “we don’t totally understand this technology. We don’t totally know where it’s got to be useful, but we need to use it as much as possible anyway.” I think that you’ve seen DOD under Hegseth be extremely aggressive in the cadence of airstrikes.

This is a Pentagon that believes in killing people. I think, at times, it seems to sort of give itself things to tweet about. This is a political movement and an ideology guiding the Pentagon that I think relishes violence. These AI systems, when you want to blow things up and kill people, these tools can provide a very rapid, turnkey means of having a list of people and places to destroy.

So what we know based on a recent Washington Post report that was discussing the use of Anthropic’s Claude system in Iran, was that it was not just used for target selection, but also target prioritization: Here are the most important targets to attack. Also, something that the Post described as sort of simulating battlefield outcomes. It’s a little unclear what exactly that means. One can imagine just asking a chatbot to basically create a story about how an airstrike could play out. That’s essentially what an LLM does, is generate text that’s plausible based on the inputs. How exactly these simulations are playing out of what value they are, how accurate they are in terms of what might actually happen subsequently in real life is unknown.

“This is a Pentagon that believes in killing people.”

To me and for the public, the most concerning aspect of what’s been reported about the ongoing use of these LLMs by the Pentagon is the focus on speed. Airstrikes, air war generally is already so prone to killing innocent people even when you take your time. But whenever you try to hurry for the sake of hurrying, and AI is great at enabling that, you just increase over and over and over again the chance of killing someone that you didn’t intend to or didn’t care enough to avoid killing.

So I think that is an immense risk of just accelerating the metabolism of killing from the air by drone, by airplane — with the stamp of “intelligence” that these AI companies are really pushing. If you blow up a school because Claude told you that it was actually an IED factory or whatever, you could say, “Oh, well, the super-smart computer told me to.”

AL: It was the robot. It wasn’t me.

SB: Exactly. We’ve spent the past several years having the tech industry tell us how ultra-smart, ultra-intelligent these systems are. That’s worrying enough when we’re asking them to write our emails for us and do our homework for us. But again, this is the business of killing people. Mistakes are not just mistakes. I think that is now just the way wars are going to be fought, and that is a very troubling new reality.

“This is the business of killing people. Mistakes are not just mistakes. I think that is now just the way wars are going to be fought, and that is a very troubling new reality.”

AL: Backing up a little bit. There is a fight right now between these companies and the government over how, if at all, their tools should be used. We know that they are being used.

But can you tell us a little bit about what is in dispute here? It also sounds like there’s some talk about guardrails being put in place, but we know that means very little in this context. Can you walk us through that?

SB: So the original controversy here was Anthropic, a leading rival of OpenAI. Some would say they have a better product at this point. They got into a dispute with the Pentagon over selling access to Claude, which is their AI chatbot system, akin to ChatGPT.

AL: But it has a human name.

SB: It does have a human name. Don’t you love that?

The company says that they did not want to permit the Department of Defense to use Claude for domestic surveillance of Americans and for killing people without human oversight. The Pentagon says this is woke nonsense, you’re now banned from doing work with the government —and then OpenAI enters.

AL: I will also note in 2024, The Intercept sued OpenAI in federal court over the company’s use of copyrighted articles to train its chatbot ChatGPT. The case is ongoing.

SB: And this is where it gets very strange because OpenAI claims to have the same red lines as Anthropic, but somehow was able to seal a deal with the Pentagon.

Both are very muddled when it comes to what they actually refuse to do. They seem to both want to say that, look, we’re not going to do anything illegal and we’re also not going to engage in these acts — autonomous killing and domestic surveillance — which are largely considered legal.

“It ultimately comes down to what they, what their lawyers decide is legal.”

Appealing to the law is no protection against these acts that the companies are saying that they will not facilitate. I wrote in a piece a few days ago, I think, ultimately, without being able to review the actual contract language for ourselves and to have lawyers go through it carefully, it all just comes down to whether or not you trust the corporate leadership of OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as Pete Hegseth and the White House. It ultimately comes down to what they, what their lawyers decide is legal. We’ve seen White House lawyers say a lot of things are legal: NSA spying, torture, et cetera. So that appeal to the law by these companies is not as reassuring as they want the public to believe it is.

Just one note though: Even though Anthropic’s deal with the Pentagon fell apart, the DOD is still able to use their technology through — it gets a little complicated here — Palantir’s Maven Smart System software, which has Claude in it as a feature, rather than getting it straight from Anthropic.

When you see headlines about Anthropic being banned or being rejected by the military, DOD can still use their software. It’s a pretty nice loophole. So they are still very much in use.

AL: I’ll also mention that the U.S.–Israel war on Iran is also the first example of countries attacking data centers as an act of war, which Sam, you have some reporting coming out on in the future, so everyone look out for that.

So to recap, the Trump administration appears to be at war with the world. The self-proclaimed “president of peace” has sent U.S. forces jumping from conflict to conflict from Venezuela to Iran to Ecuador and more. As our colleague Nick Turse, senior reporter for The Intercept, tells me on the podcast today, the U.S. has launched attacks in eight countries and killed civilians in two bodies of water — and made threats against five other nations. We also speak with Hooman Majd, an Iranian American journalist and contributor to NBC News, about the latest developments in the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, which is ricocheting around the globe. This is our conversation.

Nick and Hooman, welcome to The Intercept Briefing

Hooman Majd: Thank you.

Nick Turse: Thanks for having me on.

AL: Hooman, the Israel–U.S. war on Iran is stretching into another week. A new round of air bombardments hit throughout the country, Al Jazeera reported Monday evening, “We can say this is by far one of the most heavily intense nights in Tehran in terms of air bombardment.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised, “The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the Iranian people would oust the regime. The civilian death toll in Iran has reached about 1,300 people. To start, what are the latest developments, particularly over the last few days?

HM: Last few days, I mean, it’s heavy bombardment. That’s what it is.

Hegseth has, yes, said that it’s going to be basically death and destruction from the air, and they’re delivering that. Bombing — whether it was Israel or the United States, I don’t know — but earlier this week, they bombed oil depots in and around Tehran. There was black soot, oily rain falling on people’s heads basically in Tehran.

You’ve got Netanyahu telling people to rise up. Rise up how? Exactly how are they supposed to take control of a government that is so secure right now that it can go through the constitutional process of setting up its three-person council that rules Iran in the absence of a supreme leader, then elects a supreme leader by a majority of ayatollahs in person? Because the actual vote has to be in person and they were not blown up. So they obviously had a secure location to do this. How are the Iranian people supposed to do this? You’ve got the Revolutionary Guards who are very powerful. They haven’t shown any real fracture in their ranks. There’s not been a split. The top leadership is there. The second tier of the leadership is there. The third tier of the leadership is there. How are people supposed to get out and go and take over the government?

It’s insane for someone like the prime minister of another country to say, “We’re bombing the hell out of you, now please rise up and go take over your government.” It defies logic.

But to answer your question, what’s been happening? It’s just been war. It’s an all-out war. They can call it a special operation. They can call it whatever they want. The Iranians recognize it as war. The death toll is rising among Iranians, but also among the American servicemen and women.

The cost of this war is going up daily for everyone. It’s turning into this kind of — oh, I won’t call it a world war, that would be hyperbole — but way more countries are involved in this other than the U.S., Israel, and Iran.

AL: One of the first acts of aggression in this war was this strikes on this elementary school for girls in the southern Iranian town of Minab, which killed 175 people, mostly children, according to Iranian health offices. Trump blamed Iran for the bombing. But Nick, your reporting, and reporting from the New York Times and others, and new video evidence all suggest that the U.S. struck the school. What did your sources tell you?

NT: Even before footage of a Tomahawk missile landing near the school emerged, I was talking to sources that were refuting claims by President Trump about this being an errant Iranian strike. He apparently seized on talking points that emerged in Iranian monarchy circles. They were spread on social media that this attack on the elementary school was an errant Iranian rocket. Or he just made it up. This is standard Trump behavior.

But my sources — current government official, two former Pentagon officials who were experts in civilian harm, who worked on these issues for the Pentagon for years — said that the satellite imagery showed that these weren’t errant strikes, but they were precision attacks. The angle of the weapon, the precise nature of the strike, the fact that the munitions came straight down from above, the fact that all the strikes in the general area looked the same, including those that hit buildings on the nearby Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base — all this made it crystal clear that this was a U.S. or an Israeli attack.

The fact that it was known that the U.S. carried out strikes in the specific area offered more evidence that America was behind this. And then this video emerged a couple days ago showing a Tomahawk missile landing in the area.

Now, only the U.S., Britain, Australia, and the Netherlands use Tomahawks. Israel doesn’t have them. Despite mis- or disinformation that President Trump peddled during a news conference on Monday, Iran does not have Tomahawks. Any country the U.S. sold Tomahawks to would have to obtain authorization from the State Department before transferring these sophisticated weapons to a third party. The U.K. is not going to sell Iran Tomahawk missiles.

If Iran was somehow able to obtain a black-market Tomahawk — and let me emphasize, there’s no such thing as black-market Tomahawk. There’s no market for these. Iran lacks the technical equipment and the capabilities that are used to program the flight paths of these missiles and to upload the data necessary to the missiles onboard computer. They also need a specialized launcher to fire a Tomahawk.

So Trump’s assertion on Monday that the Tomahawk is some sort of generic munition and that Iran has some Tomahawks — it’s absurd. The only party to this conflict that’s firing off Tomahawks is the United States.

What’s also notable about this, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was standing right next to Trump when the president claimed that it was Iran that hit the school, and Hegseth would not endorse those comments.

He said there was an ongoing investigation, and he issued a classic non-denial, denial taking Iran to task for targeting civilians. But the fact that he wouldn’t back up his boss who was standing right next to him, I thought was very telling.

Then I spoke to U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, oversees this war in Iran. They told me that to comment on any of this was getting ahead of an ongoing military investigation — which is precisely what President Trump did. They said it was just inappropriate to do. You don’t often have a military spokesperson say that what the commander-in-chief has just done was inappropriate, but they did so in this case.

HM: Yeah, I mean it’s really interesting, Nick. For Iranians, it reminds them of the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iran air jet killing all passengers — civilian jet — in the Persian Gulf under George Bush Sr. at the time. And denials, denials, denials that it was us. And then, “Well, it looked like an enemy aircraft, so we fired a missile.” George Bush refused to apologize, but the U.S. did finally admit that it was an accidental shooting down of the passenger plane. And did actually end up paying reparations to Iran for that act.

It just adds to the litany of complaints or accusations that Iran throws at the United States for how the United States is the aggressor against Iran and not the other way around. There is a point to their claims that the U.S. will start aggression against Iran unprovoked.

In this particular case, there’s very little evidence, if any at all, that Iran, as President Trump has just said, was about to attack the United States and therefore we had to attack them. There’s literally no evidence. And if they do have the evidence, they really should provide it because the American people at this point are not particularly keen on this war and the approval will probably go down from what it is now, the approval ratings for being at war, as we see more and more damage, as we see gas prices go up further, as we see American servicemen and women potentially lose their lives or be injured. And of course, our allies be continually attacked.

Which by the way, I should add, I don’t know why it’s a surprise to anybody. Iran said this after the last Twelve Day War in June. They said, “Next time, no more Mr. Nice Guy; we had restraint this time.” It’s that old joke, no more Mr. Nice Guy. They actually said it out loud, no one’s going to be safe if we are attacked again by U.S., Israel, or both. They said it to the Persian Gulf States. They said it to Saudi Arabia, which is probably the reason those countries were so adamant in trying to get President Trump to not attack Iran because they knew that the blowback would be against them.

AL: A couple of things I want to just pick up on here. Going to your point on provocation and the idea that the U.S. was somehow provoked to attack Iran. They’ve already shown their hand on this. A couple days after the first strikes you had Marco Rubio blaming Israel for dragging the U.S. into the war. Then Trump is walking that back a couple days later. I think anyone who’s paying attention — obviously, there are a lot of questions about what the communication was here, how much the U.S. was actually goaded into this over Israel. I don’t think it’s a surprise that the neocons in the various administrations have been foaming at the mouth to go to war with Iran for a very long time. So I just want to make that point.

You mentioned this regime change thing. I mean we’ve talked about this when you were last on the show, Hooman. There’s been additional reporting in the last few days, hammering home this idea that that is not on the table right now.

HM: There’s been a million different reasons or rationale given by the U.S. administration for starting this war — bounces back and forth from one thing to another. Just this week, Trump now is saying that Kushner and Witkoff and Rubio, and these guys were telling him we have to go to war otherwise — two real estate people were telling you to go to war? Really? Would any president of the United States say that?

Jared Kushner doesn’t have a job. Has no title whatsoever. Steve Witkoff has never talked about Iran his entire professional life and has no knowledge. I’m not dissing him; I’m just saying he has no knowledge of the nuclear issue. None whatsoever. Probably got a briefing from the State Department, one-hour briefing — this is what enrichment means, this is how they can do this, how they can do that — and gets thrown into negotiations while he’s running back and forth from one negotiation to the Ukraine negotiations in Geneva and taking Jared with him. It’s an insane way to negotiate, but they did it. And so they, and this is what Donald Trump said this week, they — along with Marco Rubio and obviously Lindsey Graham, we know that — were pressing very hard for an attack on Iran, “Iran is the weakest that it’s ever been.”

According, again, to Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff told him that Iran could build a bomb in two weeks. How Steve Witkoff could even think that when there is no access right now to the nuclear material, let alone bomb making ability of Iran? It’s just beyond belief. So it’s insane.

The regime changed idea was clearly something that was in Donald Trump’s mind. We go in — I’m sure Lindsey Graham, Bibi Netanyahu, various people were telling him: Look, you did it in Venezuela. It’s not that hard. Look at all the protests in January. These people want to overthrow the government. This is what they want to do. They’re shouting “Down with the regime.” And they were brutally murdered. So all you have to do is just take out the supreme leader and bang, people will rise up.

Well, they took out the supreme leader, and people didn’t rise up because bombs were falling on their heads. If that’s all they had done, maybe some people would’ve been coming out on the streets celebrating. There were some celebrations, but they stopped pretty quickly because you keep bombing people. They’re going to care about their own lives, especially since there’s no leader to take over to help overthrow the regime. Trump has already ruled out the former Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi. He himself has ruled himself out. He has no operations on the ground in Iran. His name is shouted by people when they protest a little bit because that’s the only name they know. It doesn’t mean that they want the monarchy to return.

Then the MEK, as we know, are absolutely despised by 99 percent of the Iranian people. They have some ground operations in Iran, but again, not enough to overthrow the regime. They’ve been trying for 47 years, and they haven’t been successful.

So talking about regime change is meaningless. Most Iranians understand that. Iranians want the regime changed. That doesn’t mean they want it overthrown, but they want it changed. No question about that. I would argue that there’s a majority, but there’s a minority — quite a strong minority, as we saw even from the images a couple of days ago, of crowds gathering to mourn the supreme leader’s death. So if there’s 10 percent, 20 percent of the population that are diehard supporters of the Islamic Republic, that’s a significant number of people, significant enough — and they tend to be the people with the guns.

[Break]

AL: Nick, in all of this, Iran is not the only country the U.S. is at war with at the moment. Trump also recently launched attacks on Ecuador. What can you tell us about the various countries the U.S. has attacked since Trump came into office this term and other conflicts that U.S. forces are involved in?

NT: Yeah, this is a president who ran for office promising to keep the United States out of wars, who claims to be a “peacemaker,” who has campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize and founded a so-called Board of Peace but President Trump is conducting wars across the globe at a furious clip. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Trump has conducted more strikes in more countries than any modern president. I’m not sure that’s actually true. It really depends on what you call a strike, what you’re counting. But during his second term, Trump has already launched attacks on Ecuador, two wars in Iran, attacks in Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen. He’s attacked civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

The Trump administration also claims to be at war with at least 24 drug cartels and criminal gangs, who, I should add, it won’t name. It’s also threatened Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Iceland — I think, inadvertently, caught flack from Greenland — and Mexico. The Trump administration is threatening some sort of takeover of Cuba at this very moment.

“It seems to me that U.S. involvement in raids against so-called narco-terrorist targets was more than just passing along intel.”

There have been at least two attacks inside Ecuador, both of them since the second Iran war started. It’s unclear as to the extent of U.S. involvement in this. A lot of outlets initially reported that the U.S. simply provided intelligence to Ecuadorian forces. I specifically did not. A lot is unclear, but it seems to me that U.S. involvement in raids against so-called narco-terrorist targets was more than just passing along intel.

I believe this even more following a very strange war powers report that the Trump administration sent to Congress on Monday regarding the recent partnered U.S. operations in Ecuador. It says specifically, although present for this partnered operation, the United States ground forces did not come in contact with hostile forces. Mere mention of U.S. ground forces in connection with this operation raises red flags for me. And the fact that the administration actually filed this war powers report with Congress suggests to me that U.S. forces themselves took kinetic action, that it wasn’t just Ecuadorian forces. So I think there may have been U.S. forces on the ground and that the U.S. possibly conducted lethal strikes there, much like the boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean that have killed close to 160 civilians since September.

My sources say that these strikes in Ecuador are the opening salvo of a larger campaign in that country and also elsewhere in Latin America. So I’d stay tuned on that.

“The fact that the administration actually filed this war powers report with Congress suggests to me that U.S. forces themselves took kinetic action, that it wasn’t just Ecuadorian forces.”

AL: I’m just got to list these out for people. You mentioned Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, civilians boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the 24 unnamed cartels and criminal gangs and threats, to Columbia, Cuba, Greenland, Iceland, and Mexico.

HM: What about Canada?

AL: We haven’t even talked about Canada.

NT: Yes, our 51st state in the making.

HM: Yeah, by force if necessary.

NT: If necessary, yes.

AL: Going back to Iran, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.” Can you tell us more about how the U.S. is conducting this war on Iran? What does that actually mean? What does that look like?

NT: Lethal is certainly right, lethal to the Iranian security forces, but also to innocence — men, women, and children. The U.S. has been killing civilians from aircraft for more than 100 years, and lying about it, covering up, trying to explain it away, so that part is par for the course. Killing civilians is a hallmark of American air war.

This particular campaign — “Operation Epic Fury” — is set apart by the relentlessness of the attacks. There was a new investigation by Air Wars, which is a U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group. And it found that the first days of this Iran war saw far more sites targeted than any recent U.S. or Israeli military campaign.

The moniker “Operation Epic Fury” is ridiculous and bellicose. But there’s some perverse truth to this name because in the first 100 hours of this war the U.S. and Israel said that they struck more targets in Iran than in the first six months of the U.S. led coalition’s bombing campaign of the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, which was a formidable campaign.

The two militaries — U.S. and Israel — combined were striking a conservative estimate of 1,000 targets per day in the first days of the conflict. Around 4,000 targets were hit in the first 100 hours of the campaign. For another point of comparison, Israeli attacks in the recent Gaza war were also relentless, but this far outpaces the Israeli campaign by more than double the number of strikes. It’s going to be a while, I think before the full civilian toll of this war is clear, if we ever really find out. Official Iranian sources say it’s creeping up on 1,500 or more killed, but it may actually be higher.

While the true rate of civilian harm can’t solely be predicted by the number of targets that are hit, the initial indication suggests it’s been high, and I should add that U.S. targets have been correlated with heavily populated areas. So we have to assume that we’ll come to find out that large number of civilians have been killed and will continue to be killed before this war is over.

HM: The kind of war that is being waged on Iran, generally speaking, the Iranian Red Cross, or Red Crescent in Iran’s case, has been pretty accurate in terms of what they’ve reported. As Nick pointed out, it’s probably under-reporting right now. We do know there’s rubble in parts of the city of Tehran. Tehran, a city of more than 9 million, probably closer to 10 or 11 million people, densely populated, very densely populated.

For anybody who’s been there or even looked at a satellite image, they’ll see you cannot strike a building in Tehran and not kill someone who is unintended, an unintended target. Iran is not making this stuff up. They’re busy trying to protect themselves, trying to fire as many missiles as possible to try to bring an end to this war in a way by causing pain for not just America, but for American allies.

A lot of people complain and say Iran is breaking international law by attacking countries that have nothing to do with this war. That’s probably true. It is probably against international law what Iran is doing, but so is the war that the United States and Israel started on Iran. That’s also against international law. So it’s a complete break of the so-called international order.

AL: I just want to add some context for our listeners. You’re mentioning these attacks by Iran on U.S. allies. Since the war began, Iran retaliated against the U.S.-Israel attacks by targeting U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and three sites in Kuwait. Israel has also been attacking southern Lebanon where it says it’s targeting Hezbollah and seizing land, displacing at least 80,000 people so far. Lebanon’s government has now asked Israel to talk and blamed Hezbollah for attacks [on Israel].

Iran’s strategy appears to be also targeting Israel and Gulf energy sites. Iran blocked oil and gas exports through the Strait of Hormuz and attacked several oil tankers. Energy sites in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Oman have also reported damage from Iranian drones. Last week, U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, reported that the U.S. had destroyed Iran’s navy, and that there are no Iranian ships underway in the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Gulf. But fighting has continued to slow ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Last week, President Donald Trump said the war could last weeks. On Monday, Trump now says the war could end very soon after oil prices jumped significantly and this conflict spooked the markets. For both of you, do you think that impact on the markets will actually motivate Trump to end U.S. involvement in the war?

NT: It’s always difficult to gauge where this administration is at and you know what the president is thinking. This is a wildly unpopular war, and I think the longer it goes on, the more we’ll see whatever bare minimum of public support exists continue to drop. So if Americans continue to feel pain at the pump, I think there is a chance that it could hasten an end to this conflict.

The trouble is it’s really difficult to gauge what the goals of this conflict were. I’m also not sure what impact public sentiment has on Trump at this point. It may take billionaire friends of his calling him, telling them that they’re starting to feel pain for him to decide to wrap up this conflict.

On Monday, we heard that the conflict was almost over while the stock market was in session, and then afterward we heard that the war might go on for a week more, or maybe as long as it takes — unclear what that means. It does, at some points, appear the president’s trying to manipulate the markets with his statements.

“It does, at some points, appear the president’s trying to manipulate the markets with his statements.”

HM: I would agree with that, Nick. I also would say some of his friends in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and places like that. Qatar just gave him a $400 million plane, and they’re not particularly interested in this war going on.

But what I want to add to this is that Trump may be looking for an off-ramp right now. Obviously, the war’s not going the way he expected. So looking for an off-ramp means the Iranians have to be willing to offer one. They’re very adamant in every interview the foreign minister has given, every X post that one of the other leaders — Larijani, Ghalibaf — make is: We’re not interested even talking to you and let alone a ceasefire. We’re not interested in a ceasefire.

“This one is really existential.”

If you look at that carefully, and if you know the Iranians, you understand where they’re coming from since the Twelve Day War back in June, is that this one is really existential. That one wasn’t existential. That one they could show some restraint and then maybe talk to Trump and figure out how to make this nuclear deal. As we know they did, they started talking about it.

Now it’s like, this is going to happen every six months, if we stop the war. If we go to a ceasefire, six months from now it’s going to be the same thing. Our new supreme leader will be assassinated, and then we have to start all over again. So this time, we’re not going to give him that opportunity.

What it appears they are doing is bringing as much pain as possible so that when Trump, without begging, looks for an off ramp, Iran then says, sure, but I want these sanctions removed. I’ll give you that off ramp, but you’ve got to give me a non-aggression pact, and you’ve got to give me some of these sanctions because I need to fix my country, and I can’t do it with the sanctions you’ve got.

Then it’s a question of whether the U.S. and how Israel factors into this. Trump we know is fine with dictators. He’s totally fine with it. He’ll be totally fine with Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader. The question is really what will Trump do at a point where it appears that the U.S. wants to get out of this war he wants to get out, even if Hegseth doesn’t, and Lindsey Graham doesn’t, but he wants out? Gas is at $6 a gallon in California at that point, $7 a gallon in some places. And people are crying saying, wait a sec, this is not what we counted on. Then Iran is in the driver’s seat at that point. Did he ever think that could ever happen?

I’m not trying to advocate for Iran’s position. I’m saying they’re playing it well, if you think about it, they are playing it well. It’s like yeah, we’re just got to keep going. It’s fine. We can handle it. Foreign Minister of Iran on NBC News, on “Meet the Press”: Ground troops, bring ’em on. We’re ready. We’re ready for them. They probably are prepared for ground troops.

Turkey doesn’t want this war right on their border. Iraq doesn’t want this war right on their border. Kuwait doesn’t want it, we know. And all the other Persian Gulf countries don’t want it. And I think they’re, all the Persian Gulf countries, in all the other countries are very worried that this is not regime change. And the regime will be in power, and the regime can threaten them again. Everyone will, in my mind, will want an end to this war that includes a strong sense that this won’t happen every six months. And then the question really becomes, what are the Israelis going to do? What’s Netanyahu — how is he gonna sell the end to the war?

“Everyone will, in my mind, will want an end to this war that includes a strong sense that this won’t happen every six months.”

AL: We know that on the question of ground troops, Trump has sent conflicting messages saying he hasn’t ruled out sending ground troops into Iran. We also know that seven U.S. soldiers have already been killed in the war, and as we’re recording, news broke that about 140 U.S. troops have been wounded in the war, including eight severely, according to the Pentagon.

Hooman, to your earlier point on the Trump administration’s expectations, as you mentioned over the weekend in Iran, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba, was named his successor. Trump told reporters at a press conference he was disappointed. Briefly, what can you tell us about the new supreme leader?

HM: He was the second oldest son of the supreme leader who had a few other sons and daughters. Very little is known about him personally because he’s been behind the scenes, but known to be very close to the supreme leader, his closest adviser actually, and very close to the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are the most powerful military force in Iran; and the Basij, who are the paramilitaries force under the IRGC. He is known among Iranians to have basically created that very close connection between the supreme leader’s office and the revolutionary guards.

One thing we have to remember is that when Ayatollah Khamenei, his father, took over, he was considered a weak supreme leader. He didn’t have the same authority either — political or religious authority — that [Ruhollah] Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic had.

It’s also good to remember that the supreme leader is not the supreme leader of Iran. His title is the Supreme Leader of the Revolution — the Islamic Revolution. And it’s also good to remember that the military force, the IRGC, are not the Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran. They’re the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of the Revolution. They’re the guardians of the revolution. So those two, that connection, that tight connection has meant that it’s always been something that any future supreme leader would try to maintain. Since Mojtaba already had that connection, one of his closest people inside the guards is the former intelligence chief for the IRGC.

Mojtaba was known — at least whether it’s true or not, because we don’t know, we can’t tell — [to be] behind the manipulation of votes or whatever you want to call it, to have the second term of Ahmadinejad to be president for a second term. On a personal level, people don’t really know him. Everybody in Iran knows who he is because he’s been talked about for years and years as being the closest person to the supreme leader.

He hasn’t shown up yet. There were rumors that he was killed in the first strike on his father. There were rumors that he’s injured, and if he was injured, I can imagine why he wouldn’t want to be seen as the new supreme leader in a hospital bed, for example, if that’s the case.

“Netanyahu and Donald Trump killed his dad, killed his mom, killed his wife, killed his sister, killed his niece in one strike.”

How will he command as the supreme leader, if you want to call it that? It’s hard to say, but Netanyahu and Donald Trump killed his dad, killed his mom, killed his wife, killed his sister, killed his niece in one strike, and potentially injured him. He’s not got to be keen on Donald Trump and on the United States, and he’s definitely not going to be keen on Israel either.

He’s also probably quite pragmatic. He’s 56 years old. I don’t think he wants to be assassinated. I don’t think he wants war for the long term. I’m sure he wants to continue this war, as we were talking earlier about Iran’s strategy, to go as long as they can to put pressure on Trump and on all the allies, but I don’t think in the long term he wants to commit suicide of any kind and or anything like that.

But he’s going to be a hard-liner. He’s considered to be hard-line, in some cases, more hard-line than his father. One thing that opens up for him is the fatwa that his father supposedly people talk about as prohibiting the building or use of nuclear weapons as being against Islam. He could arguably reverse that. He could arguably have his own fatwa.

So I think we’re in a very dangerous place right now in terms of what could happen in the future. Iran could certainly look at North Korea and say nobody’s threatening North Korea and they have missiles — nuclear missiles that can hit California. I think there’s a lot of things we don’t know what can happen in the future, what can Mojtaba do.

Israel has already threatened to assassinate him or actually said they’re going to assassinate him. Trump has already said he should be careful. He’s not going to last long, meaning the U.S. is also potentially looking to assassinate him. Clearly he’s not got to be running around the streets of Tehran.

He’s only ever been seen in a few photographs, and he only ever comes out in the past publicly for the rallies which celebrate the birth of the Islamic Republic. He’s never given a speech, to my knowledge; he will have to as supreme leader, but he has not done so yet. So we don’t really know — the long answer to that. We really don’t know.

AL: I know you have a forthcoming piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books. I want to ask you, as we’re wrapping here, for your personal hopes for the future and thoughts on where this all goes, speaking as an Iranian exile.

HM: My hopes are always for Iran to be a democratic country, rule of law, have the people — it sounds cliché, but have people have freedom and freedom to choose their own leaders, not to be imposed from outside, not to be bombed, and not to be at war with anyone. And also to not suffer from economic sanctions that make the lives of the people miserable, hardly make the lives of whatever regime is in power miserable. That’s been proven. Regimes don’t change because of sanctions. All it does is immiserate the people. So that’s what I want for Iran. Whether that’s possible or not, I don’t know, but in terms of hope.

“Regimes don’t change because of sanctions. All it does is immiserate the people.”

There’s so many different things that can happen. War upends a lot of other kinds of predictions that we may have had in the past. The Iranians certainly thought at the last meeting they had in Geneva between the Iranian Foreign Minister and Witkoff and Kushner, that they thought things were moving ahead and they were going to have a deal.

They were sending their technical team to Vienna for the following week to go through the technical aspects of how this deal was going to work. What we do know, and this is not me, this has been printed and reported on that what Iran was willing to offer the United States was better — far better — than the deal that President Obama was able to make with Iran in 2015, 2016. Trump, we now know, could have taken that and said, I did better than Obama, but chose not to.

The hope for some Iranians was that with a nuclear deal out of the way, sanctions perhaps being lifted, that the regime would change a little bit, if not completely into something different, but at least loosen up, meet the demands of the people, but that wasn’t to be as we know now.

AL: We’re going to leave it there.

Thank you, Nick and Hooman for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.

HM: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

NT: Thanks so much.

AL: That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

The post Trump’s AI-Powered World Wars appeared first on The Intercept.

Trump’s War to Nowhere

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The Israel–U.S. military campaign in Iran has killed more than 1,000 people since the assault began on February 28. A war powers resolution in the Senate to curb President Donald Trump’s ability to drag the U.S. into the war failed on Wednesday. Similarly, a measure in the House failed on Thursday.

“This war is just a few days old and it’s escalating really quickly,” says Ali Gharib, senior editor at The Intercept. “It’s becoming a regional conflict,” as Iran retaliates and targets U.S. bases as well as Israel and Gulf energy sites. This week on The Intercept Briefing, Gharib discusses the human and political toll of the Israel–U.S. war on Iran with co-host Jordan Uhl and journalist Séamus Malekafzali, who has been based in Paris and Beirut.

“Trump has repeatedly failed to articulate anything even resembling coherent about why the U.S. got into this war,” says Gharib. He adds, “Marco Rubio even — who, again, not the sharpest tool in the shed, but usually has his shit pretty together — but in this case, he’s like changing his tune every two days because he has to keep up with Trump’s inanity about what the reasons for the war were.”

The end game for Israel here, says Malekafzali, is they want “a state that is incapable of defending itself, a state that is no longer sovereign.” He adds, “If you are bombarding police stations, if you are bombarding hospitals and schools, border guards, when you are attacking the very fabric of any society as your main target, CENTCOM and the IDF together, that means that you are going toward state collapse.”

“These are hard-won lessons over and over again for the United States — war after war, fallout, blowback. It just happens again and again. And yet we always seem to get leaders who are willing to run willy-nilly into these things,” says Gharib.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to the Interceptive Briefing, I’m Jordan Uhl.

Ali Gharib: And I’m Ali Gharib. I’m a senior editor at The Intercept.

JU: Today we’re going to talk about the growing war in the Middle East, specifically Iran. Last Saturday, Israel and the United States launched unprovoked attacks on Iran, and assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as well as several senior military officials.

The Israel–U.S. strikes have continued on Iran, bringing the death toll to more than 1,000 people since the assault began. On Thursday, the World Health Organization verified 13 attacks on health infrastructure that killed four health care workers. Ali, it feels like we’ve seen this playbook run before, but this time, it seems like they’re trying to distinguish what is and what isn’t a war.

AG: This is like the sort of last redoubt of the idiot, when it comes to national security policy, is that you don’t need congressional approval. There’s no real stakes because this isn’t a war. This is part of a long history. It’s bipartisan. We’ve seen Democrats in office. We’ve seen Republicans in office. People are constantly starting these wars. They say they’re going to be limited strikes. Well, you know what? When you’re dropping bombs on another country and that country is attacking your military personnel in the area, that’s a textbook war.

In the so-called global war on terror, they could bullshit this and say, “Oh, we’re not going after armies. We’re going after these non-state actors and terrorist groups,” or whatever. But in this case, it’s like you’re literally attacking the leadership of another country and another country’s military.

There’s just no way to bullshit this. This is war. It’s what it is. There’s civilians dying. It’s the whole thing. It’s maybe the most egregious example since Vietnam of this phenomenon.

JU: Now there are efforts in Congress to rein in the Trump administration’s attacks on Iran. We will look to see how those votes develop, but I think there’s a general sense of pessimism around the outcome.

Another way of looking at it is just getting people on the record. Do you think that’ll be something that is an anchor around people’s necks going into the midterms?

AG: It looks increasingly like this is going to be a midterm issue. We’re seeing these breaks. In the Senate, it was pretty clean.

There was a war powers vote this week that failed and we saw [Sen. John] Fetterman, D-Pa., was the only Democrat to peel off, which isn’t that surprising. He voted last summer against a war powers resolution to block another Iran attack, which would’ve given Congress the power to stop exactly this calamity that we’re seeing right now. But it failed on basically party lines, with Fetterman defecting.

Then in the House there’s a version where we see some pro-Israel Democrats peeled off and tried to introduce their own version, which would allow Trump 30 extra days to continue the war before a congressional block gets imposed. We wrote about it this week on The Intercept. Our great D.C. reporter, Matt Sledge, wrote about it.

Because this is becoming a midterm issue, and these guys have to try and thread the needle here between satisfying their pro-Israel donors, satisfying the American voters who are not happy with this war, all told. And we’ve seen in some cases, some pro-Israel Democrats who were getting primaried from the left came out preemptively and said, I oppose this. And they’re still getting hit by their insurgent primary opponents for not having come out soon enough and hard enough.

This is something that Jon Stewart made a joke about this week, is that it seems like every time a president starts a war, Congress wants to come in next Thursday and do a vote about whether it’s authorized or not.

There’s logic to what these insurgent Democrats are saying is that we’ve known what’s going to happen here for a long time, and Democrats on Capitol Hill could not get their act together. And yeah, I think that some of these progressive insurgents that we’re seeing are going to make hay of that on the campaign trail.

JU: So there are many troubling things coming from this administration. The general sense is that they don’t have a clear objective or plan. We’ve seen people forward concerns in Congress, and especially in the anti-war camps. But then how the White House has been messaging on this — even down to their social media posts — has people deeply troubled.

There’s a video, for instance, from the official White House account that was posted on Wednesday that spliced together footage from “Call of Duty” — I would argue a military propaganda video game — with footage of actual strikes in Iran. This is that blurring of lines that critics of intervention and those games have been worried about for years because it sanitizes the act of killing.

We’re already distancing ourselves from direct combat through this unseen aerial warfare, and that is pushed to young people through these games. And now the White House specifically is pushing that. So I’m curious if you could touch on both of those things: the sanitization of war and the meaning of war, and also this lack of a plan.

AG: Honestly, I think those things go hand in hand that these guys — Trump, especially, you would think maybe Hegseth’s little military experience would be different, but I think maybe he’s a little too dull to really get what’s going on here — they just seem to not get the stakes that these are the most severe decisions that a government can make and that the stakes are really life and death, and not only just in the immediate dropping bombs, but long-term ramifications.

These are hard-won lessons over and over again for the United States — war after war, fallout, blowback. It just happens again and again. And yet we always seem to get leaders who are willing to run willy-nilly into these things.

On the one hand, they don’t take it seriously. It’s a political ploy. They think it’s a joke. They’re just like meme lords running around trying to goose up their base to get all hot and bothered about bombing some Muslims over there. Then on the other hand, they’re not taking it seriously in the actual war planning either. It’s not just the propaganda.

Watching Trump’s statements has been really incredible. To watch Marco Rubio even — who, again, not the sharpest tool in the shed, but usually has his shit pretty together — but in this case, he’s like changing his tune every two days because he has to keep up with Trump’s inanity about what the reasons for the war were.

Rubio came out and said the other day that he thinks their imminent threat was that Israel was going to attack and there was going to be blowback on U.S. assets in the region. That’s a maybe true but slightly embarrassing justification for war.

And then you had Trump who came back after he was asked about Rubio’s comments and said no, no, this happened because of me. We were negotiating with the Iranians over their nuclear program — which by the way, as the details have come out, it turns out they were, and there was huge progress being made. And then the U.S. bombed the shit out of Iran.

But Trump said these talks were going on and the talks weren’t going anywhere and were collapsing. (Again, bullshit.) And that he was worried that that would spur the Iranians to attack — for which there is no evidence. Something Iran has never done in the history of the Islamic Republic is lash out after a diplomatic exercise like that has failed. I’ve covered this for my whole career: There’s been a lot of diplomacy that’s failed, and Iran is never so much as hinted that they’re going to then lash out afterward. That became Trump’s excuse. It’s these constantly shifting goalposts.

“Something Iran has never done in the history of the Islamic Republic is lash out after a diplomatic exercise like that has failed.”

Not only is there no clear justification, there’s no clear end game here. This is something I’ve talked about a lot, and I spoke with Séamus Malekafzali today on the podcast about it. He’s a journalist who writes about the Middle East, with a strong focus on Iran, and he’s been based in Paris and Beirut. We went through some of this stuff about the U.S. haplessly walking its way through this war, and the Israelis just don’t care what happens. And for them, a failed state is great. We’ve seen comments to this effect from Israeli analysts that are close to the military–industrial complex there. They just seem to have dragged Trump into this thing that Trump has haplessly, just buffooning his way through.

JU: Let’s hear that conversation.

AG: Hey Séamus, welcome to the show.

Séamus Malekafzali: Happy to be here.

AG: The pleasure is all ours, Séamus. So today we’re going to be talking about the biggest story in the world right now: Israel and the U.S. launched an unprovoked attack against Iran last Saturday. It’s still going on. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was assassinated, so were a bunch of top regime figures — people from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, other military leaders.

It’s been a pretty violent conflict so far. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group that’s closely aligned with Iran, lobbed a few missiles into Israel. Israel, in retaliation, began seizing territory in southern Lebanon.

There’s a new wave of strikes on Iran, and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that we’re “just getting started.” This war is just a few days old, and it’s escalating really quickly. It’s spiraling out of control. It’s becoming a regional conflict. Does that sound about right to you, Séamus? Is this moving into a much more dangerous situation really, really fast?

SM: I would agree with that estimation, yes. Trump had said that he was surprised by this, but Iran had threatened to bring all these different Gulf Arab countries that are hosting American bases into the war, and they did that immediately once Israel and America launched their strikes.

Recently, they had even struck Oman and potentially even oil fields in Saudi Arabia against the advice of the civilian Iranian government. Apparently, there has even been an attempt to strike at a base inside Turkey that had been hosting American forces. I’m unsure of what the Iranian government has said about that matter, but I imagine they are not keen on Turkey being one of those targets. But because of the decentralized nature of the Iranian military, they had been given instructions to expand this without individual authorizations by the Iranian leadership.

Israel, however, is not a decentralized state; it is very much intentional in what it is doing. All of the strikes that are currently happening on Iran and inside Lebanon are the Israeli military leadership’s clear and specific directives. So as it currently is going on the path of completely expelling the population of southern Lebanon or carpet-bombing Tehran, that is not an unintentional part of this. That is a fully intentional aim to expand this and deepen this.

AG: You mentioned the expansion of the war. I think that that’s a really salient point about the decentralized leadership and in fact that’s become an essential directive for the Iranians because they’re just being so closely surveilled and any communications they have could potentially give away locations and they’re running tremendous risks.

It seems like the Israeli intelligence, to your point, is extremely good on these targets that it’s hitting. So it’s hard to imagine that when the targets get so broad or say, a girls’ elementary school gets hit in southern Iran, that these sorts of things are just terrible mistakes. Like, no, this is the nature of having a wide-scale conflict and I think we should be skeptical of claims of just that things go errant.

There was this attack on Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s residence early on in the war, I think, on the first day of strikes. We’re talking about an opposition leader here who’s been under house arrest. A lot of apologists will claim that was an accident, but it’s not clear that it was. And then we see Trump complaining about there being nobody to take the place of the Iranian leadership. It stretches credulity when you put together all the statements.

SM: When Pete Hegseth says that they are investigating the strike on that elementary school for girls in Minab, and then they throw up on the screen a map of all these different strikes that CENTCOM has done — and Minab is right there, that school. They obviously know what they did. They’re covering that up, that fact.

On the Mousavi front, I’m unsure of the nature of that strike. I know that Mousavi’s apartment was near Pasteur, where all these different Iran government ministries are located. But [former President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad was apparently someone who at least a strike happened in his area. He appears to be alive still. There were reports of his death but he apparently communicated to Patrick Bet-David, an American Iranian podcaster, that he was still alive. But nevertheless, Itamar Ben-Gvir went out and said that Ahmadinejad was a righteous victim of the Israeli military

AG: Just for context, Ahmadinejad was the president of Iran, obviously, in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but also a figure who in recent years has fallen deeply out of favor with the Iranian government. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call him an opposition leader. But certainly not somebody who has a hand in anything the government is doing these days.

SM: No, no, no. He is very much on the Supreme Leader’s shit list. They are not keen on leaving any sort of leadership of any kind, I think, if the strike near Ahmadinejad is intentional, which I still have doubts about.

Trump had seemed to be confused about the nature of the temporary leadership council that took power after Khamenei was killed, that apparently there were second or third choices that may have been also killed, but also those three he might’ve had something to gain from them.

Then the reports that they wanted the IRGC, some aspect of them that could take over, be friendly to the United States. No, there’s no actual plan for any of this. In the same way that when Maduro was abducted and taken here to New York City that Delcy Rodriguez was the person who they were going to threaten and then have take power.

There is no parallel figure within the Iranian government, which means that they are pushing things towards state collapse, rather than trying to position an America-friendly, Israel-friendly Iranian government in power.

AG: Or even just in the Venezuela case, an alternative who might be compliant.

SM: Exactly.

[Break]

AG: Obviously, Israel has been a major player in this war. There’s been enough talk, at least, about Israel having pushed Trump into the war that Trump got asked about it and gave a pretty defensive answer.

Donald Trump: No, I might have forced their hand. We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn’t do it.

AG: Israel has just become a rogue actor in the region. It’s constantly unleashing these military assaults. The lesson learned from Gaza was that there’s not going to be any accountability for anything that the Israeli government does.

“The lesson learned from Gaza was that there’s not going to be any accountability for anything that the Israeli government does.”

Obviously, more than 70,000 people killed in the genocide there. Since the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed 600 more people in Gaza. There’s been allegedly thousands of violations of the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel before this latest war with Iran started. And those are documented by the U.N. peacekeeping forces. These aren’t like Hezbollah numbers or anything.

Now after the attack on Iran, we see the war expanding in Lebanon. You lived in Beirut, obviously, you know this terrain very well. Do you have any sense of what the mood is like there?

SM: There is definitely been a difference in tone from this intervention than the intervention that happened after the war broke out against Gaza in 2023. Having a war for Palestine, regardless of the sympathies that a lot of Lebanese had for Palestinians, they never largely wanted to get involved in a war on Lebanese soil for Palestine.

There isn’t polling on such an immediate thing. Even if Hezbollah is responding to 15 months of unchecked Israeli aggression against Lebanese territory which they did phrase in their statement — and also the fact that they were apparently, according to Israeli reporting, even preempting an Israeli preemptive strike on Lebanon — the optics of doing this in retaliation for Khamenei’s death, that being the express logic that was said in their statement that has presented problems that Hezbollah is not — They’re in a very difficult situation, an impossible situation, an unenviable situation. But this has not gone the direction that it had after 2023.

The Lebanese government has begun arresting members of Hezbollah and also some Palestinians who have been traveling down to the south. Amal [Movement], their closest ally in politics, has begun splitting in some regards. I have heard reports that Amal locals on the ground are participating in the offensive, but the party leadership is now more at odds with Hezbollah than it had been in the past.

The Lebanese government is not in the position in which it can allow this to happen. It is happening on their own volition. They’re making that decision expressly. But the impunity that Hezbollah had to act unilaterally without the permission of the Lebanese government — that still exists, in that they have military capabilities outside of the military, but the Lebanese government is clearly acting to stop Hezbollah’s retaliation from going on in a way that they were not after October 7th.

AG: And this is another example of the fracturing politics of the region over the past couple years, and especially in the past few days here in the Middle East. You mentioned earlier, the Gulf Arab neighbors of Iran and what this war has meant for them. We’ve seen reports repeatedly of energy infrastructure being hit. Some of that maybe is debris starting fires that are from intercepted missiles. It’s very unclear what’s being targeted, what’s being hit.

We know that in some examples there have been instances of civilian infrastructure. A luxury hotel in Bahrain got hit by Iranian missiles or maybe a drone and got severely damaged. There was an Iranian official who actually told Drop Site News that they had gotten intelligence that there were American war department officials in there.

The Washington Post got a hold of a State Department cable back that said yeah, two Pentagon officials were injured in that strike on the Bahrain hotel. So it does seem that the Iranians are going after some legitimate targets when they’re buried. Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, has said that the Americans, when their bases started to get hit, dispersed their assets and people moved into civilian areas and that’s what they’ve been going after. For us, a lot of that stuff is extremely difficult to check.

The Emirates have clamped down on information coming out because, again, this is the image of the region getting fractured. Abu Dhabi and Dubai as the safe havens for doing business that are safe and pleasant and easy to live in — that image is going up in flames with every Iranian missile that comes overhead. The airports are shut down, people can’t leave, and life on the ground there — I have some family that’s stuck in Dubai — life on the ground there is pretty normal, except this image is being completely shattered. I just saw a report in the FT that it cost $250,000 to get extracted from Bahrain right now.

SM: Yeah.

AG: This war is really remaking the Gulf Arab countries’ images as well.

SM: Yeah, and I don’t think they’re prepared for it at all. There was an Iranian parliamentarian, I think the head of the Parliament’s National Security Committee, that had said that the purpose of these strikes is to have these countries evict the Americans. The Gulf countries — I assume, I can only assume — they hosted these bases because of an assumption of American protection or American support if Iran were to launch this kind of attack against them. And there has been absolutely no American protection or real support, in the few ways that it has manifested. When American [F-15] fighter jets were taking off from Kuwait, three of them apparently got shot down by a single Kuwaiti jet that obviously was not anticipating being involved in this kind of conflict.

There was a perception that these were places that were somehow outside of politics, despite being inside the Middle East next to Iran and very much close to Israel. I think it’s going to take many years for that to be repaired — if it will ever be repaired — because these countries have never suffered this kind of conflict.

Saudi Arabia has suffered through this. Iraq has suffered through this. Kuwait has suffered through this. But Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE. Like, even singular ballistic missile launches from the Houthis, or that drone that hit Abu Dhabi airport some years ago. Those were things that had to be covered up and rapidly ignored in order to maintain that image. It can no longer be ignored in this. It’s far too wide-ranging.

“There was a perception that these were places that were somehow outside of politics, despite being inside the Middle East. … I think it’s going to take many years for that to be repaired.”

AG: And the reverberations aren’t just limited to that. Can you talk a little bit about what this is doing to energy markets — Iran’s strategy closing down the Strait of Hormuz, and this “bringing a cost to this conflict for others” strategy that Iran’s using, with regards to energy moving out of the Gulf?

SM: Qatar supplies 20 percent of the global output of energy, and they have shut down most of their production.

AG: LNG specifically, I think is their 20 percent, liquid natural gas.

SM: Clearly a massive shock is on its way. Iran had hit an oil platform in Fujairah. Aramco had come under attack in some capacity by the Iranian military, a field in Saudi Arabia. Strait of Hormuz — I had seen some bizarre graph from somebody on Twitter where they showed all of the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz absolutely tanking, and then they created some sort of projection line where it all went back up after five days. I do not think that it’s going to happen.

Oil prices are already starting to shoot up, not overwhelmingly so, but they’re starting to shoot up. There were predictions made that by next month, gas prices could be up more than a 100 percent, perhaps even near 130, 140, 150 percent in Europe. For Americans, I imagine would be in a similar boat, gas prices that are higher than they were during the financial crisis — $5 a gallon, even higher than that.

That is the lever that Iran is rapidly trying to pull up and down because it knows that it is the only one that truly affects the decision making in the West. Any sort of anti-war sentiment that exists in these places, it is not going to be able to move any of these officials. What is going to move them is if people are feeling this in their checkbooks at the pump, when it becomes so costly to continue executing this that they have to pull back or else it becomes prohibitively expensive.

Oil “is the lever that Iran is rapidly trying to pull up and down because it knows that it is the only one that truly affects the decision-making in the West.”

AG: And I should note that the Aramco thing also remains a mystery because the Iranians did explicitly deny that. I thought that was curious. They said that, no, we’re not targeting Aramco, which I thought was interesting. It’s not necessarily true, but just that they haven’t been shy about some of the stuff they’ve been targeting, but that one they did deny.

So working the levers that these foreign governments will listen to and the way to put pressure on them that is broader than just an anti-war movement — do you have any thoughts on what this pressure means in the U.S. and the kind of fractures that we’re seeing? Is Trump susceptible even to these kinds of things? Or is he just in his own world enough where so far it seems like he’s committed to keeping going and just living in his own fantasies?

SM: I don’t think Trump is susceptible to public opinion. He cares about it to a certain extent, but he really just wants to be seen more than anything as a deals man. A deals man does not allow this kind of thing to go for months, if not years. He wants the perception that he can do that for as long as he wants, but this cannot follow him forever. He wants to focus on other things. He wants to be seen as somebody who is making peace, somebody who is getting things done quickly. And if that image is not true in a severely obvious way, that is something that he does not want to be associated with — either in government or by the public.

AG: His partner in all this, of course, who, again, maybe has dragged him along into some of it, was Benjamin Netanyahu. In a way Trump has repeatedly failed to articulate anything even resembling coherent about why the U.S. got into this war. But Netanyahu has been forced on American TV on Sean Hannity’s show to make the case for going to war in Iran. And let’s listen to a clip of that.

Benjamin Netanyahu: After we hit their nuclear sites and their ballistic missiles program, you’d think they learned a lesson, but they didn’t because they’re unreformable. They’re totally fanatic about this, about the goal of destroying America.

So they started building new sites, new places, underground bunkers that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb programs immune within months. If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future. And then they could target America. They could blackmail America.

AG: All right, Séamus, you and I know that this is a lot of the same bullshit we’ve been getting for a while and there’s a lot to unpack here. But the thing I’d like you to talk about, if possible, is some of these claims that we’ve been seeing that, within months, Iran would be immune and have the bomb for 20 years now.

Then also this war coming right in the middle of negotiations over exactly these issues between the U.S. — in direct negotiations, I should say — over exactly these issues between the U.S. and Iran that were being led by Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. If you could talk about the context of Israel starting this war at this very moment.

SM: Jared Kushner and Steve Wikoff, I believe that these are diplomats, but they’re not actually diplomats. I mean, in a real sense, they are diplomats in that they’re real estate moguls — one a little bit more successful than the other. But these are not people who have any sort of diplomatic skill.

They are there to enforce an ideological line and extract concessions without any sort of expectation of concessions on their own part. This is why I think they were so favored by the Israeli government because there was no actual negotiating going on. It was deception. Explicitly, it was deception by these two people.

When America is sending negotiators to your country and demanding not only the cessation of your nuclear program, the taking of all of your enriched uranium and sending it directly through the U.S. who promises we’re going to send you nuclear fuel for your own civilian plants, but we get to control everything. But also apparently, according to Witkoff on Hannity, a few days ago, he had said that they even asked for Iran to eliminate its own navy so that America would have eternal freedom of operation in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

They are effectively Israeli agents in this regard in that they are supporting a maximalist Israeli-led position, and they are very much supported by the Israeli government in this regard.

AG: What is Netanyahu’s end game here? What is the Israeli objective? Is this what you were talking about with state collapse being the direction we’re going? Is that the actual end game or is that just where we’re going?

SM: I think that is the actual end game. Look, Trump, I’m sure there will be discussion soon about resource extraction or getting something from the Iranians or wanting a friendlier government. That’s something that Netanyahu has said as well. But the things that are being demanded of Iran — that being no ballistic missiles at all, no navy — the basic thing that you would have as a country. What they want is a state that is incapable of defending itself, a state that is no longer sovereign, and a state that cannot exercise these abilities is a state that does not exist, fundamentally.

If you are bombarding police stations, if you are bombarding hospitals and schools, border guards, when you are attacking the very fabric of any society as your main target, CENTCOM and the IDF together, that means that you are going towards state collapse. And that even if you are supporting in the future some group that may come up — or maybe [Reza] Pahlavi or this Kurdish [group], anything, doesn’t matter — the state that will eventually emerge is a state that has been stripped of its ability to do anything resembling a state. It will be a subdued state, either as severe as Gaza, even if Israel is not going to settle or depopulate Iran, or a state that is subdued like Lebanon, in which it has to listen to the directives of Israel and America for it to continue functioning in any capacity.

AG: I suspect that, without having a direct line into Netanyahu’s thinking, I suspect that you’re completely right, that is his goal there. Again, with the total lack of accountability in Gaza, I don’t see why he doesn’t think that he can do whatever he wants.

Then in the regional picture, these weakened and failed states have been pretty good for Israel in terms of eliminating threats. You said that you think Trump envisioned some kind of deal or maybe some sort of future benefit, and he’s going to start talking about that stuff. Do you think he quite understands what’s going on here?

SM: No. I’ll speak very plainly, no. The way in which Iran has been spoken about in Republican circles for a very long time is that Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, is a personality figurehead, and the entire government is based around his power, and when he falls, the entire Islam Republic will fall. If you take him out, then all the dominoes start falling immediately.

This was false. It has been false. Khomeini died, and Khamenei was elected to the deposition by the assembly of experts and the government did not collapse even though Khomenei took a much larger position within the Iranian political world, within Iranian society.

[Trump] does not seem to have any understanding of the different institutions that have influence within the country. He listens to what his advisers tell him about what people might be friendly to him or might want to deal, and he internalizes some of it. But he does not have an actual understanding of how the country works, how any sort of cultural forces might be working, anti-imperialism how that might inform other people’s decisions; how these people might feel like they have their backs against the wall, and that might inform their thinking that maybe they don’t want to be killed or made into a puppet. He fundamentally does not understand the country, not in a political sense in that Iran is some sort of brave and unsubdued power that is capable of anything, but that it is a country that does not function like Venezuela — even Cuba, as he envisions it.

AG: That’s pretty sound analysis given what we know about him. Séamus, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. It’s a pleasure to catch up with you and get your thoughts on what’s going on. You’re an experienced reporter who spent some time in the region, and I greatly appreciate your perspective.

SM: Thank you. Anytime.

JU: That was Ali Gharib, The Intercept’s senior editor and Séamus Malekafzali, a journalist and writer covering the Middle East.

That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jordan Uhl.

The post Trump’s War to Nowhere appeared first on The Intercept.

Rambling Man: Trump’s State of the Union

The Intercept Briefing — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:30:00 +0000

“The deliberate cruelty that they found humor in stood out to me,” says Jordan Uhl of Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening State of the Union. This week on the Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Uhl, Akela Lacy, and Jessica Washington disentangle Trump’s nearly two-hour-long speech so you don’t have to.

“This is who these people are. In some ways, they’re trying to sugarcoat what they’re doing, but in other ways they’re so blatant about doing really evil things around the world and being totally OK with it,” says Lacy, in reference to Trump talking about kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “It is really alarming to me how good they are at framing that in a positive light. And there were people cheering all over the room for us toppling a regime, doing regime change, while they’re telling you that we don’t do that anymore.”

Washington adds, “The whole thing, if you read it, if you listen to it, it reads like a white nationalist speech.”

The co-hosts also dissect the Democratic Party’s official response to the State of the Union, delivered by Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jordan Uhl, Intercept contributor and co-host of this podcast, joined by my co-hosts.

Akela Lacy: I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.

Jessica Washington: And I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.

JU: Akela, Jessica, it is late. We just sat through — endured, rather —nearly two hours of Donald Trump’s State of the Union and the multiple responses. We’ll get into some of what will surely be the main takeaways from this speech, but in a word or a few words, what are both of your initial reactions to tonight’s State of the Union?

JW: My word is “long.” I don’t think it needs an explanation.

AL: This is not a word, but I kept having an image in my head of villains in a superhero movie, standing around, laughing at what they’ve accomplished. [laughs]

JW: No, but you’re totally right because that one line about the food stamps. So there was this line from the very long speech that we’re describing where Donald Trump says that, he — I can’t remember exactly what word he gave.

AL: “Lifted off.” I think he said “lifted off.”

JW: Lifted off.

AL: Yeah.

JW: Lifted off 2.4 million people from food stamps as like an economic accomplishment. And that does give like Disney villain in a very specific way.

AL: “Dark” — dark is my one word.

JU: Yeah, that was certainly one way to frame plunging millions of people into food insecurity. And of course that was an applause line.

My takeaway would be the weaponized contrast. One thing I thought was a significant departure from past State of the Unions was how Trump specifically leaned into Democrats not standing and clapping for certain talking points. Now in the state of the union’s past, of course, the opposition party for the most part remains seated, but tonight felt like a slight departure from that partisan tradition where he singled them out. Repeatedly pointed out that they weren’t standing and clapping, and even on some points remarked how he was surprised that they even clapped.

Trump specifically leaned into Democrats not standing and clapping for certain talking points.

Trump delivered his last [joint session of Congress] address a year ago in a very different environment, coming off winning the presidency for a second time and major GOP wins that year. Things aren’t so rosy this time around. What do you both think has been the biggest change for Trump? What was the primary obstacle that he needed to clear or try to spin in tonight’s speech?

JW: There’s a lot that he had to clear up. I think there’s his loss on tariffs, obviously he’s still smarting from that, now saying that he’s going to do it anyway. A little bit confusing on what he means by that.

I think his “anti-war” agenda that he’s been trying to spin himself as very anti-war is difficult when he just did what he did in Venezuela and when we’re watching the preparations for a very likely strike on Iran. So he’s got a lot that he has to spin because he’s tried to create this image of himself as anti-war, as good on the economy — and those things are not panning out even remotely close to what he’s promised.

AL: And the Epstein files blowing up in his face. There was reporting today that apparently DOJ scrubbed allegations against Trump sexually abusing a minor, and we have some Democrats, I think Rashida Tlaib was yelling at him during this to release the Epstein files. And this is high on many Democrats’ mind, but obviously not that he would address this, but that’s in the background here. Not even in the background, it’s in the foreground right now.

And then, yeah, his approval ratings are lower than they were at this point in his first term. His disapproval ratings, I would say are higher, and his approval is about the same.

And there are two very different stories being told about the economy right now. Obviously, Democrats are — we’ll get to the response later — but trying to focus on affordability issues. And you have Trump pretty much making a mockery of that and trying to throw that in their faces while claiming that everything is fine and dandy when we know very clearly that it’s not, people have lost their health care, are paying exorbitant amounts just to get through on a day-to-day basis.

And I feel like this didn’t really come through. If you haven’t been paying attention, and you might have just been watching the State of the Union for pleasure — which I don’t know many people who are doing that — but he was able to get the One Big Beautiful Bill. As Jessie mentioned, the tariffs are falling apart. That was another major part of his economic agenda.

But you also have Republicans who are saying that they’re not necessarily going to go through with his pressure to have them codify tariffs or codify any of these other things into law. And this is not a “Let’s hand it to Republicans” moment, but they have also broken with him on Epstein in very small numbers. But not everything is hunky dory with him and the Republican caucus right now as well.

JU: I think any Republican opposition in Congress to another attempt to institute tariffs isn’t out of concern for those costs being passed on to the consumer. It’s simply out of fealty to corporate interests, the Chamber of Commerce, their donors.

That’s where he would meet opposition, not out of any purported concern for their base. And like you’re saying, there are two different stories about the economy. He’s bragging, similar to Pam Bondi in the Epstein hearing, about the Dow hitting 50,000. He’s bragging about the stock market.

Donald Trump: The stock market has set 53 all-time record highs since the election. Think of that, one year.

JU: Those gains rarely affect the average working person. And then on the other side, you have “60 Minutes” reporting that SNAP and Medicaid benefits are facing the biggest federal funding cuts in history.

Another part of the speech that stood out was the focus on militarism. Along those lines on these funding cuts for these social safety net programs, we’re seeing a massive uptick in military spending. He’s committing to 5 percent of GDP in our military spending. And we saw a report over the past few days from Jeff Stein of the Washington Post that said a requested $500 billion increase in military spending is slowing down the budget process because the military doesn’t even know how they would spend that additional $500 billion.

So I’m curious, from both of your perspectives, how do you think this lands in the minds of the average voter? Granted, like you said Akela, who’s watching this for fun? But we live in a shortened attention span economy where people will see clips, and surely some of these narratives will filter out. So when they see him bragging about the economy saying it’s robust and strong, meanwhile they’re looking at their bank accounts and they see a totally different story but ratcheting up military spending, how does this land?

JW: Yeah, I think that kind of stuff backfires. I think you’re talking about kind of two separate but connected things, which is military interventions, which we know are unpopular with a lot of, even the Republican base, a lot of Trump’s base is uninterested in that.

And then there’s also — which is the same mistake that the Biden administration made — which is telling people what the economy looks like for them. And I interviewed members of the Biden administration during the presidential election. And something that they kept saying was, people feel great, the economy is strong, people are doing fine. And people didn’t feel that, and they didn’t vote that way.

And so I think they’re going to run into the exact same problems that every administration runs into, when they’re campaigning on their accomplishments, which is, it actually has to match up with how people are feeling economically, and the indicators just aren’t there.

I also listened to Summer Lee’s rebuttal for the Working Families Party, and this was something she brought up really directly. And I think this is something that has been talked about in our politics a lot recently, which is, we have money for bombs overseas, but we don’t have money for health care. We don’t have money to actually provide a good life for our citizens. And that’s something that Summer Lee brought up. They’re trying to distract you with all these different issues when the real problem is we’re giving money to corporations, we’re spending money on bombs, and we’re not spending money feeding people as Donald Trump himself pointed out. And we’re also not spending money on people’s health care.

Summer Lee: Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t afford it. We somehow find endless money for ICE, for private prisons to warehouse Black and brown people and for bombs to be sent abroad. But we’re told health care and childcare are too expensive. And when we begin questioning those priorities, the powerful try to divide us once more. But that old playbook is losing its grip.

AL: I was reading some reporting in Punch Bowl on Tuesday that Republicans were talking about how they wanted Trump to frame this military spending. This is talking about him wanting to increase Pentagon funding by 50 percent. And they’re like, we don’t want him to sit to say the number $1.5 trillion. We want him to talk about it as a percentage of GDP and how it compares to past decades of military spending. Basically so it doesn’t sound as bad, but they also want him to frame it as what we’re doing to modernize the military and counter threats from our enemies around the globe.

“It’s an artful exercise in cognitive dissonance, the way that they’re trying to frame this stuff to people.”

Which we did hear him, reverting to this, what is a theme for him, painting this image of himself as a strongman, like policing the world while also telling everyone that he’s not policing the world and he’s the president of peace. So it’s an artful exercise in cognitive dissonance the way that they’re trying to frame this stuff to people.

But to their credit, Republicans are at least acknowledging openly that you have to frame this in a way that makes sense to the American public, whether it’s accurate or not. And I think that is the one thing that if you’re someone who is already giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and you listen to this, that sounds good, right, on its face?

JU: Yeah. It’s much more abstract when you’re talking about percentages of GDP than a $1 trillion-plus military budget.

JW: You guys can’t forget that he ended the war in the Congo, though. That was a key accomplishment from the speech. [laughs]

JU: Oh, who could forget? Where were you?

AL: Can we talk about the Venezuela thing? Because that —

JW: Please,

AL: Freaked me out to my core. Like jokingly, let’s not forget about our buddy Venezuela, when you kidnapped the fucking president, and JD Vance and Mike Johnson are behind him, like, laughing. I don’t know, that moment for me was just so blatantly, this is who these people are. In some ways, yes, they’re trying to sugarcoat what they’re doing, but in other ways, they’re so blatant about doing really evil things around the world and being totally OK with it. And it is really alarming to me how good they are at framing that in a positive light. And there were people cheering all over the room for us toppling a regime, doing regime change, while they’re telling you that we don’t do that anymore.

JW: Yeah.

JU: Yeah. Not just that, but the deliberate reckless killing of fishers. Yeah, that was a laugh line. Yeah. Oh, we decimated their fishing industry, and you get hardy laughs from the Republican caucus.

DT: We have stopped record amounts of drugs coming into our country and virtually stopped it completely coming in by water or sea. You probably noticed that. [Laughter]

We very seriously damaged their fishing industry. Also nobody wants to go fishing anymore. [Laughter]

JW: The Intercept’s reporting, which we’ve done a lot of great reporting on this from Nick Turse. But we’re talking about these strikes where people were clinging, dying with no relief. Just like these strikes are horrific, if you read about them the strikes have now passed over 150 dead. So just to keep that in mind for the laugh line there.

JU: The deliberate cruelty that they found humor in stood out to me as yet another departure from past State of the Unions, and we saw that also in how they talked about the Somali population in Minnesota. Trump made, if you want to call it a joke, that once they crack down on Somali fraud in Minnesota to a sufficient extent, we will balance our budget. And this served as a segue to brutal crackdowns in our cities, the deliberate targeting of certain populations in places like Minneapolis and St. Paul. And what was also interesting to watch in this part of the speech was the vocal opposition from Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Talib. Now, what were both of your reactions during this part and what stood out to you?

AL: What really stood out to me beyond the disgusting racism was the fact that he telegraphed that they’re going to do this in other states. At the end of that whole thing, he was like, oh, the number of this fraud is much higher in California, Massachusetts, and Maine. Places where he’s also been sending ICE. There’s been ICE agents terrorizing people all over those states and ramping up operations in Maine, particularly after Minneapolis. So that was alarming.

DT: There’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota. Where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. Oh, we have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that, and California, Massachusetts, Maine, and many other states are even worse.

This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe. So tonight, although started four months ago, I am officially announcing the War on Fraud to be led by our great Vice President JD Vance.

AL: We’ve been talking about this and doing a lot of reporting on this, but a perfect and fully disturbing example of how the racist conspiracy theories that incubate in the far-right corners of the internet, become policy like that in this administration. And where like where this whole thing came from is a far-right influencer who started peddling this online. Chris Rufo picked it up and a couple months later, ICE agents killed two people in Minneapolis.

Like these are the consequences of this. And I think people understand that is directly linked to what he’s doing with ICE. This is obviously not about fraud. This is about creating a pretext to unleash this country’s military power on its own citizens.

“This is obviously not about fraud. This is about creating a pretext to unleash this country’s military power on its own citizens.”

JU: Chris Rufo, of course, for those unfamiliar, is with the Manhattan Institute and has been a key player in nationalizing right-wing controversies and culture wars, specifically the rights fight against “DEI” — diversity, equity, and inclusion — initiatives among other “hot-button issues.” He really does have a significant and outsized ability to shape narratives on the right.

AL: And while we’re talking about DEI, there was raucous applause to Trump saying we ended DEI. I think that was the most applause that I heard the whole time. And like, people were cheering.

JU: Kitchen table issue.

AL: You can also thank Chris Rufo for that.

JW: To your point, the whole thing, if you read it, if you listen to it, it reads like a white nationalist speech — not all of it, but large sections of it. Particularly when he says that Somali pirates are coming to commit fraud and also to ruin the culture. The cultural elements of the ways he was talking about Somali people, I think are some of the most kind of clearly racist elements.

“In some ways, he’s broken the racism barrier.”

But I have been just thinking about the State of the Union in the light of Trump posting that really racist image of the Obamas, because in some ways he’s broken the racism barrier is the way I would think about it is that he’s done something so blatantly racist in our culture. And just to be clear, I’m referring to the photo, sorry, the AI image that he posted on Truth Social of the Obamas as apes. So he’s already broken this racism barrier. So there is almost no point. to a certain extent, in even talking about him saying that Somali people are ruining the culture, the kind of Hitler-esque things that he said before about immigrants poisoning the blood — there is no deniability at this point about who and what he is. And so this white national speech, it just makes sense. It’s in character and it’s almost un-newsworthy in that way.

“There is no deniability at this point about who and what he is. … It’s in character and it’s almost un-newsworthy in that way.”

AL: It just makes me so upset because each of these things are issues where Democrats ceded so much ground in the beginning that like allowed him to just be like, OK, actually yeah, now we’re just doing racist stuff because you guys let us get really far on immigration and claiming this was a problem and claiming there were people flooding in.

They’re like, some people are ruining the culture, not quite in the way that you’re saying it. Some people are creating all this crime problem, not quite in the way that you’re saying it, and like that being their strategy to win back voters is like to cede ground on these issues effectively. And it just makes me really mad when I think about it for too long. That’s what you saw in my eyes.

JW: On that point, I do want to talk about his anti-trans rhetoric. Speaking of Democrats ceding ground on issues, Donald Trump brought a Liberty University college student at one point, who he had brought as a guest, to make this point about transgender children, essentially. And so he had said that a school had enabled her to transition, which had then led her to run away and be kidnapped and sex trafficked. Now the mom and this girl are suing multiple entities that they hold responsible, including the school. But Donald Trump really used this moment to try and fearmonger against trans children.

This kind of idea on the right that they’re going to kidnap your children and make them trans — I think this is really an issue where we’ve seen a lot of Democrats cede ground. Obviously there was the infamous Seth Moulton comment about not wanting his kid, his young daughters, to play with males — referring to trans children that they would potentially be playing soccer with, trans girls.

So we’ve seen Democrats really cede ground on this issue and say it’s fair that people have these concerns. It’s fair that people are scared about their children being kidnapped and turned trans — which is not a thing that’s happening.

But it’s really just this massive ceding of ground. We’ve seen obviously outlets like The Atlantic, the New York Times have obviously really contributed to this paranoia. And it’s legitimizing this fearmongering that Republicans have invested millions and millions of dollars, and it’s doing the work for them instead of actually talking about this issue directly or not just throwing trans kids under the bus is another option. So that’s my little rant.

AL: I’ll also just add one thing on that, I am not a fan of Abigail Spanberger. She’s a moderate and she’s an ex-CIA agent. We’ll leave it at that. But the fact that she delivered the Democratic response after winning a gubernatorial election, in which her Republican opponents repeatedly tried to bait her on trans issues and weaponize this issue against her — We did some reporting on that, talking with analysts about how her win was an example of Democrats sticking to their values on this issues is not necessarily a liability. I can’t speak to her record throughout Congress on this stuff, but at least in charting the path for midterms for both parties tonight and the Democratic response, I just thought that was interesting, that like after doing this whole dog-and-pony show over trans stuff, like they picked someone who stood firmly on that to give the response.

JW: I will also say anecdotally, so I’ve been covering the Senate primary race between Seth Moulton and Ed Markey, and I would say anecdotally, people are still really upset about those comments that Seth Moulton made about trans children.

And so there’s this idea that there’s only political upside to throwing part of your base and parts of your base that your base also cares about, right, even if they aren’t a large part of your voting block. I think there is a political penalty for that that Democrats don’t see, and I think that’s true with immigrants. That is true on issues related to transgender people. They only see the upside of winning over this kind of mythical moderate and they never seem to see the downside, where you lose people who actually thought that you supported their values.

[Break]

JU: One of the other areas on the topic of ceding ground that I’m really fascinated by that Trump talked about in this speech were his purported desires to ban private equity in Wall Street from buying single-family homes and his calls for Congress to pass a ban on congressional stock trading. Now the devil’s in the details with these sorts of things and with the stock trading ban further reporting shows that he opposes a version of this bill that would also apply to himself, the White House and the judiciary.

Then while he says he wants to stop Wall Street and private equity from buying single-family homes, he’s calling on Congress to do that. And similar to the expected opposition from Republicans in Congress on tariffs at the behest of corporate interests, I expect similar opposition on this. But in rhetoric alone, I do think those are two things that resonate with the average American. What did you both make of those two points tonight?

AL: It’s one of those things where he knows what to say. He knows to say the right thing. Less than 1 percent of the population is going to be like, is this true? Maybe that’s ungenerous, but you know what I mean. Democrats, on the flip side, tangle themselves up in the these particular issues, not only because they’re doing the thing that’s bad, like they’re doing insider stock trading, they’re siding with corporate landlords and fighting or doing everything they can to not really do anything on housing, but they’re so afraid to say something that isn’t poll tested that again, they’re ceding ground to him on this when he’s clearly lying and enriching himself and doing all these things that would negate this behind the scenes, particularly for himself, as you’re saying.

But the fact that Democrats are also hypocrites on this doesn’t really work because they won’t say the thing. It’s not that hard to go toe to toe with him. It’s actually very simple, but you’re so concerned about making sure that you’re not turning off again, this middle of the road person, that you don’t take this low-hanging fruit.

And like you saw Elizabeth Warren standing up. This is the only part that they panned to her during this. I don’t know if she stood otherwise, but she was like pointing at him, being like, what about you? OK, let’s get that. Let’s get that in the response. Let’s get Abigail Spanberger hitting that on the head.

JW: Yeah. To your point, Akela, in her response for the Working Families Party, Summer Lee brought up the fact that Democrats are hamstrung by their commitment to corporate donors.

SL: The Democratic Party is at a crossroads. On one side are millions of working people demanding bold action, lower costs, higher wages, Medicare for all. On the other side are corporate donors and consultants who are terrified of upsetting the very interests that rigged this economy in the first place.

JW: You cannot be sworn to the American public, sworn to working people and to their benefit, and also sworn to corporations that we cannot bring down MAGA while also making billionaires comfortable. And I think she’s really poking at that weak center point of the Democrats that you keep mentioning, which is that they are unwilling to, I think there’s both the issue of everything needs to be tested, but they’re also unwilling to throw off the shackles of corporate money, corporate interests.

JU: And to add some context to Trump’s investments, specifically Dave Levinthal in NOTUS has a piece from December 23, 2025, where he wrote that Trump has invested tens of millions of dollars into corporate and government bonds, including those of companies and local governments his administration’s decisions could affect according to a new financial disclosure. So it’s not just that he’s enriching himself off of dealings with other governments, dealings with other oil Gulf state figures. He’s also making money in the market and his own decisions influence the performance of those investments. So of course, he’s going to oppose applying a stock trading ban to himself.

But I also want to go back to Spanberger and the Democratic Party’s decision to pick her to deliver the official response. Like you said Akela, you’re not necessarily a fan, she’s extremely moderate, we’ll say, former CIA official. What do you think this says at a time where we’re seeing surprising flips in state legislatures in red states, massive swings in favor of Democrats, poll numbers for Trump in the tank, you’re seeing Trump voters, some of Trump’s loudest supporters switch? They’re changing their tune entirely. They’re criticizing him over his handling of the Epstein files, of ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies’ presence and actions in cities across this country. That seems like a window where they can shift things more to the left, but here they rolled out Abigail Spanberger. Does that send up a red flag for you going into the midterms?

AL: I’m of two minds about this because you can’t ignore the fact that she just won her race and that Glenn Youngkin was the governor of Virginia. For a while, Democrats thought they had it in the bag. She was openly talking about her win in her response, pointing to the fact that they had Republican voters, Independent voters, Democratic voters, this big tent. And that’s important in a state like Virginia.

Is that a roadmap? Is that what’s going to help them win back the house? Wild card Senate even might be up for grabs. Republicans seem really concerned about this. I don’t think so, but I do think, again, the fact that she didn’t see it on some of these “cultural war” issues in her last race is a positive sign. Do I think that means that’s how Democrats are going to play this? Absolutely not.

I’ll also mention that Abigail Spanberger was a pretty big recipient of corporate PAC money while she was in the House and during the 2023 to 2024 cycle. AIPAC was her top single donor. So these are all issues that we know have lost Democrat support and mixing that with a couple of things that are positive and helped her win her election, I don’t think that’s enough to get them where they want to be.

I was not shocked at all that they pick someone like Abigail Spanberger. They typically pick a moderate. I was pleasantly surprised, I would say, because the bar is on the floor, the fact that she was saying Trump is not telling you the truth, talking about the fact that he’s enriching himself, talking directly about the impact that him unleashing federal agents on U.S. cities has had.

Abigail Spanberger: In his speech tonight, the president did what he always does. He lied, he scapegoated, and he distracted, and he offered no real solutions to our nation’s pressing challenges, so many of which he is actively making worse. He tries to divide us. He tries to enrage us to pit us against one another, neighbor against neighbor. And sometimes he succeeds.

And so you have to ask who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress? Somebody must be benefiting. He is enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented.

AL: She didn’t say this explicitly, but shortly after being sworn in as governor, she said Virginia law enforcement was going to stop cooperating with ICE. These are things that we know are moving Democrats. And so whether that translates into the whole party getting on board with this, I think the answer is a pretty clear no. But it wasn’t like, didn’t Elissa Slotkin give the response one year? And I just remember sitting there and being like, this is worse than the State of the Union, and I didn’t feel that way coming out of this. So what does that mean? I don’t know.

JU: I guess that’s good.

JW: That was a ringing endorsement from Akela [laughs]: The speech didn’t make me feel like it was worse than the two-hour speech we all just listened to from the president.

AL: Sorry, the thing that pissed me off the most about Abigail Spanberger’s speech, I will say, and I think this gets to the heart of the issue, was that she’s in Virginia, she’s in Williamsburg where I went to college. So I understand sort of the nerdy allusions to what our Founding Fathers would’ve wanted.

“It’s just like third-grade patriotism.”

But she was using this like trite device to be like, Trump is ruining the America that our Founding Fathers wanted for us. And we could sit here and talk about all day how stupid that is. But that is like the model: It’s just like third-grade patriotism — a couple of jabs here and there, and we’re going to get everyone back on board. Again, I just don’t think it’s enough.

JW: Like you said, I’m not at all surprised that they picked her. They want a moderate. It obviously looks good for the Democrats to have a woman combating Trump. So that’s clearly part of the calculus as well. Spanberger did just win her election, flip the governor’s mansion, if you want to call it that. But with Spanberger’s election, you also have to keep in mind the context of Trump and what he did to the federal government.

He decimated the economy of D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. The massive layoffs, the anger at Trump in this area is astounding, so it’s not at all shocking, frankly, that she would win in this exact moment. Is that something that can be replicated throughout the country? Are they feeling the same direct impacts of Trump? I think in some ways, they are. When you look at SNAP cuts, when you look at cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, when you even just see videos of the violence happening in cities from ICE. But it doesn’t have that same direct impact, and so I don’t know if she’s as exciting [for] somewhere that’s not Virginia.

JU: As we wrap, we’re all exhausted. We’re fed up. What was the bright spot tonight for both of you? Was there a funny moment?

JW: This is not necessarily funny, but it made me think of a funny joke, when he brought out the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team. Now, they’d also had this kind of video stunt where the team had also been hanging out with Kash Patel, the FBI director; they had Trump on the phone where he made a joke about, I’ve gotta invite the women’s hockey team [or be impeached] — which, by the way, declined.

But the only thing that kept going through my mind was that this was terrible hockey PR. And “Heated Rivalry” had worked so hard to get us all into the spirit, to get all of us woke people who are too woke for hockey into it, and they’ve just tarnished the reputation of hockey. Once again, it can’t recover.

JU: Akela, what about you?

AL: I’m somewhere between the communist mayor of New York City, his little homage to Zohran Mamdani, who he’s obsessed with, and I just think it’s funny. And said again, I don’t like his policies, but I like him a lot [laughs] which honestly probably applies to like more than 75 percent of people outside of New York in his age demographic. They’re like, there’s something about this guy, I like him.

Either that, or this is just my brain being broken, because this made me laugh — this is not funny at all, but the response was funny — when he was like, “This should have been my third term.” And in the audience, you hear — I heard — like a mixture of what sounded like “Awww” and like boos. And I was just like, yeah, that sums it up pretty much.

JU: Someone did yell out “Four more years,” which is —

JW: Oh, great.

JU: Disconcerting. I’d say mine was, again, not funny subject matter, but the reaction was funny when he was talking about Iran yet again, trying to escalate tensions there, making not-so-veiled threats. Credit to the camera people and the control room for the event because somebody wisely fixated their camera on Lindsey Graham, who looked like he had reached another plane — like just the bliss that was so visible on his face throughout his body did make me laugh, as horrifying as it is. And that one was mine.

AL: “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

JU: Yeah. Good Lord. I want to thank you both for suffering through this with me, and hopefully we saved the listeners two hours of their precious lives.

JW: Thanks, Jordan.

AL: Thanks, Jordan.

JU: That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jordan Uhl.

The post Rambling Man: Trump’s State of the Union appeared first on The Intercept.

What Does Trump Want With Cuba?

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Cuba is spiraling into a humanitarian crisis. The country’s long-standing economic and political turmoil reached new heights this week as the effects of the Trump administration’s oil blockade took hold.

The president’s targeting of Cuba is part of the administration’s broader attacks on the region, where the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year and has executed more than 140 people in boat strikes.

As the U.S. hurtles toward war with Iran and further military action in the Middle East and continues to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Cuba is just the latest foreign policy arena where the Trump administration has further ensnared the U.S. This week on The Intercept Briefing, senior politics reporter Akela Lacy speaks with fellow reporter Jonah Valdez about how U.S. foreign policy is impacting the upcoming midterm elections and Valdez’s recent reporting on how a new anti-Zionist PAC has associated with influencers who have made statements that are outright antisemitic.

Lacy also speaks to University of Miami history professor Michael Bustamante and Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Cuba specializing in post-1959 regime durability, about the crisis unfolding in Cuba.

Missing from mainstream news coverage of Trump’s attacks on Cuba and U.S. efforts to impose regime change in the region is a recognition of how Trump’s policies fit into his attacks on immigrants in the U.S., Bustamante says.

“One of the, I think, subtext of why this administration might be keen on government change in Cuba, like in Venezuela, it’s not just about being able to plant the flag and say, ‘We buried communism in the Americas. Something that no other president could do,’” Bustamante says.

“It’s also about, we can deport more people. And so how does the Cuban American community react to that? That, I think, is an open question. Something that I haven’t seen linked yet to the conversation about regime change, per se.”

The Trump administration’s strategy is likely to backfire, Pertierra says.

“You don’t get long-term cooperation stability through fear,” he says. “So I don’t think it’s actually going to solidify the U.S. position in Latin America. I think it’s going to further weaken it.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter for The Intercept.

Jonah Valdez: And I’m Jonah Valdez, reporter for The Intercept, also covering politics and U.S. foreign policy.

AL: We have been deep in midterms coverage. We had early voting in Texas start this week. The first real midterms of the cycle are less than a month away in March.

Jonah, you’ve been reporting on a new and interesting fundraising group that’s active in midterms this cycle — a group called the Anti-Zionist America PAC, or AZAPAC. Tell us a little bit about them.

JV: AZAPAC got its start in August, and so they’ve been around for a few months now, but really sort of hit traction online when they posted sort of like an ad video in November.

And the video is full of a lot of explosive imagery and language from Trump and Netanyahu shaking hands, to a lot of images of Israel’s bombs blowing up Palestinian civilian infrastructure, a lot of dead children. And in this, there’s this voiceover stating the whole thesis for the thing, which is “We need to get Zionists out of American politics. They are extorting Americans of their taxpayer dollars and they have too much influence over the U.S. government.” And they list some of their top enemies, which is AIPAC — which, Akela, you’ve reported on extensively — on top of the more moderate group J Street. So they’ve really positioned themselves as a group that is diametrically opposed to the pro-Israel lobby establishment in U.S. politics.

However, when you go a little deeper into its founder Michael Rectenwald, who is a former New York University professor, and the associations that he’s made with figures on the far right, the picture starts to be a lot muddier than just opposition of Zionism.

It’s a tricky thing, right? Because, as you know, it’s like the biggest weapon that the pro-Israel establishment has against the free Palestine movement, against any sort of advocacy to hold Israel accountable for the genocide in Gaza or any of its actions, is a blanket statement that all of that is antisemitic. A phrase that’s commonly used is, you know, claims of the genocide in Gaza is “antisemitic blood libel.” So you have this situation where this group is trying to be a very loud anti-Zionist voice, but is also making affiliations with figures who are very clearly interested in rooting their criticism of Israel in antisemitic conspiracy theories.

AL: Are they gaining a lot of traction? Are they raising a lot of money? Why should people care about what this group is doing?

JV: That’s a good question. I mean, the first FEC filings came out in January. And so from August when they were founded up until December, they raised about $111,000 — which in the grand scheme of things, when you’re going up against a PAC as large as AIPAC, it’s not a lot.

But I think why we should care about them is what makes them unique. And what makes them unique is they are very directly trying to win over support from not just the left, not just progressives, but also the right and growing criticism of Israel on the right, which has been a huge question mark for pro-Palestine advocates for the past year. Of like, how do we grapple with growing criticism of Israel among the Republican base or even further right than that, and people who are disaffected voters who may not have voted or even avoided voting for Trump altogether, but still have conservative views and are now criticizing Israel for its genocide in Gaza? How do we treat them? Should we ally with them? Should we get support wherever we can? Or should we be skeptical because of their other views?

And so AZAPAC is really, especially in its early months, really catered to that audience. And we see this with its founder Michael Rectenwald going on podcasts such as The Stew Peters Show. Which, if you’re not familiar with Stew Peters, he is a far-right white nationalist who has a show, a podcast that has gained popularity but really took off during Covid. But a big feature of his brand is what he calls the “Zionist occupation” of the government, and a lot of Jewish antisemitic conspiracy theories basically blaming Jewish people for all the issues, including domestic issues of the U.S. government.

He says the U.S. is “occupied” by “anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-American Jews who are not just working on behalf of Israel, but on behalf of a more broad Satanic Talmudic agenda that’s taken shape over thousands of years.” And in that same episode, he referred to Department of Justice Attorney Leo Terrell [as] the N-word, and also in another episode referred to Jewish people using another antisemitic slur. And this is just kind of run of the mill for folks like Stew Peters, who, again, the AZAPAC founder Michael Rectenwald is associating himself with, willingly, he told me, to gain support from other audiences to have a broad range of support.

AL: Jonah, I know you’ve had extensive conversations with Mr. Rectenwald, but can you tell us a little bit about his responses to some of your reporting?

JV: I reached out hoping to have an open-ended conversation. Just giving everyone the benefit of the doubt when they say that they are trying to be critical of Israel. It’s like, OK, well, let me hear out what you have to say.

But before our call, I did a little bit of digging — of like, how is he kind of framing the argument when he’s off-camera? Just going on his Twitter, his X account, and what I found was a lot of references, not just to Zionism, but a lot of references to what he calls the “Jewish mafia” or “Jewish elites,” which are pretty common dog whistles to the far right.

So I bring some of these questions to our conversation, and he gratefully agreed to talk with me on the phone. And [I] gave him a chance to let me know what his platform is, and he reiterated that he wants to end all U.S. military support to Israel. He opposes the genocide, wants to oppose the pro-Israel lobby in Congress, and he is pouring money into certain campaigns that are looking to unseat certain pro-AIPAC members, such as Randy Fine in Florida.

Then I ask him about, well, what about the language that you use? Don’t you think that this risks kind of blurring the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism? And that’s when he started kind of going on the defensive, and he disavowed any idea that he himself was antisemitic.

At the time, I only knew that he was on The Stew Peters Show for one appearance. And he said that that was like a very uncomfortable situation for him and that he would’ve called out Peters, but he’s a very aggressive person on his show and he didn’t want to startle him or anything. After our conversation, I come to realize that he has actually been on The Stew Peters Show three to four times to promote AZAPAC.

So I call him back and press him on this more. I say, like, hey, what’s going on here? You’re clearly a regular, and I think you’re clearly trying to gain his support and the support of his audience.

This time, he said, Stew Peters really helped us out in the beginning and after appearing on his show a lot of donations poured in and I don’t want to throw him under the bus. And he didn’t rule out any future appearances.

AL: Who are the candidates that this PAC is working with?

JV: I want to highlight two of them that stuck out to me. One of them is Tyler Dykes. You might recognize him as a convicted rioter from the Capitol riots on January 6. He pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers, but also was accused, famously, of performing a Nazi salute on the Capitol steps while storming the Capitol building. And even before that, he was also convicted of taking part in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Actually, for that, he was also sentenced for carrying a burning tiki torch, which I guess there’s a charge in Virginia for carrying a burning object to intimidate.

Anyway, there’s also figures that AZAPAC is supporting, like Casey Putsch who is running for governor in Ohio. He posted a video where basically he is giving a lot of Hitler apologist statements.

But there’s two other candidates that I wanted to mention who AZAPAC supported and endorsed, which is Anthony Aguilar, who is running as a progressive Green Party candidate out of North Carolina. And he was actually one of the whistleblowers from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that blew the whistle on violence aimed at aid-seeking Palestinians in Gaza. He’s taken that moment into a whole political career.

He actually decided to rescind his endorsement after The Intercept approached him — after we approached him — with our reporting on both Rectenwald, his statements, his associations with the far right, but also these backgrounds of other candidates that Aguilar’s campaign wasn’t aware of.

And it’s the same case for another recent AZAPAC endorsement, which is Greg Stoker, who is also a progressive Green Party candidate. He was part of one of the flotillas to break the siege in Gaza. And, you know, similar case where when we approached him with our reporting on Rectenwald and AZAPAC — decided to rescind his endorsement. And sure enough, as of this week, all mention of both Aguilar and Stoker’s campaign were removed from AZAPAC’s website, scrubbed from social media.

I think they are making a calculation similar to some concerns that I’ve raised in my reporting — it harms the movement.

AL: Jonah, we’re looking forward to reading your piece, which is up now. Thank you for walking us through your reporting. You know, while frustration over Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been a major focus of our reporting and covering how the Israel lobby is approaching midterms and how much voters still care about that — this is far from the only foreign policy issue that is top of mind for voters right now.

We are potentially moving toward war with Iran, according to reporting from Axios on Wednesday. There is a very large aircraft carrier moving toward the Middle East.

Our episode today focuses on what’s happening as the U.S. is ramping up sanctions in Cuba. If you’ve been following The Intercept’s reporting, you know, we’ve been tracking the more than 140 people the administration has killed in boat strikes in the Caribbean. Amid these boat strikes, we hope you did not forget that the U.S. also kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

After toppling Maduro, the Trump administration demanded the Venezuelan government hand over its oil. This has led to a fuel shortage in Cuba, which largely depends on Venezuela’s oil. Now the Trump administration has Cuba squarely in its crosshairs. At the end of January, Trump signed an executive order declaring that Cuba constituted an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security — we’ve heard that one before — which has led to an oil blockade, which is now spiraling into a humanitarian crisis in Cuba as we speak.

To understand what’s happening, I spoke to Michael Bustamante, an associate professor of history and chair in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, and Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Cuba specializing in post-1959 regime durability.

Here’s our conversation.

Michael Bustamante and Andrés Pertierra, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Andrés Pertierra: Thanks for having me.

Michael Bustamante: Thanks for having me.

AL: To start, Andrés, the last time you spoke to The Intercept in 2024, you were joining us from Havana, Cuba. You’ve since left. What can you tell us about what life was like for people in the country when you were last there?

AP: I was there in 2024. Things were really bad already when I was there. The country was recovering from the Covid crisis more or less, protest waves had gone from a historic exception to part of the new normal. And while I was there, there were actually the beginning of what became, I think, in total six national blackouts. Six times that the entire national grid collapsed, usually for two to three days. Inflation was out of control. Wages had gone back to basically symbolic, at least if you were in the state sector.

And there was just a despair, a generalized despair, that I had never remembered seeing before. I mean, people were always desperate and frustrated, but there was a despair of things ever getting better that was novel, that was kind of pushing people to leave en masse. In the last five years about 20 percent of the population has left the island, which is pretty extraordinary for a country not in a state of war.

AL: Recently, a reporter asked Trump about Cuba making a deal with the United States. Let’s hear Trump’s response.

Reporter: You’re warning Cuba to make a deal. What does that deal look like? What do you want them to do?

Donald Trump: Make a deal. Cuba is right now a failed nation, and they don’t even have jet fuel to get for airplanes to take off. They’re clogging up their runway. We’re talking to Cuba right now. They have Marco Rubio talking to Cuba right now, and they should absolutely make a deal because it’s really a humanitarian threat.

AL: In that clip, Trump goes on to say, “There’s an embargo. There’s no oil. There’s no anything.” Michael, can you bring us up to speed? Tell us about the long-standing U.S. embargo against Cuba and the Trump administration’s efforts to increase pressure.

MB: I think it’s widely known that the United States has had a program of comprehensive sanctions on Cuba since the early 1960s that come out of the consequences of the Cuban Revolution, the nationalization of U.S.-owned properties and businesses, the emergence of Cuba as a kind of a Cold War flashpoint. That history has never gone away.

What I think has changed over time is sort of the degree to which there are holes that are poked in that sanctions regime. There have been openings and closings — most memorably, perhaps, under the Obama administration that really moved to try to put relations with Cuba on a new footing and try to normalize diplomatic ties. In fact, they did that. But the sanctions as such have been codified under law since the 1990s, and that really limits the purview of what the executive branch can do on its own.

The first Trump administration when it came in promised to undo the “bad Obama deal” with Cuba, and it did so, piling on sanctions particularly by 2019 that certainly made things difficult — more difficult — in Cuba.

But the last decade in particular, I would say, has also been a time in which there is a greater and greater consensus inside Cuba, among Cuban economists, among Cuban social scientists, that the country itself is desperate for reforms of a political and economic variety, that the government has been slow — sort of slow footing. And those reforms are needed, not because the United States says so, but because foe and friend alike to Cuba have been been telling them so.

And so the Cuban people are left in the middle, it seems to me, of a U.S. policy that particularly in the last few weeks has intensified even further in the wake of the ouster of Nicolás Maduro, and the particular vulnerability to that pressure that comes from Cuba’s own inability to put forth a reform program and do so successfully.

So that’s kind of where we are. And right now, there are few lifelines available to Cuba in an economic sense. The Trump administration feels that it has the leverage and is trying to use it, albeit, as you heard the president admit, at a potentially, very significant humanitarian cost.

AL: Andrés, can you talk more about how these sanctions work and how they’re playing a role in the current state of Cuba’s economy and its prospects for governance? Walk me through how we got here, like I’m 5.

AP: I think that the most urgent sanction, which is the novelty here, is the current oil embargo.

Basically, the United States has declared it as a matter of policy that if you ship oil to Cuba, the United States government is going to increase tariffs and basically engage in punitive economic measures against your country. And so this obviously creates a huge disincentive for countries that even want to sell oil.

So Venezuela would give oil, it would sell it at below-market rates, it would aid Cuba for political reasons. That’s over, thanks to the change of leadership with Delcy Rodríguez. With Mexico, [President Claudia] Sheinbaum has made it clear that she wants to help Cuba. But she’s not really willing to cross Trump on the oil issue. So she’s sending every kind of aid except for oil. That is the real key thing that is basically causing the wheels to come off the bus, as it were.

But if you’re talking about broader sanctions and regimes, you have Helms-Burton. Trump, during the first Trump administration, activated Title III, which had never been activated before, which among other things, basically says if you’re doing business in a way that engages with or uses resources that were nationalized by the Cuban government, never compensated owners for them, and the owners are U.S. citizens — blah, blah, blah, lots of caveats there — but basically that you can then be sued.

For example, if you have a cruise ship and it docks in a port that was owned by a Cuban who has U.S. citizenship, da da dah, you can then be sued. So the Carnival cruise ships died overnight. That entire sector just collapsed. And I actually had a friend who part of his business model was giving day tours for the tourists who were just there for the day — dead overnight.

Or another thing is, by Trump, and this is — I’m not sure if this is technically an economic sanction, this is not technically an embargo. But another policy that’s hurt Cuba is by putting Cuba on the [state] sponsors of terrorism list. That means that if you’re a European citizen who normally qualifies for an ESTA visa to come to the United States, you no longer qualify if you visit Cuba for a period of, I think, five years, which obviously also impacts the tourism sector.

Also the famous one is, if you have a shipping container and you dock in a Cuban port, you can’t dock in an American port for six months. Like there’s a lot of different measures that turn up the pressure, but really it’s the state sponsors of terrorism list plus the oil embargo that’s really like turning the volume up to 11, right now.

MB: I just wanted to add to that — Andrés has done a good job zeroing in on some of the more recent things and some of the more specific things. But of course, there’s just a broader trade embargo, right? Which means that U.S. companies, by and large, with few exceptions, cannot export goods to Cuba, nor can U.S. persons or actors or companies import goods from Cuba.

Now, there have been exceptions to that put in place over time. A big one came in the year 2000 for the export of food stuff. So it is legal to export food. In fact, a lot of the chicken that gets consumed in Cuba is from the United States.

One of the, I think, Achilles’ heels of the Cuban economy is the degree of import dependence for foodstuffs. A lot of which has been coming over the last 10, 20 years through that loophole. But I think because of that, and because of loopholes like that, and then also because of the fact that the trade embargo per se is a bilateral thing, it doesn’t impact in theory the ability of Cuba to trade with France or Brazil or whatever else. You often hear this commentary, “Well, you know, embargo, what embargo if Cuba can trade with the rest of the world?” And that’s kind of true, but it neglects sort of the impact of the sanctions regime on global financial institutions.

The fact of the matter is that because the global financial system is so integrated and so tied into U.S. banking institutions — because particularly of Cuba’s addition to the state sponsors to terrorism list — any transaction that Cuba might want to do with an enterprise in Europe, say, but that has a link to a U.S. bank or that has a subsidiary that operates in the United States, they just don’t want to touch it. Cuba is radioactive.

And so there are significant kind of extraterritorial effects of the U.S. sanctions regime that obviously don’t make it any easier for Cuba to do business elsewhere in the world, even when in some ways they can.

AL: President Barack Obama, as you mentioned Michael, tried to normalize relations with Cuba when he first entered office, lifting restrictions on remittances and travel to Cuba. In 2014, Obama and President Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro’s brother, took steps to fully restore diplomatic ties, and there were signs of positive economic outcomes as a result. Then Trump won in 2016, immediately reversed those Obama-era policies. Biden comes into office and tries to normalize relations again. Then Trump is back in office, this time increasing pressure on the country even more.

What has that back and forth on U.S. policy toward Cuba meant for the nation and what is driving the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts, which I will note that the United Nations is warning that the humanitarian situation will “worsen and if not collapse, if its oil needs go unmet.” Andrés, I’ll start with you.

AP: I think that the first thing the listeners should understand is that pre-1991 and post-1991 U.S. Cuba policy have similar but very different dynamics. In the context of the Cold War, you could make more arguments about Cuba as a national security threat. You could make these arguments, like Cuba is intervening in Angola and U.S. interests and all the rest, or U.S. support for guerrillas in Central America. Post-1991, the problem is more like a Jeep that’s stuck in the mud on the side of the road, right? Even though the consensus —

AL: I love that image. Yes.

AP: The consensus post-1991 has long been, at least in foreign policy circles, like a rational Cuba policy would be normalization. It would be engagement. I mean, think back to the ’90s. What is the U.S. approach to China? More trade, more investment, more integration in the hopes that you’re going to defeat Communism with Nike and Coca-Cola. That’s similar to what people have been thinking about Cuba for a long time. But because of the fact that an increasingly well-organized Cuba lobby in a strategic swing state — like Florida — is able to basically leverage that. Not saying you can’t cross them; you can. Obama did, and he won Florida anyway.

But it increased the pressure. And part of it is, Cuba is not important enough to kind of escape those shackles of domestic politics. If it were a national security issue, then those domestic policy issues could be overridden much more easily. But it’s not, and that’s kind of the core problem. It can have this kind of lobby interest capture in a way that many other countries don’t. And I think that’s the core problem.

“Cuba is not important enough to kind of escape those shackles of domestic politics. If it were a national security issue, then those domestic policy issues could be overridden much more easily.”

AL: Michael.

MB: First, just on the flip-flopping between relative degrees of openness and closeness in U.S. policy — it certainly doesn’t do anything to help, say, the investment landscape in a place like Cuba.

Imagine you’re a European company or whatever, and you’re watching this sort of flip-flop. You want stability in whatever the framework is in which you have to figure out how to operate. And by the way, that also applies to the increasingly important Cuban private sector, which has been growing slowly but surely through ups and downs in Cuba’s own internal regulatory framework. But in 2024, the Cuban private sector was doing more business just in terms of retail sales to the population than the Cuban state. And that is a very significant shift in kind of the internal economic logics of the place.

But they also are contending not only with an unstable policy landscape internally and the sort of ups and downs of opening and closing to private sector expansion, which have not been helpful. They’re also dealing with the ups and downs of U.S. policy and thinking, OK, can I get a visa to go to the United States and think about sourcing goods in the United States under certain embargo loopholes? Well, are they going to close me off, are they not? Is the U.S. going to authorize investment, for perhaps, in the private sector with the notion that United States might have a strategic interest in supporting the growth of the private sector versus the state economy?

So the flip-flopping makes it very difficult to sort of envision a path forward. It means that I think both for Cuban officials, but also Cubans on the ground who are trying to push their country forward sometimes against the ways that their officials are not happy with. Everyone’s sort of playing whack-a-mole constantly, right?

One thing I would just amend your description of the recent years slightly. And just to say that A, when Trump was elected the first term, he didn’t undo the Obama thing right away. It took a couple years and cruise ships kept going to Cuba for a couple years, and that was sort of an odd thing. Despite the rhetorical change, obviously. It’s really in 2019 when they put in place what they call a maximum pressure policy tied to a similar policy on Venezuela at the time.

And then the Biden administration, I think there was some expectation that when they came in, Biden would roll back the clock to what Obama had done. For better or worse, that didn’t happen. And part of that didn’t happen because when Biden comes in, he’s got a huge agenda. It’s the middle of the pandemic. Cuba’s not high on the geopolitical priority list, as Andrés mentioned.

And then when in July of 2021, Cuba was at the low point of the pandemic itself and the economic crisis that had been induced by it or worsened by it and there are these mass protests across the island. And the Cuban government responded to mass protests of people who wanted food, electricity, and greater political freedoms by throwing a thousand kids in jail.

And so, like it or not, the Biden administration is not going to step into that moment and say, “Yeah, let’s open the doors.” I wish they had been more, had more foresight on the humanitarian front, but there’s also a pattern here of the Cuban government doing things over time that make the political optics fair or unfair for the United States to move its own policy ball forward more difficult.

And when the Cuban president at the time says, you know, we’re sending out people to the street to combat these anti-revolutionaries, I mean, how do you think the United States is going to respond, even under a Democratic administration? So again, I just again and again, see that in this back and forth, the Cuban people are sort of caught in the middle of this geopolitical game between both governments. And we’re now seeing those consequences have really probably the most tragic effects that I’ve seen in my lifetime.

[Break]

AL: Michael, for the Journal of Democracy, you recently wrote, “Many U.S. policymakers, diaspora leaders, and opposition figures have embraced humanitarian suffering as a tool of political change.” You’re touching on this — I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that and what effect the Trump administration’s pressure campaign is having on the Cuban people and the government? That’s some of the least of what I’ve seen in the reporting on this, about the real effects on the ground. And I’m also curious what has been the response from Cuban people to the U.S.’s latest efforts to oust the government?

MB: Those lines in the piece alluded to the fact that, in addition to the effort to sanction or disincentivize further oil shipments and really cut off oil, Cuban American elected officials and other voices in the community have been calling for further measures. Measures that would include cutting off commercial flights that still exist between the United States and various places in Cuba that are largely used by members of the Cuban diaspora to go visit and support their families. The ability of Cubans to send remittances to send gift parcels of various kinds, right?

All of these things are really very important lifelines for Cuban families in unequal ways, because not every Cuban on the island has family outside, and not everyone has access to those remittance dollars. But those remittance dollars are a vital lifeline.

I think the position of the elected officials is, is that any kind of economic lifeline to the Cuban economy helps the Cuban state stay afloat. And they are arguing that if the Trump administration is really going to try to crack down, you might as well go all the way if you want to use leverage and try to force them to the negotiating table or force the Cuban government to cede to U.S. wishes or whether opening to U.S. economic interests or political change — you got to cut off every source of supply.

This has been a more delicate thing for Cuban American politicians to navigate in recent years because they’re well aware that many of their constituents are sending money to their families. Sending, you know, in a country that has — there’s no antibiotics, let alone basic painkillers, right? The care package that you can send really, really makes a difference.

And just to put it into context, while it’s really hard to calculate the number of remittance or the value of remittance that go into Cuba because a lot of it is sort of in people’s suitcases. It’s thought that the income that the Cuban economy gets from this is really on par of what it has gotten in from something like tourism. So it’s a major contributor to the Cuban economy, but it’s sensitive to cut that off because it touches people. It’s one thing to say, “Down with the Cuban government.” It’s another thing to say, “You can’t send painkillers to your mom.” But lately they have been saying it. The Cuban American officials have been saying it. They’re calling for it. And I think they’re making a bet that you step up the pressure to 1,000 percent and you have a better chance of getting the Cuban government to cede. Of course, there’s a huge humanitarian risk there.

“ There’s this very dangerous game of chicken that’s happening between both governments.”

I think it’s a mistake in some of the reporting I’ve seen to attribute the degree of, say, the trash piling up on Cuban streets or the degree of the economic problems to just what’s happened since January. This has been a rolling train wreck for a while. What we’ve done is ratchet it up, and there’s this very dangerous game of chicken that’s happening between both governments. And I think as time passes, the more difficult it is for U.S. policymakers to allege that none of the suffering is on their hands, that this is only the Cuban government’s fault. I mean, it’s both. And again, the Cuban people are sort of caught in the middle wondering which side is going to back down first.

AL: Andrés, can you expand on that?

AP: I did want to say that a lot of people, and I think Michael has already touched on this, is a lot of people think, oh, Miami Cubans, and you’re thinking about a bunch of white Cubans who left between 1959 and 1975 — that’s a minority.

Since 1980, not only do Cubans often come from working-class backgrounds, they grew up or were born under the revolution, they maintain closer ties. But many of them still buy in for reasons of extreme frustration with the Cuban government. So I think that even as I disagree with their policies, I do think it’s important for listeners to understand that this is not just the same kind of caricature of the white Cuban who left back in the day. This is like, I have classmates who are pro-Trump — or former classmates, because I did my undergrad in Cuba — and they are pro-Trump, despite being Black and Cuban. That is a dynamic that I think listeners should be aware of.

But I agree with another thing that Michael said and I think is really important here, which is that it’s not just that this is going to hypothetically hurt people, but this is going to kill people and it’s probably already killing people. What happens when someone has an asthma attack, and there’s no meds at the hospital? Or someone has an asthma attack, and you can’t even get to the hospital because there’s no ambulance, there’s no transportation, there’s no gas? Something that’s small or should be small then suddenly becomes this catastrophic life-changing event.

“What happens when someone has an asthma attack, and there’s no meds at the hospital?”

I even met someone two years ago — two years ago, before this mess — whose father-in-law fell and broke his hip. And she was told by the doctors that she would have to import basically everything, including surgical supplies, not just medicines for him to have his hip replaced or his hip operated on. And I said, “But that means he’s not going to be able to walk.” And she’s like, yeah.

That is the kind of impact that a maximum pressure campaign has. Which is why traditionally, it’s one thing to, for example, in World War I create this maximum pressure sanctions — no oil, no nothing — campaign against Germany in the context of aggression in World War I or World War II. Or even maximum pressure sanctions against Russia that’s invading Ukraine. Like, that is one thing.

It is entirely another to have this policy against a government which is despotic, which abuses its citizens, which is incompetent, which does all of these things — I’m not trying to dodge any of that — which throws kids in jail, draconian measures, all that stuff. But then who’s footing the bill? It’s everyday people, and the politicians don’t take responsibility for that. They still try and dodge, by and large, their responsibility.

And the fact that they are killing people and they’re doing it from the safety of Florida — which to me, beyond the intellectual component — to me just feels like, come on, if you really want to commit to this, you’re not even going to suffer from these policies that you’re enforcing. You’re not even going to take responsibility for it. And I don’t think it’s justifiable.

MB: Andrés is right, that it feels a little cheap to say pile on the pressure — pile on pressure from the outside — when you’re not going to be on the receiving end of it. But one thing that I think is important is that because of the tremendous recent migration from Cuba, some of the people who are calling on for piling on pressure do have family members in Cuba.

And they have grown embittered by the fact that they have to send remittances to their family in the first place. And this translates to more and more people I know on the island — I mean, of course there are people on the island who are horrified by what the United States is doing — but there are others who are saying, you know what? Between the sort of unwillingness to move the ball forward internally between our government officials saying we would rather sink in the sea than cede to the Americans when maybe we should cede a little because that would help me breathe too. And then the sort of hostility of the outside, I hear people saying more and more, listen, enough with the sort of middling approaches from the United States, whether it’s poke a little hole in the embargo this, or close down this. It’s either you rip off the band-aid of sanctions and let the economy breathe, and you just learn to live with the Cuban government — or send in the F-16s.

And I don’t say that to sound callous or to endorse that way of thinking, but that’s the mindset of many, many Cubans I know who are, I think, more open than they have ever been to some kind of drastic U.S. action, if it would at least maybe move the ball forward, even if there are tremendous risks that come from it, and rather that than this kind of slow-rolling humanitarian disaster that may unfold if the governments continue to just be playing the standoff over the oil shipments and other kinds of trade.

So I think there’s a thirst for decisive action, but of course this is an administration, if we want to go there, I think they’ve shown quite clearly in Venezuela that they’re not too keen on long-term boots on the ground and trying to do this sort of remote governance, in a sense, by proxy of the Delcy Rodríguez regime. In Cuba, that’s a much more difficult proposition to envision. And so one of the other things I argue in that piece of Journal of Democracy is that, ultimately, if the United States really wants to force regime change here, it might require a kind of forcing of the issue from the outside in a way that I think could get uncomfortable for more isolationist actors within the Trump administration. So that’s going to be very important to watch too — how that conflict internally in the decision-making process in Washington evolves.

AL: You also wrote, “Exile groups, for their part, are as numerous as they are competitive for influence and attention. With Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Cuban Americans have never held more sway in the U.S. federal government. But unlike during the heyday of the Cuban American National Foundation in the 1990s, there is no single organization or leader who can claim to speak for the entire diaspora community.”

I want to talk a little bit about Rubio’s influence here and of the Cuban diaspora, as well as what you describe as “credible architecture for political change.” And the question in the back of my mind here is also like, how much of what we’re seeing here is part of a lobbying effort on behalf of the Cuban diaspora or Cuban interests in the U.S. versus how much of this is just like, we don’t like communism?

MB: I mean, unquestionably, Marco Rubio has been highly influential, if not determinant in the direction of U.S–Cuba policy under this administration. He was certainly in the ear of the Trump administration, the first go around, albeit from the Senate. And it’s no secret that the secretary of state has had a long interest in seeing a different political and economic model in Cuba and believing that U.S. sanctions are the tool to achieve that.

You know, everybody’s making the Venezuela comparison. So the parts of my piece that you cited come a little bit in response to that. U.S. diplomats have floated this idea that what we want is to combine external pressure with sanctions, with trying to find someone in Cuba to negotiate with. That for someone like Rubio, I find to be highly interesting from a political point of view because this is somebody who made his career in a sense — or at least part of his career, part of his foreign policy bonafide — arguing, as many Cuban American elected officials have, that any talks whatsoever with the Cuban government are tantamount to legitimizing a government that is illegitimate.

“This is somebody who made his career … arguing, as many Cuban American elected officials have, that any talks whatsoever with the Cuban government are tantamount to legitimizing a government that is illegitimate.”

That was their response to the Obama normalization, and yet, in effect, what the president himself keeps saying, and Rubio confirms and denies — a little bit more, more unclearly — is that there may be talks underway. There’s a report in Axios that suggests that the secretary of state himself is actually engaged in a kind of a back-channel dialogue with Raúl Castro’s grandson, who is, let’s just say not a particularly beloved figure among most Cubans. How Rubio sells that to a Miami constituency, I think, is quite interesting. But that kind of deal-making impulse is very much in keeping with the Trump administration’s focus.

And I also happen to think that in the Venezuelan case, Rubio has said in response to criticism, look, you don’t get a political transition overnight, a political transition is not something you cook for two minutes in a microwave oven. I think he’s right in most cases, right? This idea of the Cuban government or the Venezuelan government just kind of imploding and disappearing and to be replaced by something that’s unclear is a little bit of fantasy, I think, in these two contexts. And particularly in the Cuban context where, as I argue, there are opposition actors in Cuba and groups and certainly in exile, but there is nothing comparable to the figure of María Corina Machado that acts as a force around which both an internal opposition and a diaspora opposition can gravitate. And so I think the big missing piece here, in this vision of forcing change through sanctions and dialogue is, where’s the counterpart? And so that’s the paradox of this moment, too.

I mean, you’ve never had Cuban Americans more influential in the foreign policy-making process toward Cuba, right? It’s not the Cuba lobby anymore. It is a Cuban American who’s the secretary of state. He doesn’t need to be lobbied perhaps in the same way that others needed to. This is his issue. But the Cuban American community is as divided as ever. Not necessarily in terms of their vision for change on the island, but who is to lead it and the politics — the intergroup politics — of this group or that group. I mean, that is as old as time and hasn’t gone away. And contrast with the moment in the 1990s when the Cuban American National Foundation was really the leading organization of the Cuba lobby, so to speak, and claimed, I think with a bit more credibility, to speak for the community as a whole. That’s disappeared. And there’s this sort of scrum of elected officials, influencers, you know, all sort of vying for attention.

But what is the actual structure of governance that would follow a supposed fall of the Cuban government on the island? I don’t think it exists. And that might explain why this administration, even under Rubio, is flirting with this idea of some kind of negotiated exit, even as improbable or fantastical as that may seem at this juncture.

AL: Andrés, do you want to jump in?

AP: I agree with what he’s saying, and I think that also it kind of underlines this broader tension in the MAGA coalition, as it were. So you don’t just have these conflicting interests and all these positions within the Cuban diaspora, but you also have this coalition where you’ve got the more isolationist wing and you’ve got the hawkish wing.

The hawkish wing is obviously more the Rubio wing. While the isolation of swing is, I guess, more Stephen Miller and JD Vance, though, I’m not sure how seriously Trump takes Vance, but Stephen Miller at the very least.

So you have all these conflicting interests, and this does seem to be narrowing the possible policies that the Trump administration is willing to do. So no boots on the ground. And this risks not only with Venezuela, with Delcy Rodriguez, that’s not a consummated regime change operation, right? They took out one person. They have someone who’s more pliable, but she’s in a very delicate position domestically.

So it remains to be seen how much of a transition there will be. There’s already like problems over how many political prisoners she’s released, you know, will she try and break free of this kind of quasi vacillation. So, not only is the Venezuela 1.0 model still a question mark, but you also have these tensions within the Trump coalition that severely constrain how much Rubio or Trump or anyone can have a coherent policy towards a country that is, you know, as Mike said, very different and very complex.

For context, I mean, not only is it that Cuba has a very different level of dissident organization, all the rest — like look at Eastern Europe, look at the USSR. In almost all cases, accept in Poland with Solidarity, dissident movements were microscopic until the very end. In Cuba, you had attempts to organize a broader dissident organization. There was right after the 2021 protest, you had the attempts to articulate something called Archipiélago. That movement was broken. Its leaders were basically given the choice of exile or jail. And there is no leadership.

And so really what you would have to do is negotiate with the state, but then that creates the tension that Mike’s already talked about, which is OK, how do we do that without pissing off these people? It seems like they’re going to piss off part of their coalition no matter how they handle it, even if the current approach is “successful,” right? So it’s really like even seeing things in terms of whatever they’re doing right now is successful, it is going to create problems down the road for them. And I’m not sure that it is going to be successful in the way that they think it is.

AL: For both of you, what do you think mainstream media, particularly in the U.S., is missing in how it’s covering the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Cuba right now?

MB: I mean, part of it is what I said already. I think there’s some missing context that this humanitarian crisis — like, it didn’t just start. There was already a humanitarian crisis. 850,000 Cubans came to the United States since 2021. That is the largest Cuban migration in history ever. That’s happening for a reason, right?

So where we are now hasn’t come out of nowhere. And I think there’s a kind of a presentism in coverage sometimes that is understandable but I think is missing a little bit of the boat of this wider history. That’s one thing.

To shift gears slightly to another issue that’s been kind of in the ether, particularly in the diaspora, all throughout this period, and certainly since Trump retook office, is the subtext of migration policy. And thinking about how the Trump administration has treated the historic numbers of those Cubans who came in recent years and sort of revoked status. Long story short, 400 to 500,000 Cubans of that giant recent exodus have some kind of indeterminate status that the Biden administration gave them, that the Trump administration has either tried to pull away or seems less likely than Biden ever was to sort of convert it to permanent status.

Deportations have been increasing, and they’ve been continuing even since January at a slow clip or relative to the size, but nonetheless significant. And so I think one thing that would even in a circumstance in which a Cuban government falls — there’s a regime insider that becomes the Delcy Rodríguez of Cuba, the best-case scenario that the Trump administration can imagine — the politics for the Cuban American community are going to be really important to watch because one of the, I think, subtexts of why this administration might be keen on government change in Cuba, like in Venezuela, it’s not just about being able to plant the flag and say, “We buried communism in the Americas. Something that no other president could do.” It’s also about, we can deport more people. And so how does then the Cuban American community react to that? That, I think is an open question. Something that I haven’t seen linked yet to the conversation about regime change per se.

AL: Andrés.

AP: One of the core things that I think a lot of the coverage has kind of struggled with is how to balance systemic failure from embargo policy in a particular Trump-era policy. And I think that part of the problem is that if you talk to a lot of people, especially politicians or activists, you’re going to get either it’s all the fault of the government, or it’s all the fault of sanctions, and there’s no real room in between or even like the beginnings of a framework to understand how to approach this.

And I think that, not only to mention it in the same breath is important because it’s clearly both factors. But also something that might be helpful for journalists covering this to think about is, think of the systemic economic and policy failures in Cuba as kind of an immune disease. People often miss that because these systemic failures, these policy problems, the unreformed nature of Cuban agriculture — meaning that a country that is a historical ag exporter is importing previously about 60 to 80 percent of its food. Now, I don’t doubt, somewhere around 95, like they’re importing everything at this point.

“Think of the systemic economic and policy failures in Cuba as kind of an immune disease.”

Like these are things that are aggravated by the embargo, but they’re not caused by the embargo. And that you need to see the embargo as multiplier rather than cause of why the system just is struggling to breath. Why there’s kind of like a pneumonia — economic pneumonia — in the country right now.

AL: Both of you have touched on the fact that this is happening right after our kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro. And I won’t say unprecedented because it’s not unprecedented, but probably the most U.S. intervention in Latin America that we’ve seen since the coup spree of the ’50s through the ’80s. What does this mean for Latin America more broadly?

Michael, I’m really glad you brought the immigration policy into this, but you know, we’ve killed people in boat strikes in the Caribbean. And as you mentioned Andrés, people are probably already dying now from the most recent sort of ratcheting up of these sanctions.

But as we’ve talked about, it’s not being covered in the same way. So I wonder if you could just speak to that and sort of what you were expecting to see in the future.

MB: The conversation about Cuba policy is intimately related to broader conversations about U.S. national security strategy. If you read that national security strategy that was put out by the administration late last year I believe, I think what was so striking to many folks was how far it leaned away, even from the rhetoric of kind of great power competition and more that we will let China and Russia do their thing, but it’s really about spheres of influence.

And so I think, all this business about the revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the “Doroe” doctrine, and aggressive force projection, to put it mildly in the Western Hemisphere, feels like deja vu for someone who teaches about the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America in the early 20th century quite often. So it’s inseparable from that. There’s this notion that the administration feels that this is our hemisphere. I mean, they’re using this language much more boldly and baldly than I think we’ve seen since, I don’t know, Teddy Roosevelt or something.

What I think is interesting about this moment is that Latin America itself as a region has had its own backs and forths in terms of the ideological direction of leadership but right now is in a moment of largely or sort of more of a swing to the right with few exceptions. You know, [Gustavo] Petro (Colombia) and Lula (Brazil) are exceptions in the regional political landscape. And also, there’s no love lost in much of the region even on the center left for parts of the region, for someone like Nicolás Maduro who, you know, Venezuela became the source of a mass exodus in its own right that impacted a number of countries and became a political problem across the region.

So I think part of that is why you don’t see many voices in the region necessarily standing up and criticizing too much what the administration has done in Venezuela. The critiques have been more pro forma, but also because those governments that might be more likely to critique those actions, they’ve got their own fish to fry with an increasingly transactional administration that’s wielding tariff threats in new ways. That explains why Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, to go back to an earlier point, is sort of caught between a rock and a hard place with regard to the demand that she stop Mexico’s own oil shipments to Cuba. And I don’t think the Cuban government can count on the kind of regional support that it might have in prior moments.

If you go back 10 years ago, part of the reason that Obama does what he does on Cuban normalization is because he’s hearing an earful every time he goes to a regional summit that the path to improving U.S. relations with Latin America as a whole coming out the George W. Bush years is to get away from sort of unilateralism and interventionism or the threat of that. And that the way to signal to the region that you’re turning the page is to fix your problem with Cuba and get policy on a more normal, practical footing. And guess what? The Cubans are also reforming and there’s a path here. The regional landscape right now is very, very, very different — very different politically. And so Cuba is much more isolated than it has been in a long time.

You hear voices on the center-left also saying, you know, the Cuban government here, yes, what the United States is doing is horrible and using Cuban people as cannon fodder for this policy that increases humanitarian suffering with the goal of getting the Cuban government to cede or come to the table. But man, the Cubans have had a decade or more — 30 years since the end of the Cold War — to get their economy on at least a little bit stabler footing. And they’ve kind of opened themselves up to this in a way, right? Which is not to blame the victim per se, but it is a complicated story. And I think Cuba’s more isolated on the regional front than it’s been in a while because of it.

AP: There’s a reason that the United States just didn’t really do what the Trump administration is doing anymore, right? Like that really in your face, just do it, break some things on our way to fixing it solution or approach to Latin America. There’s a reason we moved past that.

And I think that a return to that is going to create a backlash. The exact way that this backlash is going to take form we won’t see it for a while. He’s going to cow various governments into obeisance for a bit, but you don’t get long-term cooperation stability through fear. You get them to temporarily cooperate while they now figure out a backdoor, other guarantors.

“If you look at who is the main trade partner of a lot of Latin America, it’s not the U.S. anymore, it’s China. China’s investing.”

So I don’t think it’s actually going to solidify the U.S. position in Latin America; I think it’s going to further weaken it. Not least because I mean, if you look at who is the main trade partner of a lot of Latin America, it’s not the U.S. anymore, it’s China. China’s investing. This is not the USSR, where the USSR even at peak was a fraction of the U.S.’s GDP and had real trouble exporting their economic model. This is a country that can compete with the U.S. on its own terms, and in fact can excel because like they, oftentimes the Chinese don’t really care as much about, is this country a dictatorship? Is this country going to be able to pay us back reliably? They’ll just do it.

So, I don’t even think that purely in a Machiavellian sense, this is going to create a coherent policy or an effective policy. And another way that I think this is going to create a likely backlash and actually strengthen authoritarian tendencies among the left, is look at the overthrow Jacobo Guzmán in 1954 in Guatemala, which was a seminal moment for many Latin Americans during that period, not at least many of those who created the Cuban Revolution, but also look at [Salvador] Allende in 1973. And I understand that’s more complicated. It wasn’t just a foreign coup. It was like a lot of domestic factors. But what I’m trying to say is, the lesson that a lot of people on the left took was, a democratic path to policies that we want is impossible, ergo realism dictates that we take a different road. And does that mean that we’re going to see guerrillas pop up tomorrow? Probably not. This seems to be set to supercharge that tendency, even if we can’t exactly foresee what direction or manifestation it will have in practice.

AL: I want to thank you both for helping me and our listeners understand this even a tiny bit better. Michael and Andrés, thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with us on The Intercept Briefing.

MB: Thanks a lot.

AP: Thank you.

AL: That does it for this episode.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it really helps other listeners to find us.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

The post What Does Trump Want With Cuba? appeared first on The Intercept.

Attorney for Epstein Survivors Warns That Justice Is Impossible With Bondi as AG

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, defending the Justice Department’s widely criticized rollout of the Epstein files against accusations that her department is shielding powerful men, including President Donald Trump, at the expense of survivors.

Democrats, who reviewed the unredacted files for the first time this week, revealed that the names of “wealthy, powerful men” were improperly redacted, while the names of victims were left exposed.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Jessica Washington and Akela Lacy gave their rundown of the politics stories they’re watching right now. Washington also spoke with Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing nine of Epstein’s victims, about the failures of the Department of Justice to protect survivors.

“From the beginning of this case, the government, both from a state and federal level, have been trying to bury this, cover it up, and avoid any full exposure of the extent of the operation that was involved here,” Kuvin said, “and they’re doing it … because of all the both political, wealthy, and powerful individuals who were involved with Epstein and knew what was going on with these young women.”

Kuvin also spoke about the DOJ’s failure to redact the names of victims in the files, including two of his clients who were victimized as children. “The current Department of Justice has a focus on something different than victims and helping victims and prosecuting bad people that victimize these young girls,” he said. “Their focus instead appears to be on the important people — powerful people that are contained within these files and protecting them instead of protecting who needs the protection, the young victims in this case.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.

Akela Lacy: And I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.

JW: We’re going to be doing something a little bit different this week and start off the show by discussing the topics that are on our mind as political reporters. Akela, what do you have your eye on this week?

AL: The midterms are here. There has been an onslaught of news this week from New York to Illinois to New Jersey — where after days of tearing my hair out, waiting for them to finalize the election results in the special election in New Jersey, 11 — it appears that the pro-Israel lobby strategy backfired and helped elect a progressive critic of Israel. So we’ve been writing about that.

We also had done some reporting on AIPAC donors backing the Lieutenant Governor Tahesha Way in that race. And it appears that she is now potentially thinking about running against the winner Analilia Mejia in the next primary, which unfortunately is not that far away because there will be another race for the full term for this seat.

On Thursday, we published a story about a new endorsement in Illinois, where over the last week there’s been several ads, millions of dollars spent in four races, where AIPAC is making one of its biggest investments this cycle. Our story is about a candidate in the ninth district, Kat Abughazaleh, who is now running with the endorsement of Justice Democrats and a new pro-Palestine political action committee that launched on Wednesday and is endorsing several candidates in the upcoming midterms.

JW: Can you tell me a little bit about AIPAC strategy and how they’re viewing the midterms?

AL: Yeah, so we’ve done a lot of reporting on this. Basically the 2024 midterms, AIPAC was extremely loud and vocal about its endorsements, its investments in these races, and there has been sort of a groundswell in criticism of AIPAC. Lots of groups popping up. I think we’ve seen a big shift in the number of people in the general public who are paying really close attention to how this lobby is operating in these midterms.

And in response to that, AIPAC has retreated to the way that it operated before it started spending directly on elections and launching the Super Pac and the regular PAC that many people are familiar with now, distancing itself from candidates, directing donors to fundraise for candidates that it hasn’t publicly endorsed. On the other hand, you have candidates who are fundraising with AIPAC or aware that they’re receiving tens of thousands of dollars from big AIPAC donors are saying that they’re not seeking the endorsement of this group that they’re not involved, that they’re happy to take support from whoever wants to support their campaigns. And so this has made reporting on this a little bit more difficult in some ways because we’re looking at donors where they overlap between these two groups.

We’re trying to read between the lines of statements that officials and the group are making about whether or not they’re involved in this race. And, in Illinois in particular, as I was interviewing Kat Abughazaleh on Wednesday evening, she said, AIPAC knows how toxic it is and that’s why it’s trying so hard to make it appear that it’s not involved in this race when it very clearly is. And that I think is an evergreen statement about how it’s operating in lots of races that are coming up.

Jessie, I know you’re also focusing on the midterms. What do you have your eye on right now?

JW: Yeah. First I have my eye on all of your reporting because it’s been excellent.

AL: [Laughs.] Thank you.

JW: You have been writing a lot and really interestingly on AIPAC, so I’ve definitely been following your coverage.

I think for me, ICE is really something I’m watching going into the midterms. In my conversations with campaigns candidates and their teams are bringing up ICE over and over again.

They recognize that part of what this election is going to be about is what kind of country we want to live in, and people are really rejecting the violence that they’re seeing really publicly. Obviously, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security has been acting in ways that are violent towards communities in much quieter ways for years. But this violence that people are seeing, they’re really rejecting. So I’m seeing a lot of traction with that, with campaigns.

And I think it’s also an interesting juxtaposition with everything that’s gone on with the Epstein files. This week and last week, you’re really seeing this idea of conservatives as protectors of the innocent protectors of the weak, the ways that they’ve been trying to champion themselves to voters fall apart, both with the ways in which voters can see that they’re not protecting the survivors connected to the Epstein files, and also the ways in which they’re seeing that the authoritarianism that they have justified on the backs of, “hey, we have to protect the weak and vulnerable” is fake. So that’s something I’m really watching, for campaigns to touch on.

AL: And I just think it’s important to note here that Analilia Mejia, who you know, was elected in New Jersey as we were talking about, made that a cornerstone of her campaign. And like I know her campaign was really pushing that information out to reporters, that something that was so successful was that they were doing these ICE trainings at her campaign events — she was a critic of Israel. She was a supporter of all these progressive policies. But that specifically — the ICE issue — was what was resonating with voters in this district that was represented by a Republican before Mikie Sherrill was elected in 2019. So in terms of this everlasting quest to unite people across the ideological spectrum, it seems like that is being really effective.

JW: Yeah, it’s definitely a message that we’re seeing campaigns latch onto and we’re seeing the public latch onto. And what you just said about the trainings, I’ve found to be so interesting, just the ways in which people have — despite being really afraid; I think it’s rational to be afraid when we’re seeing the kinds of violence publicly on video — but instead of just staying inside of their house, we’re seeing people really resonate with this moment, go out, do these trainings, get into the streets, and that energy is something a lot of campaigns are trying to harness.

Now, whether or not they turn on that same energy, the ways in which we saw the George Floyd energy, which had been harnessed by Democrats and they really lost that momentum. It’ll be curious to see if Democrats can hold onto the momentum from activists on the streets who are angry about ICE or whether we’re going to see that exact same kind of turn we saw on organizers and activists who are connected to the George Floyd protests.

AL: Also this week I’m sure people were paying attention to the electric Pam Bondi hearing and the Epstein files. Jessie, you spoke to Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing nine of Epstein’s survivors.

JW: Yeah, I did. It was a really great conversation. Spencer drove home the ways in which the Trump justice department has been protecting the powerful at the expense of the victims in this case.

AL: Let’s hear that conversation.

JW: Spencer, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Spencer Kuvin: Thank you so much for having me today.

JW: I want to start off by asking how the women that you represent are reacting to this latest batch of documents.

SK: Well, and thank you for asking about the victims, which really is the focus or should be the focus of everything that has been going on for the last 20 years.

Unfortunately, I had to make a very difficult call after the documents had been released. One of my clients, actually two of my clients were unfortunately unredacted and disclosed in those documents that included the first victim that came forward to police— the 14-year-old that I represented back in 2007, who the federal government was well aware of.

And another young victim who was 16 at the time that she was brought to Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, they were both disclosed in these documents, unredacted. So I had to make that awful call to let them know that they had been disclosed and that I had notified the Department of Justice of what had happened.

And then thankfully within a day the redactions took place. But it’s just unbelievable the failures of this Department of Justice.

JW: Yeah. Why do you think we saw such sloppy redactions in these files?

SK: I think you saw the sloppiness because of the lack of focus on what was important, and that was the victims.

I think unfortunately, the current Department of Justice has a focus on something different than victims and helping victims and prosecuting bad people that victimize these young girls. Their focus instead appears to be on the important people — powerful people — that are contained within these files and protecting them instead of protecting, who needs the protection, the young victims in this case.

JW: You’re talking about someone who was abused at 14 years old, and I guess my question for you is just what does that re-traumatization look like when you’re publicly outed in this way?

SK: It’s awful. It’s absolutely devastating. This is a young lady, for example, that chose to remain anonymous and wanted to move on with her life. And because of the drip of information over the last 20 years with respect to Epstein, she hasn’t been able to move on with her life. She is now someone who is in her thirties and has a family of her own. And really does not want to have to look back at this dramatic and awful period of her life. And remaining anonymous allowed her to do that. And unfortunately the federal government is re-traumatizing these victims by making them have to go back through this awful period.

JW: Spencer, you’ve been working on this case for roughly 20 years. Can you give us some of the background, particularly on the sweetheart deal that Epstein got originally?

SK: Yeah, so I started working on these cases when victim number one, the first victim to go to the police in Palm Beach, walked into my office and needed help because she had, along with her parents, reported what had happened to her at Epstein’s home. And that really started the snowball of this entire investigation for all of the future victims that came forward in the FBI investigation.

But what it started as was a local investigation by the town of Palm Beach, and Joe Recarey was the lead officer that I met with during that initial investigation. It was only after the state attorneys in Palm Beach refused to prosecute this case that it ended up at the FBI and the Southern District of Florida.

Then the FBI took over this case and started the prosecution and had an indictment that we now see that they’ve revealed unsealed that had almost 50 counts against Epstein and other potential co-conspirators that they shelved. And they shelved it because they entered into an awful, awful sweetheart deal with Epstein at the time.

That Epstein sweetheart deal was never provided to the victims. As an attorney on behalf of one of the victims, I had to fight in court just to see the crappy deal that they had entered into with Epstein and the immunity that they had given others. And that fight lasted a year in the litigation before I was able to even see it. And then once I saw it, I realized why they didn’t want anyone to see it because it was such an awful deal.

JW: There are some truly horrifying allegations inside of these files, but so far there haven’t been any high-profile arrests or charges brought. I think you’re uniquely qualified to speak on this. What does justice look like here for the victims, and is it going to have to come from outside of the legal system?

SK: That’s a good question and a very difficult one. In handling these types of cases, specifically the Epstein cases over the last 20 years, I get a lot of calls that are just not credible.

And unfortunately there is a mental health crisis in the United States and unfortunately, some of the people that have some issues will call in and make allegations that just factually don’t hold water. Having said that, there are a lot of very valid tips that deal with individuals. So the FBI just seemed to categorize all of the tips that came in as not credible without even investigating them. And that’s a problem.

In addition to that, Epstein entered into the sweetheart deal with the federal government as a result of the initial prosecution here in West Palm Beach in South Florida. And when they did that there were four co-conspirators that were clearly named in that agreement.

Four people that the federal government knew had assisted in the sex trafficking that Epstein was involved in. And by the way, one of those four was not Ghislaine Maxwell. She was not even named in the sweetheart deal at all. Most people don’t realize that there were four other people, four other women, that were part of this conspiracy that have never been prosecuted to the state.

So the victims want them prosecuted. That’s number one. There is enough information to prosecute those people and bring them to justice. Number two, they want this information out in the public so that the public can then see the full extent of this heinous operation that was going on for years. And then judge who they want to be running these important companies, corporations, in politics and whatnot, and have the public judge them for what they did, or what they didn’t do, and then have them be held publicly accountable.

JW: I want to talk about these redactions again and the ways in which powerful people have been shielded as you’ve been just discussing now. Members of Congress were able to view the unredacted files this week. Before we get into some of the shocking revelations, I just wanted to ask you about the use of redactions to protect powerful people within the files and what you make of that, and what the women that you represent make of that.

“How do we hold the Department of Justice accountable for breaking federal law? … [W]ithout a penalty clause in the law, the only way to do that is contempt of Congress.”

SK: It breaks the law. It violates federal law. The Department of Justice broke the law, and they are continuing to break the law. Make no question about this. The Epstein Transparency Act is very clear. You can read it. It is only about two pages long, and it states that no redactions shall be made for the purpose of merely embarrassment or protecting important or powerful people. In addition, it gives a deadline for the full disclosure of records. Both of those things have been violated by the Department of Justice.

The question really is just accountability at this point. How do we hold the Department of Justice accountable for breaking federal law? That’s a quandary that unfortunately, or fortunately, our country has not had to deal with yet. But right now we have to figure out a way to be able to hold the Department of Justice accountable. And I think legally speaking right now without a penalty clause in the law, the only way to do that is contempt of Congress.

JW: So on Tuesday, representative Ro Khanna revealed the names of these six, powerful, wealthy men, whose names had previously been redacted in the files. Those names included billionaire, former Victoria’s Secret owner Les Wexner and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. What did those new names add to our understanding of Epstein and his world?

SK: I can tell you Les Wexner name was connected with Jeffrey Epstein, even back during the original prosecution of these cases I was involved in 2007. We were well aware of Epstein’s connections with Wexner, and he was on our witness list as somebody, as a person of interest, that needed to be talked to or subpoenaed for a deposition.

Now the case is resolved before we got to that point. But the connection was clear even back then, and I think there were stories that came out in the news dating back into the late 2000s that identifies that connection.

The other wealthy, important and powerful people who were out outed in some of these records that shows the world the breadth —the true worldwide breadth —of Epstein’s conspiracy and sex trafficking. And I think that there was a lot of rumor that had circulated for years, and people would call other individuals who would talk about those rumors as conspiracy theorists and crazy. And, you’re making up crazy stories.

What we’re seeing with these documents is that that is the reality that wealthy and powerful men around the world were trading young girls like trading cards.

JW: I should note here that Wexner’s legal representative issued a statement saying “The Assistant U.S. Attorney told Mr. Wexner’s legal counsel in 2019 that Mr. Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor target in any respect. Mr. Wexner cooperated fully by providing background information on Epstein and was never contacted again.”

I just want to get into the conspiracy element of this because I think it’s important. There’s been so much talk about how these files have validated conspiracy theories, like QAnon, but in my opinion, there’s been far less discussion about the ways in which these files have validated the accounts of women who were abused by Epstein as children and have been speaking about it, frankly, for years.

What would it have meant to listen to these women when they spoke out instead of waiting for a trove of government documents?

SK: Huge. It’s huge from an emotional standpoint a victim goes through a huge emotional trauma just reporting what she has been through or he has been through. Latest government statistics show that one out of every three women, literally, if you are in the room with three women, one of them was likely subjected to some kind of sexual trauma in their life, and one out of every five men, by the way, also according to government statistics.

“A victim goes through a huge emotional trauma just reporting what she has been through or he has been through.”

And what happens is that these young women, for example, in this case, that report this, when they’re met with denials, accusations, attacks, all it does is drive them deeper into a depression because they know the truth. I think what it teaches us as a society is that we have to believe victims and what they’re telling us because it takes a huge amount of bravery to even come forward and report these types of things.

I think that if that had occurred, if people had believed victims, then they would’ve been able to work through the healing process. Part of what I do as an advocate for victims in the civil arena is I listen to victims and I believe them.

I then fight for them based upon that belief. And just that alone can help a victim knowing that there is someone out there that’s fighting for them, believing in them, and wanting to get them justice. So being a part of the system and finding an advocate for them that is a very significant thing.

Look at, for example, Virginia Giuffre. She, for years, for years had been called a liar. And we are now seeing the absolute proof that everything she was telling us was true. She may not have unfortunately committed suicide had she been able to be believed and supported as a true victim.

[Break]

JW: I want to turn towards Donald Trump because obviously he casts a large shadow over the story. On Tuesday, Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin claimed that Donald Trump appears in the Epstein files more than a million times. He also said that Trump never asked Jeffrey Epstein to leave Mar-a-Lago as he previously claimed. What is your response to these revelations?

SK: I think it’s important to look at these documents within the context of what they are and the timeframe within which they were gathered. These documents were gathered after the FBI began their operation, which was around 2007. We know historically that Epstein and Trump were friends. He’s admitted that, and they were friends for years. But that friendship predated a lot of this investigation.

So a lot of the information we’re seeing in these files is after the 2007 period when the investigation began. What we’re not seeing is the extent of that relationship and what Trump may or may not have done with Jeffrey Epstein before 2007. We know because we’ve seen videos of them at parties and socializing together. He admitted that he knew that he liked young girls. And Trump now is trying to obviously distance himself as far as he can from Jeffrey Epstein.

But the reality is that there was a close connection, there was a good friendship. They did go to parties together. And this is something that the FBI never fully investigated. And unfortunately, given the fact that Trump is now the President and it seems as though he has a tight grip on the Department of Justice, I don’t know that there will be a full and complete investigation of his activities.

JW: I think Donald Trump complicates this story in so many ways because at its core, this is a story about the violent sexual exploitation of children, and we have to hold space for that. But it’s also a political story because of Donald Trump’s involvement. So I guess, how do you think about holding space for what these women have gone through as children, while also acknowledging the politics involved here?

SK: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that politics definitely complicates the issue, but we have to remember that Donald Trump is the one that actually brought this to the forefront. We have to thank him to a certain extent because during his campaign he made this a major issue as part of his campaign that he was going to release this information.

It was only after he was elected and realized what was actually in those documents, that he then started backpedaling on the release of information to the general public. Politics always complicates truth because politicians seem to have a very difficult time just being truthful with the general public.

We have to always remember that the Department of Justice is supposed to be neutral. They are not supposed to be a political arm of any political party, whether it be Democrats or Republicans. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has turned our Department of Justice into a political animal, and as we saw, for example, through the testimony of Pam Bondi the other day in front of Congress. The Department of Justice no longer has any credibility as a nonpolitical or apolitical organization. They are political, without a doubt. It is now controlled by the president and the executive branch, and that’s a shame because now victims cannot trust even our own Department of Justice to investigate crimes and do the right thing.

JW: As you’ve just mentioned, Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. What jumped out to you from that testimony? I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

SK: Everything jumped out, including the Attorney General. It was an absolute embarrassment to our country that the highest ranking law enforcement officer in our country acted like a child.

That is exactly what the Attorney General was doing. She was acting like a child and she was clearly exhibiting pro-political leanings toward the current administration with absolutely no respect for the rule of law or her job, which is to remain neutral, and not favor either political party in any investigation or potential investigation.

And frankly, it was sad to me as a member of one of the branches of government to see a person like our own U.S. attorney general acting in that manner. It was sad and it was an embarrassment.

JW: Can justice be achieved with Pam Bondi as the attorney general? Is there a path towards that?

SK: No, I’m convinced that based upon the performance that she put on the other day, I don’t believe that there’s any way that justice can be accomplished. When we talk about an organization that is now a political arm of the executive branch, I don’t see there’s any possibility that justice can fully be accomplished while she’s in office. I think that if Congress frankly had any integrity whatsoever they would do one of two things, either begin impeachment proceedings against the attorney general, or alternatively hold her in contempt of Congress.

JW: As you pointed out, Pam Bondi, Donald Trump, they all came into office using Epstein’s survivors using the threat of violence against young women to really push a lot of their more authoritarian impulses.

This is historically true, for the Republicans and for conservatives, but particularly true in this moment. Did the Epstein files and the high profile men in Trump world mentioned in the files, plus what we’ve seen from the attorney general, reveal those concerns about violence against young women to be a farce?

SK: I think that what it revealed is the true nature of what politicians do. What politicians do is they find key issues that can separate society or inflame fears or tension within a society in order to trump up votes. I use that analogy and word specifically in this case because that’s exactly what the president did, right?

“What politicians do is they find key issues that can separate society or inflame fears or tension within a society in order to trump up votes.”

It’s exactly what other Congress people did, is that they utilized an inflaming type of language and situation to be able to get votes. And then once they’re in office, they completely retract what they said they were going to do. We see this in all types of enforcement actions when a government wants to move toward a more authoritarian type system where they justify actions through fear.

Be afraid of the illegals. Be afraid of the immigrants. Be afraid of the pedophiles that are in society. We are here to protect you, so you need more police and more military and more authoritarian governments to protect you from all of these bad people, when in reality that’s not what they want. What they want is control.

That’s how they get it is through fear. And I think that the way to combat that is really through truth and not being afraid, but instead standing up to power and questioning them and making them be held accountable in the public eye. And thankfully in a democratic society, we can vote people out of office if they fail to be held up to the standards that we expect of them.

JW: Do you think the American public is waking up to that reality? Because I see people in the streets, particularly in Minneapolis, but in LA throughout the country, really standing up against authoritarian power. And we also see people calling out what’s been now dubbed the Epstein class. These group of people — powerful people — who abuse women, but also, and children, and more broadly abuse our society. Do you think there’s been a wake up in our culture?

SK: I do think that certain people are now coming around to realize that these are not all just conspiracy theories, that there is a lot of truth behind what people have been saying for years about the elite billionaire class and their ploy to control society and the way that they think about the ordinary citizens in the world throughout the world, including the United States. But I also think that there is a certain group of society that looked at, for example, the testimony of Pam Bondi and cheered her on and said, “Wow, she did awesome, she did a great job.” And there are still people that look at what Trump is doing and defend his every action and defend everything he’s saying. So it won’t be until we get to those people that things will really change, right? You need to be able to get on a level where you are communicating with people you disagree with, but you’re discussing facts, not just bullet points, and not just points that are given to them by talking heads on television. You have to have a conversation with people you disagree with in a way that it can be fruitful to both sides to understand where they’re coming from and understand why they think the way they do.

And only then I think, will there be true change. Because otherwise you’re going to continue to have a society that is fractured along a very definitive line. There used to be gray, there used to be a middle, and now there is just team A and team B, and that’s the problem.

JW: A lot of people have called this a coverup, down from the federal government all the way to the local level. Do you see it as a coverup?

SK: 100 percent. From the beginning of this case, the government, both from a state and federal level, have been trying to bury this, cover it up, and avoid any full exposure of the extent of the operation that was involved here, and they’re doing it for many obvious reasons because of all the both political, wealthy, and powerful individuals who were involved with Epstein and knew what was going on with these young women.

“It is a billionaire crowd trying to protect their own.”

So as a result, you’ve got institutions that are controlled by wealthy, powerful politicians and individuals who are trying to cover up potential crimes of other wealthy, powerful politicians and powerful people. So it is a billionaire crowd trying to protect their own.

JW: That’s a really good point and a good point to end on. But just first I wanted to give you a chance if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to share.

SK: I think the most important thing that I want people to remember is that victims need to be heard and victims need to be believed. And as a society, we need to trust what victims are saying first, until evidence shows otherwise, and not immediately accuse people of lying or exaggerating because by trusting them you can at least hear them out. And at least give them the space to talk about what they’re going through. And even if it doesn’t prove to be true, which is frankly only about less than 5 percent of the allegations that come out, according to statistics, but even if it doesn’t, they believe it. And they’re saying it for a reason that they truly believe. Whether they have some kind of issue going on in their life or not, it doesn’t matter. Whether they remember an exact date, it doesn’t matter.

They are going through something emotionally, so we should listen to what they have to say and allow them the space to say it without any judgment or accusation and then get them the help they need.

JW: Thank you, Spencer. That was a really important conversation and I really appreciate you taking the time to share both your point of view and then also the points of view from your clients who deserve to be heard.

SK: Thank you.

JW: Thank you for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.

SK: Thank you so much for having me today.

JW: That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post Attorney for Epstein Survivors Warns That Justice Is Impossible With Bondi as AG appeared first on The Intercept.

“Terrorist”: How ICE Weaponized 9/11’s Scarlet Letter

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The word “terrorist” wasn’t coined on September 11, 2001, but the defining event of the early 21st century ushered it in as the United States’ go-to term for demonizing outsiders and dissenters alike. The so-called “war on terror” transformed the way the U.S. wields power at home and abroad, enabling mass surveillance and a crackdown on the right to free speech. It became reflexive for the U.S. to disparage immigrants and protesters as supporters of terrorism.

President Donald Trump has embraced this model and manipulated it for his own ends, as author Spencer Ackerman points out. The Trump administration often peddles spurious accusations of terrorism against the targets of its immigration raids.

“There’s nothing about any of their action that’s remotely anything at all like terrorism,” Ackerman says. “But that is the fire in which ICE, CBP, and the Department of Homeland Security was forged. You are going to find this in its DNA.”

This week on the Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks with Ackerman, a leading expert on the concept of terrorism and its weaponization by the state. Ackerman’s 2021 book, “Reign of Terror, How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump,” traces the legal and cultural evolution of the last 25 years, and how the boomerang has come back home.

“Before 9/11, not only was there no ICE, there wasn’t really much in the way of a robust internal mechanism for finding and deporting people who were in the country illegally. When it did exist, it was for people who were serious criminals, traffickers, and so on,” says Ackerman. Now, he says, the contemporary terrorism paradigm has transformed immigration enforcement into something “operating like a death squad.”

“What we are seeing on the streets of Minneapolis is what ICE has done to the undocumented for a very long time,” he says. “And now we’re seeing this happen to white people on the streets of Minneapolis for little more than filming ICE.” With the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, “I worry that a tremendous amount of our political system is geared toward either, on the Republican side, rationalizing it, justifying it, or on the Democratic side, pretending as if this is some kind of abuse that can be exceptionalized, rather than something that has to do with this 25-year history of coalescing immigration enforcement in the context of counterterrorism.”

As Democrats in Congress struggle to leverage DHS funding for changes to ICE policy — like a ban on face masks for ICE agents, an idea on which they’ve already softened — Ackerman says the parallels with the early 2000s are clear.

“We can’t move in reformist directions when the thing talked about being reformed laughs at killing Americans,” advises Ackerman. “Reformist politics under two Democratic administrations got us to where we are now. These are accommodationist politics, and the thing being accommodated wants to kill you.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jordan Uhl.

If you didn’t recognize the voices, 2026 might not sound so different from the years following 2001.

George W. Bush: We are on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront, and we’ll accept nothing less than complete victory.

Donald Trump: These are paid terrorists, OK? These are paid agitators.

Dick Cheney: Terrorists remain determined and dangerous.

Kristi Noem: It was an act of domestic terrorism.

JD Vance: We’re not going to give in to terrorism on this. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

John Ashcroft: America has grown stronger and safer in the face of terrorism.

JU: In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the so-called war on terror transformed the way the United States enforced its laws and its priorities, both at home and abroad. The label “terrorist” became a catchall for a wide range of actors, and dissent against the Bush administration was often disparaged as support for terrorism. The USA PATRIOT Act codified a reduction in civil liberties in the name of protecting freedom.

Bush: As of today, we’re changing the laws governing information sharing. And as importantly, we’re changing the culture of our various agencies that fight terrorism. Countering and investigating terrorist activity is the number one priority for both law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

JU: The day he put his signature on the Patriot Act, President George W. Bush laid out how those new priorities would include a focus on immigrants.

Bush: The government will have wider latitude in deporting known terrorists and their supporters.

JU: It was largely an era of political consensus. Both major parties lined up to support the Patriot Act and other legislation giving greater legal latitude to the government, from local police all the way up to the president. But even then, there were plenty of warnings that these powers would be abused and stretched far beyond their intended goals.

Supporters argued that there were backstops, like congressional oversight and international law, basic human decency and strategic restraint. But President Trump ignored and shattered so many of those long-standing norms. A glaring example is on display in the streets of U.S. cities right now.

ICE was a post-9/11 creation as part of the new Department of Homeland Security. In his book “Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump,” author Spencer Ackerman traces the legal and cultural evolution of the last 25 years and how the boomerang has come back home.

Ackerman has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, and many U.S. bases. He’s won a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award, and currently writes for Zeteo and his own website, Forever Wars. Spencer, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.

Spencer Ackerman: Thanks for having me back, Jordan.

JU: So we’re talking 25 years now since 9/11. Many of our listeners — as well as working journalists, and even many people working on Capitol Hill right now — don’t have any living memory of that time. So can you start off by bringing us back to the days and weeks after September 11? President George W. Bush essentially had carte blanche to pass laws and change policy based on the notion that he was making Americans safer; that we had to clamp down and, in some cases, give up some of our freedoms to ensure security. With hindsight, what were the most significant aspects of the newly born war on terror that have a clear through line to today?

SA: Well, one that we saw just this week really take prominence is the Patriot Act, which among other things, enabled law enforcement to more seamlessly get “third-party records,” as they’re called — basically, customer accounts of records kept by some kind of service provider, financial records, internet records, and so on — without a judge’s signature or a finding of probable cause. It occurs instead through something called an administrative subpoena that the Patriot Act supercharged.

And we’re seeing just this week, there was a very good piece in the Washington Post laying out the exponential growth in administrative subpoenas being used by DHS in order to get records that would otherwise require a court order to collect.

Now, when the Patriot Act passed, the idea was that this would be the FBI surreptitiously collecting information that would prevent terrorism and uncover active links to terror networks and so forth. There’s not really much of a record of it having done that — certainly not a public one. But it definitely didn’t envision what DHS is doing, which is harassing critics of ICE.

Now, a ton of critics at the time, when the war on terror was coalescing, recognized and stated that this was going to be where the war on terror led. That it was going to become a war on dissent, that it was going to criminalize a tremendous amount of both politics in general but also resistance to itself — that we’re really seeing coalesce.

For the purposes of what we’re tracking, what we also saw after 9/11, is a complete sea change in how America conducted its immigration affairs. Something that I think people probably don’t remember is that before 9/11, not only was there no ICE, there wasn’t really much in the way of a robust internal mechanism for finding and deporting people who were in the country illegally. When it did exist, it was for people who were like serious criminals, traffickers, and so on.

The Department of Homeland Security gets created after Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft, pretty much takes over immigration enforcement because ICE’s predecessor, Immigration and Naturalization Services, is under his purview. And what he starts doing is using it to round up immigrants — not just Muslim immigrants, although there was an immediate outcry for a clamp-down on Muslim immigration, certainly. But it was a way of shoe-horning a gestating border hysteria on the far right that 9/11 gave a kind of new security context and accordingly opportunity to pursue.

Even then, the Bush administration did not wish to create a kind of agglutination agency that would kind of stick together all sorts of domestic security functions. That took the active intervention of moderate Democrats and some moderate Republicans, who were able to basically checkmate Bush over his concerns about such an agency being kind of too large for, you know, extent conservative perceptions of government using his own logic of counterterrorism. And there is really no way for Bush to argue himself out of that. So instead he accommodated himself to it.

But even then, ICE, when it starts, has only 2,700 agents. By 2008, that becomes 5,000. ICE’s budget until in something like 2016 was $6 billion. For a while in the intervening decade, it’s hovered around $10 billion. Trump has now made it $85 billion.

This is an enterprise that operated fundamentally — well, I shouldn’t say fundamentally different. I don’t want to suggest that the INS was a benign agency, or that immigrant Americans didn’t fear INS, much as they would come to fear ICE. Just that there were constraints, both legal, budgetary, and from a political perspective, cultural, that constrained interior immigration enforcement. That doesn’t exist anymore. We have seen instead — to finish answering your question in a very long-winded way — a counterterrorism context transforms, in ways both direct and structural, the apparatus of American immigration to something that today is coalescing into something that I think we can see fairly clearly is on its way, if it’s not there already, into operating like a death squad.

JU: One thing we saw right away post-9/11 was the demonization of Arabs, Muslims, South Asians, or anyone remotely resembling any of those categories. What kind of connection can we make between the rhetoric and actions of that era with how otherization and fear is being wielded these days against immigrants and other populations?

SA: I see it as a rather straight line. The early years of the war on terror proved something that politicians, particularly in the Republican Party, but also in the Democratic Party, have been sort of chasing ever since to recover its potency — like chasing a high. And that’s that the politics of counterterrorism in the early 2000s — really persistent throughout, but especially in the early 2000s — completely deterred opposition, silenced dissent, and intimidated resistance. And it worked. It worked for a really long time. Eventually, it ceased working as well. But the fact that it worked can’t be overstated. Because politicians afterward, particularly when there has been no criminal liability or even significant political liability for the atrocities that result, accordingly seek to do what works. And this works extremely well.

“The politics of counterterrorism in the early 2000s … completely deterred opposition, silenced dissent, and intimidated resistance. And it worked.”

In a broad sense, one of the things that the war on terror did in particular to Muslims in this country was redefine terrorism away from being something that people throughout history have done across cultures, into “terrorism” is something that a certain kind of people are, and usually only them. That when people who do not look or worship like Muslims utilize violence for political purposes — that becomes defined as “counterterrorism.”

So there is a really, really firm connection in how we have seen not only the targets of ICE’s raids, since the Trump administration returned to power, be described as terrorists. But now people like Marimar Martinez in Chicago, Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, when they’re shot — and in the case of Good and Pretti, killed — by ICE, ICE and the broader political structure calls them terrorists.

They have the first-mover communication choice of basically daring journalists, politicians, whomever to prove that they weren’t in fact terrorists. There’s nothing about any of their action that’s remotely anything at all like terrorism. But that is the fire in which ICE, CBP, and the Department of Homeland Security was forged. You are going to find this in its DNA.

JU: As you wrote in your book, “Trump had learned the foremost lesson of 9/11: The terrorists were whomever you say they were.” And I’m curious about this seemingly expansive scope of this label. You’ve written about how the “terrorist” label has predominantly been used against people of color, while white people like Timothy McVeigh get different treatment, both linguistically and legally.

Do you think what we’re seeing in the Twin Cities is a significant development — the government calling white activists “terrorists” —and these are white people who present as average middle class, not so-called anarchists or “antifa.” Is this, in your mind, a significant shift in how the term “terrorist” is wielded and will be wielded?

SA: Yes, absolutely. Minnesota is kind of the next stanza in the [Martin] Niemöller poem. The poem about, “First they came for…”

ICE and CBP have a very long history of acting lawlessly. The conditions of ICE prisons, many of which are operated as for-profit enterprises with detainees being paid a dollar a day, have often been shown to be both violent and deeply neglectful. I have a friend who contracted Covid at the ICE detention center in Batavia, New York, for instance.

So what we are seeing on the streets of Minneapolis is what ICE has done to the undocumented for a very long time. What we saw in places like Portland in 2020, where, certainly in Portland, CBP tactical units, known as BORTAC, opened fire with less-lethal rounds on protesters outside the Hatfield building. That was what they were willing to do — similarly, lawlessly stuffing people into unmarked vans for detention and so forth — to people deemed enemies of the Trump administration.

And now we’re seeing this happen to white people on the streets of Minneapolis for little more than filming ICE. In Renee Good’s case, for possibly, slightly inconveniencing ICE vehicularly. And then, trying to comply with a contradictory order to get out of the way and then stay put, get outta the car, you know? And then with Alex Pretti — helping a woman up.

What we’re seeing is something we can’t turn away from, and I worry that a tremendous amount of our political system is geared toward either, on the Republican side, rationalizing it, justifying it, or on the Democratic side, pretending as if this is some kind of abuse that can be exceptionalized, rather than something that has to do with this 25-year history of coalescing immigration enforcement in the context of counterterrorism.

[Break]

JU: In some cities, we see different relationships between local law enforcement and federal agencies, and that’s been a contentious issue going back to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces enlisted during the height of the so-called war on terror. Now we hear more about the 287(g) agreements that are focused on giving immigration enforcement powers to local officers. Collaboration by city and county law enforcement agencies often depends on who’s in charge and sometimes local community influence. How has this idea transformed local law enforcement over the past 25 years — situating local police and sheriffs as partners in fighting a war, essentially?

SA: First, in the literal sense, it deputizes local police into an immigration function. And the implications of that are both profound and subtle. Being undocumented in this country is a civil offense, not a criminal offense. And it’s a misdemeanor, it’s not a felony. So being undocumented in this country now all of a sudden becomes “law enforcement-related.” It becomes a matter that is quickly understood in a kind of everyday person’s sense of association as something that is being done by cops.

And so cops are going after criminals. They’re not going after someone who overstayed a work visa. The person who overstayed a work visa is presumed to have done so because they’re criminal. That is a profound shift that nativists 30 years ago could only have as the apple of their eye. That’s now normal in this country.

Beyond that, beyond the kind of mimetic and cultural functions there, what the Department of Homeland Security’s relationship with local police over the vast majority of DHS’s existence was a patron-client relationship. There’s always been a lot of focus, and not inappropriately, on the [1033] Pentagon program that takes decommissioned military equipment and gives them to law enforcement. Appropriately so.

“ There is not very much terrorism in the United States of America of the sort that DHS was created to redress.”

DHS’s grant programs to local law enforcement have always dwarfed them, in terms of budgetary capability. There is not very much terrorism in the United States of America of the sort that DHS was created to redress. However, DHS had a budget to give out to local law enforcement, you know, cop shops, that applied for grant money that it would have to disperse.

The overall point is not only was DHS for such a long time a supplier of equipment that cops did not need for terrorism, but could find a whole lot of value out of when using against their existing tasks — which means, in a lot of cases, against the people it polices. But also, it accustomed police shops to look at DHS as a source of support that didn’t have to go through existing and potentially contentious budgetary processes locally that municipal, small-d democratic functions have power to effect. It’s not the most potent power. I’m telling you this from New York City where the NYPD has for a very long time been considered pretty much untouchable. But nevertheless, this is a more friction-free funding path than troublesome city councils.

JU: And to continue this line of thought on weaponry, it’s one thing to have a heavily armed Border Patrol if they legitimately believe they may encounter a “violent drug cartel.” But the images we’re seeing of immigration agents in residential U.S. neighborhoods with body armor and advanced weaponry brings to mind the militarization of local police and federal agencies that’s taken place since 9/11.

You talked about the equipment, you’ve talked about the vehicles. There are local police departments with MRAPs. Across the board, top-down from federal agencies down to local, it feels like a war that’s literally everywhere. What’s been the arc of that evolution?

SA: Markets for advanced military technology get spurred on by overseas war. Eventually, those wars draw down beyond the funding capabilities of those different technological production lines. Those different technological production lines will seek out derivative markets that they can use to keep making money. That has been local law enforcement, but before that, it’s been DHS.

Starting around the first Obama administration, DHS, particularly for the border, starts buying up a drone fleet. Then it starts buying up really powerful military-grade camera suites that had previously been developed for protecting U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. DHS buys this stuff. It provides funding for — as we were just talking about — local police agencies to eventually start buying other stuff that DHS has.

There’s no Gray Eagle-sized drone in police custody in the country yet. But we’ll talk in 10 more years, and we’ll see about that. DHS provides funding to get similar technologies, related technologies, and then it pushes what it currently has beyond the border into the interior of the country.

We should also mention that the border after 9/11 changes in important ways, where DHS — this is for the last 15 years at least been policy at CBP — the border is anywhere within 100 miles of a port of entry or exit. So if you’ve wondered, why is the Border Patrol in, you know, Charlotte, North Carolina, or Chicago or Minneapolis — that’s why. Because your sense of the border intuitively is not the U.S. government’s definition of the border.

Eventually we see this stuff move into the interior of the United States. The roundups, which had been there since at least 2005, become more ambitious, and they become, with the 287(g) program, involving local law enforcement as well as the Department of Homeland Security — and now increasingly toward critics of DHS itself.

I want to say one more thing about this. When we look at what ICE and CBP deploy with, in all of the cities that we’ve seen them invest since the second Trump administration — a common denominator has been they’re all wearing plate carriers. The stuff that says like police, ICE, and so forth, you know, the ballistic chest protection that they wear around them.

Marimar Martinez legally had a gun. She didn’t draw it; she kept it holstered in her car. They called her a domestic terrorist. Her hands were on the steering wheel when ICE shot her.

“ICE and CBP are posturing as if they are the ones under the threat, not that they are the threat themselves.”

Alex Pretti famously had a gun, not that he drew it on CBP. When they shot him, six of them shot this man who is completely not in any position to be threatening them. ICE and CBP are posturing as if they are the ones under the threat, not that they are the threat themselves.

All of this social media footage-ready imagery that they’ve been collecting and disseminating is what we should understand as a psy-op on the American people to make it think that these are a valorous Praetorian Guard that puts itself in danger constantly. Instead, they are the ones inflicting the danger on Americans, undocumented or citizens.

JU: Now we talked about this evolution — part of that is an expansive or unchecked legal infrastructure and framework that allows this. Over the past two decades-plus, were there moments when that infrastructure could have been dialed back or unraveled? Times when Trump wasn’t president? Did that happen to any extent? And if not, why not?

SA: There are many reasons to be deeply upset at the way the Obama and Biden administrations treated the institutions of the war on terror that they inherited. But really chief among them is the way that they embraced the existing structures of homeland security for use against immigrants.

Obama — famously the deporter in chief, always under pressure from his right to deport more. Obama famously makes the massive miscalculation that if he can just, you know, bolster resources for border protection, then he can buy goodwill on the right. This was just an epic political miscalculation that really everyone could have seen coming, and many did.

Biden — 4.4 million deportations on his watch; Trump left office the first time at 1.5 million. After everything that we saw the Trump administration do the first time around, in particular with child separation, with raising the number of people in ICE custody to something like 50,000 a day — I don’t know if they’ve gotten back to that, if they’ve exceeded that by now or not. But I remember reporting on it at the time that it was in 2020, it had gotten up to, maybe a little before the pandemic, something like 50,000 a day. It was really astonishing.

But Biden famously tells his donors ahead of the election that they’re not gonna seek fundamental change. And I think that by the time the Biden administration takes office, the Democratic Party had successfully marginalized the voices that were calling, not just for pursuing once again, comprehensive immigration reform — which of course is stifled by the Republicans again and again and again — but to abolish ICE.

I think right now we are at, you know, years before a Democrat could theoretically take power. But we’re starting to see Democratic politicians go down the same very dangerous road along the politics of security that they’ve played not just during the Biden administration or the first Trump administration, but throughout the war on terror.

“Unless the nativist concept of the need for an interior deportation force is confronted root and branch, we are going to continue to see exactly what we are seeing.”

And they’re doing it with ICE now, which is we’re starting to hear people say things like, “This is not immigration enforcement.” It’s true. This is not what I think many people think of as immigration enforcement. But immigration enforcement is how we got to this point. And unless the nativist concept of the need for an interior deportation force is confronted root and branch, we are going to continue to see exactly what we are seeing. Not as a form of stasis, but as a form of ICE and CBP completing their transformation into a death squad.

And I use a very scary term because this is a very scary moment. But we also need to be really clear about what we are seeing ICE do and behave as. You mentioned it’s unwillingness to follow the law. In Minnesota, a judge found just before January of 2026 expired, around 100 violations of court orders about immigration and how ICE needed to behave, in just that month. How many gleeful videos do we have to see on our phone of ICE people telling Minnesotans to “fuck around and find out”? Beyond even just the actual murders and shootings — but the way that the CBP officers applauded after shooting Alex Pretti? The way Jonathan Ross, who murdered Renee Good, called her a “fucking bitch” after doing so? This is not something that can be reformed. The best time to abolish ICE was 2003. The second best time is today.

Every single moment that we refrain from doing this, that Democratic politicians as well as Republican ones try and push it back to the margins of political discourse, is another day closer to the time that they’re going to shoot you, that they’re going to deport someone you love, and on and on and on.

“This is not something that can be reformed.”

JU: There’s a sinister delight that we see time and time again from federal agents beyond the comments or behavior after both of those Minnesotans were killed. But we’ve seen many other videos of them wielding those incidents to other observers as threats. And to your point, that’s not something that you can fix with a sensitivity training. That is something ingrained in the culture. And I’m curious what could be done? It doesn’t seem like there’s a critical mass of Democrats willing to do that. Maybe there is and or maybe we might get to one, but that’s down the road. And you of course have the challenge of the current Supreme Court composition not wanting to challenge anything that Trump is doing meaningfully. So realistically, what can people hope for or work towards in terms of turning this imperial boomerang around?

SA: First, the answer to how you stop the war on terror is not easy, but it is simple. And that’s organize. Force your politicians in an abolitionist direction; oust them when they won’t go in that direction. Organize so you can build power amongst like-minded people in your area, in order to produce that function. It’s awful that that’s where we kind of have to start from, but our leaders will not do this on their own.

Outside of that I would look to efforts that the Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is building toward, in which he’s been talking about, however long it takes, prosecuting ICE and CBP agents for violating relevant local laws. And one of the main lessons of the war on terror is that without legal consequence for one era’s atrocity, the next is foreordained.

So until ICE killers and CBP kidnappers alike go to prison, we can expect them to continue their behavior. This is why JD Vance and Stephen Miller have started deceitfully talking about absolute immunity for ICE after they killed Renee Good.

“Until ICE killers and CBP kidnappers alike go to prison, we can expect them to continue their behavior.”

Krasner has been hinting that there is a kind of impromptu coalition of like-minded district attorneys and perhaps state attorneys general that are seeking to go in this direction. That will either act as a deterrent, or it won’t. Here in New York, the attorney general, Letitia James, announced that she’s going to start sending observers from her office out on ICE-related operations in and around the state. That carries with it a suggestion of prosecutorial intervention. I think that’s going to be a crucial step. But it’s a step that is going to have to come in supplement, with people finding political outlets for an explosion in popularity — justifiably so, in my opinion — for abolishing ICE.

We can’t move in reformist directions when the thing talked about being reformed laughs at killing Americans. This is something that has to be uprooted and replaced, or just simply not replaced at all, if we don’t think certain functions that they perform are legitimate functions, which I think is a very, you know, reasonable conclusion. Reformist politics under two Democratic administrations got us to where we are now. These are accommodationist politics, and the thing being accommodated wants to kill you.

JU: My final question for you, Spencer, is where does this go over the next three years if nothing happens? If there is no restraint, if there is no change, if there is no reform. That is certainly an uphill fight. Nothing could potentially happen until at least after midterms, but we’ve seen Trump’s priorities laid out in places like Project 2025, and I can’t imagine this is their end game. So if left untouched, where does this go over the next three years?

SA: We’ve been seeing reporting from Ken Klippenstein and others about how ICE is accessing existing, widely revealing, databases of Americans’ information, building others. We saw in the beginning of the Trump administration, the massive data-snatching grabs involving DOGE that have also accumulated a tremendous amount of revealing information on Americans. This is also, I would suggest, the predictable course of the surveillance state after 9/11. These massive and revealing data sets will go into ICE custody, probably through tools purchased from Palantir, to get an ever more refined picture of terrorism in the United States. Except by terrorism, they mean you and me. They will mean people that they can consider internal dissenters, critics, obstacles to the continued operations of ICE, and like-minded allied federal agencies.

“It might not be long before we see a drone strike in an American city. And I can’t stop thinking about that.”

This, I think, is probably coming sooner than three years. Not to sound alarmist, but the current trajectory of this is really, really ominous. And that is an extremely realistic possibility. Your friend and mine, Derek Davison of the American Prestige podcast a couple months ago, was predicting that it might not be long before we see a drone strike in an American city. And I can’t stop thinking about that. And I wish I could say I found that an outlandish possibility. But the crucial framework for that was laid when the Obama administration decided that they could execute an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, without any kind of criminal process, let alone a conviction, because it would be too inconvenient to send a team of CIA operatives to kidnap him.

It won’t be long, I think — as long as that Chekov’s president remains blessed by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice — before we start seeing that applied on American soil. And those are some places that I think are realistic possibilities for what we might see unless this apparatus is aggressively dismantled.

JU: That is absolutely chilling. And in some way, I’m at a loss for words, just something that I never thought we might encounter. But that is a situation we seem to be finding ourselves in. Spencer, as always, I appreciate your insight, your analysis, and thank you so much for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.

SA: Thank you, Jordan.

JU: That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Andrew Stelzer. Laura Flynn is our supervising producer. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jordan Uhl.

The post “Terrorist”: How ICE Weaponized 9/11’s Scarlet Letter appeared first on The Intercept.

Even the Top Prosecutor in Minneapolis Doesn’t Know the Identity of the Agents Who Killed Alex Pretti

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000

In the two months Minnesota has been under siege by federal agents, immigration officers have shot and killed two U.S. citizens, poet and artist Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti. Local and state law enforcement say they’ve been blocked from properly investigating the shootings of Good and Pretti.

“The federal government has blocked our state BCA, so that’s the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They are the state law enforcement agency that has authority to investigate any kind of deadly use of force involving police,” says Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who is leading local investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti.

“We’ve not gotten anything from the federal government,” Moriarty says. “To tell you how odd this situation is, we are getting our information from the media … we are not getting that from the federal government.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Moriarty, whose office has jurisdiction over both killings. Moriarty says federal agents have blocked local and state law enforcement from properly investigating the killings. Even Moriarty, the top prosecutor in Minneapolis, does not know the identity of the agents who killed Pretti.

In response, Moriarty says, “We set up a portal and asked the community to send any kind of videos or any other kind of evidence so that we could collect absolutely everything that we possibly could.” The BCA, she says, was even “blocked physically, actually, by federal agents from processing the scene where Alex Pretti was shot.”

Meanwhile, attacks by the administration on Minnesota’s Somali citizens persist. At her first town hall of the year in Minneapolis, an attendee sprayed Rep. Ilhan Omar with an unidentified substance on Tuesday. Trump has backtracked on some of his bluster and removed Border Patrol Gregory Bovino from Minnesota, replacing him with border czar Tom Homan.

None of that has changed things on the ground yet in Minneapolis, says Moriarty. “Minnesotans care about their neighbors. They’re delivering meals to people. They are there and they do not approve of the fact that their federal government is attacking them and their neighbors.

“We hear a lot of people talking to us about how they understand the threat from the administration or from DHS on their neighbors and on their communities, and it’s really much more rooted in an understanding that they think their freedoms are under threat, even if they are not an immigrant or even if they don’t really have deep ties to immigrant communities, that this really matters to them and it really bothers them,” says Jill Garvey, co-director of States at the Core, an organization that leads and runs ICE Watch training programs. “So we hear a lot from folks who just haven’t been engaged previously. But this for all those reasons is enough for them to step up.”

Garvey says her organization is training community members in how to properly document ICE. “We also know that we can’t stop all this aggression,” Garvey says. “The aggression is the point of these operations. So we can’t guarantee that people aren’t going to be targeted with violent actions from federal law enforcement. What we can say is, if you’re doing this in community, other people are going to be watching.”

Garvey says the administration’s claims that paid agitators are fueling protests around the country is a baseless attempt to save face as public opinion turns against it.

“It’s just another part of the propaganda machine. They need an explanation for why they’re losing. … This is a very basic training that we’re providing and that most other people are providing to folks rooted in how to be a good neighbor, frankly. How to assert your rights, how to protect your neighbor’s rights,” says Garvey.

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy.

Federal agents have shot three people in Minnesota, killing two U.S. citizens, since they descended on the state in December as part of President Donald Trump’s massive surge in efforts to hunt down immigrants.

Kristi Noem: Let me deliver a message from President Trump to the world. If you are considering entering America illegally, don’t even think about it. Let me be clear: If you come to our country and you break our laws, we will hunt you down.

AL: The administration quickly tried to paint poet and artist Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti — the two people killed by ICE and Border Patrol Agents this month in Minneapolis — as “domestic terrorists.”

KN: If you look at what the definition of “domestic terrorism” is, it completely fits this situation on the ground. This individual, as you saw in the video that we released just 48 hours after this incident, showed that this officer was hit by her vehicle, she weaponized it …

Reporter: The White House has labeled the man who was killed in Minnesota a “domestic terrorist.” Is that something you agree with? And have you seen any evidence?

KN: When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of “domestic terrorism.”

Gregory Bovino: This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

AL: But video evidence circulating online and digital investigations from various news outlets flatly refuted those claims. After massive outrage from the public and even some of Trump’s Republican colleagues — several of whom are now joining Democratic calls for him to fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — Trump has, as of Monday, appeared to backtrack on some of his bluster.

After having attacked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz publicly and blaming him and other Democrats for the killing of Pretti, Trump spoke by phone with Walz and said they “seemed to be on a similar wavelength.” For his part, Walz said Trump had agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota.

By Tuesday, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and several agents were set to leave the state. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, is expected to take over. The two agents who fired at Pretti — whose identities are still not public — have been placed on administrative leave as of Wednesday.

Meanwhile, local and state law enforcement have accused federal agents of stymying investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti, and have sued to stop the feds from destroying evidence in both cases. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, who oversees criminal cases in Minneapolis and has come under attack from Trump’s Department of Justice, has called Trump’s decision not to conduct a federal investigation into the killing of Renee Good “incomprehensible.” Moriarty’s office has jurisdiction to investigate both killings.

Now, we’re joined by Minneapolis’s chief prosecutor, who’s part of the team of state and local officials investigating the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Welcome to the show, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.

Mary Moriarty: Thank you so much.

AL: We’re speaking on Wednesday morning, and your office just held a press conference announcing the formation of the “Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach.” Can you tell us about what the aims of this group are? Who’s in it?

MM: It was formed to support prosecutors around the country with resources and just a collaboration should the federal government come into their cities or their jurisdictions, because these issues can be complicated and sometimes resources are scarce and it’s helpful to have the support of other people around the country.

The other goal, I think, is to really assure the public. One of the things that we’ve seen here in Minneapolis, and in Hennepin County and in Minnesota, is that people are seeing federal agents engage in behavior which seems unlawful or at least inappropriate, and they aren’t seeing any consequences or accountability.

I have tried to make it very clear that as Hennepin County attorney — and by the way, that’s Minneapolis and its many suburbs — that our office does have jurisdiction over shootings, any kind of homicide that happens in Hennepin County. It does not matter where you work, if it’s federal government or not. We do have jurisdiction.

There are some more complicated issues involving potential federal defenses, but those are something we would face in court. And so I think it’s helpful for us as prosecutors to be collaborating across the country to ensure our communities that we will stand up and we will hold people accountable should they engage in unlawful behavior in our cities.

AL: In that vein, can you tell us about the investigations you’re conducting into the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti?

MM: So, as you know, and as I think the country probably knows, the federal government has blocked our state BCA, so that’s the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They are the state law enforcement agency that has authority to investigate any kind of deadly use of force involving police. Now their authority is statutory for Minnesota Peace Officers, but they still have the expertise. This is all they do.

And I had talked to the FBI, I had talked to the U.S. attorney, I had talked to the head of the BCA when Renee Good was killed. And we all had an agreement — which was unsurprising because all of us work well together — that there would be a joint investigation into the shooting and killing of Renee Good. And then suddenly, the BCA got kicked out. We were told that came from Washington, the administration, essentially. And so we were determined to do as much investigation as we could in conjunction with the BCA.

We set up a portal and asked the community to send any kind of videos or any other kind of evidence so that we could collect absolutely everything that we possibly could. And the whole goal is to try to collect enough evidence to make a decision about whether charges are appropriate or not. And we are actually doing the same thing in the shooting of Alex Pretti; the BCA is conducting an investigation there. They were also blocked physically, actually, by federal agents from processing the scene where Alex Pretti was shot.

That actually led us to get a search warrant. The BCA drafted a search warrant. We made sure a judge was available. And so a judge signed a search warrant, and federal agents would not allow access to the scene even with that. And so that is why we filed the lawsuit in federal court Saturday. And we asked also for a temporary restraining order to force the government to preserve and not alter any of the evidence in that case. Later Saturday evening that was granted by a federal judge. And then there was a hearing two days later on Monday for the judge to hear from both parties to decide whether that TRO should be permanent — and we’re waiting to hear the judge’s ruling on that.

AL: So your office and the BCA sued the Department of Homeland Security, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel. It’s my understanding that in this hearing that you’re talking about, the judge didn’t issue an immediate decision, but it’s still ongoing and you have this temporary restraining order to provide access to evidence. Have you been able to access it?

MM: No. So actually the temporary restraining order was actually just to force the federal government to preserve and not alter.

AL: Mmm, OK.

MM: We’re not at the point of getting access or asking the court for access yet. It was because they were, like I said, physically preventing the BCA from processing the scene.

I have heard various officials in the administration make the claim that it was actually the public that prevented the BCA from entering the scene. I don’t know if that’s a lie, or they just don’t know what they’re talking about, but we had a prosecutor there. I was in contact with the BCA. I was watching livestream video, and you could see federal agents standing about 2 feet apart with large batons. And so there’s absolutely no way the community prevented the BCA from getting there.

But because they went to such great lengths to block the BCA from trying to just do what they normally do — what their job is — and because of hearing very plainly that the administration has no intent to investigate the shooting of Renee Good — in fact, bizarrely, they were going to investigate her and her widow —we are taking this step by step. And so the first step was to ask a court to order the federal government to preserve that evidence and not alter it in any way.

AL: You’ve said that you have substantial evidence to consider charges in the case. Are you going to charge the officers in — I’m talking about both cases — in Good’s case and in —?

MM: My goal was to collect as much evidence as we possibly could and then make a decision about whether charges are appropriate or not. I’m not going to say what we’re going to do or promise that we are going to do it because it really is important to gather as much evidence as we can.

We still don’t have the autopsy results in either case. That’s not unusual because the medical examiner does not issue preliminary results. They’re very cautious; they do a bunch of testing. I understand what it’s going to say in the Renee Good case, and I know that the family has released the results of an independent autopsy.

But I think both autopsies will be very important evidence — maybe even more than, say, in most cases, we would want the gun, we would want the shell casings, we want the car in the Renee Good case. But we get cases submitted to us every day that don’t have all of the evidence that we would want. That’s just not how things work. And so the goal is to get as much as we can and to get to a point where we feel like, OK, we’ve got enough here to make a decision.

“BCA, when they complete an investigation and once the case is closed, whatever that looks like, they post the investigation on their website.”

The important thing, I think, for the public here and across the country is that the BCA, when they complete an investigation and once the case is closed, whatever that looks like, they post the investigation on their website. Anybody can take a look at it. And our goal, also, is very complete transparency. We make a decision, and we explain to people what evidence we were relying on, and I think that’s the only way people have trust in their government — the only way they can have trust in their government if they can actually see what the evidence said and understand why a decision is made.

So that’s really important. We have not made a decision about whether charges are appropriate, but I do believe, and my statement was that we are going to get enough evidence to be able to make those decisions.

AL: On Tuesday, Customs and Border [Protection] notified Congress that two agents fired their guns during the killing of Pretti. Was your office aware of that prior to that statutory? This was like a statutory notification that The Associated Press obtained and reported.

MM: Yes. We’ve got videos, many different videos, and we’ve looked, we’ve synced them. We’ve looked at it from many different ways, and it certainly appeared that way.

But one interesting thing is, we’ve not gotten anything from the federal government. So I was asked recently about “Have we received the body cam from the federal agents?” Well, I have no official notification that the federal agents were wearing body cam. So, I mean, to tell you how odd this situation is: We are getting our information from the media or from that report; we are not getting that from the federal government.

AL: Similarly, there’s been some discussion around figuring out the identity of the officers who shot Alex Pretti. I’m assuming that your office is aware of the identity of these officers?

MM: No — they haven’t shared that with us. And so this is a question that people have asked me that I think people probably have interest in. They’ll say, “Why don’t you just subpoena records? Why don’t you just subpoena the identities?” that kind of thing.

If this was state, if we were trying to seek information from a state agency or records or something like that, it would be very straightforward. We could subpoena it. There’s a body of law by the U.S. Supreme Court that if you are seeking information from a federal agency, you can’t just issue a subpoena. You have to make the case — and to bore everybody to tears or to get into the weeds, it’s called —

AL: Please do.

MM: TOUHY, T-O-U-H-Y. It outlines a process that you have to go through to ask for information. So it doesn’t mean you’re actually going to get it. So we’re taking this step by step.

We’ve gotten very well versed in the federal law. And so we’re just making sure that we are doing all the things that we need to do, trying to collect all the evidence we need to collect. But no, we do not know the identification of the people who shot Alex Pretti.

AL: I also just want to mention for our listeners that with the law enforcement killings of Good and Pretti, nine people have died so far this year — either ICE shot them, or in Pretti’s case Border Patrol, or they died in ICE custody.

MM: The BCA is actually doing another use-of-force investigation because a man was shot in the leg on January 14; he fortunately survived. But that is another shooting, and that is a third investigation that the BCA is doing, and I expect they’ll submit their investigation to us for consideration of charges as well.

AL: Has there been the same sort of efforts by fed federal agents to stymie that investigation or has that been an easier —?

MM: Yes. No, same lack of cooperation or response. And the BCA had the same problem with that scene too. So it’s been very consistent, non-cooperation, and I won’t even say non-cooperation, but just blocking every attempt by the BCA to do what they’re supposed to do by law and what is best practices.

AL: There was a story that I saw in Slate that mentioned that observers on the scene — after BCA had been blocked from the Pretti shooting scene — that they saw the federal agents leave. And you’ve mentioned like they’re not investigating it, so I don’t know why they would stick around, but that was just shocking to me that they were, and if that’s accurate, that they were blocking — not shocking, but adding to the things that are frustrating about this, that they’re blocking and then they’re leaving the scene so that they’re not preserving it.

MM: Correct. People may have seen videos of people with BCA written on their jackets. They did go out there when they had the opportunity, and they did do as much as they could. But of course the best practice would be that you arrive at the scene as soon as — or shortly after it happens, and process everything there before people have gotten into the scene.

AL: Right. On Tuesday night, also in Minneapolis, someone sprayed an unidentified substance on Rep. Ilhan Omar during her first town hall of the year. What can you tell us about that incident, and is your office investigating it?

MM: So the Minneapolis Police Department is investigating it. It will be submitted to our office, I anticipate. The man who was seen on video doing that is in jail. We do have a period of time to make a decision and look at all the evidence, and I think MPD is still doing the investigation. So I think we have probably until later today or tomorrow to make a decision about whether charges are appropriate.

And I should say: Our office prosecutes felonies in Hennepin County. (We do all youth, so juvenile, so it can be a misdemeanor, low-level crime.) If something is a misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor, a lower level crime, that is charged in the particular city where it happened. So we would be reviewing for potential felony charges.

AL: The entire premise of these raids and Trump’s attacks on Minneapolis in particular is to go after Somali immigrants, and much of that rhetoric has been directed at Somali residents in Minneapolis, including Omar herself. I wonder if you can talk about how that political rhetoric is fueling violence and the consequences here?

MM: It is. We have a very vibrant immigrant community. Many immigrants from many countries are here, including our Somali neighbors. They are mostly peaceful, just like other immigrants.

Before all of this started, before they took down these numbers from their website, the federal government had numbers that showed that American-born citizens committed crimes at a higher rate than immigrants.

To be clear, as the prosecutor for all of Hennepin County here, first of all, there was no influx of immigrants that were coming here to commit violent crime. In fact, violent crime has gone down here. And that’s not because of ICE’s presence — that was going down, as it is around the country. So there’s no justification for ICE to be here because we have “violent crime.”

And the whole idea — at least what they claim, what they say it is — it’s about fraud. Well, this is not how you investigate fraud. Investigating fraud involves looking, I’m dating myself, I always want to say bankers boxes of documents but —

AL: I know what that is. [Laughs]

MM: It’s really meticulous! It’s really painstaking and tedious, and you have to look through records. It isn’t snatching people off the street. So this has nothing to do with our immigrant community, and it has done tremendous damage. When you target a particular community and make ridiculous claims about what they’re doing, that can and has led to violence here against Somali neighbors.

And so it’s very damaging, and Ilhan is my representative. She has been, I think, the recipient of the worst, just terrible rhetoric, violent by the president on down. And it’s just, especially after what happened to [Minnesota state Rep.] Melissa Hortman and her husband who were assassinated, and another legislator was shot along with his family — there are consequences for the things that people say.

There are people out there that are really struggling with mental health. We in fact have set up, and we partner with other agencies, to do threat assessments when we get people who are making threats against electeds. And a lot of these people are struggling with mental health. Some of them aren’t; some of them are radicalized, and they get the idea in their head that doing something to someone is somehow a good idea. And so there are consequences for words.

And it’s been devastating for our Somali community to have all of this hatred directed at them. And, Ilhan, I see her at events. We’re at the same events. She’s the last one there talking to her constituents. She has more public town halls than anyone I’ve ever seen. She has more public town halls than anyone in the state. She’s courageous to show up. She’s always there to talk to her constituents, and obviously what happened last night is extremely alarming. I’m grateful that she is OK. And we have, I think, reports that the substance was not toxic. So that’s good.

But the violent rhetoric, the lies, I would say, just has to stop. I know it isn’t going to, but I want people to know it has consequences and sometimes those are very violent consequences.

AL: Thank you also for mentioning the assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman.

I also want to mention this is — aside from the political violence that we’re talking about — that shooting was carried out by someone who was posing as a police officer, in the midst of this situation where as Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a recent interview, local law enforcement are being overwhelmed by thousands of these immigration agents who are not clearly identified. They’re not wearing badges, and people don’t know who they are. And so that contributes to the sense of not knowing who is protecting you, right?

MM: Yes. It’s frightening. And there, I think, will be legislation in our session, which starts next month about creating greater laws to penalize people who impersonate police officers.

It is frightening. All of the ICE presence, most of them are masked. And so do you know who this person is when they’re giving you commands? It’s hard to describe how frightening it is here, how much this dominates everybody’s existence right now.

I know of no parent who hasn’t had to have some kind of conversation with their child — and I’m talking about 4, 5, 6, and older — because that child is frightened that ICE is going to hurt them or hurt their family or hurt their classmate. ICE is sending brochures into schools promising families that are having food security problems access to food. They’re doing that in schools.

And we’ve all seen the videos of the Hmong gentlemen, elder gentlemen. And by the way, the Hmong — I think we have the second highest population of Hmong in the country — but for those who don’t know, they fought for the United States in the war in Laos. And so they are here because they were going to be killed and persecuted in Laos. So they helped us, they’re here.

And yet we have situations where we had this Hmong elderly gentleman who was marched out of his house. And just noticing it’s 5 degrees here today. 5. And that’s been the consistent temperature in January. So they marched this gentleman out in his boxers and Crocs, and his family was able to throw a blanket around his shoulders.

They drove him around for an hour and evidently dropped him back off. He is a citizen. And he has no record. They mistook him for somebody who’s actually in one of our prisons, and the prison had notified ICE that the man was in prison.

And we all have seen the boy, the precious boy, with the bunny hat. His father was here seeking asylum. And so he jumped through all of the legal hoops that he was supposed to, relying on our government, doing what he was supposed to do. Then they swoop in, and they snatch his 5-year-old boy and him. And I think they sent them to Texas.

“They use this word like, ‘detain,’ which sounds pretty antiseptic, right? We’re talking about a cage. We’re talking about a jail, a prison.”

And they use this word like, “detain,” which sounds pretty antiseptic, right? We’re talking about a cage. We’re talking about a jail, a prison — for a 5-year-old child. And to have the administration say, “Well, he is in better hands.” And who would want their 5-year-old child in the hands of ICE and then in a cage or a jail?

And we’ve seen these incidents over and over where I don’t know if you saw the video that came out recently. This was actually after there were some hopes here, I guess, that the ICE presence would diminish. But that same day we see videos of an ICE agent saying to somebody, “If you raise your voice, I will erase your voice.”

Unknown agent: I will tell you this, brother,

Unknown man: What?

Unknown agent: I will tell you this: You raise your voice, I will erase your voice.

Unknown man: If I raise my voice, you’ll erase my voice?

Unknown agent: Exactly.

Unknown man: Are you serious? You said, if I raise my voice, you’ll erase my voice?

Unknown agent: Yeah.

MM: We saw another video that same day of a woman sobbing, and she has a small child in her arms, because ICE is hauling away someone in her family. We see these, and it’s like the administration says, don’t believe your eyes.

But everybody can see the videos here, and we can see what’s going on. And this isn’t about public safety. And I could go on and on about how what’s happening is really preventing our office from prosecuting people. But I’ll stop.

AL: No, actually, I’m curious what you have to say about how this is stymieing being able to actually investigate things. But secondarily, is law enforcement and your office equipped to handle these forms of violence fueled by political rhetoric, especially when it’s coming straight from the top?

MM: You know, for our office, we’re reactive in many ways, right?

AL: Yeah.

MM: We try to be proactive in prevention, but that’s very difficult here. And so we are often reactive. I think, I have reflected a lot on the role of local law enforcement here. I’ve had conversations — we have something like 38 different jurisdictions here in Hennepin County, and I have talked to them. I’ve sent them an email. And I’ve made it clear to them that they do have jurisdiction to do investigations just like they normally would, and they should submit potential cases to us. And some of the things I hear are, “What about sovereign immunity?” and that kind of thing. And we have said repeatedly, “That’s legal stuff. Let us deal with that.”

But I’ll just say that we haven’t had a single case referred to us by local law enforcement this entire time. And I think that there’s a role there — and I acknowledge that we’re in unprecedented times — but that, I think, there’s a role that local law enforcement should be playing here.

I know there have been discussions about, well, we don’t want to get into it with federal law enforcement. And at the same time I’m listening to the interview that’s come out of the woman — people are calling her the woman in the pink coat — who is videotaping what happened to Alex Pretti, and she’s talking about how frightened she was, how frightened everybody is, but they feel compelled to bear witness and be there.

And so I have tried to challenge our local law enforcement: You know, you’re here to protect and serve. Sometimes they’ve said, well, we don’t want to be political. And I’ve said, this isn’t about politics. You can think it’s a good thing that ICE is here. What we’re talking about is if members of your community are being — if excessive use of force is being inflicted upon them, what are you going to do? Are you going to investigate?

And sure, blockades there, you may not know who the agent is. And I’ve also heard fear on the part of police that they may get arrested for obstruction or worse. But I think we’re at the point where they need to make some decisions: Are they here to protect and serve the community? And that means their community members. Even if that means intervening when they see ICE engaging in unlawful behavior and doing investigations and submitting cases to us.

I can’t help but think having been living with this since the federal agents have been here, if they thought there would be accountability, if that would end some of the behavior, if that would deter some of the behavior, because I know the administration has said, “You have absolute immunity. Nobody can do anything to you.” And that is simply not the case.

But we haven’t gotten to the point where there has been accountability for any of the behavior that we’ve seen. And I continue to encourage local law enforcement to intervene, to investigate, to send us cases, even if they’re not sure what it is. But to this point, we haven’t received a case.

[Break]

AL: There is a dynamic here that I want to touch on and that I’ve covered, with respect to your office, which is that both local and federal law enforcement and Republican officials have targeted you throughout your time in office, in part for your reform policies, but also in response to you charging a police officer in 2024 for killing a driver, Ricky Cobb II. How is that playing out here? Is that dynamic generally? Is that affecting any of the efforts on behalf of your office or these other Minnesota law enforcement agencies to respond to these two killings?

MM: No, it isn’t, and I think I will have plenty to say about the way I would say Renee Good and Ricky Cobb situations have been approached by many — very differently at some point — perhaps when I’m out of office.

And I said this when I campaigned and I’m very proud of this: I have not let politics enter into any of our decisions. We charged the officer who shot and killed Ricky Cobb because we very much believed we had a case — a good case — and we knew it would be difficult, but we thought it was appropriate to attempt to hold the state trooper accountable.

There were a lot of politics involved there. But ultimately, we ended up dismissing. And I know sometimes it’s reported that I got pressure from the governor. We dismissed it because it was the ethical thing to do. Certainly the governor at some point was threatening — was, I guess, going to take it away from us, I can only guess for the purpose of dismissing it.

But I’m pretty immune to political pressure because I very much believe — I fundamentally believe — that a person in this situation, when we’re talking about prosecution and justice, I mean, we do things that matter, that matter to people’s lives. That goes for law enforcement and community members. And I think it’s extremely important that we not be swayed by politics, that we do the best we can and we make the right decision. And I continue to believe that we made the right decision in charging the trooper, [Ryan] Londregan, in Ricky Cobb’s death. We made the right decision to dismiss it when there were many complications with the lack of cooperation by law enforcement in that case.

And we are going to do the right thing in this case. We’re collecting all of the evidence so we can make sure we’re making a decision with as much as we can possibly get, and then we will sit down and see, is it appropriate to charge or not?

AL: Speaking of politics, getting involved in things — the Department of Justice is also investigating your office. My understanding is that there are multiple probes going on, one of which is unrelated to ICE, but related to your office’s policies to address racial disparities in charging. The other came as a result of your role in the Good and Pretti cases. Can you walk us through that?

MM: Sure. I’ll talk about the subpoenas because there’s been a lot on those. That subpoena actually was not served on me. It was served on Hennepin County. As the county attorney, we have a civil division here as well as a criminal division. Our civil division represents Hennepin County.

So we advise, my office advises the county on that subpoena. I don’t even think it was necessarily the people that got subpoenaed, but they were — I’ve seen some of the other subpoenas — they’re looking for records about immigration. But I view those efforts as just being attempts at intimidation.

What I’ll say about that is, I was actually in a meeting about the Renee Good case, when suddenly I was inundated with texts from reporters asking me about being subpoenaed, and I had no idea what they were talking about. So it seemed that the administration was leaking that I personally had been subpoenaed.

“That’s, I think, another intimidation tactic. You can’t even be honest about what you’re actually doing.”

And then we found out I actually wasn’t. It was Hennepin County, and my office does represent Hennepin County. But that’s, I think, another intimidation tactic. You can’t even be honest about what you’re actually doing.

And why on earth would you be claiming that you’re subpoenaing me and the attorney general and others when we are investigating this case, or we were, just that case at the time. So I think it’s pretty clear that it’s politically motivated. I also learned about the DOJ investigation via Twitter. I guess I’ll still call it Twitter.

AL: I do, too. [Laughs]

MM: And that’s ongoing. I can’t talk about that, but yeah, Minnesota has been under constant attack by this administration. That’s been clear for quite some time.

AL: After a call with Trump on Monday, Governor Tim Walz said Trump “agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals.” I want to ask you, what does a more coordinated fashion look like given that per Minnesota officials, they’ve already been doing their statutory requirements as far as transferring legitimate cases to immigration?

MM: Well, first of all, I don’t believe anything until I see it with my own eyes. And the same day that happened, or the day after that happened, we saw this ICE agent telling somebody, if they raise their voice, he will erase their voice.

So we’ve seen no change here on the ground. So immigration, as you know, is civil. The law does not require the state to participate in federal civil enforcement. But that’s what this administration wants.

Now, there are good reasons not to do that. And you’ll hear a lot of law enforcement talk about how what a bad idea it is for local law enforcement to be participating in civil enforcement of immigration law because that means that victims of crime — who are often immigrants because they get targeted — will never call you, will never call the police. They won’t be witnesses for our cases. If they’re domestic violence victims, they won’t call. So there are very good policy reasons and practical reasons — you want trust in the community for local law enforcement to not participate in something you are not, you don’t have to participate in, because it’s civil.

And Minnesota has, as you said, has been doing its statutory responsibility, but they want more than that. And this continual refrain of violent criminals is ridiculous. If an immigrant commits a crime, if law enforcement brings us a case, they’re held accountable. And then typically what’s happened is that ICE decides, if they go to prison, do they want to deport them after that. That’s the way it’s always worked. It’s not been a problem here.

Like, how is this about violent criminals when — and I haven’t looked at this for a while, but at one point, given the administration’s own numbers — over half of the people that they have detained have no criminal record. It’s not about violent criminals. So it seems as though the administration wants information that legally the state is not required to give. And if handing that information over actually hurts public safety, so I don’t see, hopefully, the state switching positions on that.

It always has been a political question, but I think the question is, is it starting to look so bad for Republicans in this administration that for political reasons, they’ll stop doing this or withdraw? I think that’s what it comes down to. I mean, I thought I heard Trump saying in Iowa that this is just bad for us, not for him.

Every day we hear something new. And so as I said, and I think Minnesotans believe this too: We will believe it when we see it here on the ground.

AL: I’ll just mention, what the administration wants local police to do in terms of doing immigration enforcement is part of this massive increase in 287g agreements that the administration has been signing with local police departments and state departments around the country.

Minnesota has eight of them, none of which are in Hennepin County. But I read into that statement that they would be potentially trying to push more of those agreements. I don’t know if you’re hearing anything to that effect.

MM: I think they have. I cannot remember what community it was in, but they were trying to push some kind of facility on a community. And community members showed up and said no. And I think it’s very unlikely that community here in Minnesota, after what they’ve seen, would voluntarily want to do that anyway. The reason I think communities do that, or different counties do it, is to raise money. They get money from ICE by housing people.

And so that’s not something that Hennepin County is ever going to do. And I’m sure it’s not something other counties are going to do, but they do need places to house all of these people they are picking up, even though they have no records.

And I should tell people too, we have restaurants closing because there’s no one to work there. We have abandoned cars that are still going in the middle of the street because somebody’s been dragged out of it and taken away. This has been devastating to the community. And at the same time, Minnesotans know how to protect one another. That is why they’re showing up in droves.

That is why they showed up on the Friday with the march. I’ve heard everything from upward of 15,000 to 50,000 people showed up. I think that day was below zero. The temperature was below zero. Minnesotans care about their neighbors. They’re delivering meals to people. They are there and they do not approve of the fact that their federal government is attacking them and their neighbors. And they are resisting in pretty remarkable but probably not surprising ways.

AL: We’re going to leave it there. Thank you for joining me on the Intercept Briefing, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty,

MM: Of course.

AL: This was a great conversation. Really appreciate your time.

MM: Thank you.

AL: All eyes are on Minnesota. But ICE is continuing to sweep cities around the country, expanding its efforts most recently in Maine. Elected officials are warning that however the courts respond to what they describe as extreme and dangerous federal overreach in Minnesota could portend what’s next for other cities. In a letter supporting the lawsuit brought by Minnesota officials including Moriarty, who we just heard from, against DHS, 20 attorneys general wrote: “If left unchecked, the federal government will no doubt be emboldened to continue its unlawful conduct in Minnesota and to repeat it elsewhere.”

Next, we’ll hear from someone who has been preparing communities for just that. Jill Garvey is the executive director of States at the Core, an organization that leads and runs ICE Watch training programs. Welcome to the show, Jill.

Jill Garvey: Thanks for having me.

AL: Over the last few weeks, concerns about safety have hit a high point after immigration agents killed observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. How are you talking to people about being safe when observing and documenting agents activities, particularly when law enforcement is blatantly breaking the law?

JG: When we talk to people and we train people to be observers or to document what’s happening in their communities, we really focus on three things. One is documentation, how important it is to have as much footage as possible, as much evidence as possible about what is happening, but to do it as safely as possible.

So it’s a core piece of the training that thousands of people are getting right now and are joining, essentially. We find thousands of people from all over the country every week are doing what we call ICE Watch training or documentation training. What we find is that people are scared for their safety, but that they are resolved to do this anyway.

And so we talk a lot about maintaining a safe distance, maintaining nonviolence, not interfering, not getting between an agent and their target — because that’s not just dangerous for the observer, but it’s dangerous for the people directly being targeted and other potential vulnerable people in the area.

But we also talk about doing this in community. The beating heart of what we are seeing happen in cities and people getting prepared is their sense of community. So this isn’t an individual activity. If you do it together, you are much safer and it is much more effective.

“This isn’t an individual activity. If you do it together, you are much safer and it is much more effective.”

AL: And the idea being that if you’re in community that disincentivizes agents from retaliating? Or can you tell us more about how that strengthens?

JG: I think it’s a few things. One is the more people, the more eyes on the scene, whatever the operation or activity is, the more people watching, the less likely that there will be an escalation of violence. What we see most of the time is that ICE agents or Border Patrol agents don’t want to be filmed. They don’t want to be documented, and they certainly don’t want a crowd of people watching them even from a safe distance.

A lot of the footage that people around the country have seen have been these sort of violent confrontations or clashes in certain cities, and so those do develop, but it is typically after ICE agents have already escalated some aggression against a community member.

Maybe they are targeting children for arrest or detention. Maybe they are smashing somebody’s window and trying to take them out of a vehicle. More often than not, having more people on the scene means that ICE agents pull out of that neighborhood and try to find a place that is quieter.

“The more people watching, the less likely that there will be an escalation of violence.”

We also know that we can’t stop all this aggression. The aggression is the point of these operations. So we can’t guarantee that people aren’t going to be targeted with violent actions from federal law enforcement. What we can say is, if you’re doing this in community, other people are going to be watching.

We wouldn’t know what really happened to Renee, we wouldn’t really know what happened to Alex Pretti if their neighbors hadn’t been bravely recording these incidences all the way through.

AL: And you’re talking about documentation, it sounds like mostly video recording, audio recording. Are there other forms of documentation that you’re training people on, or can you tell us more about exactly how people are documenting these instances?

JG: Primarily it is video documentation with their phones. One thing that we talk about that I think is a surprise to people is how much we want them to narrate or create some audio documentation while they are using video. So what we find in this new wave of ICE enforcement and it being documented by residents, is that people are often taking videos, or at least a couple months ago in Chicago and some other cities — people were taking videos, and it was really hard to tell what was going on just from the visual. So increasingly people are learning that they take the videos, but they also calmly narrate everything that they’re seeing just in case, their hands are shaking and the camera’s kind of migrating over here, but they’re seeing something really important, right?

So that audio, that eyewitness accounting of what is happening is also really important.

AL: Can you tell us what you’ve learned from the people in the communities participating in these trainings?

JG: So I think what I’ve learned is that this is a multigenerational pretty broad spectrum of people who are getting engaged and going out there and doing this. So we’re hearing from people who are young, we’re hearing from people who are old. We have people who join our trainings who say, “I’m 83. How do I do this safely and effectively?” We hear from a lot of people in rural and more remote areas and we hear from people who have not previously been involved in any sort of protest or political activity.

The reason they’re coming to these trainings and the reason they’re going out with their cellphones and whistles in some places is because they’re having some, I think, base reaction that is transcending typical politics to what they’re seeing and what they understand the threat is.

We hear a lot of people talking to us about how they understand the threat from the administration or from DHS on their neighbors and on their communities. And it’s really much more rooted in an understanding that they think their freedoms are under threat, even if they are not an immigrant or even if they don’t really have deep ties to immigrant communities, that this really matters to them and it really bothers them. So we hear a lot from folks who just haven’t been engaged previously. But this for all those reasons is enough for them to step up.

AL: On the right, some people, including the administration, claim that the individuals and the communities participating in these kinds of activities and protests are — they accuse them of being paid agitators or astro-turf groups. What do you say to that?

JG: I think the numbers don’t really support that. The numbers don’t lie. Even if you look at the footage, at the number of neighbors, residents who come out of their homes prepared to document what they’re seeing in lots of places, Charlotte, North Carolina; Columbus, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; New Orleans; Chicago; LA; D.C. It’s not possible that there’s that many paid agitators.

I also think it’s just another part of the propaganda machine, right? They need an explanation for why they’re losing. And they need an explanation to pull people off the the sense that “Hey, this isn’t really about immigration. This is about authoritarian overreach. This is about militarizing certain cities that are political opponents or where democracy thrives.”

It’s a weak argument that there’s some major sophistication happening behind the scenes. I assure you there is not.

AL: [Laughs]

JG: [Laughs] This is a very basic training that we’re providing and that most other people are providing to folks rooted in how to be a good neighbor, frankly. How to assert your rights, how to protect your neighbor’s rights. So I think it’s a little bit laughable. I also think it’s a little bit desperate.

AL: Speaking of authoritarian overreach, Trump invoked the Insurrection Act once again after an ICE officer killed Renee Good. What would happen if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act yet again? Would your advice change? If so, how are you all talking about this?

JG: I don’t think our advice really changes other than for those people who live in places where the Insurrection Act could be invoked, understanding what that actually means. This is a pretty vague thing to invoke, or to enact, activate. So I do think it’s people really understanding what it means. Does it mean that local law enforcement, local governance is disempowered in some ways? Yes, and that should be a concern for folks. But it doesn’t strip you of your rights. Doesn’t strip you of your First Amendment rights or your Fourth Amendment rights.

AL: Were you doing these trainings prior to January of 2025, and what the timeline is there?

JG: So my organization, in partnership with some community defense networks in Chicago, started training more robustly in January 2025.

AL: OK, got it.

JG: But there’s roots in this training all the way back to 2017 when various groups started adapting other documentation training, and know-your-rights training into what a lot of people now refer to as ICE Watch or Migra Watch. But I think we saw a big uptick in interest from across the country in July of 2025. For various reasons, people started to get very concerned — and now, in hindsight, very good reason — that the Trump administration was really going to operationalize this playbook around surging immigration enforcement officers into certain places.

We had probably 100 people per training in the beginning, and now, like tonight, we have 7,000 people registered for training.

AL: Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about that you think is important for people to know on these topics?

JG: So the recent news is that Bovino has been demoted, and his sort of brand is being dismantled. But he’s not a decision maker. He’s not the architect of these strategies. So until we get to a point where Kristi Noem or Corey Lewandowski or Stephen Miller are really held to account for what they are doing in American cities people should be staying as vigilant as possible. Keep training, keep organizing their communities to respond when they come to Ohio or Pennsylvania or other states and cities.

AL: Many Democrats and even some Republicans now are calling on Kristi Noem to be impeached and all this stuff, and it’s the lowest-hanging fruit here obviously for people. They can take Bovino out of Minneapolis, but they’re just going to go on to the next city and continue doing the same thing with whoever they put in place next. So I think that’s an important and fitting note for us to end on.

Thank you so much for joining us on The Intercept Briefing, Jill Garvey,

JG: Thank you for having me.

AL: That does it for this episode.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

The post Even the Top Prosecutor in Minneapolis Doesn’t Know the Identity of the Agents Who Killed Alex Pretti appeared first on The Intercept.

Protests and Power Plays: From Tehran to the Arctic Circle

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000

The people of Iran are in the midst of one of the country’s biggest uprisings — and harshest government crackdowns — since the Iranian Revolution.

It started with shopkeepers in bazaars closing their doors at the end of December in protest of the plummeting Iranian rial and economic distress. But demonstrations soon spread to universities and across the country to every single province. Working-class Iranians wanted relief — both from the inflation crisis and U.S sanctions.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks with Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer and journalist, who explains what sparked the protests and the government’s brutal response.

“I don’t think in the history of Iran, even during the Islamic Revolution, have we seen this number of fatalities.” says Majd. “The death toll is staggering. Really, because that death toll is staggering, what’s happened is there are no more protests. And that’s where we are right now. No more protest, heavy security on the streets. Massive security on the streets, on every corner. It isn’t martial law. But it feels like martial law to people living there.”

The path forward is unclear, Majd says. But a few things are certain. “The idea is no to shah, no to an ayatollah, no to theocracy. Let’s just, finally, after 120 years of demonstrating — which is what the Iranians have been doing since 1906 — after 120 years of looking for democracy, can we just do that? Can we just get a democracy? That is probably the biggest sentiment in Iran: wanting a democratic rule, wanting the repression to end, wanting better relations with the rest of the world so these sanctions can be lifted.”

Some people inside and outside Iran have called on President Donald Trump to intervene. The idea that the U.S. should — or could — impose regime change militarily is folly, Majd says. “Sure, we were able to impose a regime change in Iraq militarily. They can do that again in Iran, possibly with the help of Israel or even without the help of Israel. But then what do you have? Do you have another basically authoritarian, autocratic government? That’s not what, I would argue, most people would want. And then there’s a whole other group of people in Iran, I think, who would say, ‘Anything is better than this.’”

Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to intervene in another international arena. He has set his sights on taking over Greenland.

Despite walking back his statements pledging to do so by force, Trump has now said he’s forming a plan with the secretary general of NATO for Greenland’s future. We’re joined by independent investigative journalist Lois Parshley, who explains the financial interests behind Trump’s obsession with the Arctic island, the billionaires and tech moguls plotting to exploit Greenland’s natural resources, and how the people of Greenland have responded to the president’s pledge to violate their sovereignty.

Shortly before Trump first expressed an interest in Greenland during his first term, his ambassador to Denmark and Greenland visited a major rare earth mining project on the island, Parshley reported last year.

“More recently, The Guardian reported that it was Ronald Lauder, heir to the global cosmetics brand [Estée Lauder] who was also a longtime friend of Trump’s, who first suggested buying Greenland. He has acquired commercial holdings there and is also part of a consortium who want to access Ukrainian minerals. I should also say here, it’s probably important to note that blowing up NATO relationships and severing ties with longtime allies and fellow nuclear powers does not increase U.S. national security.”

Fresh off the invasion of Venezuela, the idea that Trump wants to take over Greenland is even more alarming, Parshley says.

“I’m not the first person to report on these kinds of major tech interests in things like crypto states or special economic zones. People have been pointing this stuff out for a long time, but it’s not until President Trump started saying the quiet part out loud that people have really been registering some of these absurd concepts that seem to now be creeping toward reality.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy.

In late December, people in Iran took to the streets to protest the worsening economy as the country’s currency plunged to a record low. As protests grew, the government opened fire on civilians and implemented an internet blackout.

Leila: We tried to overcome the regime, but every night, when it got late, about midnight, they attacked with their guns and they wiped out the streets from the living people. They killed everybody, almost everybody. If you got injured and you tried to run, they kill you.

AL: We have obtained an exclusive and rare firsthand eyewitness account from one of the protesters who took to the streets of Tehran over the past few weeks. She wishes to remain anonymous, so for her safety, we’ll call her “Leila.”

Leila: I’m sorry that I’m alive. I feel guilty that I’m not dead. And the others are.

AL: It’s been difficult to confirm the current death toll, and estimates range from the low thousands to over ten thousand. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has threatened to intervene, while Iran has blamed the U.S. and Israel for the protests.

To understand what’s happening, I’m joined by Hooman Majd, an Iranian American writer, and the author of numerous books, including most recently, “Minister Without Portfolio.” Majd has written for The Intercept, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs, among many others, and is a contributor to NBC News.

Welcome back to the show, Hooman Majd.

Hooman Majd: Thank you very much, Akela.

AL: To start, Hooman, can you give us a brief recap of what’s happening in Iran? What sparked the protest, what’s driving people to the streets, and how has the Iranian government responded?

HM: Yeah. The timeline is that the end of December, 28th or 29th, baazaris — people in the bazaar — in Tehran went basically on strike, closed their shops, and started protesting because of the incredible drop in the value of the national currency, the rial. The purchasing power of ordinary people has been decimated. And for baazaris who sell goods, often imported goods, it became an untenable situation with the currency fluctuation. So they were like, “Well, we can’t afford to sell things today at this price, because tomorrow we’re going to have to import them at a higher price.” So that was the beginning of the protest.

Other people then took up the protests, as it were, and went out and protested. Some of them were also protesting about the economy and the terrible situation, living standard, reduction in living standards. Others wanted the regime to go completely.

So it started out really as an economic protest, and other people joined in, especially young people joined in, and demanded an end to the regime altogether. And the reason they did that is because they just didn’t buy it that the regime could, that the system — if you want to call it the government — could do anything about the collapse of the economy in the way that it has been collapsing.

And they also didn’t think the government or the regime could protect them after the 12-day war in June, the decimation of — the obliteration, as Donald Trump calls it — of the nuclear program. And so they’re like, “OK, what are you guys going to do to make things better?” No sanctions relief, no negotiations with the U.S. on the immediate horizon. So people were very angry. So apart from the actual economic protest, it’s like OK, time for change. We want serious change.

The government actually responded and said, “OK, you guys are right.” Even the supreme leader responded on those initial couple of days. “You’re right, people have a right to protest. They have a right to be upset. We have to fix this.” The government said it was going to implement the equivalent of $7 [monthly] credit into everybody’s account so they could buy goods like eggs and stuff like that — but that really isn’t enough. Seven dollars in Iran basically will buy you the equivalent of a Happy Meal. They don’t have McDonald’s there, but that would be the equivalent. For a family, once a month? That’s nothing. That’s not really a solution. So the protests continued, and people weren’t satisfied. They weren’t going home.

Then former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi in Washington — the shah’s son — became the self-appointed leader of the opposition, leader of a transition to a new Iran, and told people in Iran to go out on the streets en masse — huge numbers — and chant slogans against the government, whatever. And they did.

And whether they did it because they are big fans of Pahlavi, or because it was just an opportunity to continue the protest in the name of someone — not everybody was chanting his name, but certainly huge numbers were, and that, I think, rattled the government. That night is when they cut off the internet, to stop people from being able to communicate and continue these protests.

That’s when the government said that infiltrators came in and started shooting and killing people and killing security officials and killing police. Up until then, it had been mostly peaceful, and the police had actually not interfered in any big way. But videos emerged, even despite the internet shutdown, videos of people attacking, burning buildings, attacking policemen. There’s one horrific video of a security officer — half-naked — being beaten almost to death. And then there are also videos of security officials firing into the crowd.

There were riots, I should say. And it became a really, really scary situation for almost every Iranian, certainly the ones on the streets. But the terror that was happening on the streets, whether it was 100 percent on the side of the Iranian government shooting people and killing people, or whether it was some rioters killing some of the security people, setting fire to mosques, buses, cars, things like that.

And the crackdown continued and became even more severe. I don’t think in the history of Iran, even during the Islamic Revolution, have we seen this number of fatalities — deaths. This is where we are now. The amount of people having been killed and the number of people injured with all the videos that have emerged out of Iran through Starlink, or at various times when the internet does actually switch on for five minutes and then switches back off, is staggering. The death toll is staggering, really.

Because that death toll is staggering, what’s happened is there are no more protests. And that’s where we are right now. No more protest, heavy security on the streets. Massive security on the streets, on every corner. It isn’t martial law. But it feels like martial law to people living there.

I’ve been able to communicate with family briefly, very briefly, but I’ve been able to communicate video-wise. It certainly feels like martial law. People don’t want to go out at night. If they do venture out at night, they are told to stay off the streets by the security forces. But there isn’t really any shooting or protesting at this time.

The government is putting out that everything’s over and we’re going back to normal. I wouldn’t say it’s back to normal, go that far, but certainly there aren’t any protests at this time.

AL: A couple things you mentioned that I just want to pick up on. One, we’re talking about the death toll, and we actually were discussing this in a meeting with colleagues last week, and it was right when CBS had published the story that the death toll had risen over 12,000.

And we were discussing this along with my other colleagues, and we were like, that seems wrong. Because the numbers that had been coming out in the days prior to that were in the hundreds, or like some estimates in the low thousands, and then all of a sudden, it shot up.

But this is the result of there being an internet blackout, not being able to get accurate information out of Iran. And now it’s apparent that the death toll is well above 10,000. And so I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about the effect that this is having on how the world is interpreting these events as far as what we’re actually able to confirm.

HM: The government will eventually put out numbers — which will either be believed or not believed. And certainly, it’s been admitted, even by the supreme leader, “thousands” — that’s the word he used. He didn’t say how many thousand, but thousands.

AL: Yeah.

HM: Now, let’s remember these protests were not just in Tehran, and we’re getting most of our videos out of Tehran or Mashhad, these two big cities. But there were protests in the entire country, in almost every town, small towns. And yes, the number is horrific, but it’s not just in Tehran. They didn’t mow down 12,000 – 20,000 people just on the streets of Tehran, but they did mow down people. There’s no question there. People have been killed.

The internet shutdown is, the argument has been to prevent terrorists, as they say. The government says terrorists or infiltrators, Mossad agents, CIA agents, whatever you want to say, whatever you want to call them — and by the way, also the MEK, the other opposition group that actually is armed and does have people inside Iran — from communicating and stirring up trouble and taking over government buildings.

You actually had Reza Pahlavi telling people to go out and take over government buildings. And then he also said to Norah O’Donnell on CBS News that this is war.

Norah O’Donnell: Is it responsible to be sending citizens in Iran to their deaths? Do you bear some responsibility?

Reza Pahlavi: As I said, as I said, as I said, this is a war, and war has casualties.

In fact, in order to preserve and protect and minimize the death toll, minimize innocent victims yet again be killed by this regime, action is needed.

HM: It also seems like people inside Iran who have communicated say, “We weren’t starting a war. That wasn’t our intention, to start a war.” They certainly weren’t starting a war because they were unarmed. Why would they start a war unarmed?

But the internet shutdown is not just to stop people from communicating, which that’s one, obviously, one obvious element of it. The other element is because they’re turning it on and off right now and only in certain neighborhoods. Go from one neighborhood and it’ll be on for an hour, full 5G internet on your phone. And then it will be off. And then it’ll go to another neighborhood or another part of town, and it’ll be on and then off again.

And this is my own suspicion, is that they are trying to identify — they’re trying to monitor internet usage and find out where the organizers of any rioting and/or terrorist and/or Mossad agents are. And the way they can do that by having it come on so they communicate, because not everybody’s communicating by Starlink. There aren’t that many terminals in Iran. And they’ve been successfully jamming the Starlink communication. So occasionally it works, occasionally it doesn’t.

AL: I just want to mention for our listeners, people have been smuggling Starlink terminals into Iran in order to prop up the internet. That’s what we’re referring to. So we’re talking a little bit about Pahlavi, too. I want to play another clip from Leila, who we heard at the top, who is one of the protesters who is supportive of Pahlavi. Let’s hear her again.

Leila: We are here, and 90 percent purely looking for a better future with our king. We chant for our beloved king, Mr. Reza Pahlavi. And we chanted for our hero. He is going to do something, I know. I believe in him. And we listened to him. We listened to every order he gave.

AL: So this is one perspective from a protester who supports the son of the shah, Reza Pahlavi, and we’ve heard him a lot in recent media as you’ve mentioned.

Can you describe the complexities involved in the types of people who have been protesting, who they support? Obviously, this is not a monolith. They don’t all support Pahlavi. Can you expand on that?

HM: Yeah, I can. Well, I think I can, it’s complicated because the opposition to the Islamic regime has been there from the day the Islamic regime was created.

The initial opposition was the MEK, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, under Massoud Rajavi, who was hoping that he’d become prime minister. Khomeini and the Islamic regime set him aside. The people who had supported him, this was the MEK, the Mojahedin who had been a terror group on the American terror list because they had killed American citizens during the shah’s reign.

They fled after committing some terror acts against the Islamic regime, hoping to overthrow it and then take over. This is in 1980. They fled mostly to Iraq and then joined Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran. Which is why nowadays most Iranians, the vast majority of Iranians, do not consider them a viable opposition group, partly because they supported the enemy against their people and more than half a million Iranian boys basically died in that war.

And secondly, because they’re considered to be somewhat cultish, if not an actual cult, the way that they operate. So that’s one opposition group, and they’re still very active, and they still do have people inside Iran. They commit assassinations from time to time, so on and so forth.

Reza Pahlavi, who is the shah’s son, initially, when his father died in 1980, declared himself king in exile. And then subsequent to that, for many years, has been relatively quiet. The time that he really came out and started taking on this mantle of being a leader of an opposition was during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement; a little bit during the Green Movement, but not really because the Green Movement wasn’t against the regime, it was very much a civil rights movement. It was very much in favor of Mousavi who was actually part of the regime, who had, they claimed had lost the election to Ahmadinejad.

So this is going back a little bit into history in 2009, but in 2022 during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, when Mahsa Amini was killed by the morality police, it was claimed that she was killed by the morality police, and there’s video to show her dying in the hospital. There was a real genuine uprising in Iran against the system that produced this kind of result: that a woman with a “bad” hijab, as it were, not quite covering all her hair, could end up dead, a young woman at that. That uprising caused people in the diaspora to believe that the regime was very weak and could be potentially overthrown. Reza Pahlavi took on the mantle of being the leader of that. And then it fizzled again his attempts to become an opposition leader, who had a viable chance — a real chance — to go back to Iran and lead a transition to a new regime, if not actual monarchy.

And then he was promoted by Israel and went to Israel in 2023, met with Netanyahu and began a campaign against, once again, against the Islamic Republic and himself as the leader of an opposition. And during this period, from 2022 to 2025, now 2026, his visibility has grown. His reputation has grown. Some people do see him as a potential liberator as it were. And during these protests, he really took on a very, very public role. Coming out, issuing videos, issuing proclamations: Go out, take out government buildings, the revolution is nigh; I’ll be there; I’m joining you soon. But he’s still in Washington and then obviously hasn’t made that move yet.

The second week of January, I believe, he was in another interview asking President Trump and/or Israel to strike, in his words, strike Iran, to finish off this regime. That has made him, among some people who are against the regime, not as popular as he could be. Siding with the enemy, Israel, which killed 1,000 Iranians in their bombing campaign in June, that’s one aspect that makes some people uncomfortable with him. There’s another aspect of just not wanting to bring back another authoritarian regime after this one.

Certainly, if not he himself, his supporters in the diaspora, at least in the West and especially in England and America, have shown themselves to be very undemocratic — attacking the Iranian Embassy in London, for example, and then injuring a bunch of policemen, attacking them physically, the police and having some of them ending up in hospital, and getting arrested. Giving speeches where, “we don’t want to talk about democracy, only the shah.” Some people saying, “Let’s make SAVAK great again” — SAVAK was the shah’s secret police that tortured people in jail.

So some of that just turns other people off. And the idea is like, no to shah, no to an ayatollah, no to a theocracy. Let’s just finally, after 120 years of demonstrating — which is what the Iranians have been doing since 1906 — after 120 years of looking for democracy, can we just do that? Can we just get a democracy?

“It’s always been for democracy, but the result has never been democracy.”

That is probably the biggest sentiment in Iran wanting a democratic rule, wanting the repression to end, wanting better relations with the rest of the world so these sanctions can be lifted. I think that’s the greater goal. I think some people will use Reza Pahlavi to try to force that to happen in a way, if not being an actual supporter. And yes, there are people like Leila, who you’ve just mentioned or just played her tape who definitely are very much in favor of him as a leader and as even an autocrat.

A famous Iranian economist, Saeed Laylaz, who’s been very critical of the regime — he lives in Iran — has said Iran’s waiting for a Bonaparte. They want a Napoleon to come in and rescue everyone and fix the system — sort of like Reza Shah, the previous shah’s father, who came in and dragged Iran into the 20th century in the 1920s, and declared himself king overthrowing, the previous very, very, very weak Qajar kings who had sold off parts of the Iranian economy to various interests — British tobacco, British petroleum, so on and so forth. And he brought that together.

And then they demonstrated again in 1953, as we know, democracy under Prime Minister Mossadegh. And then again in the revolution in 1979. It’s always been for democracy, but the result has never been democracy. So some people would recognize that. Some protesters would recognize that, oh, if Reza Pahlavi comes here, either by being helicoptered in by Israel or the United States, it’s possible. Sure. We were able to impose a regime change in Iraq militarily. The U.S. can do that again in Iran, possibly with the help of Israel or even without the help of Israel. But then what do you have? Do you have another basically authoritarian, autocratic government? That’s not what, I would argue, most people would want.

And then there’s a whole other group of people in Iran I think, who would say, “Anything is better than this. So if it means having Reza Pahlavi — great, fine. That’s better. That’s going to be better because at least the bars will be open. We’re going to have sanctions relief because he’s half American, basically. So the sanctions will be off, and the economy will improve. And who cares if he loves Israel?” So there’ll be those people, too.

AL: I just want to mention, there was a clip going around on social media of the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying, openly, that the goal of these sanctions is to push the Iranian people so far that they rise up and overthrow the regime.

MH: Yeah.

Scott Bessent: I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranian citizen, I would take my money out. President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division — Office of Foreign Asset Control — to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked. Because in December, their economy collapsed.

AL: I also want to talk about the geopolitics here, and then I want to go back to Pahlavi, but particularly these allegations by the Iranian government that Israel has been involved in fueling the protests. Israel has admitted to being part of this. Can you walk us through what happened there? The impact both inside and outside of Iran, and, you’ve alluded a little bit to this, but if at all how that might discredit Pahlavi in the eyes of some of his would-be supporters.

HM: He was discredited by going to Israel first, praying at the Western Wall, but not visiting a mosque, not going into the West Bank. So going to Israel, and especially with this particular government in Israel, I think did leave a bad taste in Iranian’s mouths.

And then to top it all off, when Israel attacked Iran and didn’t just attack the nuclear sites — was blowing up buildings, children were being killed in apartment buildings where they weren’t the target, admittedly, but if you were targeting a general in the IRGC in a multistory building, you’re killing a lot of innocent people. Or a scientist, I should say, for example. There’s video, which was verified, of bombs falling on a square in north Tehran, and cars being thrown into the sky. When he then refused to even condemn the attack on his own people, that also lost him some support.

And when he said, “This is [our] Berlin Wall movement” as his message to the Iranian people to rise up, it was a miscalculation because Iranians weren’t going to rise up as they were being attacked by a foreign country. They just weren’t. They were actually, I wouldn’t say they rallied around the flag, but they definitely rallied — not in support of the regime necessarily, but in support of the nation, as it were, that was being attacked by a foreign country. It doesn’t matter what the foreign country is, Iraq or Israel. So he did lose support there.

Israelis aren’t particularly interested in human rights in Iran; they don’t care about the freedom of the Iranian people. If they don’t care about the freedom of the Palestinian people, how are they going to care about the freedom of the Iranian people? It’s a very cynical view. The goal of Israel, especially the Netanyahu government, is and the Likud party is to make Iran as weak as possible so that it’s no longer a threat to them and no longer a challenge, not just as a threat, but a challenge to their hegemonic behavior in the neighborhood.

Right now, Israel has complete freedom to bomb any country in the neighborhood, and nobody can react. I think Iran is the only one that can react and has proven that it was able to react in the 12-Day War and actually got missiles through to Tel Aviv and other cities and killed innocent Israelis.

“Israel has complete freedom to bomb any country in the neighborhood, and nobody can react. I think Iran is the only one that can react.”

AL: If Pahlavi isn’t a realistic alternative, who or what do you think is the most appropriate or likely, rather, solution?

HM: The honest truth? It’s impossible to predict. What we should remember is that in these protests, which were large and very pointedly anti-regime in many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases, the security forces — the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards, the actual army itself, which are made up mostly of conscripts — none of them fractured. There were no defections. There was no sense that any of the security officials were going to not follow the orders and do the crackdown and bring about order. Not one that we know of, at least not one serious one.

There may have been occasional cops or Basij or even IRGC members, younger ones, who wouldn’t fire on anyone but would just patrol. But they didn’t come out and say, we’re defecting to the side of the opposition.

And the other thing to remember is that Pahlavi, back in 2025, after the 12-Day War in June, set up a system where people could defect anonymously through a web portal. And he claimed at one point, within a month, that he had 50,000 armed people from the armed forces in Iran, various armed forces, ready to defect at the right time. If there was a right time, this was the right time. Not only did not 50,000 defect to his side, but not even one came out, or at least publicly, and defect to his side. So that’s not happening in terms of the regime crumbling, cracking in that way with the security services so far. That’s not happened.

So in terms of what is in the future, I think in the immediate future, the regime survives. And people are terrified. They’re shocked, they’re in trauma. People in Iran, I’d say even people outside Iran who have family in Iran, are shocked and traumatized. Not being able to reach our families is tough.

I think that for the immediate future — short of an interference or intervention by Donald Trump or Israel — I think the regime survives in the short term. In the long term, we have to remember that the supreme leader is going to be 87 years old this year, I think, and he’s had cancer, probably not in the best of health. So far, people have remained loyal to him. Whether that continues over the longer term is questionable. Whether Trump decides to pull a Venezuela and then decide that he can work with, or the U.S. can work with, one of the Revolutionary Guards generals, or the president of Iran, or the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council is very powerful, Ali Larijani — who knows?

Who knows what options, because it was just announced, I think, this last week that options are being presented to Trump by the military, by the, I assume, the intelligence agency, as to what options he has vis-à-vis Iran, in terms of what kind of blow he can do on Iran, or what kind of attack/strike was it were he could make on Iran, or what kind of blow it could be to the regime.

It does seem that he wants to do something to Iran because he said he was going to. It’ll be far, far too late to help the protesters, which he initially claimed he was doing.

AL: Right.

MH: And now the argument is that [Trump says,] well, I saved 837 people from being executed. So that’s how I helped the protesters. Which may or may not be true, but it’s irrelevant. He hasn’t refuted that he believes it’s time for new leadership in Iran. Now what that leadership is, he certainly hasn’t met with the shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, and hasn’t indicated that he believes he’s a viable option. So we don’t know.

Again, prediction is impossible, but there are various scenarios. It’s not what I would want to happen. I’m living in America. I don’t have a right to say what I would — I would like Iranians to be happy. I would like Iranians to have the government that they want. I would like Iranians to have democratic rule. I would like Iranians inside Iran to have an economy that works for them and have jobs and be able to spend money and have disposable income and travel. All the things that we take for granted in the West, I would want my fellow Iranians inside Iran to have. How they bring that about, it’s not my place to make the prescription.

AL: You mentioned the 837 people, you’re referring to the protesters that Iran has backed off from hanging now, as a result, ostensibly, of Trump’s comments.

HM: Yes.

AL: I want to turn back to this question of a targeted strike from the United States. We have another clip from Leila.

Leila: We are hopeful that Mr. Trump can help us because as long as we are not armed, we are only a bunch of meat in front of the bullets.

AL: What do you make of this kind of sentiment, asking Trump for help? And the idea of a targeted strike, what would that actually do? Does anyone think that striking a government from afar will remove that government? What are you hearing?

HM: I mean, certainly people like Leila, who you just played the tape of, certainly she’s not armed and I think most of the young people are not armed. But there have been armed people in Iran in these protests. We have verified videos of armed people, especially in Kurdish areas, in Baluchestan and in certain parts of the country, there have been armed clashes.

It is hard to get guns in Iran. It’s not a gun-friendly country. I think people are desperate, and I think a lot of the protesters who either witnessed some killings or mass killings probably feel that there has to be some kind of strike to stop the government from behaving the way it does and or to potentially bring about regime change.

Now, striking the leadership, for example, if President Trump decides to do that — it’s very unlikely to bring about regime change because what’s behind that strike? We saw that in Venezuela. He wasn’t going to helicopter [María Corina] Machado into Caracas because he had no idea if the military would support her. You just don’t have any idea, and you don’t want a war.

Again, going back to 2003, George Bush did want a war. He was happy to have a war. But we know what that was. And as we know, Trump has, on his own personal level, always been against those kinds of foreign interventions. He likes the one-and-dones, as it were, one and done, I’m in and out. Same thing with Iran in June, when he in a space of a couple of hours, he, as he says, obliterated the Iranian nuclear program without killing anybody on the ground, without any American servicemen losing their lives. What appears to be his notion of doing something of striking Iran or some kind of strike on Iran would be to take out some of the top leaders but leave the regime in place and hope that someone powerful takes over, whether it’s, as I pointed out, Ali Larijani or Mohammad Bagher, who’s the speaker of Parliament. These are former IRGC generals who are in politics now. That’s a possibility. I don’t know if that’s something that he’s considering.

But regime change in a big way means what? The only way that can be accomplished by force is to land American troops. And go to war with basically the people who are going to fight to the death.

We have to remember that Iran isn’t a situation where 99 percent of the people are against the regime. Even if the regime only has 10 to 20 million supporters out of 90 million people — I’m not going to count the children, obviously — but it has shown to have had more than 10 million supporters.

In the last presidential election where the reform president won, Pezeshkian won, 13 million people voted for Saeed Jalili, who’s probably the most hard line of the hard-liners, who has zero relations with the West, an absolute hard line. His Ph.D. thesis was the foreign policy of the prophet. This is how deeply, Islamically theological he is. And he got 13 million votes. The fact that he lost but with 13 million votes should indicate something. Let’s say even the 13 million was exaggerated, 10 million people, and they’re the ones with guns and they’re not going anywhere. And they have no escape to go anywhere.

“There aren’t a lot of places they can go, if there is a regime change. So they’re going to fight.”

Right now, people like Reza Pahlavi, or at least his people, not himself directly, are claiming that they will seek revenge for these people who have blood on their hands. And they’re going to basically do what the Islamic regime did to the shah’s closest allies and execute them the first day they take over. These people, they don’t have an escape route. Most of them, the vast majority of them, don’t have big bank accounts overseas that they can access. Most of them don’t have family overseas or places they can escape to. If you thought at one point that if there’s a revolution and these, the ones who are the diehard religious, diehard theocratic supporters, theocracy supporters would go to Damascus, that’s no longer possible. If you thought they would go to Beirut, that’s not possible. If you thought they’d go to Caracas, that’s not possible anymore. There aren’t a lot of places they can go, if there is a regime change. So they’re going to fight. If there’s a war, they’re going to fight. They’re going to fight.

One of the potential problems with regime change attempts, at least by outsiders, is that we end up in a civil war like Syria. Because if there’s a decapitation at the top of the leadership, then there are Kurdish armed groups who are separatists. You’ve got Azeri separatists, you’ve got Baloch separatists down in the Southeast, you’ve got the Arab separatist in the Southwest — many of them armed, separatist groups, I mean — who could break up the country. You could have a civil war going on.

The MEK is not going to stand by and allow Reza Pahlavi to take over. Reza Pahlavi supporters aren’t going to allow the MEK to take over. So you’re going to see those clashes. So it could be very, very messy. And I have to believe that the U.S. intelligence community is laying all this out for President Trump as he makes a decision. In fact, I’m sure they are. It would be crazy, and I’m sure the Mossad has been laying it out for Benjamin Netanyahu as well.

AL: I do want to ask one more question about the weakening of Iran’s regional allies in recent months: Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. How has that affected the regime’s power and stability?

HM: No question it’s affected its power. It’s power projection, for sure. In terms of stability, yes, it’s one of the complaints of people who protest against the regime — that we spent all this money, all this effort to become this power in the region, and it’s all gone in the space of two years. We spent all this money which we could have spent inside Iran on people. Billions and billions of dollars on Hezbollah decimated, if not, it’s not gone completely, but still, the leadership is decimated. The power of Hezbollah has been weakened to the point where they’re not a threat to anybody really anymore, or certainly not to Israel in any significant way. Hamas decimated, certainly not a threat anymore to Israel.

Caracas is problematic only because that was their springboard to this continent, the South American continent. And so that’s no longer good. Syria, of course, not a threat to anyone. And the hundreds of billions of dollars spent keeping [Bashar al] Assad in power. So when you look at that and you look at Iranians saying, what about us? These are all countries that supposedly were going to end up being our protector in a way, so that if we were attacked, they would be on the forefront of attacking our attacker. And that didn’t happen. What was all that money spent for?

The one thing it does have are ballistic missiles and the capability to produce ballistic missiles accurately — accurate ballistic missiles, I should say. And it does have drone technology that even the U.S. is reverse-engineered and is starting to use suicide drones that Iranians invented and can produce in huge numbers, which they also then sold the technology to the Russians, who now make them domestically in Russia.

But weakened? Yeah, it’s been significantly. There was always this sense that Iran had surrounded itself with these, if you want to call them proxies, they weren’t exactly proxies because they weren’t doing everything that Iran wanted. At one point Hamas, they were actually against Hamas because Hamas was for the rebels in Syria, and Iran was killing the rebels in Syria. So they had Hamas, they had the Iraqi Shia groups in Iraq right across the border. They had, as you pointed out, they had Islamic Jihad, they had Hezbollah, they had Damascus. So all that power is now basically gone, and it’s now down to just Iran really.

And the Houthis are still, yes, allies, if not proxies, and can cause some damage if Donald Trump decides to take out the supreme leader and kill him — the Houthis would react very negatively to that. The Shias in Yemen would react very negatively to that. And in fact, it’s quite possible that Shias in other parts of the Middle East, such as in Iraq and in Bahrain and places like that, even in Saudi Arabia, there might be some unrest for taking out an ayatollah at the end of the day, whether you like him or dislike him. For a lot of Shia faithful, he’s an ayatollah. It’s like, do you take out a cardinal that you don’t like in the Catholic church? I’m sure that the Pope would have an issue with that.

AL: Thank you so much, Hooman, for this conversation and for your insights. We’re going to leave it there.

HM: My pleasure, Akela. Thank you.

[Break]

AL: In other news, President Donald Trump is making good on his threats to — for some reason — try to take over Greenland. And his efforts reached new levels of absurdity when the self-proclaimed “president of peace” texted Norway’s prime minister “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” Setting aside the highly questionable “8 wars” claim — Trump went on to say, “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

So why is Trump so obsessed with Greenland? Joining us to explain what’s behind Trump’s attempted land grab is investigative journalist Lois Parshley.

Welcome to the show, Lois.

Lois Parshley: Thank you for having me.

AL: So Trump has repeatedly claimed an interest in taking over Greenland, though on Wednesday he walked back his comments about doing so by force. He’s been claiming that this is in the national security interest of the U.S., notwithstanding the blatant violations of sovereignty here fresh off the U.S. invasion of Venezuela. What is Trump actually interested in?

LP: That is a great question and one that I started to ask last year. As Trump took office, I thought it was really important to understand who is benefiting from his policy decisions.

So I started asking questions about the wealthy donors in his orbit and their personal financial interests. We still likely don’t have the full picture, but last January I found that shortly before Trump first expressed an interest in Greenland during his first administration, so back in 2019, his ambassador to Denmark and Greenland visited a major rare earth mining project on the island.

Now, more recently, The Guardian reported that it was Ronald Lauder, heir to the global cosmetics brand [Estée Lauder], who was also a longtime friend of Trump’s, who first suggested buying Greenland. He has acquired commercial holdings there and is also part of a consortium who want to access Ukrainian minerals. I should also say here, it’s probably important to note that blowing up NATO relationships, and severing ties with longtime allies and fellow nuclear powers does not increase U.S. national security.

AL: As you mentioned, Trump started talking about this after Ronald Lauder first brought up the idea, and last year you wrote about the tech moguls who’ve also taken an interest in Greenland. Can you tell us more about the specific interests that they have in the island and the resources that are at stake?

“They are aiming to mine in western Greenland for minerals crucial to the artificial intelligence boom and used in data centers.”

LP: Many of the tech moguls who are sitting in the front row of Trump’s inauguration, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, are investors in a startup called KoBold Metals. They are aiming to mine in western Greenland for minerals crucial to the artificial intelligence boom and used in data centers. Opposition to some of this mining actually ushered a new party into power in Greenland in 2021. They slowed some of the rare earth minerals development that was currently in explorations phases and banned all future oil development. But just two weeks before Trump came into office – so in 2025 — KoBold medals raised $537 million in a funding round, bringing its valuation to almost $3 billion. So we’re talking about a lot of money here.

AL: What does it say that these elite financial interests are so explicitly driving the U.S. to pursue this really anachronistic imperialism?

LP: That is a great question. How anachronistic that actually is, is another one? But I would say that overall —

AL: Fair enough.

LP: One of the things that just seems abundantly true here is that I’m not the first person to report on these kinds of major tech interests in things like crypto states or special economic zones. People have been pointing this stuff out for a long time, but it’s not until President Trump started saying the quiet part out loud that people have really been registering some of these absurd concepts that seem to now be creeping toward reality.

AL: I want to talk a little bit about Marc Andreessen, who has also taken a particular interest in the island. What can you tell us about his investments targeting Greenland?

LP: So among the contributors to KoBold’s funding is a leading venture capital firm, founded by Marc Andreessen, who has also helped shape the administration’s technology policies. A general partner at his venture capital firm was also listed as a KoBold director at one point on a company SEC filing.

Andreessen has been funding startups hoping to build experimental enclaves around the world. These are sometimes called network states. And sometimes they’re called crypto states, sometimes they’re called special economic zones.

Often they involve the promise of freedom from the constraints of government. And proposals for these libertarian freeholds have sprung up in Honduras, Nigeria, the Marshall Islands, Panama — which by the way, Trump also proposed taking over by military force.

AL: Lest we forget.

LP: And while it looks a little different in each location, the sales pitch usually includes replacing taxes and regulations with things like cryptocurrency and blockchain to enable things like biomedical experiments on human subjects.

Trump also recently issued a full and unconditional pardon for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been serving a 45 year prison sentence in the U.S. for drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy charges. During his time in office, Hernández and his administration consistently backed the legal framework that enabled Honduras’s special economic zone called Próspera, which was also funded by Andreessen, including submitting legislation to grant them tax exemptions and regulatory privileges. So this is not just an issue around Greenland.

AL: Greenland was ruled by Denmark from 1721 to 1979, but Denmark continued to control its foreign policy and defense after that. In 2008, Greenlanders voted for greater independence. You write, “The president’s renewed intention to take over Greenland has reignited debates over its sovereignty, as the country grapples with the trade-offs between economic opportunity and independence from Denmark. As the country’s glaciers recede, it’s also facing sweeping climate-driven transformations, threatening traditional industries like fishing and hunting and exposing valuable mineral resources.”

Can you tell us a little bit more about this tension? I’m really curious also about the movements that you alluded to earlier within Greenland to slow this development.

LP: The fight over Greenland’s resources has extended for centuries. As you noted, Greenlanders voted for greater independence in 2008, taking control of their natural resources along with other state functions.

There are abundant oil reserves around Greenland, but producing oil in those conditions has been historically very difficult and expensive. There are high transportation costs and infrastructure limitations, and how much to develop its abundant natural resources has been a debate within Greenland. Some of their politicians have supported development, particularly as a means to fund greater autonomy from Denmark.

Siumut, a pro-independence political party who was in power in the early aughts, declared that mineral extraction could help the country transition away from Denmark because it would need to find new sources of income. However, many residents still rely on traditional ways of life, including fishing, hunting for food security, living closely on the land. And development would impact all of those things, which are also under pressure from rapidly changing climate conditions, including warming temperatures and extreme weather.

AL: In response to Trump’s threats, Greenland has also seen some of its biggest protests in history. Can you tell us more about how the people of Greenland, the Greenlandic Inuit, have been responding to this tension and now the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts?

LP: I certainly don’t want to speak for any Greenland residents. I’m not a resident, but from the people I spoke to a year ago, the general vibe seemed to be more bemusement. Obviously, as tensions have escalated since then, it seems like far less of a joke today.

All of this unwelcome attention has succeeded in delivering one change. Some of the residents I spoke to said the country is now more unified and wanting to find a path to independence from Denmark, although it is challenging to figure out a way to do so. He told me, “You can’t put a name on land. Land belongs to the people.” It’s not something they feel like can be sold.

Frankly, I think a lot of the news conversation around “Can Donald Trump buy Greenland?” overlooks the fact that no one in Greenland is interested in selling. More bluntly, as a Danish politician said, at one European Parliament meeting last week, “Let me put this in words you might understand: Mr. President, fuck off.”

But as you noted, at Davos President Trump reiterated that he wants to acquire Greenland, but said, “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.” Certainly our allies hope that that is true.

AL: We’re going to leave it there. Thank you so much, Lois, for joining us on The Intercept Briefing.

LP: Thank you for having me.

AL: On Wednesday at Davos as Trump rambled on about why he believes the U.S. is entitled to take Greenland, he repeatedly confused the island for Iceland. He would then later announce that he had a productive meeting with the secretary general of NATO, and they reached a “framework” of a deal over Greenland’s future.

That does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn and Desiree Addib, who is also our booking producer. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

You can support our work at theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell all of your friends about us. Better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find us.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

Thanks for listening.

The post Protests and Power Plays: From Tehran to the Arctic Circle appeared first on The Intercept.

Trump’s War on America

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis last week, unleashing a wave of anti-ICE protests and sentiment throughout Minnesota and the rest of the United States.

On Wednesday evening, federal immigration agents shot and wounded a man in Minneapolis, adding to the tension in the Twin Cities. President Donald Trump threatened to send in troops to crush the unrest.

“What should be very clear to all Americans now is that there is no way to wage war on ‘illegal immigration’ without also waging war on American citizens,” says Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington examines how the Trump administration’s brutal deportation agenda is unfolding in Minnesota, sparking national backlash and renewed demands to abolish ICE; the historical legacy of immigration enforcement in the U.S.; and the administration’s racist vision of reshaping American society.

First, Minnesota Public Radio reporter Jon Collins shares an update on the Trump administration’s siege. “The national audience needs to understand this is not just unrest, this is not just protests. … This is an invasion,” says Collins. “The justification from this administration, the way that they’re portraying what’s happening here in Minnesota — it almost turns on its head how we think about our constitutional rights in this country. Instead of protecting the citizens from the government, what they’re arguing for is protecting law enforcement from any transparency, from any accountability to the people.”

“The biggest organization of terror in this moment is the Department of Homeland Security,” says Rep. Delia Ramirez, who shared exclusively with The Intercept that she is introducing legislation to limit the use of force by DHS agents.

The Illinois congresswoman described the bill as the “bare minimum” to curb DHS’s abuses, calling for Democrats to use the appropriations process to “hold” funding to the agency and ultimately dismantle it.

“Every single Democrat and every single Republican should be able to sign on to this bill,” says Ramirez. “Because it’s basic, bare minimum, and not signing on is indicating that you’re OK with what’s happening on the streets.”

“What we’re seeing today has a long history,” says Adam Goodman, a historian at the University of Illinois Chicago. Federal immigration agencies’ budgets depend “on apprehensions, detentions, and deportations.” That “institutional imperative,” he says, “is going to lead to all kinds of problems, including incredible discretionary authority … and tremendous abuses.”

Serwer points out “the violence that you’re seeing that federal agents are engaging in against observers, against activists, not just against immigrants, is a reflection of [an] ideological worldview. Which is that those of us who do not agree with Donald Trump are not real Americans and are not entitled to the rights that are due us in the Constitution, whether or not we have citizenship.” He adds, “The truth is, a democracy cannot exist when it has an armed uniformed federal agency who believes that its job is to brutalize 50 percent of the country.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

ICE Invades the Twin Cities

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington.

Since ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good last week, the Trump administration has deployed about a 1,000 more immigration agents to the Minneapolis area. That’s on top of the roughly 2,000 federal agents already in the area to conduct the “largest immigration operation ever,” according to Trump administration officials.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar: There are like 600 sworn-in officers in Minneapolis, and 550 or so in St. Paul. The ICE agents are literally overwhelming our own police force.

JW: As the city becomes the latest target of the administration, yet again, we see a wave of videos on social media showing heavily armed masked immigration agents tackling, dragging, shoving, and intimidating people.

Sound of tape from ICE arresting Jose Roberto Beto Ramirez: [Whistle sounds] Let them scan your face. … Why did you hit him? No. [Screaming.]

Sound of tape of federal immigration agents tackling Target employee:

Unknown speaker: What’s your name?

Johnny Garcia: Johnny Garcia. Jonathan Aguilar Garcia. … I’m a U.S. citizen.

Sound on tape of ICE carrying a woman from her vehicle: I’m autistic, and I have a brain injury! Put me down! I was just trying to get to the doctor …

Sound on tape from Noah and Judy Levy’s ICE encounter:

Unknown agent: Hello, Judith.

Judy Levy (SOT): Do not threaten me. … God bless you.

Judy Levy: And as more people started showing up and people were honking their horns and making a commotion, they started driving away. So we started following, and they led us to our house.

JW: That last clip is of Noah and Judy Levy, a St. Paul couple who were observing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The Levys were speaking to Minnesota Public Radio reporter Jon Collins. He joins me now to talk about the latest from the Twin Cities.

Jon, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Jon Collins: Thanks so much for having me,

Jessica Washington: Jon, we just heard a clip of your interview with a couple from St. Paul, Minnesota, telling you about their encounter with immigration agents on the street the day before Renee Good was killed. Can you tell us more about that interaction?

JC: We had heard many different accounts from observers that they were being intimidated by ICE and other federal agents. And so I tried to track down some of the people who had direct experiences with it, and these are some of the folks who were willing to talk on the record.

They told me they went out. They heard there was a caravan of ICE agents staging in a vacant parking lot near their home. They went out with other neighbors. What typically happens happened — which is that the ICE agents stopped the observers, they surrounded the cars, they started yelling at them, they threatened them with arrest, that sort of thing. But the Levys, in this particular case, after this incident, after they were stopped, kept following. And one of the officers had come up to Judy’s window and scanned her license plate, took pictures of her, of course, and then said, “Hello, Judith.”

So that’s when they first realized that the feds were using some sort of tool to identify them, but they didn’t know the extent of it because as they continued to follow this ICE caravan, the ICE caravan drove onto their street. And they have video showing ICE agents out in front of their house.

At that time, they were advised by other observers to go to a safe place. But they were shocked that ICE agents were somehow able to access their private data in order to — what they saw as — intimidate them.

JW: Have you investigated other stories that are similar? Are there other types of surveillance happening in Minneapolis that you’ve encountered?

JC: There’s certainly a lot going on especially since the surge here started, the ICE surge, started in December and that had fewer agents, but they’ve been sending more and more agents here. There’s all sorts of allegations of different tools that ICE agents are using to identify people.

Facial scanners is one, and that’s both for immigrants, that they want to look in their database and see if they’re wanted for any immigration violations — a civil violation, again, not a criminal violation. But also for citizens. So that will be observers, that will be bystanders.

And what people are alleging is that ICE uses this information. And remember, ICE are masked agents, they’re not identified, they don’t typically almost ever have a badge or a number or anything really that holds them accountable — including what agency they’re a part of.

DHS, we know, the Department of Homeland Security, has many different federal agencies under its auspices. Not all of the folks on the street are ICE. And in fact, Border Patrol has showed up in force recently, and they have quite aggressive tactics even compared to ICE. So people have been reporting concerns about federal agents accessing their private information and using all these technologies for weeks now.

And I should say, Homeland Security does not respond to requests for comments. They don’t respond to media questions, and they will not deny or confirm or even acknowledge what tools agents might be using. It’s really a black box, and it causes a lot of concern for privacy advocates.

JW: Yeah, that’s a really good point: The conflation of agents in the street and a lot of confusion and focus on ICE. I was hoping you could give us a little bit of background on why they’re in Minnesota in the first place.

JC: What people are saying is that Minnesota is the home of Gov. Tim Walz. He was the vice presidential candidate who ran against Donald Trump. And people are saying this really fits the pattern that we see across the country of retaliation, using the power of the federal government — in this case, it would be federal agents and immigration enforcement — to retaliate against political enemies.

Minnesota, I should say, is kind of a blue state. It can be relatively close. We don’t have any statewide elected Republican officials, and we haven’t in many years. So in the Midwest, folks will say, we are a pocket of blue surrounded by red. People see some sort of action from the federal government as retaliation for not being loyal enough to the president, essentially.

Then there have been things in the news about fraud that people see being used as a pretext to come to Minnesota to demonize Somali Americans who have been a longtime community here. That is alarming to a lot of people, because Somali Americans — the vast majority are U.S. citizens.

So when ICE agents are driving around town, masked-up, in very small groups, and grabbing Somali Americans off the street, the vast majority of them, the people being hassled, are U.S. citizens. So people think that the pretext of immigration enforcement is just that it’s a pretext. And what they really want to do is enforce some sort of political orthodoxy on the state of Minnesota and on the people here.

JW: I want to get into the reaction from people in Minneapolis and in the Twin Cities in general. Thousands of people have taken to the streets, protesting against the presence of ICE agents after an officer fatally shot Renee Good, a mother of three, who was acting as a neighborhood observer.

Jon, what have you been hearing from residents about how they’re responding to the shooting and to ICE’s, and as you’ve pointed out, larger federal agencies’ presence within the city?

JC: I think one thing a national and international audience needs to understand is what we’re seeing here is not like what happened after George Floyd here and in other places around the country. Of course, there have been vigils after Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. Of course, there was a vigil of 10,000 people in the neighborhood, and there have been protests. There was 20,000 people a mile from here over the weekend.

But most of what is happening is not what we think of as “protests.” It’s not clashes between protesters and federal agents. What is happening is we have groups of masked armed federal agents, not identifying themselves, roving around the cities in caravans — and then we have neighbors, some activists, but also many normal people.

“Most of what is happening is not what we think of as ‘protests.’ It’s not clashes between protesters and federal agents.”

One person who’s been working with these folks describes it as “normie Target moms.” Essentially these are folks, just normal people who are coming out of their houses when they hear the whistling, which is the signal that folks use to alert the neighborhood that ICE is around. When they hear honking, they’re coming out, they’re trying to use their constitutional rights to observe law enforcement.

Most of the instances where you see someone being pepper-sprayed, someone being tased, ICE agents breaking a window and pulling an observer out of a car — those are not protest situations. That is a response from the community that is trying to, they say, keep their neighbors as safe as possible at a time when we have thousands of these agents in our communities.

I just want to say really quickly that this is not just in the core cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the Twin Cities. This is not just in the lefty neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul. This is happening all over the state. The enforcement is happening all over the state, and then the response is happening all over the state.

When ICE agents conduct some sort of action in a place like St. Cloud, Minnesota, a small town, the neighbors are coming out in the same way that they’re coming out in the core cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, because these are the folks who work at their coffee shops, they work at their restaurants, they’re co-workers, they’re friends.

So this enforcement action is so broad and unprecedented, and folks across the state are really trying to meet peacefully and observe and use their constitutional rights to express their opposition to what’s being done to this state.

JW: I think for many of us who watched that video of ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting Renee Good, watched it from multiple different angles. It evokes a lot of fear. And I guess my question is, from what you’re seeing, is the anger and the love for their neighbors — is that outweighing the fear in people right now?

JC: What’s shocking to me is, every time I talk to someone who say they were an observer, they got taken down in 20 below weather kept on the ground, handcuffed, dragged away, brought to detention, all these different circumstances — everyone I talk to says what they see as harassment and intimidation that they experience only makes them more resolved to go out and use their constitutional rights to observe what’s happening and express opposition to it.

JW: I want to talk about some of those violent incidents that you’ve documented. Federal agents in Minneapolis and throughout Minnesota have violently clashed with protesters throughout the week. What can you tell us about these interactions and how they’ve been playing out in the state?

JC: It’s all over the Twin Cities specifically, but all over the state. And typically what’s happened is ICE agents will go around in a caravan. It’s not clear that they have, for the most part, any actual enforcement plan, but they’ll drive around.

“It’s not clear that they have, for the most part, any actual enforcement plan.”

It just happened down the block here. Two people were detained by ICE at a bus stop, and observers show up because typically they’re trailing these officers trying to keep tabs on what they’re doing.

They will let their networks know. They use Signal and other apps to communicate with other folks in the community, and they will start honking. They’ll blow their whistles. And people from all over the city or all over the neighborhood will show up and express their opposition to it. So some people are recording, some people are yelling, but for the most part, people are not impeding law enforcement.

But the clashes that we see are when, typically, ICE decides “OK, people are too close,” or “We want to get out of here.” Or many people have told me stories that they don’t even know why an ICE agent was acting in a certain way. The Minneapolis City Council president was out on a scene the other day, and video captured ICE agents — for no reason — just pushing him as hard as they could. And they pull out pepper spray and randomly use that.

The City Council president told me there’s an officer just running around, putting his Taser to people’s chests or to people’s arms, threatening them. Not for any security reason, not from what we can tell, any reason connected to their job. But because there is no accountability for these ICE agents.

They know they’re not going to be disciplined. They’re clear with a message from the administration — from the top down — that anything they do, including, the shooting of a mother of three in the face, is going to be defended by the administration. So there’s a sense that they’re acting without accountability and that, that is really inspired by a lot of the rhetoric that we hear coming out of this administration.

“Anything they do, including, the shooting of a mother of three in the face, is going to be defended by the administration.”

JW: Where are city and state officials in all of this? What efforts have we seen from local representatives to push back on DHS in their state and in their cities?

JC: So Minneapolis and St. Paul have both had separation ordinances for a while that blocks the city agencies and officials from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. And that includes the police in both cities.

They have found themselves, in the cities, in a very strange situation because you have essentially all these unaccountable masked, mostly anonymous, federal agents running around town — some who are using excessive force on citizens and on immigrants they’re trying to detain. And the police, for the most part, have steered clear of showing up to those scenes.

The police chief has said, if you see them, call 911, but police so far have not intervened on the side of citizens or protesters. That’s why so many of the observers who are out there say, “It’s our responsibility to put our bodies on the line to go out there, because the state’s not going to come out and protect us. The local law enforcement that we pay is not gonna come out and protect us.” So they say, “We need to protect us.”

And I should say much of the infrastructure for this movement of observers and ICE watchers came out of protests after George Floyd was killed in 2020. Many of the neighborhood groups that were formed in places like my neighborhood — the WhatsApp channels, the Signal channels — were ways that our neighbors communicated with one another to set up things like patrols when police were not patrolling our streets, to make sure that arsons did not happen in our neighborhoods.

So these really evolved into ways that people organized the resistance to this current push by the administration here. And people are really of the opinion that the national audience needs to understand this is not just unrest, this is not just protests.

An attorney I talked to just a few minutes ago said, “This is an invasion.” And people need to understand the scale of it: 3,000 law enforcement agents — that’s about 1 for every 1,000 residents.

JW: Before we go, any final thoughts?

JC: The justification from this administration, the way that they’re portraying what’s happening here in Minnesota — it almost turns on its head how we think about our constitutional rights in this country. Instead of protecting the citizens from the government, what they’re arguing for is protecting law enforcement from any transparency, from any accountability to the people.

We have ICE agents who they say they’re afraid are being doxed, which is not a legal term, of course. But we have a principle in this country that officials, we should know who officials are. We’re vesting them with authority; we’re vesting them with power. Therefore, the trade-off is we say, OK, we should know who these people are. We should be able to hold them accountable when they abuse these fundamental rights that are happening. But this administration has turned the Constitution on its head.

We see this in Renee Good’s killing too, where they are saying that citizens, instead of being given these constitutional rights as just an assumption, that citizens need to earn their constitutional rights by acting appropriately, by respecting law enforcement, by not yelling at law enforcement.

And that is just the opposite of what our traditions here are in the United States. I want the national audience to understand that that’s what’s happening here. It’s not just clashes between protesters and ICE; it’s an attack on basic rights that we’ve taken for granted.

JW: Thank you so much for that update, Jon.

JC: Thanks for having me.

Rep. Delia Ramirez on Her Efforts to Stop DHS Violence

JW: Wednesday evening protests erupted in Minneapolis after ICE shot a man, hitting him in the leg. President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the insurrection Act and send troops into the city to crush protests.

Next, I speak to Democratic congresswoman of Illinois, Delia Ramirez, who is introducing a bill that will limit the use of force by Department of Homeland Security agents. This is our conversation.

JW: Can you walk me through the bill that you’re introducing and why?

Delia Ramirez: The bill that I’m introducing, Jessica, is called “The DHS Use of Force Oversight Act.” And it’s a bill that actually codifies that the Department of Homeland Security must have a use of force policy that really also focuses on deescalation.

What you and I have been seeing around the country — not just last Wednesday — since the Trump administration took power is this brute, savage attack of our communities and this undermining of rule of law by ICE agents.

Because in reality, there isn’t any real use of force policy that is being followed by this administration. After what happened on Wednesday, so many of us knew that a use of force policy needed to be codified from this body as quickly as possible, which is what this bill does, but it’s not just creating a policy. It also clearly and consistently specifies that there has to be deescalation as the preferred method of engagement.

And I think the second piece of it, Jessica, that I think is so important, is that it also establishes a review committee to ensure that agents are in fact being trained. You and I both know — we have no idea where these agents are coming from. Have they been with the agency for 10 years? Did they get hired last week at one of their little gatherings that they do or via online? They’re not really doing background checks. So this actually establishes a review committee, making sure that agents are in fact being trained and following the techniques that promote public safety over violence and harm.

And then the third part of it: It requires DHS publish a report every six months, including the data of every use of force incident for transparency and accountability. We know that even under the Biden administration in 2023, the GA under-reported many incidents within the administration then. So for us, it’s really important that we’re doing it every six months and that that report is being published for us to be able to see what in fact is happening on the ground.

JW: What does the agency currently say about use of force and what agents are allowed to do and what accountability metrics do exist?

DR: I would say that most of us would argue that there’s no accountability metrics right now. That what ends up happening is, an agent harasses, beats, shoots, and kills an individual — whether it’s Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in Chicago, or Renee in Minnesota — and then immediately what you’re seeing in terms of use of force policy is whatever Donald Trump puts on Twitter. Or whatever lie DHS is putting on their own social media platforms, which is some BS argument identifying a victim as a domestic terrorist and then justifying whatever the agent did.

“What you’re seeing in terms of use of force policy is whatever Donald Trump puts on Twitter.”

We know that there are some protocols, specifically protocols like an agent does not get in front of a moving vehicle. An agent is not supposed to shoot at a moving vehicle, especially if it knows the person driving does not have a weapon. There’s a lot of that. But when you actually talk about how they’re supposed to engage, there’s not really a use of force policy being enforced.

We know that in 2023, under [Alejandro] Mayorkas, the administration itself had begun discretionary accounts to establish some use of force policy. But also we know that when we leave it to the administration, this administration, whether it is the president’s administration or the Department of Homeland Security under Kristi Noe — whatever’s internal changes immediately as needed for them. Which is exactly why for us, we need to codify what that actually looks like by Congress, and then we have to have the systems in place to ensure that they’re following protocol and then getting the reports when in fact they’re violating it, so that we can ultimately hold them accountable.

JW: You know the abolish ICE movement has started to pick up some steam, is it enough to restrain ICE from using excessive force, or is more needed?

DR: Look, this bill here, “The DHS use of Force Oversight Act” bill, in my opinion, is the bare minimum. It’s basically stating that like every other law enforcement entity, there must be a use of force policy that is not just in the books but trained, implemented, and used for accountability in the future. The bill itself has a number of details, right? Use only the amount of force that is objectively reasonable. We can argue back and forth what that means. It clearly and consistently specifies that deescalation is preferred, and they should really move and create the tactics for deescalation. It requires law enforcement officers to complete initial required training, which we know agents are not doing now. Prohibition of chokeholds, and the list goes on with this policy.

“This is not controversial. This is what every other enforcement agency is using.”

So when I say that to you, what I mean is, this is not controversial. This is what every other enforcement agency is using, and ICE or CBP, since they’re entering our cities, should not be excluded from it. And I mean that every single Democrat and every single Republican should be able to sign on to this bill because it’s basic — bare minimum. And not signing on is indicating that you’re OK with what’s happening on the streets.

Now let’s separate from a very specific policy reform that I’m looking at through this bill. I still think that we need to hold the administration accountable. I still think that members of Congress need to use the appropriation process right now to ensure that not one more dollar goes to this agency without significant concrete policies.

You know that for me, ultimately, what I want to see is defund ICE. Ultimately, what I really want is to start dismantling the Department of Homeland Security. It has not been around that long. It’s been 20 something years that they’ve been around. It was formed after 9/11, and ICE enforcement was happening under other purviews, and so was other entities like the Coast Guard. And then TSA, of course, as we know, was created after that as well.

This agency was designed, created intentionally in this particular way so that it gives them the massive latitude necessary to do whatever they want in the name of protecting us from domestic terrorism. Which is why strategically you hear Kristi Noem, the president, Tricia [McLaughlin], the assistant secretary, all calling victims — victims attacked and harmed by ICE — domestic terrorists. Because as long as they can call them domestic terrorists, they think that they can have impunity, qualified immunity, and kill and then lie about it.

So what that means is, I want to use the appropriation process to hold money from DHS. I want to see real reforms long-term. I want to work on dismantling DHS. We need to impeach Kristi Noem, and then we need to hold her accountable as well.

“This agency was designed … so that it gives them the massive latitude necessary to do whatever they want in the name of protecting us from domestic terrorism.”

JW: Why do you think that your Democratic colleagues are so resistant — in many ways — to tackling this issue in a broader way? We’ve obviously seen resistance to abolish ICE, to defunding DHS. What do you think that resistance is based in?

DR: Jessica, I think sometimes the resistance is based on fear, and this moment shows us that our constituents are demanding moral courage and moral clarity. If our responsibility is to represent our constituents, — whether it’s in Chicago, in New Orleans, in Louisville, Kentucky or if it’s in Portland, Oregon, and the list goes on — it’s to represent them, to fight for every single resource they need to thrive, and to protect them and uphold the Constitution.

Department of Homeland Security has demonstrated lawlessness. They’re operating unaccountable. They’re violating the Constitution. And they are creating chaos and fear and potential death in every single city that they walk into.

“The biggest organization of terror in this moment is the Department of Homeland Security.”

And so my colleagues have struggled with the fear, of what does that mean? Does this mean open borders? What does this mean? Are constituents going to vote me out because I’m being critical of an agency that was created after 9/11? Am I not demonstrating that I’m defending them from terrorism? Well, the biggest organization of terror in this moment is the Department of Homeland Security.

We are not where we were in 2018. The movement is not where it was in 2018. Thirty-five people have died under the Department of Homeland Security since Donald Trump became president again last year. A U.S. citizen was shot in the face three times, and they’re threatening to kill all over the country and then lie about it.

When 46 percent of consistent polls of U.S. citizens are talking about abolishing — not even defund, abolishing — it really forces members of Congress to ask themselves, “What are we doing about this agency that is lawless and creating fear and killing people around the country in the name of protecting us from the threats to the homeland?” And so I really think that this is a moment of real moral reckoning for my colleagues, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.

This agency isn’t operating FEMA the way it needs to. It’s not providing the resource and supports the Coast Guard needs in the way it needs to. It’s actually taking their money and moving them to ICE enforcement. They’re sending these ICE agents untrained, sending them to create the kind of havoc, the kind of chaos into cities that people are worried and fearful of leaving their home for.

And at the same time, they’re giving all these contracts to Donald Trump’s campaign donors so that they can become filthy rich at the expense of imprisoning and letting human beings die in prison.

So, yes, things may have felt different, and maybe they were in some ways, but some of us knew that this agency — in its inception — was created to do what it’s doing now. It is the biggest threat to the homeland, and we need to dismantle it immediately.

JW: Those were all of my questions, but is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you wanted to say?

DR: You heard me talk a lot about the Department of Homeland Security, how it was created. I think more and more of us are going to start talking about what this means. Of course, we need to fund TSA; of course we need to fund the Coast Guard. FEMA needs resources. And we’ve seen what happens when negligent leaders like Kristi Noem are at the helm of DHS.

There are ways to fund these important programs, but they can’t be funded under an agency that steals the money from these programs and puts them to put these criminals on the street, these thugs on the street to kill our constituents and American citizens. So where there’s a will, we create the solutions, but we have to have the will to do that.

[Break]

How Trump Is Unleashing His Partisan Militia on Immigrants and His Ideological Enemies

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: The cuts to your health care are what’s paying for this.

JW: That’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking to reporters earlier this week.

AOC: So understand how these dots connect. You get screwed over to pay a bunch of thugs in the street that are shooting mothers in the face.

JW: Back in 2018, the then-House candidate won the New York City Democratic primary on a progressive platform that included calling for abolishing ICE. In response to Trump’s first term policies — such as family separation — the movement gained modest momentum among Democrats. But it was largely seen as too risky and too radical to completely eliminate the agency.

Now though the calls to abolish ICE are back — perhaps stronger than ever as the Trump administration’s violent immigration raids terrorize communities across the country.

Could backlash to Trump’s deportation agenda actually lead to real change? Joining me now to break it all down are two guests.

Adam Goodman is the author of “The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants.” He’s a historian at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Welcome to the show, Adam Goodman.

Adam Goodman: Thank you, Jessica.

JW: Also joining us is the author of “The Cruelty is the Point” and staff writer at the Atlantic, Adam Serwer.

Welcome to the show Adam Serwer.

Adam Serwer: Thank you so much for having me.

JW: According to polling from The Economist and YouGov, more Americans support abolishing ICE than keeping it. Adam Goodman, I want to start with you. What do you make of this shift?

AG: One of the things that’s really interesting about public opinion polling on immigration is that it’s held pretty consistent over time of U.S. citizens and people in the country being in favor of immigrants. It was a relatively recent shift in the lead up to the 2024 election against immigrants and against ongoing immigration, in part because of the campaign that Donald Trump launched to scapegoat immigrants — use them for his own political gain. And what we’ve seen since Trump has come into office in the past year is that public opinion polling has shifted again, and response to the cruelty and response to the really draconian actions that the administration has taken against not only immigrants, but also citizens and permanent residents and many others.

JW: Adam Serwer, I want to turn to you. Does this type of polling change the political calculus for Democrats when it comes to either reining in or abolishing ICE altogether?

AS: [Sighs.] That question is difficult to answer because you’d have to ask the Democratic Party, but the reality is that this is a paramilitary armed force that is essentially a partisan militia that is being deployed as an armed force, that is at war with the parts of the country that did not support Donald Trump as much as he deems necessary.

So we talk about ICE in the context of immigration, but I think as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, ever since these deployments started, this is really a war against the “blue” parts of the country. And I hesitate to describe them that way because that’s really un-nuanced. The fact is, the country does not look like an electoral map in terms of, every community has both types of people in it.

“These people have a definition of American that excludes people who do not agree with them ideologically.”

But fundamentally this is not really about immigration. And it’s not just about immigration in the sense of who is a citizen and who is not. These people have a definition of American that excludes people who do not agree with them ideologically. And so the violence that you’re seeing that federal agents are engaging in against observers, against activists, not just against immigrants, is a reflection of that ideological worldview. Which is that those of us who do not agree with Donald Trump are not real Americans and are not entitled to the rights that are due us in the Constitution, whether or not we have citizenship.

JW: I want to push on this a little bit more. As you’ve said, there’s essentially a war on blue states, and it’s more complicated than that. But why do you think we’re not seeing Democrats push really hard against that, against not just this war on immigrants, but as you pointed out, this war on states where they’re in power?

AS: Not just states, cities. They sent ICE, federal agents to Memphis. I hesitate to say ICE because people say ICE when they both mean ICE and the Border Patrol. These are essentially people who are used to the subjects that they’re dealing with treating them as non-persons. So it’s not really a surprise that they’re also treating citizens as non-persons because we have given them license to treat immigrants, essentially as non-persons with no rights they need to respect. And so now that they’re treating Americans who are perceived as liberal that way.

“Most Americans have been alive longer than ICE has existed.”

I think Democrats are apprehensive because the backlash against the 2020 Black rights protest was so profound in the “anti-woke” backlash, which I believe was really driven by anti-integration sentiment in white-collar workplaces — in particular, in the public-facing jobs like the media.

They are concerned with the agenda-setting power of the American right and the reactionary elements within the media industry to define the terms of debate. So if they go against ICE, which has not existed for very long — most Americans have been alive longer than ICE has existed — they’re concerned that they’re going to be dealing with another “abolish the police” backlash. But the truth is, a democracy cannot exist when it has an armed uniformed federal agency who believes that its job is to brutalize 50 percent of the country.

“They are concerned with the agenda-setting power of the American right and the reactionary elements within the media industry to define the terms of debate. ”

AG: What we’re seeing now is also a result of the Democrats’ inaction and actually decision to avoid immigration, in part as a result of the polling. To go back to your first question, the polling that the Biden administration followed and that other administrations before Biden on the Democratic side followed, was that immigration was a toxic issue, it wasn’t going to help them come election time. And kind of they ignored it — hoped it would go away. The Trump campaign and the administration has capitalized on that since.

But I think there’s actually an opportunity here for Democrats to stake out some new ground. I mean, if there was ever a chance for Democrats to stake out new ground, it was 2016 and then again 2024, to distinguish themselves from the Trump administration. They did that to an extent on the campaign trail. But after assuming power, Joe Biden kept at arm’s length when it came to immigration. And that was a missed opportunity, I think, for all kinds of reasons — political, certainly, but also moral and ethical.

One thing I’ll just add, a brief anecdote, is that I had a chance to speak with a group of about 20 congressional Democrats in 2020. And this was the height of the protest for Black Lives Matter after the killing of George Floyd and the Abolish ICE, abolish the police movement.

And I mentioned just the word “abolition” or “abolish,” and was quickly shut down by the group. And I think that’s actually both understandable on the one hand from an elected official who sees that there’s no political possibility there, but a real miscalculation and that we’ve seen how far things have moved to the restriction side of the ledger.

We’ve seen what’s politically possible now. And how what was seen as extremist in the past is now a centrist opinion when it comes to immigration. So if we’re ever going to move back in the direction of a more humane immigration policy in this country, I think that we need more radical ideas on the table — regardless of whether or not they come to fruition.

AS: Yeah, I think it’s important to remember the immigration situation when Joe Biden took office was that there was a surge in migration at the border because of the post-Covid economic recovery, which in the United States was the strongest in the Western world. And so you had a big demand for labor, and you had a lot of people who, for other geopolitical reasons, wanted to come here and work.

That created an anti-immigrant sentiment that, along with, what they call thermostatic public opinion, that provided an opportunity for the Trump administration. I’m not a campaign adviser, I can’t give political advice in that sense. But I think what should be very clear to all Americans now is that there is no way to wage war on “illegal immigration” without also waging war on American citizens.

“There is no way to wage war on ‘illegal immigration’ without also waging war on American citizens.”

And they understood that from the beginning. And that’s precisely why they wanted this war in the first place, because they wanted to reshape the country in a very narrow right-wing image of what an American is — which is a white Christian conservative, with a few token minorities who will provide an alibi for the racial nature of their redefinition of American citizenship.

But the truth is that they consider anyone who is ideologically opposed to them an enemy, and that that person can be subject to violence — political violence at the hands of armed agents of the state. And you could see that in the way that they’re talking about Renee Good in the aftermath of her shooting by a federal agent saying, she was an agitator, or she was an activist, or she was protesting.

“Their mandate is to terrorize communities that they see as insufficiently pro-Trump.”

What that means is if you express the wrong ideological views or you act on the wrong political views, the state has a right to execute you. Now that is not freedom under any definition. They simply do not care whether or not you are an immigrant or not. Their mandate is to terrorize communities that they see as insufficiently pro-Trump.

JW: You know, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer just miles from where an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good. “Defund the police” was widely maligned by established Democrats as a political grenade. It was never adopted by mainstream or establishment Democrats. Do we think the “Abolish ICE” movement will hit some of those same political roadblocks, or do you think there’s more appetite for limiting funding to ICE than there is from relocating funding from police departments?

AS: I think there is, and I think because there’s a middle road here, right? It’s possible to have a democracy with policing. It’s possible to have a democracy with immigration enforcement. What you cannot have is an armed — federally armed — taxpayer-funded partisan militia that is at war with half the population because they’re insufficiently conservative.

You cannot have a democracy with an agency — a rogue agency — like that. And I think that’s what American history says. Like in some sense, it feels a little bit like we’re going through Redemption after the Civil War, except the federal government is in the place of the Southern white supremacist governments with their aligned paramilitaries.

If you’re a Democrat, maybe you don’t have to say the word “abolish,” but you do have to say that this is not working because these people are violating the fundamental constitutional rights of American citizens, and they can’t continue to do that because that absolutely breaks the consent of the government.

AG: You know, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have only existed for a little over two decades, and prior to the Department of Homeland Security, the immigration bureaucracy was called the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

That rhetorical shift matters a great deal. And it also points to the fact that part of the immigration bureaucracy has typically, and up until very recently, been meant to provide services to immigrants and to people who are seeking to come to the country. And today, we’ve seen a dramatic shift of the whole bureaucracy being directed at enforcement efforts.

The Trump administration has broken with kind of any past tradition when it comes to how the bureaucracy’s typically operated. And I think that we’re seeing kind of the effects of that. So you have people on the service side of things who are now running de-naturalization campaigns and have quotas that they’re supposed to meet each month in sending potential cases for de-naturalization to the Department of Homeland Security.

And so I think that it’s possible that we could see a kind of a reapportioning of the budget of the Department of Home Security, but I don’t think it’s going to happen under this administration, certainly.

And the other thing is that as immigration has become really intricately tied to questions of national security, at least that’s what the administration and what politicians often say and that’s been true since September 11, 2001. But even prior to that, it becomes difficult to disentangle enforcement efforts with this fearmongering about the immigrant other posing a national security threat. And politically, I think politicians find that a difficult tightrope to walk.

JW: Yeah. I want to dig in a little bit more on the history. Can you walk us through how the Department of Homeland Security got to be this massive behemoth, expensive behemoth that it is today on par, not fully on par, but close to the Department of Defense in terms of the amount of spending that we’re putting into this? I’m curious how we got here.

AG: The federal government came to take control over immigration in the late 19th century in 1891. And for a long time, it was under the Department of Labor. Immigration was seen primarily as a question of labor. In 1940 at the start of the Second World War, it moved from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice. Then after September 11, 2001, it moved to the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

And really, historically, the agency had been underfunded and had been strapped for cash. It was difficult for enforcement efforts to really achieve what their mandate stated. And there was also an incredible amount of corruption, of extortion, of smuggling, and physical, psychological, sexual abuse that agents perpetrated against migrants.

In the late 1970s — which I referred to as the dawn of the age of mass expulsion — around 900,000 people a year were apprehended and deported, from the late 1970s up until the 21st century. And these abuses were very common. People were being beaten, children were being separated from their parents. And family separation was a thing that has a long history as well. Agents sexually abused, raped women who were in their custody. Agents shot migrants. Agents killed migrants.

What we’re seeing today has a long history, but there’s also some striking differences today, and I think in part because of September 11 and the turn toward the national security state. And in part because Donald Trump has used this as the most successful way for him to accumulate power and to maintain power is the scapegoating of immigrants. And I think that’s something that has resonated with people and it’s worth asking why. Why has it resonated with people?

And I think because people have real issues, they have real problems that they’re facing, and instead of actually creating a more sustainable social welfare state to address those problems, the administration finds it much easier to point the finger at immigrants and others.

“Instead of actually creating a more sustainable social welfare state to address those problems, the administration finds it much easier to point the finger at immigrants and others.”

AS: There was a huge backlash to the brutality of immigrant authorities in the 1930s. That led to some reforms. I think the issue here is, to be honest, is that the country went crazy when Barack Obama got elected president.

It’s not a coincidence that Donald Trump started polling as the front-runner in 2011 when he became the country’s biggest birther. Because birtherism was a redefinition of American citizenship that excluded the Black president, whose mere presence was a psychological wound for a lot of white people in America.

Donald Trump has basically ridden this madness to a point in which he is shredding the constitutional rights of American citizens in the name of cleansing the country of those that they don’t consider American. And he is perhaps less ideological than Stephen Miller, but he is aware of what Stephen Miller’s ideology is. You know, Trump joked about how Stephen Miller, he’s only gonna be happy when everybody in the country looks like him. And Miller’s like, yeah, that’s right. And we know what that means! And I think there’s an inability to accept that because it’s so at odds with Americans’ definitions of themselves.

But if you look at what’s happening, if you look at like these masked agents who are brutalizing people and killing people, and you don’t recognize that as a violation of everything you claim to stand for as an American, then there’s a real problem.

And I think, just to go back to what Adam was saying about abuses by immigration agents. When you give people power this kind of power, and they are not accountable for that power — they can hide their identity, the federal government is not providing any oversight over their actions — then you get abuse. That is just human nature. When you are not accountable for abusing your power, you will abuse your power to degrees that are intolerable for those who are being abused because there’s no reason for you to stop. Especially because, to some extent, the people who are doing this are self-selective for having a high tolerance for inflicting pain on other people.

The entire premise of the American government is supposed to be opposition to arbitrary power, arbitrary tyranny. But that’s all we’re seeing in our streets right now, and it’s up to the people to say, “This is not what we’re about. We’re not gonna tolerate this.” And to some extent, it’s up to the people’s representatives, especially in the opposition and the Democratic Party, to say, “We’re not gonna tolerate this anymore.”

AG: One of the things that comes to mind listening to Adam is that I got interested in the topic of the history of deportation and trying to understand it actually in the early years of the Obama presidency, trying to make sense of like, how could someone who came into office preaching hope and change also be apprehending and deporting a lot of people?

And it points to the fact that there’s a bipartisan history here, and it’s not to equate the present administration with past administrations. There’s a stark difference. But Democrats and Republicans alike, have overseen mass deportation campaigns throughout U.S. history.

It speaks to the fact in part of the bureaucratic nature of the Department of Homeland Security, and prior to that, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. If you create an agency within the federal government tasked with enforcing immigration laws whose budget depends on apprehensions, detentions, and deportations, they’re going to try to carry out that task and they have an institutional imperative to do so. That’s going to lead to all kinds of problems, including incredible discretionary authority, as Adam noted, for low-level agents on the street or on the border, and tremendous abuses as a result of people not held to account.

We’ve seen that that’s incredibly problematic and also very difficult to change. So it’s not just the capitalist imperatives, the racist rhetoric and laws and implementation of the laws, but it’s also the bureaucratic imperatives that have historically driven the deportation machine.

AS: Yeah, as Adam said, the reorganization of the immigration or deportation bureaucracy was done under the Bush administration. But prior to that, it had been substantially expanded by Democratic presidents. And Obama believed that if he was aggressive on deportations that Republicans would come to the table and do an immigration deal. But of course, that didn’t happen. And so instead, you just have a one-way ratchet, where the immigration state gets more and more aggressive, and the people who are hired to enforce those immigration laws become more and more hardened by their mandate, which is solving the problem with the only lever they have, which is force and violence.

I do think there’s probably — the downturn in migration is also in part because we have shown the world that we are becoming a different type of country, that we are becoming a tyrannical country in which the basic human rights of immigrants and even citizens are not going to be respected by men with badges and guns.

AG: It’s worth noting that Obama during his presidency, during his two terms, changed in response to pressure from immigrants and advocates and allies. And I think, people who organize on the ground, immigrants themselves first and foremost, and then those working alongside them recognize that they might not be happy with either party, but there is a difference between the two, and Democrats are certainly more susceptible to pressure from below and to moving on this particular issue. And I think that presents political possibilities for future administrations.

JW: As you’ve both written about extensively, law enforcement agencies spreading racial terror throughout the United States isn’t a new phenomenon, and yet it feels like we constantly go through these cycles of people caring and the energy fizzling out without a bunch of meaningful systemic change. And the cycles of racial violence in the U.S. are obviously particularly notable as we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What would it take to sustain a movement that meaningfully addressed that violence, and do electeds right now have the stomach for it?

AS: I think these resurgences are built into the contradictions of the American idea, right? You have a Declaration of Independence that says, “We find these truths self-evident that all men are created equal.” But by the way, the British king is fomenting slave uprisings and leaving us victim to Indian savages. That’s in the Declaration of Independence. Nobody reads past the first paragraph, so we always forget the rest of it.

And then you have this other definition of citizenship rooted in the Reconstruction Amendments, which is that we are all Americans, regardless of where you come from, regardless of what your ethnic origin is — all really are created equal.

And so as a result this back and forth that you’re seeing is a conflict between these two iterations of the American idea. And I’m not sure that there’s ever going to be a final disposition of this conflict, but the reason that it keeps happening is because these are two mutually contradictory ideas of what it means to be an American. Either an American is a white Western Christian, or anybody can be an American. Those two ideas cannot coexist. It can be 80 percent one, and 20 percent the other, but they’re always going to be in conflict. And as long as there are people who adhere to the idea that to be an American is to be white, we’re going to have these reactionary revolutions and backlashes over and over. Particularly against advances in civil rights and equality and things like Black people becoming leaders of the country.

JW: And Adam Goodman, I want to get you in on this too. I interviewed Bernice King a few years back, and she repeated obviously her parents famous line about having to fight for democracy in every generation, to fight against evil in every generation.

But I’m not that old. It can feel a little exhausting how quick the cycles are going. And I guess, how do you see, if not a forever racial harmony, but a real addressing of the violence that we’re experiencing? I want to get your thoughts.

AG: History shows that anyone struggling for equity, justice, really a different world, needs to play the long game.

When it comes to immigration, these battles have taken place in response to horrible things, whether it’s apprehensions, mass raids across the United States, and people trying to defend themselves, their families, and their communities. There’s been a lot of defensive actions taken, but also there’s been a lot of proactive, offensive actions taken by immigrants and advocates and recognizing that perhaps there’ll be some short-term victories, but real change will only happen over the course of longer periods of time and sustained struggle and really keeping the pressure up on elected officials and keeping this issue front and center so that when a moment does emerge, when change, perhaps surprising, perhaps unexpected or thought impossible, presents itself, we can capitalize.

I think it’s very difficult to say exactly when that’ll be, but certainly we see historically that when there have been moments of dramatic change and victories won, and there are many examples of that — it’s important to remember that, especially, during this dark time, it’s been a result of that sustained pressure and struggle over long periods of time. And not just pressure from below, but also people in power taking action and taking advantage of their positions and their privilege to push forward a new vision for the country.

AS: My pessimistic offering here is that I think the kind of change that Adam is talking about really requires a fracturing of the Republican coalition as it currently exists. The Democratic Party cannot, by force, do it on its own.

You look at things like Reconstruction or the mid-century civil rights movement — it cannot just be Democrats and liberals saying, “No, recording an ICE agent is not a death penalty offense.” You need Republicans, to some extent, and obviously not the hard-core MAGA because they’re never going to do that, but to some extent, their rank-and-file Republican voters to have a moment of recognition and to realize that this is not the country that they want to live in.

I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I don’t know if it’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t know if it’s going to happen in four years or five years. But I do think it’s not something that in a two-party system, one party can do on its own. Now, maybe, maybe in a landslide election with a tremendous amount of the veto points built into the system with a majority that’s large enough to overcome those veto points — maybe. But I don’t actually think that’s in the offering given the division of the country at the moment in terms of the two parties’ coalitions, especially given that Donald Trump won a plurality of the popular vote in the last election.

So to some extent, you need some of the people on the other side to wake up and realize that they don’t want to live in a show-me-your-papers country.

AG: One thing that’s important to remember is that it’s really helpful to have a common enemy when you’re organizing. Donald Trump has both implemented the harshest most draconian policies in our lifetimes when it comes to immigration. But he’s also brought more people out into the streets, and more people now care about this issue than, I think, have in the recent past, at the very least. And there’s political possibility in that.

And the question of after Trump leaves office, what happens and how to keep that pressure up is one I don’t have the answer to. But I think we saw that happen in 2020, after Biden came to office and things went back to normal, back to the status quo. Which, certainly, I think immigrants weren’t happy about. They wanted broader-scale changes when it comes to the system in which they need to live and navigate.

But there is a real question of what’s going to happen moving forward. And I agree with Adam that it’s not going to be one in which one party can just push through these transformative changes. It’s going to happen when there’s a realignment. And perhaps there will come a breaking point because of public opinion, because of something horrible that happens like we’ve seen recently, and perhaps some Republicans and others, whether it’s voters or elected officials, will peel off.

JW: We’re running out of time, but I just wanted to give you both a chance to give any final thoughts before we close out. And Adam Serwer, I’ll start with you, and then Adam Goodman, if you could close us out.

AS: Look, I would just emphasize again that as scary as these men are, as scary as this situation is, the people even in authoritarian regimes are the determinant of where things go. If enough people rise up against this, if enough people say this is unacceptable, you can change it. The fact that they have all the guns and the authority to use force and a pliant Supreme Court that will bless whatever the president wants to do — no matter how nakedly authoritarian or unconstitutional — the ultimate arbiter of what happens here is the people. You are not helpless. It is actually up to you.

And they know that. And in part, that’s why they’re trying so hard to demoralize people. And I would just say that people should not be demoralized by the administration’s propaganda efforts to make everything seem like they can do whatever they want and they’re all powerful and everybody else is helpless. No, ultimately the American public decides what happens here whether through action or complacency.

AG: I couldn’t put it better myself. What other option do we have but to fight, but to continue to organize and to struggle? Hope is about bringing about a different world.

JW: We’re going to leave it there. But thank you both so much for joining me on the Intercept Briefing. This was a really important conversation. I’m glad you had it with me.

AS: Thank you for having us

AG: Thank you.

JW: That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post Trump’s War on America appeared first on The Intercept.

Greg Grandin on Trump’s “Universal Police Warrant”

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000

How long will the United States claim control over Venezuela? “Only time will tell,” President Donald Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday — potentially years. U.S. troops invaded the country over the weekend, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in New York on Monday. They now sit in a Brooklyn jail, awaiting trial.

Trump and administration officials have justified ousting Maduro by claiming it was consistent with the Monroe Doctrine — a doctrine that through the years “has been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene,” says historian Greg Grandin. “Trump has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it’s a substitute for liberal international law.”

This week on the Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington discusses the Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela, its larger aims of controlling the Western Hemisphere, and bringing Latin America to heel with Grandin, the author of numerous books, including most recently “America, América: A New History of the New World.”

“There’s an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism,” says Grandin. “They imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.”

The administration’s vision is outlined in the National Security Strategy the White House released in December. “This is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form. But what’s also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. … It’s reserving the right to treat the rest of the world like it treats Latin America.”

Trump and administration officials — from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change, to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller — have threatened to expand military operations to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don’t fall in line. Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at The American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined “The Narco-Terrorist Elite,” also joins the conversation to discuss the former Florida senator’s history and ambitions.

Tkacik points out that Rubio, a driving force behind Maduro’s ouster, represents a wing of the Republican Party fixated on battling nominally left leaders in the region. That mentality is at odds with a key faction of Trump’s base, who say they’re against foreign intervention because they think the government should keep its attention on U.S. soil.

Trump’s attack on Venezuela and fixation on so-called “narco-terrorists,” Tkacik says, “represent an attempt to reconcile these two poles — the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons — that really have different definitions of America First.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington.

U.S. troops invaded Venezuela on Saturday, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges, and the Venezuelan President now sits in a Brooklyn jail cell, awaiting trial.

The invasion was preceded by months of U.S. military strikes on alleged “narco-terrorist” boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.

Stephen Miller: The United States is using its military to secure our interest unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.

Marco Rubio: We’ve seen how our adversaries all over the world are exploiting and extracting resources from Africa and every other country. They’re not going to do it in the Western Hemisphere.

Donald Trump: They now call it the Donroe document. I don’t know. It’s Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore. Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.

JW: While Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as interim leader after his abduction, President Donald Trump says the U.S. is in charge.

Trump and administration officials — from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller — have threatened to expand military operations to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don’t fall in line.

Meanwhile, the administration has been threatening renewed strikes on Iran and escalating efforts to acquire Greenland. Rubio told lawmakers that Trump wants to buy the island from Denmark, but the administration hasn’t ruled out taking it by force.

So, what’s to make of the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy ambitions?

Joining me now to break all of this down is historian and professor at Yale, Greg Grandin. He’s the author of numerous books, including most recently “America, América: A New History of the New World.” Also joining us is Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at the American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined, “The Narco-Terrorist Elite.”

Greg and Maureen, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Greg Grandin: Thanks for having us.

Maureen Tkacik: Thank you so much.

JW: To start, Maureen, Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as interim leader after his abduction, but Trump says the U.S. is in charge — exactly who is, is unclear at the moment. But what does it mean to govern Venezuela right now?

MT: To govern Venezuela is a task that’s difficult to comprehend. We are talking about a country that has experienced the equivalent of three Great Depressions in the past decade. A lot of that was oil prices and a lot more of that is the draconian sanctions that successive administrations — especially the Trump administration — imposed that effectively criminalized commerce when it comes to dealing with that country.

When he was still in charge, Maduro was very open to doing whatever we wanted him to do to lift those sanctions to get a little bit of relief, because a little bit of relief could start to mend the state. But what is the terrifying prospect is that — if the Chavistas are completely overthrown — really relies on a competent government with some ability to enforce the rule of law and to when they have enough money, get basic needs out to the populace. I don’t think that it’s easy at all, but the Chavista government has done that hard work for several decades now, despite meager and meager resources with which to do it.

And I think that somebody in the Trump administration — there’s been a lot of press about how Trump was put off by [Maria Corina] Machado accepting the Nobel Prize and not just getting up there and saying, “This really belongs to that peacemaker, Donald J. Trump.”

What I have heard is that Marco Rubio has an unusually — for this era of Republican affairs — unusually competent chief of staff, I think formerly of [think tank] American Compass. And this gentleman is apparently behind the scenes saying, “She ain’t it. This opposition ain’t it. There’s so much infighting just among them. We can take out Maduro, we can get that sort of public relations coup, but really what we should do is take the deal that Maduro offered, which is, whatever you want.”

GG: One question that I did have was, who in the Trump administration was smart enough to know that Machado was a non-starter?

MT: Michael Needham.

GG: Michael Needham [laughs]. Because if one of the ways you look at this is that Marco Rubio as the head of the war party, Hegseth, and JD Vance and Miller and the head of the DEA, and they’re all eager to go in, and they want to kneecap the people who want to negotiate a normalized relationship like Richard Grenell. If they started this war, and obviously, they started this military buildup, and obviously the end goal isn’t just Venezuela — it’s Cuba. Then Greater Miami and Greater Florida must be feeling enormously betrayed about Machado and her being cut out, because they see it as, this is the first step to bringing down Cuba.

So I was wondering how they got Marco Rubio on board for this particular arrangement, which seems to contradict that other idea, that we’ll put the hard-liners in and then we’ll move on to Cuba. But it makes sense, if they just felt that they were so incompetent and so much infighting. And there’s no reason why they can’t eventually bring pressure to bear on Cuba.

I haven’t heard if there’s been any directives issued from the metropole — from Washington — about how Venezuela should be treating Cuba. But I imagine they’ll be coming soon. You know that Cuban security agents have to leave. Cuban doctors will have to leave, and no more oil for Cuba. I don’t know. I’m not saying that’s happened. I’m just saying I imagine that is on the agenda soon.

JW: What you’ve picked up on, too, about Cuba is taking me into my next question, which is about the “Donroe Doctrine,” as Trump has renamed it.

GG: We can’t call it that.

[Laughter.]

JW: OK, I’ll just call it the Monroe Doctrine. But Greg, I want to get into it because Trump has justified ousting the Venezuelan president by invoking the Monroe Doctrine, and I think it’d be helpful to just get a little bit of background for our listeners. What is the Monroe Doctrine, and why are we invoking it here? Why is Trump invoking it here?

GG: First of all, the United States is the only country that has doctrines. The Monroe Doctrine is four paragraphs in a 1823 State of the Union address that James Monroe gave, basically acknowledging the inevitability of Spanish American independence. The four paragraphs — vaguely worded — they’re hesitant. They weren’t sure really how to proceed. They didn’t want to commit one way or the other. They said they recognized that Spanish American independence was inevitable. They warned Europe about trying to reconquer any parts of Spanish America that have been declared free. They said the United States shares special interests with all of the Western Hemisphere. They didn’t define what those interests were.

And there’s a brief sentence in there about how the United States would interpret events anywhere else in the hemisphere on how they bear on the peace and happiness of the United States. Now it’s that last clause that has been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene. It’s a standing open warrant that it could use wherever it wants against whoever it wants. Not at first! It took a while before Monroe’s statement was elevated to the level of doctrine. Then it was fortified.

Other presidents added corollaries; Grover Cleveland basically said the U.S. sovereignty was law across the whole hemisphere because it was powerful. Theodore Roosevelt said that the United States had policing power to put down chronic disorder, that was in 1905. But the Monroe Doctrine fell out of use with FDR and the Good Neighbor Policy, and even during the Cold War, when the United States started ramping up interventions again, particularly after the Cuban Revolution. They didn’t so much reference the Monroe Doctrine with all its association of gunboat diplomacy, and taking Texas, and taking Mexico, and taking Panama, and old styled imperialism. Reagan had his own doctrine. Nixon had his own doctrine. They didn’t necessarily invoke Monroe.

What’s important to know is that American First nationalism likes the Monroe Doctrine.

But what’s important to know is that American First nationalism likes the Monroe Doctrine. There’s an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism. First of all, American first nationalists are not isolationists, they’re internationalists. They’re just not universalists. They’re tribal nationalists, and they believe in expansion within the hemisphere. They understand that the United States has the right to project its power, and they imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.

And they liked the Monroe Doctrine — people like Stephen Miller and these people — because the Monroe Doctrine is pre-modern. It’s before the United Nations. It’s before universal suffrage. It’s before abolition. It’s before mass migration and doctrines like human rights. It’s before the foundation of the Organization of American States. It’s almost like a heritage — they talk about “heritage America” — the Monroe Doctrine is something very dear to the hearts of the kind of America First nationalism that Trump represents.

So their use of it now, their rehabilitation of it now — and I must say in the most bellicose way yet. We complain about Teddy Roosevelt. We complain about Grover Cleveland. But even in the past, even when it was justifying all sorts of interventions, the assumption was that the United States was doing it on behalf of the Western Hemisphere to keep enemies out, whether it be Communist or whatever.

“The Monroe Doctrine is particularist, it’s tribal, it’s specific to the United States.”

Trump has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it’s a substitute for liberal international law. And to the degree that liberal international law was nominally, even formally, if not in actuality universalist, the Monroe Doctrine is particularist, it’s tribal, it’s specific to the United States and its relationship to what the United States imagines as its backyard, its sphere of influence — and that’s Latin America. So this rehabilitation of the Monroe Doctrine, I think, goes very nicely and seamlessly with the vision of world politics and global politics that Donald Trump imagines he’s presiding over or implementing.

JW: And the Monroe Doctrine is a part of the administration’s national security strategy, which was released in December, which includes a section titled “Western Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” So this feels really relevant right now. And Greg, I want to also touch on something else that you’ve obviously touched on quite frequently in your work.

You’ve referred to Venezuela as “empire’s laboratory,” a testing ground where the U.S. works out its own problems in someone else’s sovereign nation. Can you tell us more about the history of this dynamic and what it says about the Trump administration that they’re reaching for it now?

GG: Yeah, well not so much Venezuela — all of Latin America. All of Latin America is empire’s workshop. It’s a place where the United States right from the beginning, where banking houses first went international, where companies first had their first overseas offices, where shipping companies, Grace Company, companies that later became Halliburton first set up overseas shop.

Mexico after the Civil War was the first time that capitalists in New York and Boston got together and presided over a process of nation building to basically turn Mexico into an export oriented state; took over its mining and its agriculture, its railroads, its electricity, its trolleys. Mexico was basically the United States’ first exercise in capitalist state building. Latin America is a place where the United States would work out strategies of repression. And that was particularly during the Cold War. And there was a lot of cooperation between U.S. police and U.S. military and Latin American military.

“Mexico was basically the United States’ first exercise in capitalist state building. Latin America is a place where the United States would work out strategies of repression.”

But one of the points that I make in the book — it’s just not all of these repressive things. Latin America is also the place in which the United States, where aspiring coalitions emerging out of the ruins of the last coalition that overreached turn to Latin America to work out new ways of thinking about the world.

So Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal was absolutely dependent on having access to Latin America. It was working with economic nationalists, cooperating with reformers, tolerating all sorts of things, including nationalization of U.S. property. Basically giving up the right of intervention and recognizing the sovereignty of Latin American nations that created a decade of goodwill that solidified and gave ballast to the New Deal at home also and readied the United States for World War II.

And then of course, when the New Deal begins to unravel in the 1970s, it’s the new right that returns to Latin America and works out new strategies for how to administer things. Where maybe the New Deal was the moral vision of citizenship with some form of social democracy. The new right brought back the idea of individual rights and individual freedoms and a very muscular anti-communist liberalism that it then uses. That is its framework for thinking about foreign policy as a whole.

So it’s a workshop, not just in the material instruments of repression or the grasping means of accumulation of wealth. It’s also a place in which the United States forms ideas about how the world works and the role of the United States in it.

“So it’s a workshop … a place in which the United States forms ideas about how the world works and the role of the United States in it.”

JW: No, that’s really interesting analysis, and I’m going to dive back into Rubio of this whole situation in a second. But first I want to look a little bit more globally.

In December, Greg, you wrote for the New York Times, “In place of the now defunct liberal international order, the White House is implicitly globalizing the Monroe Doctrine, claiming for the United States the right to unilaterally respond to perceived threats not just within its hemisphere but anywhere on Earth (China excluded).” Can you say a bit more? How are the Trump administration’s expansive foreign policy aims taking shape? The implications seem somewhat obvious, but I’d like you to spell them out for us.

GG: Yeah, if you read that document and you listen to the ideologues of America First nationalism, there’s a clear rejection of the post-Cold War bipartisan consensus and that the United States would superintend a liberal capitalist order — with shared rules concerning property rights and trade and what not — and treat the world as a single unity. Trump’s vision is a return to a kind of pre-World War II balance of power in which individual hegemons would be in charge of getting their hinterlands in order.

It’s more of a fractured sovereignty. You have China and its greater realm in the South China Sea. You have Russia and the former Soviet Republics and Ukraine, and you have the United States and Latin America, and this is very explicitly laid out in the national security strategy, and this is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form.

But what’s also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. It’s not like it’s going to let every hegemon play in its own sandbox. It still understands the world as a world of competition and especially against China. And it’s reserving the right to treat the rest of the world kind of like it treats Latin America.

There is an implicit globalization of the Monroe Doctrine. It’s talking about influencing politics in Europe. It’s talking about continuing to protect Taiwan if it has to. It’s a little unclear. It’s a little all over the place that there are certain contradictions within the document. But yes, it’s a fascinating document, and I think it’s a very precarious document. I mean, why shouldn’t Putin say, “Well, look what the United States did in Venezuela? We just want to get Ukraine in order.” Why shouldn’t Beijing say, “We just want to get Taiwan in order. These are our hinterlands.”

“Why shouldn’t Putin say, ‘Well, look what the United States did in Venezuela? We just want to get Ukraine in order.’”

MT: I wanted to add that, having looked a lot at the Tren de Aragua phenomenon, there is a real schism between the neocons and the MAGA America First people.

Stephen Miller anticipated this throughout the Biden administration, and you can see their obsession building with Tren de Aragua starting in 2023. This was a project.

So we had this slumlord in Aurora, Colorado. He hadn’t taken care of his buildings. And some Venezuelan immigrants happened to have taken up residents there. And some of these people were bad guys. There are a few of these buildings that were really getting taken over. But these slumlords, they hire a PR firm in Boca Raton, Florida. And these guys put together a pitch saying, this vicious gang Tren de Aragua — which at this point no one has ever heard of, this is back in 2024 — has taken over buildings, we are being invaded by these scary Venezuelan gangs. To make the case that cities were shoving the Tren de Aragua epidemic under the rug, that woke city officials, the woke Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, were gaslighting the public about the horrors being inflicted by this Venezuelan prison gang that nobody had heard of.

This Venezuela, the Tren de Aragua thing, and this Venezuela operation, I think, do represent an attempt to reconcile these two poles — the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons — that really have different definitions of America First.

Rubio, of course, comes from this — this is what my story that you invited me on to talk about explains — that Rubio is so much a product of this milieu of hard-right-wing Cuban immigrants. His brother-in-law, who was a mentor to him, an idol to him as a teenager — he was a drug trafficker for an organization, and he was arrested and imprisoned in the late ’80s. But for an organization that was run by a bunch of Bay of Pigs veterans. I really couldn’t believe, wow, Bay of Pigs veterans, wouldn’t you know, they really controlled the entire drug trade in Latin America starting in the ’70s, they controlled cocaine. And as a result, they controlled every sort of either right-wing government, or had their tentacles in every right-wing government in Latin America and every right-wing paramilitary organization in Latin America. And they were working with the CIA on behalf of the CIA.

GG: And it is true that after the Cuban Revolution, right-wing Cubans or anti-communist Cubans were brought into the conservative coalition. They’re involved in this drug-running. They were involved in Watergate. So the incorporation of anti-communist Cubans into the right-wing coalition has been a key element within the rise of the new right.

And in terms of the drugs: John Stockwell was a CIA agent, and he turned into a kind of informant to the public. He said there’s not one major operation that the CIA has mounted where it didn’t leave behind a major drug cartel operation. And starting with Italy in 1947 and running to Latin America through the 1980s. Latin America, the CIA is all over the expanse of drug running, through Pinochet, through these repressive right-wing governments that the CIA installed in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s. And then once they’re in power, then they start taking money from the DEA to eradicate the drugs that they themselves are involved in facilitating and cultivating. It’s crazy-making.

JW: The aftermath is often incredibly destructive of anything the United States does when playing in Latin America. Playing is maybe not the best word here. We’re talking about ousting a president, but I want to dive into some reporting. Reporting has suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the one of the driving forces behind the ousting of Maduro.

He represents a wing of the Republican Party that remains fixated on battling these nominally left leaders. And has Marco Rubio essentially become the dog that caught the car here? Do we think this has gone beyond what he planned for or is he exactly where he wants to be?

MT: I think that Marco Rubio is eyeing a presidential run. And I think that his brain — this gentleman Michael Needham, who people who aren’t ideologically affiliated with the neocons are very impressed with — I think that he said, this would be bad. It would be bad to install. So we’re in this interesting period where it’s not clear what’s going to happen.

JW: Greg, I want to get your thoughts. Marco Rubio, along with Stephen Miller, is apparently now running the country. Do you think he got exactly what he wanted, or is this way more than he could have ever anticipated?

GG: This goes back to the earlier point: Who came up with the idea of cutting out Machado? Operating on the assumption that Rubio would’ve wanted Machado in because it’s part of the whole, anti-Castro, anti-Communist, anti-Cuban line with much more hard-line, much more ideological. If Venezuela really is a step to taking out Cuba, you would’ve imagined that Rubio would’ve wanted Machado. So Machado must’ve been pretty bad for them to reject it.

So the question is, is Rubio playing a long game? He still has Cuba in his sights, but he just thinks it’s going to take a little bit more time until they can get Venezuela in a place where they want. If Machado was installed, maybe they could have just leapfrogged straight to Cuba and went after Cuba. Now it’s going to take a little bit more time.

I mean, Rubio, he has his foot in both camps. He’s not a natural America Firster. He is a neocon. In the Senate, he was very much associated with the neoconservative interventionist, and he supported the Iraq war. He supported the war on terror. He certainly wants to go into Iran.

So he is, in some ways, Trump’s liaison to the neoconservatives, and now he’s caught himself in this weird position where he is not the fish nor fowl. He’s presided over a regime change that may have satisfied the American Firsters in its restraint — in the sense that it’s not going in with boots on the ground and spending millions of dollars on rebuilding Venezuela. But he’s not satisfying the neocons. David Frum had an article in The Atlantic basically praising and saying, even Trump gets things right. So Rubio kind of operates on both of these sides on this foreign policy divide.

MT: Yeah, Rubio is just a dye-in-the-wool neocon. One thing in writing about Citgo, I would look at FOIA requests filed with USAID because USAID spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade funding Venezuelan opposition and sabotage missions and what-have-you.

And Marco Rubio as the head of the National Archives, that’s his like fourth job, I think he controls those records. I started calling up some people who’d been filing these FOIA requests because I wasn’t really sure how I should do one, who I should make it out to these days. And I came across a lot of right-wing Venezuelans who have very little regard for [Juan] Guaidó, for Maria Corina [Machado], for Leopoldo López — a lot of fairly right-wing or some of them are hard right, I had one of them tell me that Maria Corina was actually a socialist.

GG: [Laughs.]

MT: But ideology aside, they all will tell you that these people are just grifter, like they’re just as corrupt as Maduro. There’s a lot of variation in the Venezuelan opposition. It could be that there are other members of the Venezuelan opposition that are trying to pull the strings.

They’ve been doing a lot of really bad stuff in Venezuela, and that is why they are not popular, especially Maria Corina. She has, again, asking Netanyahu to invade her country. So that’s another thing. If the Trump administration could get to the point where they put a moratorium on some of these sabotage efforts and get some of the sanctions lifted, they could have a win-win situation. But most of the Trump administration has been lose-loses.

[Break]

JW: Greg, I want to pivot to you. The Trump administration’s attempts to destabilize Venezuela look essentially like the latest chapter in U.S. antagonism towards what’s known as the pink-tide nations — Latin American countries that elected left-leaning governments explicitly opposed to U.S. hegemony. Maduro certainly opposed the U.S., but did he govern like a leftist? How much of this is a left/right issue? What else is going on here?

GG: Maduro was a special case in the way that Venezuela gradually became a crisis and then a problem to be solved.

He obviously comes out of the left. He was, I think, a bus driver. He was a community organizer and he worked his way up the Chavista social movements and into the Chavista government. He undoubtedly comes out of the left. The question is to what degree once he became president, once oil prices fell, once the sanctions hit, once he found himself boxed into a corner, what actions did he take to stay in power, is another question. But it did have the effect of splitting, in many ways, the left in Latin America.

When you have somebody like Maduro, it doesn’t matter, the actual facts that Maureen were talking about — it’s the perception. So you have Lula, and Boric in Chile, and Petro in Columbia; they have to take a stand. Is Maduro somebody we’re going to defend? Is Maduro somebody we’re going to argue didn’t steal the 2024 elections? And Maduro somebody we’re going to go to the mat for? And so it creates divisionism within Latin America to a large degree. So it weakens things.

What I’m most distressed about is, polling shows in countries like Chile and Columbia, a high degree of support for the removal of Maduro. And that is different in Latin America. Because as I said, Latin America is the place where the ideal of national sovereignty was first made real, where the ideal of non-interference and non-intervention was forced on the United States. When Bush Sr. took action against Manuel Noriega, every country in the [Organization of American States] opposed — every one of them. It was seen as a violation of sovereignty, period. No matter how ill-reputed Manuel Noriega was. And to see that commitment to sovereignty and non-intervention weakening in the face of this ongoing assault and orchestrated campaign against Venezuela is a bit troubling.

But without doubt, we talked about Venezuela being the first step toward Cuba, but it’s not going to end there. Obviously, the two big prizes is Brazil and Mexico. These are countries that have solid left governments, Mexico more secure than the Brazilian one. But though maybe not, considering the way that they handled the coup plotters in Brazil.

But there is no getting Latin America in order, back under the eagle’s wing, without Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies, the two largest populations — and they’re also the countries that have the most coherent left-wing governments that still understand itself as anti-neoliberal, as committed to sovereignty, as committed to non-intervention.

Claudia Sheinbaum speaks cautiously and quietly, but forcefully also about defending the ideal of sovereignty. And Lula spends, as we know, a lot of time trying to organize different pieces of the world to find alternatives to the United States in terms of trade and credit, either through the BRICS or through something else. And those are the countries ultimately that’ll be targeted. The U.S. tried to target Brazil over its social media prohibitions. Brazil regulated social media and tried to get some of the hate speech off of it. And it drew a sharp reaction against the United States, including sanctions.

Elon Musk was very upset and Rumble was very upset, but Brazil won that fight. And it also won the fight against the coup plotters — the people that tried to prevent Lula from coming to power in jail. So I think there’s some basis of hope in Brazil and in Mexico. But without doubt to get Latin America in order would entail bringing those countries to heel, or at least keeping them on their hind legs, and worried about U.S. intervention and U.S. interference.

Latin America people are tired of crime and they’re tired of the corruption that comes with the drug industry. And the right has also imported a lot of cultural politics — cultural warfare politics — into Latin America in order to confront the left. Coming out of the Cold War, the left was dominant rhetorically and electorally, when Chavez and Lula and Kirchner, and Morales was in power in Bolivia, and the right lost almost every election. It was a kind of partition Cold War anti-communist right. But since they’ve managed to restyle themselves in the format of Trump — in all of Trump’s pet issues —they’ve managed to gain electoral traction.

So it’s clear what the United States wants in Latin America. It wants a giant prison camp, à la Bukele. And he wants to escalate the drug war into a crusade. It wants everybody back on board. There’s resistance to that.

And of course it wants to kick out China. China is the big thing, but China’s investment is so integrated within Latin America, I don’t see what the Trump administration, short of offering viable alternatives in terms of competing with China economically, can do to extract Latin America from China. I think that boat has sailed. And China has an influence in Latin America, although it acts very cautiously. It didn’t speak up about Venezuela, and it kept quiet and it plays its cards to its chest. China’s always playing a long game.

JW: Yeah, you just mentioned a lot of really catastrophic scenarios.

[Laughter]

So this next question may seem a little confusing after all of that, but what is the most hopeful outcome that could possibly come out of all of this?

GG: In Venezuela, I don’t know the dynamics. Things are happening so fast, I really don’t understand who’s doing what or what’s going on. I know there’s schisms within Venezuela. But if to some degree there could be a democratic renewal within the social base of Chavismo, those democratic organizations that made Chavismo a vibrant movement in the early 2000s as something to celebrate. Whether it be community radio, whether it be the cooperatives, whether it be the communal councils, if there can be a democratic renovation of the social base of Chavismo — which I think has been to a degree decimated and diluted by Maduro, for whatever reasons. He was under siege by the greatest, strongest, and most powerful country in world history. Lord knows what steps you have to take in order to survive.

If there could be a democratic renewal that wasn’t an oligarchic restoration, that kept some of the premises and principles of the Chavista Revolution — that oil belongs to the people, that the revenue should be spent on social funds, that health care should be provided to the poor, that housing should be provided [to] the poor. I think a lot of expectations were raised under [Hugo] Chavez and many of them were fulfilled, even if they unraveled under Maduro. If we can get back to that, I think that would be the most hopeful scenario that I can imagine.

JW: Well, we’re going to leave it there, but thank you for taking the time to speak to us on the Intercept Briefing. We really enjoyed having you.

GG: Thank you so much, Jessica. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun talking.

JW: That does it for this episode.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post Greg Grandin on Trump’s “Universal Police Warrant” appeared first on The Intercept.

AI’s Imperial Agenda

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000

After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched ChatGPT in 2022, the race for dominance in the field of artificial intelligence hit warp speed. Silicon Valley has poured billions of dollars into developing AI, building data centers, and promising a future free from the chains of unfulfilling work across the globe.

But in “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” tech reporter Karen Hao pulls back the curtain, unveiling the human and environmental cost of artificial intelligence and the colonial ambitions undergirding Silicon Valley’s efforts to fuel the rise of AI.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington speaks to Hao about her book and the dawn of the AI empire. “Empires similarly consolidate a lot of economic might by exploiting extraordinary amounts of labor and not actually paying that labor sufficiently or at all,” says Hao. “So that’s how they are able to amass wealth — because they’re not actually distributing it.”

“The speed at which they’re constructing the infrastructure for training and deploying their AI models” is what shocks Hao the most, as “this infrastructure is actually not technically necessary, and … somehow the companies have effectively convinced the public and governments that it is. And therefore there’s been a lot of complicity in allowing these companies to continue building these projects.”

“They have effectively been able to use this narrative of [artificial general intelligence] to accrue more capital, land, energy, water, data. They’ve been able to accrue more resources — and critical resources — than pretty much anyone in history,” Hao says, warning of “the complete aggressive and reckless” growth of AI infrastructure, but stresses that none of this is inevitable. “There is a very clear path for how to unlock the benefits of AI without accepting the colossal cost of it.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington.

In 2022, Sam Altman’s company OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that unleashed a wave of excitement over artificial intelligence. And it kickstarted a race for dominance in the field.

Tech CEOs from Altman at OpenAI, to Mark Zuckerberg at Meta, and Alex Karp at Palantir have lauded artificial intelligence as the “future” of humanity.

During a New York Times New Work Summit in 2019, years ahead of Open AI’s launch of ChatGPT, Altman predicted that artificial intelligence could “eliminate poverty.”

Sam Altman: It can be great, we have the potential to eliminate poverty, solve climate change, cure a huge amount of human disease, like educate everyone in the world phenomenally well.

JW: In a more recent CNBC interview, Palantir CEO Alex Karp claimed that AI made the United States the “dominant country in the world”:

Alex Karp: AI makes America the dominant country in the world. So just start there. Every other country in the world — like, I spent half my life in Europe — they’re whining and crying. We have the right chips. We have the right software. We have the right engineers. We have the right culture. We have the right people.

JW: And in a video posted to Facebook, unveiling Meta’s new AI research lab in July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to develop personal “superintelligence” that would free its users to focus on what truly matters.

Mark Zuckerberg: Advances in technology have freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on the pursuits that we choose. And at each step along the way, most people have decided to use their newfound productivity to spend more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and just enjoying life. And I expect superintelligence to accelerate this trend even more.

JW: Only — what if these utopic visions mask a far, darker reality?

In “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” Karen Hao exposes the underlying reality of the lofty promises made by Sam Altman and the tech industry. Hao reveals the human toll of artificial intelligence from its extreme water usage, to its exploitation of data laborers, to AI companies’ disturbing resemblance to the colonial empires that ravaged the planet for centuries.

Joining me now to discuss “Empire of AI” and Silicon Valley’s grip on our world is Karen Hao.

Karen, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Karen Hao: Thank you so much for having me, Jessica.

JW: Before we begin, we should start off by mentioning that The Intercept is a party in a lawsuit against OpenAI for allegedly using copyrighted materials to train ChatGPT.

So, Karen, of all of the tech CEOs in the artificial intelligence rat race to profile, why Sam Altman, and why OpenAI?

KH: So I actually didn’t set out to write an OpenAI book. I was trying to write a book about these parallels that I had been documenting for several years between the AI industry and colonialism. And I realized as I was putting together that idea, that in order to really illustrate how every single thing that we know about AI today in the public consciousness, like I had to trace the history of OpenAI, because those decisions were made within that company.

So the fact that we associate AI in the public with large language models with ChatGPT, with these colossally consumptive technologies that need massive amount of data, massive amounts of data centers — those were all because OpenAI made certain choices. And Sam Altman was at the helm of the company when it made many of those choices. So yeah, it really is, I would say the book is not just a history of Open AI, it’s really a history of the modern-day AI boom.

JW: As you’ve alluded to in the book, you masterfully, in my opinion, weave the promises of Silicon Valley against the backdrop of its impact on the communities that host its data centers and feed other parts of the AI machine. What made you want to tell these two stories alongside each other, instead of just a tech book, or instead of just a book about the impact?

KH: I’ve always felt that the most important questions on people’s minds about technology or about AI is just: How is it going to affect their lives? And the only way to really tell that story is to ground it in the experiences of people that have already been affected by the development of the technology, because they are the canaries in the coal mines, so to speak, of how the rest of the world is going to experience it.

And if you only tell the story from the perspective of San Francisco and from the tech companies themselves and the elites that run the companies at the top, you’re largely going to get a story about the technology working because it’s designed by these people for these people.

But that’s not actually the real, full scope of the story. And so philosophically, in a lot of my reporting even before the book, I always believe that you really start to see where things fall apart when you go furthest away from Silicon Valley to the places that work fundamentally differently from SF, from the U.S., with people speaking fundamentally different languages who look different, who have a different history and culture.

And that is actually more indicative of how the average person is going to ultimately be impacted by this technology because San Francisco’s a really weird place. It’s an extreme bubble. There’s an extraordinary amount of wealth that is pretty much not replicated anywhere else in the world. There’s an incredible amount of homogeneity.

And so that’s why I wanted to interweave both the inside story and the ideology of these people and the decisions and the context in which they make these decisions, but then quickly expand to the far reaches of the empire, as I call it, to document really how it’s going to affect the vast majority of the world.

JW: Yeah, I want to dive into the empire of it all. So the obvious through line of your book is colonialism and the ways in which these AI companies and tech companies have resembled these colonial empires of old. And I’m curious, how do you see the comparisons and where do they differ?

KH: Yeah, I mean, there’s honestly so many comparisons. But I really focus on four in the book. The first one is that empires, they consolidate an extraordinary amount of wealth and power in part by just taking a lot of resources that are not their own. That refers to the intellectual property — as The Intercept knows well — that they take to just train their models without any creditor compensation. That’s also taking the private data of people that they might leave in places like a Flickr photo album that they never realized could get hoovered up into these image generation tools.

Also, second parallel: Empires similarly consolidate a lot of economic might by exploiting extraordinary amounts of labor and not actually paying that labor sufficiently or at all. So that’s how they are able to amass wealth — because they’re not actually distributing it. And I talk in my book extensively about the ways that the industry does exactly the same thing with workers in Kenya or [who are] in crisis in Venezuela, who are doing some of the lifeblood data annotation tasks that the AI industry needs to thrive but who see only a couple dollars a day or even at all for that kind of work.

The third parallel is that empires always engage in this kind of control of information flows in order to perpetuate their ability to continue expanding unfettered. And we see this in the industry as well, where most AI researchers today are either employed by the companies or bankrolled by the companies in some way. And so the entire research agenda and AI development agenda has been completely distorted by the empire’s agenda, and any research that reveals inconvenient truths is actively censored. So we don’t have a true scientific picture of the limitations and capabilities of these technologies.

And then the final parallel is: Empire is engaged in this narrative that they have to exist because of a moral or existential imperative. So they are the “good” empire that’s on a civilizing mission to bring progress in modernity to all of humanity. And they’re competing with an evil empire that’s trying to bring the demise of humanity.

And so in OpenAI’s history, there have been many examples of it framing “Google was the evil empire.” Now, Silicon Valley largely says, “China is the evil empire.” And the idea is that if the evil empire crosses the finish line, then we’re going to end up in an AI hell. And they say, AI could kill us all, or AI is going to lead to complete total authoritarianism in the wrong hands.

Whereas when the good empire crosses the threshold first, we end up in this utopia — eliminating poverty, curing cancer, all of the things that you mentioned in the beginning are their common talking points.

JW: Yeah. One thing that strikes me about tracking these empires as opposed to older, when you think of the British Empire, is the pace at which they’re moving and the pace at which things are changing.

We’re in a vastly different landscape when it comes to AI than we were a year ago, or arguably even a month ago. Did you predict the pace at which this technology would proliferate and the kind of full-throated embrace of it from people in power really in both parties, or is there something that’s surprising you about where we’re at now?

KH: I’m definitely really shocked at the pace. And you’re 100% right that one of the key differences of the classical empires of old and empires of AI is just the sheer speed. The British Empire moved at the pace of ships. And with the empires of AI, they’re moving at the pace of bits. They can make like 60 decisions in an hour that affect billions of people around the world.

But the thing that has shocked me the most is the speed at which they’re constructing the infrastructure for training and deploying their AI models. Part of the shock is that this infrastructure is actually not technically necessary, and so I’ve been shocked that somehow the companies have effectively convinced the public and governments that it is and therefore there’s been a lot of complicity in allowing these companies to continue building these projects.

“Sometimes I feel like that’s a strategy to get people so shocked or confused by these large numbers that they can’t even wrap their minds around that it allows the companies to continue doing what they’re doing.”

But the other shock is just what they’re trying to do is insane. It is hard to explain just how baffling the scale is. Sam Altman has recently said that he aims to build 250 gigawatts of data centers by 2033, which he estimates would cost $10 trillion. And when you just think about that figure of just $10 trillion, that’s already insane. Like most people in the world have never encountered 10 trillion of anything, let alone dollars. And sometimes I feel like that’s a strategy to get people so shocked or confused by these large numbers that they can’t even wrap their minds around that it allows the companies to continue doing what they’re doing.

But 250 gigawatts is also an insanely baffling number because New York City on average is 5.5 gigawatts of power. So what he’s talking about is constructing almost four dozen New York cities of data centers in the world to power and train his AI technologies.

And Meta has talked about building supercomputers where the facilities are almost the size of Manhattan. And so like this is the largest infrastructure build-out that humanity has ever seen, and it’s being controlled by a tiny group of people that are aggressively trying to build this out in communities around the world, many of whom actually do not want this infrastructure. There’s huge protests that has started breaking out all around the world and all across the U.S. and so that’s the thing that has shocked me is just the complete aggressive and reckless nature of the growth.

“ This is the largest infrastructure build-out that humanity has ever seen, and it’s being controlled by a tiny group of people.”

JW: When you talk about the growth, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the impact of that growth and what that could mean. Your book gets into some of these direct environmental harms. When we’re talking about building out the kinds of infrastructure that Sam Altman is talking about, what are those harms?

KH: So when talking about these data center facilities, one of the harms is the energy is coming from fossil fuels. Even Sam Altman has, when he was testifying in Congress, he admitted in the short term it would likely come from natural gas. From reporting we’ve also seen that it comes from coal. There are coal plants that were meant to be retired that are now having their lives extended because of the utilities needed to meet an energy demands that they cannot meet with any other energy source.

And essentially we are starting to see the AI industry provide a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry. So it’s bringing extraordinary amounts of emissions into the air.

“We are starting to see the AI industry provide a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.”

Those emissions are also pollutants. So it’s polluting working-class communities most often and rural communities. There has been phenomenal reporting on Memphis, Tennessee, hosting Colossus, the supercomputer that Elon Musk built to train Grok and it’s being powered by 35 methane gas turbines that is pumping toxins into that community’s air, which actually has a long history of environmental racism and inability to access the fundamental right to clean air.

Then you have to talk about the fact that these data centers also require fresh water to cool the facilities. If they’re going to use water, it needs to be fresh water and even drinking water — because any other type of water would lead to corrosion of the equipment or to bacterial growth. And so you often see in proposals for data centers the request from the company to the local government for potable water — to connect directly to the city drinking water supply.

And many of these facilities are being put in places that don’t have that drinking water to spare. There was a Bloomberg investigation that found that two-thirds of these data centers are going into already water-scarce areas. So there are communities that are actively competing with this computer infrastructure for life-sustaining resources. So it’s basically layer upon layer of environmental and public health crises that are already underway, that are being massively accelerated by this push.

JW: With the Trump administration moving to massively deregulate a lot of environmental protections, do you expect these costs to grow?

KH: I do, and it’s not just the deregulatory stance. The Trump administration and actually the Biden administration also had enabled data centers to be built on federal lands. So the federal government has been aggressively using all of the different mechanisms that they can to try to facilitate the recklessness of the tech industry.

And of course, Trump also signed an executive order that is trying to neuter state AI regulation as well. So not only deregulating federal laws, but also trying to prevent any states from stepping into the vacuum. And so all of the trends that we see, if the public did nothing about it — if there was no contestation, if there were no protests, and everyone was just laid back and allowed this trajectory to barrel forward — I absolutely think that it could get worse. But I also think that there is an incredible amount that people can in fact do in the absence of leadership at the top to show leadership from the bottom.

Break

JW: There’s been some public pushback to your water usage calculations, primarily from supporters of artificial intelligence. Andy Masley, executive Director of Effective Altruism DC published a Substack in November questioning some of your data around water usage, and you issued two changes to your book regarding the water footprint data recently. I wanted to just give you a moment to respond to that critique.

KH: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, Andy brought up some very valid criticisms. One was on a particular data point that, after he brought up the criticisms, we investigated it and realized it was wrong. This was a data point that appears in Chapter 12 of my book, where we are describing a proposed Google data center in Cerrillos, Chile, outside of the outskirts of Santiago. And I was trying, in that particular case study, to explain the water impact that this facility would have within the community by comparing it to the water use of that community.

And basically what happened was the government document that stated the water usage of the community had a unit error. And so instead of quoting the numbers in meters cubed as they should have, they quoted it in liters. One meter cubed is 1,000 liters, so they underestimated the water use of the community by a factor of 1,000, which meant that when I then divided the data center proposed water usage by what the document said was the water usage, my comparison was off by a magnitude of 1,000.

And so the corrected statement is that this proposed Google data center could use more water than the population of the town — which is already substantially bad. But of course, in the error of the calculation, I had said that it was going to be more than 1,000 times what the town uses, which is just incorrect. And basically I worked with my Chilean collaborator to figure out, contacted the Chilean government agency that had issued the document to get to the bottom of it, confirmed that it was in fact a unit error. We issued the correction.

The second change that I made, which is also based on Andy’s feedback, was that there was a part of my explanation or citation of a study about the overall water impact of AI that also used the wrong terminology. So I had used this term that AI was going to lead to this amount of “water consumption.” But there’s actually a technicality: “Water consumption” is not the same as “water use.” And I should have actually used the term “water use” because in consumption with data centers, it means that the water’s evaporated and it just disappears. Whereas “water use” means that it’s running through the system, but then it exits out the system. Not that it’s completely unchanged. It can have a lot more pollutants in that water, and it can have a higher temperature, and it might not actually be able to return safely to the environment, but it’s different from pure evaporation.

So I made that change as well and added some more language to explain that the study was referring to the water impact of data centers — both in terms of the water used to cool the facilities, but also the water used to generate the electricity to power the facilities, because that is also a huge important part of the water footprint of data centers.

So those changes will be made in the next reprint of the physical edition and will also be made in the digital and audiobook edition.

JW: Thank you for explaining that. I want to switch gears to one of my favorite chapters of your book where you talk about the concept of intelligence and this kind of mythical idea of superintelligence. What is superintelligence, and is it just something that tech CEOs are saying to sound futuristic?

KH: [Laughs] So superintelligence, colloquially, I guess refers to a theoretical point at which AI exceeds human intelligence. That’s why it’s called superintelligence. And the problem with this term is that there is no scientific consensus around what human intelligence is.

There’s a long history of trying to define and quantify human intelligence. Much of it is a very dark history motivated by the desire to show through “scientific means” that certain races are superior to others. And we’ve never landed on one test that definitively proves that this is like the marker of intelligence.

“Artificial general intelligence — which also, what does that mean?”

And so superintelligence is just like a totally unmoored concept. And indeed, this is very useful for executives of companies where when they want to market themselves, because there is no definition around this term, they can just define it however they want. They do the same thing with the term artificial general intelligence — which also, what does that mean? It’s supposed to be the point right before superintelligence when the AI system theoretically matches human intelligence.

And use see OpenAI define and redefine AGI constantly, based on what it wants to do at the next steps. So when Sam Altman is talking with consumers, he says AGI is going to be this amazing digital assistant that’s going to solve all your problems — because he wants those people to buy it. When he is talking with Microsoft, The Information reported at one point that Microsoft in the agreement between OpenAI and Microsoft, they define AGI as a system that can generate a $100 billion of revenue. When Altman is talking to Congress, he says AGI is going to cure cancer and eradicate poverty and so on and so forth to try and ward off the regulation.

And so you can see that it just shape-shifts based on the audience that needs to be convinced in that moment for the company to just continue its agenda.

JW: Speaking of promises made by the tech industry about AI, one of the biggest promises is that it’s going give people their time back to use on more fulfilling activities and that AI will eliminate the need to work essentially, since the expectation is that it’s going to take our jobs.

How exactly is that going to help people who then lose their income? Is the government supposed to step in and sufficiently take care of people, or are the titans of this industry going to pay more taxes to take care of people? I guess, what is the promise and what are they saying we’re going to have in the future that’s supposed to be so great?

KH: [Laughs] Right. The answer is, they promise whatever they need to promise to convince whoever they need to convince. So the promises keep shape-shifting, but generally, they fall in the line of, “There’s going to be so much abundance that we’re not going to have a competition for resources anymore. Everyone’s going to live wild and free and it’s going to be amazing, and, like, all science will be solved.” But the fine-grain details of this vision are not there.

It’s interesting, in OpenAI’s early years they explored the idea of instituting some kind of tax structure upon which if an AI company had windfall profits, then there would be a ceiling to how much they could keep, and the rest of it would be redistributed as universal basic income to everyone. That’s as far as I’ve ever seen anyone in the industry go towards actually articulating a mechanism by which everyone gets a piece of the pie. But of course, this was like very early days in OpenAI, and we’ve never heard about this proposal since.

And what we’re actually seeing instead is the complete opposite, right? We are currently seeing these companies get more and more and more and more wealthy, while the average American is struggling more and more with an affordability crisis, with inflation, with job loss — sometimes driven by AI.

And we are in a moment right now where the economy is k-shaped. All of the AI-related stocks are flying, while everything else is going south. And so this, I think is the clearest signal that we have of the true tally that AI — in Silicon Valley’s conception of it — what it’s actually delivering us and will continue to deliver us if we allow the empires to continue on.

JW: In that vein, there’s been this growing concern that we’re in an AI bubble that companies are overvalued and overspending on data centers, on microchips. What do you make of that concern and the way that tech leaders are responding to that concern?

KH: I think we’re in a huge bubble, and I’m deeply worried about what might happen if that bubble pops, especially for the ripple effects that it’s going to have on average people, because the people at the top are going to be fine. Like, they are not going to be the ones that are suffering from the fallout that could happen with a market correction.

But of course, the industry leaders are trying to project the fact that we’re not in a bubble. They’re trying to project continued confidence in the fact that their technology is going to lead to continued crazy GDP growth that will somehow get redistributed to the average person. But I think average Americans are starting to realize that this is totally not true.

“They’re trying to project continued confidence in the fact that their technology is going to lead to continued crazy GDP growth that will somehow get redistributed to the average person.”

And that’s why we’ve seen in the past few months the attitude towards the AI industry towards the way that these companies are developing AI in particular has really soured because people are actually experiencing their kids being harmed or having worries that their kids will be harmed. They’re seeing data centers pop up in their communities that could hike up their utility bills or potentially contaminate their water, and they didn’t have any say in that project.

They’re seeing a shrinking job market where they might themselves have been laid off in part because an executive is saying that they’re engaging in an AI strategy. And so I think, as much as the executives are really trying to create this veneer that everything is fine, most people know that it’s not fine.

JW: As you’ve mentioned throughout this conversation, we’ve been focusing on the effects of AI outside of Silicon Valley, but there are red flags, as you’ve mentioned in San Francisco, in the larger Bay Area in California, where wealth inequality has grown really exponentially as the tech industry has grown in the last 15 years. How do you view that, what we’ve seen as a microcosm in that region, against the backdrop of this kind of larger exploitation?

KH: This is something that I think about all the time because I used to live in San Francisco. And part of the reason why I left the tech industry and ended up becoming a journalist was because I felt like what I was seeing in San Francisco was really a manifestation of the real ideology that undergirded the industry. And there is this extraordinary amount of wealth. Bloomberg reported at one point that the AI industry is minting billionaires faster than any other industry in history. It’s an extraordinary amount of wealth. And there’s been reporting talking about how this year, 2026, is going to see some massive IPOs that’s going to create even more extraordinary wealth generation than we’ve ever seen in this town.

“It’s just so crazy to me that they can talk all these utopic lofty goals about solving science and eradicating poverty — when they haven’t eradicated poverty in their own town.”

And yet at the same time, there’s rampant homelessness there. There’s a huge housing crisis in general, and there is just an obliviousness almost to the people who are within the industry to the things that happen at their very doorstep. And it’s just so crazy to me that they can talk all these utopic lofty goals about solving science and eradicating poverty — when they haven’t eradicated poverty in their own town. They haven’t done anything to solve the social ills within their own town, and in fact, they’ve only done things to make it worse.

JW: On that point, what is their larger goal? What do these tech billionaires, maybe even soon to be, some of them trillionaires, what do they actually want? They have all this money, as you’ve said, they could spend on social welfare in the communities that they’re already in. What are they actually after?

KH: The reason why I use the metaphor of empire is because … the revealed agenda is an imperial agenda. They have effectively been able to use this narrative of AGI to accrue more capital, land, energy, water, data. Like, they’ve been able to accrue more resources — and critical resources — than pretty much anyone in history. So that to me is what they’re after.

But also, it’s complicated in the sense that there are also these, what I can only describe as quasi-religious movements that undergird the push for AGI as well. So there are some people that are more political actors that are seeing the opportunity to leverage these narratives about AGI to amass more and more power. But there are also genuine cohorts of people who believe in the myth of AGI or the religion of AGI, where they think that when the moment comes that AI actually matches or begins to surpass human intelligence, that it is somehow going to truly lead us, as I mentioned, like to an AI heaven, to an other worldly civilization 2.0, so to speak, where we finally unlock the next era of human evolution.

“We actually have no idea how to define AGI, because we have no idea how to define human intelligence.”

The reason why I call it quasi-religious is because it’s not actually backed in scientific reality. In 2025, there was a survey of researchers that found this — AI researchers — that found 75 percent of them do not think that we’re on the path to AGI, and this is still actually an open question of “Can we even reach AGI?” Because once again, we actually have no idea how to define AGI, because we have no idea how to define human intelligence. So people call themselves believers when they say that they’re AGI believers. They use this religious rhetoric of saying AGI is akin to an AI god, or the bad version of AGI might be akin to summoning the demon, as Elon Musk once said.

And that is why in order to really understand what is truly motivating this industry, you can’t actually just view it through a capitalistic lens. You have to also view it through an ideological one. And once again, that returns us back to this is why it’s colonialism. Colonialism is the fusion of capital and ideology.

JW: This has been fascinating, and I want to give you a chance to just share any final thoughts if you have anything you want to say.

KH: I cannot stress enough that none of this is inevitable. I alluded to the fact that this scale is totally technically unnecessary. AI is actually a word that refers to such a wide array of different types of technologies.

I think it’s very akin to the word “transportation.” Transportation can literally refer to anything from a bicycle to a rocket. Those are systems that all get you from point A to B, but have fundamentally different designs. They have fundamentally different cost-benefit trade-offs. And generally when we speak about transportation, we have a much more nuanced discussion of saying we need more public transit, rather than just saying we need more transportation in general.

“The tech industry is able to manipulate public understanding by constantly selling the benefits of the bicycle version of AI, when they’re actually building the rocket version of AI.”

And we are currently stuck in a moment where there isn’t that nuance with AI, and the tech industry is able to manipulate public understanding by constantly selling the benefits of the bicycle version of AI, when they’re actually building the rocket version of AI.

And the reason I feel so strongly that none of this is inevitable is that there is a very clear path for how to unlock the benefits of AI without accepting the colossal cost of it. And that is just by simply shifting from building rockets to building bicycles.

And even though there is no government willingness to hold the industry accountable, there are plenty of ways that individuals and communities can engage in collective action to hold the industry accountable themselves, and we are seeing remarkable movements of this already happening and already working.

There have been, I believe, at this point, $60 billion-plus of data center projects that have been blocked because of protests. There have been lawsuits from families of victims who have suffered egregious mental health harms, including dying by suicide after extended uses of ChatGPT that has led to a massive momentum around shoring up the safety of these models. There has been litigation around copyright, intellectual property. There have been huge discussions sparked in schools about whether or not these tools should actually be actively adopted within schools.

And I think all of this pushback is forcing the companies — even without regulation — to shift their practices, hopefully will force them to downsize away from empires to just being businesses that actually provide valuable products and services that are not built on extraordinary exploitation and extraction.

I think that’s like the final message that I want to leave with people: Any single person that’s listening to this has an active role to play in shaping the future of AI development. And we absolutely can get to a point where we have the benefits of AI without any of the costs by just changing what types of AI systems we design.

JW: Well, thank you so much. I really learned a lot reading your book and even more in this conversation. So appreciate you taking the time and thank you for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.

KH: Thank you so much, Jessica.

JW: That does it for this episode.

This episode was produced by Andrew Stelzer. Laura Flynn is our supervising producer. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post AI’s Imperial Agenda appeared first on The Intercept.

Deportation, Inc.

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000

The most defining feature of Donald Trump’s first year back in office has been the brutality of his deportation machine and his administration’s numerous attempts to upend due process. Back in March, the Trump administration wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego Garcia to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador. Ábrego Garcia’s legal status protected him from deportation to his home country for fear of persecution.

“I think most Americans are intelligent enough to recognize that everybody deserves due process,” says Ábrego Garcia’s attorney Benjamin Osorio. “There’s a process. They get a jury of their peers. And the same thing in immigration: This guy had a lawful order protecting him from being removed from the United States, and the government violated that.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy speaks to Osorio about Ábrego Garcia’s case. After months of being shipped around detention centers, he is free and fighting deportation orders from home with his family. “I think the courts have probably never seen more immigration habeases in their life.” says Osorio. “In the habeas sense, I would think that Kilmar’s case has had a lot of effect in the immigration practice.”

Ábrego Garcia’s story epitomizes the unlawfulness and cruelty of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda and for that reason his story has become a political flashpoint. But what’s less understood is the scale and scope of fulfilling the administration’s vision of mass deportation.

A new investigative video series from Lawfare and SITU Research called “Deportation, Inc.: The Rise of the Immigration Enforcement Economy,” maps out a vast web of companies that make up the rapidly growing deportation economy, how we got here, and the multibillion-dollar industry driven by profit, political power, and a perverse incentive structure.

“The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was a pivotal moment. It was a major restructuring of immigration, and that was also a point at which the framing of immigration went from more of a civil matter to more of a national security concern,” says Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare. “And with that transition, the amount of money and contracts began to flood in.”

Gauri Bahuguna, deputy director of research at SITU, adds, “It was in the Obama administration where the detention bed quota comes in, and that’s really the key unit of measurement that drives this particular part of the immigration enforcement industry, is ‘How much money can you make per detained individual?’”

“Even though the bed quota is gone formally from the law there, it still exists in contracts with companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group,” says Bahuguna. “There is payment for detaining a certain number of people, whether or not the beds are occupied, and then the perverse incentive to keep those facilities filled because there’s an economies of scale.” McBride underscores that the current immigration system is “treating people as these products and units and to maximize profit.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy.

The most defining feature of Donald Trump’s second term so far has been the brutality of his deportation machine, from masked agents tackling people in the streets to shipping people off to prisons in far-flung countries.

The Trump administration wrongly deported Kilmar Ábrego Garcia to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador back in March. But last week, a judge’s order finally freed him.

Kilmar Ábrego Garcia: [Speaking in Spanish]

Interpreter: I stand here today with my head held up high.

AL: That’s Ábrego Garcia speaking at a press conference after his release, joined by advocates and an interpreter at his side.

KG: [Speaking in Spanish]

Interpreter: Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws, and I believe this injustice will come to its end.

AL: Ábrego Garcia is now back in Maryland with his family and is continuing to fight deportation orders. His story epitomizes the unlawfulness and cruelty of the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.

Joining me now to update us on Ábrego Garcia’s case is one of his lawyers, Benjamin Osorio.

Benjamin, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Benjamin Osorio: Thank you.

AL: Kilmar Ábrego Garcia was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — custody last Thursday. To start, can you tell us how he’s doing since his release?

Benjamin Osorio: He’s pretty tired. I don’t know if you saw when he went to go check in with ICE that morning, it looked like he hadn’t slept. I think he’s exhausted from the whole process. He’s bounced around from being deported in March to detained at CECOT — obviously, he’s much happier to be out of CECOT and back in the United States. But then, re-detained again, briefly out for a weekend, back in ICE detention, and then now out.

He’s ecstatic to be with his family, but at the same time, I mean, he’s still limited in what he can do and obviously still facing federal charges.

AL: During the press conference when he spoke after his release, during the segment where an advocate and a pastor are speaking, you can see him visibly getting emotional. It seemed like he was tearing up. Has this episode changed him?

Benjamin Osorio: I didn’t know him before, so it’s hard to say whether it’s changed him, but again, somebody having been through what he has been through, I don’t know how it could not. At this point, if I was him, I would just want resolution to everything and not be in detention.

AL: Back in March, Ábrego Garcia was detained by ICE in Baltimore, as you’ve mentioned, and then within a few days he was sent to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador. What can you tell us about his experience in CECOT?

Benjamin Osorio: Well, it’s been reported, so this isn’t anything confidential or of that nature. But he was taken off the plane and beaten — that’s sort of their welcome greeting — was beaten as he was taken off the plane. And then their heads were shaved.

They were basically beaten on a daily basis, from what it sounds like. They were put on their knees for long periods of time, and if you passed out, you were beaten. They were not allowed to go to the bathroom — many of them urinating on themselves, defecating on themselves.

He would talk about, in the middle of the night, you would hear people screaming out for help and nobody doing anything. The lights on 24/7 — blinding lights. Sleeping on all metal beds: no sheets, no pillows, no nothing like that. So it doesn’t sound like a pleasant experience.

AL: How did that compare to his experience at the ICE detention facilities that he was shuffled around to?

BO: He’s been segregated from everybody else, so not the same group housing that you would typically find in ICE. But being in solitary and only interacting with other individuals for certain hours of the day also has a detrimental effect on your morale and psyche.

AL: Of course, yeah.

BO: ICE conditions aren’t good, but again, better than CECOT.

AL: Can you remind us, for people who might not know the full story, from the beginning of this ordeal, what happened to him? What was the process? Why was he moved to these different centers, and what happened there?

BO: Since he’s been back in the United States, he was paroled back in when he was brought back in. He’s been shuffled back and forth between both immigration and criminal custody. So that’s been one of the reasons that he’s been moved back and forth. He was taken out to Tennessee, staying in a Putnam County Jail there, while they were arraigning him on the federal charges and then figuring out whether he was going to be released on bond.

Once he was released on bond, he was then re-detained by Baltimore [Enforcement and Removal Operations] and then taken down to Farmville [in Virginia]. The judge in the federal district court case had ordered him to be kept within 200 miles, and then they transferred him from Farmville to Moshannon detention center [in Pennsyvlania]. And that’s where he was released from recently.

AL: Can you talk a little bit about the legal strategy of these dueling, federal attacks against him — both on the immigration front and the criminal front — and how that complicated his situation?

Benjamin Osorio: I guess, let’s talk about the three-front war, right? So he’s got an immigration case, which is pending before the immigration court.

He then also has the habeas case, which — even though he’s out now — continues because of some of the things that have happened in the immigration case that’s taking place in the federal district court in Maryland. And then he’s got the criminal case taking place in federal district court in Tennessee. So he’s got a criminal defense team working on the criminal case.

He also has us, who are partnered with Quinn Emanuel working on the district court litigation. And then he has us just working on the immigration court litigation.

“Typically before the Trump second administration, you were not seeing these third-country removals that you’re seeing now.”

So it’s kind of messy, but what he was granted before is called withholding of removal. Typically before the Trump second administration, you were not seeing these third-country removals that you’re seeing now.

So if you won withholding of removal, they can’t remove you to your home country, but they can remove you to a third country. So let’s say that he has this protection from El Salvador, they were not supposed to have been able to send him to El Salvador, but they could send him to Mexico, to Honduras, to Guatemala as part of these third-country agreements. They could do that.

He would be a very visible candidate for them to try to go after to do that. We feel that we also were fighting the immigration case to try to normalize his status, get that back reopened, and adjust his status. Now when they paroled him back into the United States, they also created some new immigration options for him as well, potentially applying for asylum because he’s back within one year of having entered the United States, but also he’s married to a U.S. citizen.

So now that he has a lawful entry back into the United States, he could potentially adjust status through her. So it’s messy. And obviously, the government has put the full force of DOJ and DHS behind it to try to make an example of him.

“The government has put the full force of DOJ and DHS behind it to try to make an example of him.”

AL: You mentioned like his particular circumstances made him the perfect target for this administration and what they’re trying to do.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that and how his case became a flashpoint in this administration’s immigration policies. This was the case that finally pushed Democratic senators to say, “We’re going to go and visit these detainees,” people who have been removed. Why did that happen?

BO: I think most Americans are intelligent enough to recognize that everybody deserves due process, right? There’s a reason that if somebody that we all know goes and commits a murder, they still get a trial. We don’t summarily execute them unless they’re a danger to the police officers arresting them or anything else like that. There’s a process. They get a jury of their peers.

And the same thing in immigration: This guy had a lawful order protecting him from being removed from the United States, and the government violated that. And so the Constitution is designed to protect us from the government. And so here is the government violating somebody’s due process, violating the Constitution.

And I think that’s why people cared about it. I don’t think it was necessarily about Kilmar, or his specific person — or it’s not about whether Kilmar is a good guy or a bad guy. It’s about, the government owes a responsibility to do the right thing,

AL: The order to release Kilmar — a federal U.S. district judge in Maryland said that federal authorities lacked a legal basis for continuing to detain him. Has his case changed anything in your view, as far as how judges are handling other similar cases, or how the administration is approaching targeting people like Kilmar?

BO: Yes. The federal district courts probably are not fond of how many habeas we filed. But there’s been a change in bond rules too. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this. In September, there was a case that came out from the Board of Immigration Appeals called Matter of Yajure Hurtado, and it basically tries to change the rules to make so many people ineligible for bond.

Because they were trying to change the rules without actually going through Congress to change the law — which actually governs statutes and mandatory detention and who’s eligible for bond — we started filing a ton of habeases. And so I think the courts have probably never seen more immigration habeases in their life.

“ I think the federal district courts probably are not fond of how many habeas we filed.”

Like I said, they’re probably sick of it, but at the same time, they’ve been great and fast-acting on these habeas. Sometimes a habeas, a normal habeas, could pin for a while. But they’ve been great on ordering either the immigration courts to hold a bond hearing and find a head jurisdiction or beyond that ordering these people released. So in the habeas sense, I would think that Kilmar’s case has had a lot of effect in the immigration practice.

AL: What’s next for Ábrego Garcia after his release? Obviously, you mentioned his pending cases.

BO: It’s hard to say. We’re still in the middle of briefing both before the immigration side of things, both at the immigration court level because the immigration judge just issued a new order the other day, and then also before the Board of Immigration Appeals.

And then because of some of the acts that the board and the IJ have taken — the immigration judge — have taken, now Judge [Paula] Xinis has ordered an additional briefing on the [Temporary Restraining Order] right now in federal district court.

Look, I was shocked. People were asking us when we first started if we were going to be able to bring him back. And then I was kind of shocked that Xinis found that he didn’t have a removal order. It’s not something I would’ve predicted in the beginning. But then when there was that hearing a couple weeks ago, and she was talking about there not being a valid order because he was ordered removed to Guatemala.

I mean there’s been a lot of different turns here. I think it’s hard to predict what ultimately happens. Like I said, if I’m him, I just want to be out and I want to be with my family, and if that means it’s in Costa Rica or whether that’s here in the United States as long as I’m not detained, I would be happy.

AL: Any final thoughts? One thing I would ask maybe if you want to elaborate on is this idea that it doesn’t really matter what kind of person it is when we’re talking about these cases. Like, what matters is the statute and the constitutional protections that are here. And that’s completely at odds with how the administration has framed all of this — that the people it’s going after are criminals who deserve whatever’s coming to them. I think that’s an important distinction, but if there’s any other point that you touched on that you want to elaborate on?

BO: I just think it’s funny. I hear different officials go on TV and they say, we’re going after the individuals who are breaking the law, or we’re going after the individuals here who are here unlawfully. But there have been many cases where they are making the people unlawful.

So when they take away Temporary Protected Status from people from Haiti and Sudan and from Venezuela, these countries that have ongoing crisis in them, they made them undocumented. And when they say that we want people to do things the right way — look, Congress passed Section 208 [of the Immigration and Nationality Act] and made asylum a lawful pathway. Asylum is a lawful pathway to get status here in the United States.

Now, if Congress wants to change the laws, that would be well within their right to do. But until they do that, their attempts to block asylum-seekers and their attempts through different regulatory changes or through the Board of Immigration appeals to whittle away asylum and go after victims of domestic violence — I don’t know, to me, that’s not the American way, and it’s sad that our government is targeting some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society.

AL: What else is on your docket right now?

BO: It’s pretty crazy, the number of detentions has obviously picked up pretty significantly, and that’s sort of my specialty, is detained removal.

“Our immigration system is broken.”

It’s just very sad because I see so many families — and families of people with U.S. citizen spouses and families of people with U.S. citizen kids — getting ripped apart. People always ask me, they say, “Why don’t people just do it the right way?” I have friends who are not immigration lawyers or, I’m from Georgia, I have a lot of friends who have maybe very different views on immigration than I have, and they’re like, “They’ve been here for 20 years. Why haven’t they fixed their status?” And I’m like, “Our immigration system is broken. I don’t think you understand like how complicated it is for somebody who’s been here 20 years.”

Even if they have a U.S. citizen spouse, if they have more than two entries, they might be subject to a 212(a)(9)(C) and be subject to the “permanent bar.” That means they have to stay outside for 10 years — away from their U.S. citizen spouse, away from their U.S. citizen kids.

“People don’t understand like how much damage we’re doing to future generations of Americans.”

And then I have other things, where people are active members of this community. I have a family I represent that the U.S. citizen spouse works for a local school board, and they have two small U.S. citizen kids. And it’s sort of complicated, but at one hearing where the judge was ordering him removed, even though we won later on appeal and he’s still here — a 7-year-old girl’s coming up to me. And I have 6-year-old twins. So she’s about my kids’ age, and she’s asking me, “When is Dad going to come home?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

And so I just think people don’t understand like how much damage we’re doing to future generations of Americans. I don’t think people understand how much damage we’re doing to the economy. I don’t think people understand how much damage we’re doing to the American brand here.

AL: Thank you so much for taking the time, Ben. We know you have a lot on your plate, so we really appreciate it.

BO: Thank you.

AL: After a quick break, we’re going to zoom out and talk about exactly who is profiting from the Trump’s deportation agenda, and take a closer look at what has become a rapidly expanding and lucrative industry. We’ll be right back.

Break

AL: Welcome back to The Intercept Briefing. The militarization of U.S. borders and immigration policy is a project that’s been long in the making.

Bill Clinton: We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of law.

George W. Bush: We’re going to get control of our borders. We’re going to make this country safer for all our citizens.

Barack Obama: Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws.

Unknown: President Obama has deported more undocumented workers than President Bush did.

Donald Trump: And we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States.

AL: The violent immigration raids we see in communities across the country today could not have happened without the bipartisan efforts of past presidents — those who paved the way for an insatiable immigration bureaucracy and an unhinged administration ready to take it over.

As of November, ICE is detaining more than 65,000 people, a historic high, according to The Guardian. Under the guise of protecting national security, officials have transformed U.S. immigration over the last two decades into a cash cow for private corporations. Today, Trump’s deportation machine takes up more than half of all federal law enforcement spending. And Trump’s marquee spending bill raises that to 80 percent.

Democratic senators just released a report that found that the Trump administration diverted $2 billion in Pentagon funds to target immigrants, as our colleagues Nick Turse and Noah Hurowitz reported earlier this month.

A new investigative video series from Lawfare and SITU Research maps out this vast web that comprises the deportation economy: how U.S. immigration enforcement has evolved into a rapidly growing multibillion-dollar industry shaped by private profit, political power and a perverse incentive structure. Joining me now to talk about this industry are some of the folks behind the project.

Tyler McBrien is the managing editor of Lawfare, a nonprofit publication covering law, national security, and foreign policy.

Tyler McBrien: Thanks for having me, Akela.

AL: And we’re joined by Gauri Bahuguna, a computational designer and deputy director of research at SITU Research, a visual investigations practice in Brooklyn, New York.

We’ve worked with SITU on reporting on reconstructions of police responses to protests, it’s great to have you on.

Welcome, Gauri.

Gauri Bahuguna: Thank you for having me.

AL: To start, for both of you, what drove you all to do this project? What did you feel was missing from the public’s understanding of how the system works?

GB: This project actually began as far back as 2023, and at the time we were interested in expanding the notion of immigration enforcement beyond the border. So at the time we were looking at the various, the physical, the digital, and the political infrastructures that create this everywhere border, so to speak.

And from there, obviously, the election last year was a huge point for us to track and study. The industry part came up in our research of how and why this immigration enforcement seems to be a growing hot- button issue.

“We were interested in expanding the notion of immigration enforcement beyond the border.”

TM: What we are trying to do with this project is to make visible an entire system, as much as that’s possible. All the facets of the immigration enforcement economy — be it detention, deportation, surveillance, and interdiction — because I’m sure listeners can relate, the past year has just been this feeling of jumping from fire to fire. And you can easily miss the forest for the trees.

We wanted to highlight not just these big-name companies that people will be familiar with — the Palantirs, the Googles, even maybe the GEO Groups, the private prisons — but also smaller companies that do food service or IT services that make up these web of contracts for ICE and DHS.

AL: Tyler, that’s a good segue because we know that this is obviously a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s agenda, but there’s been a bipartisan effort to build up this machine since long before he first took office, which really accelerated when George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and ICE after 9/11. But what other figures helped drive that expansion prior to Trump? How did we get to where we are today?

TM: The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was a pivotal moment. It was a major restructuring of immigration, and that was also a point at which the framing of immigration went from more of a civil matter to more of a national security concern. And with that transition, the amount of money and contracts began to flood in because of this “higher echelon” issue of national security versus civil enforcement.

2002 was a pivotal moment, but like we said, it was building before that. We really try to convey that in the videos — of having not only Trump on the campaign trail promising the biggest deportation campaign in history, but also dating back to Bush, of course to Bill Clinton, and before.

Just to also back up, the framing that we wanted to put forth was that of the military–industrial complex, and throw out this provocation that we may be seeing an immigration–industrial complex following the same dynamics.

“The framing that we wanted to put forth was that of the military–industrial complex. … We may be seeing an immigration–industrial complex following the same dynamics.”

AL: Gauri, can you talk about the main ways that this deportation economy operates?

GB: It was in the Obama administration where the detention bed quota comes in, and that’s really the key unit of measurement that drives this particular part of the immigration enforcement industry, is “How much money can you make per detained individual?”

And for now, even though the bed quota is gone formally from the law there, it still exists in contracts with companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group, where there is a minimum quota that ICE must fulfill in order to be in contract with these companies. And any detainees above that minimum guaranteed daily population, they get discounts on.

So there is payment for detaining a certain number of people, whether or not the beds are occupied, and then the perverse incentive to keep those facilities filled because there’s an economies of scale.

TM: This is another, I think, motivation behind the project is to highlight not only the ideological and political motives of the current immigration system — think Stephen Miller’s vision — but also the profit motive driving this perpetual system. And the upshot of it is something that Gauri just touched on, which is treating people as these products and units and to maximize profit there.

AL: Can you talk more about this incentive structure and who is profiting?

Like you mentioned, everyone knows Palantir, GEO Group, CoreCivic, and you mentioned there’s some other names that people may not be as familiar with playing a significant role there. But yeah, I’m curious to hear more about who is actually profiting.

GB: The main profiteers are those large private prison corporations like CoreCivic and GEO Group, because ICE has different kinds of facilities that range from completely owned and operated by ICE to agreements with the marshals, and then completely contracted detention facility centers.

And because of the pricing structure offered by these private companies, it is the lowest price per night per detainee in private detention centers. However, ICE will often work with local and state governments, who then subcontract out to these private companies to detain populations. So what happens is that almost or close to 90 percent of all of the detainee population are held in private prisons because it just makes that much more economic sense.

TM: As Gauri said the biggest ones are the private prison contractors. I think the biggest single contractor is GEO Group, which listeners will probably be familiar, but they’re also smaller firms. In surveillance, we have the big names like Google, Palantir, Clearview, but there are also smaller companies, like BI2 Technologies. There are investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard.

In the video, we have this map that shows just this web of companies. But I think what was really interesting in doing this project was to come to realize that this analogy between the military–industrial complex and the immigration–industrial complex was sometimes not so much an analogy as just the extension of one into the other.

So some of these firms are the same. You have Northrop Grumman, where you have big weapons manufacturers. You have gun manufacturers that are also benefiting.

AL: Because they’re arming the guards?

TM: Exactly. And arming for some of the immigration raids, so for example, Operation Midway Blitz.

AL: Does the incentive structure that you were talking about, Gauri, does that have the potential to limit future avenues for policy change on immigration? And is that already happening? Like the idea that the incentives are built around the fact that this economy already exists and it needs to continue existing or else it’ll be bad for the economy, and does that make it harder to unwind this machine?

GB: That’s an interesting question. I think because these are being detailed in the contracts themselves, I would imagine, it is something that could be addressed and there could be safeguards against having these types of quotas. Because again, it is just another expression of the detention bed quota, and they did successfully get that repealed.

AL: But the idea that like, even though they repealed that, it’s still part of this structure. Like, the economy is operating with a mind of its own, like outside of the policy sphere.

TM: I think that’s the dynamic that we’re warning that is already happening and will continue to happen and further entrench.

So if you think about detention, for example, which is the first chapter of the video that we put out. Often companies like GEO Group will have idle facilities that were just a red line on their balance sheet. And now there’s this huge incentive to get these idle facilities up and running — fill the beds.

And then the way that it can become entrenched in that community, for example, is then that creates some jobs. And it’s this perverse choice between an economic boon to the local community in some small way versus not having those jobs. And so, you can see how these incentives — these just pure economic incentives — can just keep driving the machine as you said.

AL: This is obviously very linked to the broader phenomenon of mass incarceration in the U.S. and the push and pull over cutting the number of people that we have behind bars outside of the immigration system. Did that come up at all in this project? Are there characters or actors who play a major role in building up the carceral system who also play a role in this system? We know private prisons, GEO Group and CoreCivic, are a big part of this, but obviously they don’t incarcerate the majority of people in the U.S. But I’m curious how this came up, if at all, during your research and how you think about the nexus between the U.S. prison system and immigration detention.

GB: Yeah, absolutely. They’re so closely tied together because GEO Group, their facilities are both, again, they’re private prisons and also immigrant detention facilities. I believe some of the private prisons were then converted into detention centers. And now because there is this tipping point where there’s just so much more money in this immigration enforcement, you see other actors [are] moving toward that.

“The myth really that it creates jobs for local people was something that we found to be not necessarily true in our research.”

I also just wanted to note that the myth really that it creates jobs for local people was something that we found to be not necessarily true in our research. And one of our colleagues actually took a road trip through America and visited a lot of these towns that were in close proximity to these facilities. And because of the stop-and-start nature, so sometimes they would be filled, so the detention center was operational, so there were a few jobs given out. Then it would shut down, so they would all lose their jobs immediately. And more recently, with the immigration detention facilities, because of language requirements, they were not even hiring people from the neighboring towns.

So it’s not even that there was a direct benefit to the community.

AL: That’s really interesting. Did they interview people who lived in the town or where, who were they talking to?

GB: Yes, pretty much people in the local watering hole. This is the facility that is also mentioned in the video in Michigan, one of the GEO Group idle facilities that was just recently opened, and I believe it’s the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest. So he was speaking to a lot of people in small towns around that detention center, and they all expressed similar sentiment.

AL: I also just want to touch on this idea that ICE and CBP have really exponentially increased the amount of power and influence that they have over not just immigration policy, but our government in general.

“ Two small agencies that were intended for a very particular purpose have pretty much become the face of the government at this point.”

There’s been so much great reporting on just how much money has been diverted from other parts of the government, or how many agents have been diverted to these agencies to sort of power this machine.

But I wonder, can you talk about that phenomenon? Like, these two small agencies that were intended for a very particular purpose have pretty much become the face of the government at this point.

TM: Yeah, I guess I don’t want to overstate something that I said earlier about the profit motive and the economic factors driving all of this/ That’s a fear, and something that we’ve been seeing that is driving policy. But of course the political and the ideological motives are also driving this.

You see this in the national security strategy that was just released by the administration — that border security and controlling immigration is the national security threat. So you see it elevated in the political arena as well. And then it’s not just the administration. You have Congress to thank for the exponentially higher billions that are flooding into DHS and ICE, who can then award the contracts to these companies.

GB: It’s the result of decadeslong lobbying campaigns, right, to push for these harsh immigration laws. So I think there’s definitely the political angle, and also because of how CBP and ICE are allowed to operate, which is slightly different from other law enforcement agencies; they have a lot more leeway. Border Patrol, for example, they have a 100-mile radius within the U.S. border, that they can stop people without a warrant and just question them. I think these types of extra powers make it easier for the conversion or the misappropriation of a military force, so to speak.

TM: And just to add one point to what Gauri said about lobbying. If you take GEO Group, for example, their PAC, according to FEC filings, was the first to max out donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

AL: On this point about this being part of the national security strategy and this lobbying apparatus, this is also a strategy that Trump and his allies want to push beyond the U.S. and into Europe, for example. Can you talk a little bit about that, how the Trump administration is essentially lobbying to export this around the world, export this system around the world?

TM: Yeah. I can speak to one aspect of this. Take the video that we put out on detention. We broke it down into three ways in which the detention economy works. One is permanent facilities. We talked a lot about private prisons. One is temporary or soft-sided facilities. But the third that we cover — as a sort of form of outsourcing or contracting — is “alternative jurisdictions,” as we call it.

So think El Salvador, CECOT. Think the talk about detaining migrants at Guantánamo Bay. And then of course the system of deportation, these third-country removals, these are transactional often in nature, in terms of what a country would economically benefit very often from receiving migrants from the United States.

We wanted to expand the idea of what a contract could be or what this transaction could look like beyond just the U.S. government and a private company in the US. It’s really more expansive than that.

AL: Can you talk about how you compiled this project? I know a lot of the information was public or open source, but tell me about your approach. Where did you start?

GB: So the first step was to identify who are the main actors within this economy. And that was identified through looking at the budgets and the contracts that you mentioned. This is open-source information.

And then after that, we really wanted to understand further how this is exploding as a way. So I think looking for the details within the contracts that really jumped out, like the tiered pricing, for example. And then moving into now, how do you put this all together and visualize it? And I think that’s where we started being a bit more experimental with our research. And so one example is the parametric tool that we use to visualize deployed resources, which is one of the soft-sided detention facility contractors.

So just trying to visualize what detention at this scale means because I don’t think that’s something that is particularly present in most of the conversations. So it was a combination of trying to find and really parse through these government contracts and all of this jargon. And then translate it into a way that was, again, paints this picture of it being beyond the border and located to other geographies within the United States.

TM: On this parametric tool. I think Gauri and some of her colleagues at SITU really helped understand projections and what these big numbers and big promises would actually mean.

“What do these massive numbers mean and what will they continue to mean?”

What that gets at is just the reason for contracting in the first place. The government just doesn’t have the capacity to find, detain, and deport the numbers of people that they are setting as a goal. And sometimes not even the single facility or single company that are contracted to do something can do it, which means that there likely will be more contracts and more money going into it.

So I think that’s one thing that the SITU team really helped me visualize at least, was, what do these massive numbers mean and what will they continue to mean?

AL: Tyler you brought up Stephen Miller earlier. Obviously we’re going to have to talk about him at some point. Top White House adviser Stephen Miller is widely recognized as the brains behind Trump’s deportation agenda. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent had this great piece about his vision earlier this week. He wrote, “Miller’s grander aims are best understood as an effort to destroy the entire architecture of immigration and humanitarian resettlement put in place in the post-World War II era.” I really encourage people to go read this because they interview Miller’s family members and go into like this book that his family member wrote about the immigration apparatus, like when they came to the U.S. Anyway, very interesting.

But can you guys talk about Miller, his vision, and how that’s coming to life under Trump’s second term — and how that deviates or doesn’t deviate from lthe post-9/11 vision of this system?

TM: I haven’t read the piece, and I can’t believe you’re asking me to crawl into Stephen Miller’s mind. [laughs]

AL: Sorry, someone has to. [laughs]

TM: I would go back to what I was saying in the past answer, where the way to achieve the scale at which Stephen Miller wants to deport and relocate people again is only achieved through a massive expansion of contracts. And that’s why the funding bill was so material to this.

AL: You’re talking about the “Big, Beautiful Bill.”

TM: Exactly, yeah. So I think Stephen Miller and even the Trump administration as a whole can announce that they want to hit these benchmarks, but it’s then these contractors who come in.

GB: Yeah, I agree with what you said but also wanted to acknowledge the very prominent white nationalist undercurrent of his vision.

AL: Yeah.

GB: And I think that we can see that play out in how the language of how to describe migrants is very dehumanizing, “illegal aliens.” And it’s just rife with xenophobia in every news coverage.

And I think that is moving the country toward a more, or less tolerant overall perspective of what migrants are and specifically which migrants are “good” and worthy of being in this country. And I think that is probably the most scary part of his vision coming to life.

TM: Yeah, it’s a great point. We were constantly asking ourselves what part of this system we have today is continuity and what part is rupture. And I think to Gauri’s point, I mean that the rupture is just the destruction of any sort of refugee program, save for white Afrikaners from South Africa, is just a nakedly, racist policy. I think there’s just no other interpretation.

AL: You’ve both mentioned this capacity issue — Miller and Trump have these quotas that incentivize these policies, but maybe don’t have the capacity to fulfill that vision, even though they’ve been very successful at it so far. But this brings up this notion that I heard a lot prior to Trump’s election. Policy people and reporters who cover immigration were saying, “Not that this is overblown, but take it with a grain of salt because there is no capacity to do what they’re saying that they want to do.” We’re obviously seeing that not really be borne out right now. But even if there isn’t capacity to achieve their goals, does it matter because of how much they’ve already been able to do? Obviously by diverting money, resources, and agents from all of these other departments, but despite all the handwringing over capacity, like this is still obviously happening in full force.

GB: I don’t think it matters that much both for the base that they’re trying to appeal to and also the corporations and individuals involved in this large scale operation. What happens is that yes, it’s completely impossible for them to meet the targets they’re setting for themselves, but in doing so, they create like an urgency and that’s when more of these regulations start to dip and drop.

[White House border czar] Tom Homan, for example, has already been calling to reduce the detention standards in ICE facilities, if it’s not permanent facilities, and we go into the tents. And then within the tents again, how much more can you pack in so you squeeze more profit, reduce the living conditions of these places, and then you have a lot more to show for that’s closer to this target, but whether or not they ever reach, it doesn’t matter to the people affected.

AL: Right. I want to mention another piece that was recently published. Above the Law published this story about ICE, perhaps, inadvertently, posting a “watchlist” of immigration lawyers. We know the administration routinely attacks its perceived enemies, including immigration attorneys. What do you make of that and how the administration has gone after the legal system to power its agenda?

TM: Yeah, I think it’s a clear attempt to reduce the friction that they face in the immigration system. And often that friction is happening in the courts. Some of the biggest administration immigration stories of the year have been about these high profile deportation cases. Kilmar Ábrego García, for example, Mahmoud Khalil, of course. You’re seeing the strategy deployed across other issue areas too. It’s the flip side of the capacity — they’re building out capacity while also trying to reduce the barriers, and most of the barriers are legal ones.

AL: Right.

GB: Even just in the geographic distribution, it’s again, trying to set up these obstacles for accessing legal counsel. So that’s very intentional, right? They’re extremely rural areas where most of these facilities are. It’s very difficult for people to be in touch with lawyers in facilities like Alligator Alcatraz; there was no access at all.

So I think there is this both contempt and disregard for the law, but also intentional fear of limiting access.

AL: Given where we are today and how big this deportation economy has grown and how deeply it’s spread its tentacles into all of these other sectors that we’ve touched on, is it possible to unwind this and what would that take?

TM: It’s such a hard question. Like I said earlier, we throw out the analogy to Eisenhower’s military–industrial complex farewell speech. I think it’s safe to say that his warning went unheeded, and the military–industrial complex only increased exponentially. Which is one of the reasons we wanted to shift this new warning that, you know, maybe it will be heeded this time.

But it is worrying to me because I think you contrast the current moment to the first administration, first Trump administration, where there were sometimes successful worker-organized protests, for example, especially at tech companies. After contracts with ICE were made public, workers came together to protest and sometimes those contracts were canceled. I feel like you’re not seeing the same dynamic here. There is, I guess, some power in the consumer base and if consumers are made aware of companies or investments that they are a part of that are also being used to detain and deport people often illegally, then perhaps there’s some sort of pressure point there.

AL: And this reminds me, we didn’t even talk about this. The first anti-ICE protests that we saw under Trump [this term] brought the first National Guard deployment that we saw. And now I feel like people don’t even really — he’s deployed the National Guard to so many cities that people don’t necessarily connect that to that being an effort to tamp down on opposition to this deportation machine.

GB: That actually connects quite well to what I’m about to say, which is I am a little skeptical about whether the toothpaste can be put back into the tube just because of how deep these roots have gotten into every part of our daily lives. And so the first pieces were about detention, and we’re going to do one on deportation and interdiction. Then the final one is a data surveillance piece. And I think that is really, that’s where so much money — like far beyond what the deportation and detention is estimated.

I think this data surveillance piece is what will ultimately also impact citizens most directly, right? It’s being tested on migrants and then slowly, as you mentioned with the National Guard, it just creeps into daily life and becomes normalized. So I think just because of the, and we see that the large tech companies are also embedded into this administration, so I just feel like we’re moving towards a very dark point of no return.

AL: Thank you for using the toothpaste and the tube analogy, because I think that is a perfect analogy for this. It’s not only impossible to do, but it’s very messy. Thank you both for joining me on the Intercept Briefing. This has been a great conversation on a depressing topic, so we really appreciate it.

GB: Thank you.

TM: Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

AL: We’re going to add a link to the SITU and Lawfare series in our show notes and on our website. Really encourage you all to check it out. It’s fantastic work and more to come in 2026, so hopefully we will talk more about that then.

That does it for this episode.

Before we go, a quick note: We’re taking next week off. In our place, we’ll feature an episode of The Intercept’s new series, Collateral Damage, hosted by investigative journalist Radley Balko. And we’ll be back with a new episode the following week.

Thank you for showing up every week for The Intercept Briefing. This show exists because of you — our listeners and readers of The Intercept. If you believe in the work we’re doing, you can support us at theintercept.com/join. Every contribution, whatever the size, keeps independent journalism alive.

If you value what you’re hearing, leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. It’s one of the most powerful ways to help new listeners discover the show. And if you have story ideas for the new year or want to share feedback, reach us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.

Happy holidays, and happy new year.

The post Deportation, Inc. appeared first on The Intercept.

“Trump Has Appointed Himself Judge, Jury, and Executioner”

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000

In September, The Intercept broke the story of the U.S. military ordering an additional strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.

Since then, U.S. boat strikes have expanded to the Pacific Ocean. The Intercept has documented 22 strikes as of early December that have killed at least 87 people. Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian national, was one of the dozens of people killed in these strikes. His family says he was just out fishing for marlin and tuna when U.S. forces attacked his boat on September 15. On behalf of Medina’s family, attorney Dan Kovalik has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

“We’re bringing a petition alleging that the U.S. violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, in particular, the right to life, the right to due process, the right to trial, and we’re seeking compensation from the United States for the family of Alejandro Carranza, as well as injunctive relief, asking that the U.S. stop these bombings,” Kovalik told The Intercept.

In the midst of this massive scandal, the so-called Department of War is cracking down on journalists’ ability to cover U.S. military actions. Back in October, Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced major new restrictions on reporters covering the Pentagon. In order to maintain press credentials to enter the Pentagon, journalists would have to sign a 17-page pledge committing to the new rules limiting press corps reporting to explicitly authorized information, including a promise to not gather or seek information the department has not officially released.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington speaks to Kovalik about Medina’s case. Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse and Gregg Leslie, executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University Law, also join Washington to discuss the strikes off the coast of Latin America, subsequent attacks on shipwrecked survivors, and the administration’s response to reporting on U.S. forces and the Pentagon.

“Americans should be very concerned because President Trump has appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner,” says Turse of the administration’s justification for targeting individuals it claims to be in a “non-international armed conflict” with. “He has a secret list of terrorist groups. He decided they’re at war with America. He decides if you’re a member of that group, if he says that you are, he says he has the right to kill you.”

Leslie raised concerns about the administration’s attempts to erase press freedoms. “It’s just that fundamental issue of, who gets to cover the government? Is it only government-sanctioned information that gets out to the people, or is it people working on behalf of the United States public who get to really hold people to account and dive deep for greater information? And all of that is being compromised, if there’s an administration that says, ‘We get to completely put a chokehold on any information that we don’t want to be released,’” says Leslie. “You just don’t have a free press if you have to pledge that you’re not going to give away information just because it hasn’t been cleared. It just shouldn’t work that way, and it hasn’t worked that way. And it’s frightening that we’ve gotten an administration trying to make that the norm.”

“What’s to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists?”

With a president who regularly targets journalists and critics, Turse adds, “What’s to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists? … These boat strikes, the murders of people convicted of no crimes, if they become accepted as normal. There’s really nothing to stop the president from launching such attacks within the United States.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington.

Back in September, President Donald Trump made public that he and his administration had ordered a military strike on a boat in the Caribbean. On social media Trump claimed that members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, were transporting drugs on the vessel.

Reporter: And also the boat that you mentioned yesterday where 11 people were killed. What was found on that boat, and why were the men killed instead of taken into custody?

Donald Trump: On the boat, you had massive amounts of drugs. We have tapes of them speaking. There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people. And everybody fully understands that. In fact, you see it. You see the bags of drugs all over the boat, and they were hit. Obviously, they won’t be doing it again.

JW: Since then, U.S. strikes targeting boats allegedly carrying drugs to the U.S. have expanded to the Pacific Ocean. The Intercept has counted 22 strikes as of early December. Those strikes have killed at least 87 people.

Members of Congress from both parties say these strikes are nothing short of extrajudicial killings targeting civilians that do not pose an eminent threat to the U.S. The administration has yet to provide the public any evidence that these boats are carrying drugs or affiliated with drug cartels, which the administration has also designated as “narco-terrorists.”

The family of one of those victims, Alejandro Carranza Medina, a Colombian national, says he was out fishing for marlin and tuna when a targeted strike on September 15 killed him. Attorney Daniel Kovalik has filed a human rights petition on behalf of his family; Kovalik filed the petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. And he joins me now.

Daniel Kovalik, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Daniel Kovalik: Thank you, Jessica. Thanks for having me.

JW: Daniel, I want to start with you telling us a little bit about Alejandro. Who was he?

DK: He was a fisherman. He was a father of four children: one adult child, three minor children. He was married, though he was separated at the time of his death. He was close to his parents as well.

And he was poor. They were a poor family, and they relied on Alejandro to make ends meet through fishing. He was also, by the way, a member of the fisherman’s association in Santa Marta.

JW: What is known about the strike that killed Mr. Medina?

DK: It’s as much as we know about any of these strikes. He was out fishing for marlin and tuna, and his boat was the victim of what the U.S. is calling a “kinetic” strike, which I think essentially means it was bombed and virtually obliterated. The president of the fishermen’s association recognized from the video that it was one of their fishermen association boats that Alejandro would normally use. And of course, Alejandro never came back. That’s what we know about it.

JW: What is the complaint that you’re making?

DK: First of all, we’re bringing it against the United States as a state party to the Organization of American States. They are subject to the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is a body of the Organization of American States. And we’re bringing a petition alleging that the U.S. violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man — in particular, the right to life, the right to due process, the right to trial. And we’re seeking compensation from the United States for the family of Alejandro Carranza, as well as injunctive relief, asking that the U.S. stop these bombings.

JW: Can you tell me a little bit more about why you filed the petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and what your goal is here?

DK: Yes, so we felt that, at least, at the moment it was the best place to get jurisdiction over the United States because the U.S. is a party to the American Declaration, which by the way, I just note, is the oldest human rights instrument in the world. It was signed in Bogota in 1948; it’s also known as the Bogota Declaration. And the U.S., as I said, a petition can be brought against the U.S. as a country before the Inter-American Commission.

To get compensation from the United States and the U.S. court is very difficult because of sovereign immunity issues. But the U.S. in this case, where the Inter-American Commission has agreed to, essentially, waive those immunity issues. So we felt it was a good venue for us again. And we will be seeking compensation, as I said, and a finding that these killings are unlawful, and we hope that does play a role in ending these killings. That’s really a big goal.

By the way, we have not foreclosed the possibility of a court case. We’re looking into that right now as well.

JW: Can you tell us about the process of bringing the petition to the human rights commission and what’s coming down the pipeline in this case?

DK: It’ll be slow going for sure. But the commission will do their own investigation of the claims, which will include sending questions and queries to me, for example, about our case, but also to the United States. They will ask the U.S. to respond to the petition to give their petition on jurisdiction and on the merits, to maybe give evidence. And so that those will be the next steps is an investigation of what happened here and why.

JW: Switching gears a bit. You were also hired by Colombian President, Gustavo Petro, who the Trump administration has sanctioned and accused of playing a “role in the global illicit drug trade.” What can you tell us about Petro’s case?

DK: First of all, these claims of him trafficking the drugs are completely untrue.

I’ve known Gustavo Petro for 20 years. He’s been a fighter of the drug cartels through his whole political career, including when he was a senator in Colombia. And currently he’s also very active in fighting the drug trade. He’s bombed a number of drug labs. He has engaged in a lot of crop substitution programs, encouraging farmers to go from growing coca — the raw material for cocaine — to growing other agricultural products like food items, and that’s been very successful. He’s reclaimed a lot of land from coca production to, again, legitimate crop production. He’s also engaged in interception of drug boats in the Caribbean, but he doesn’t kill people — he arrests people. He’s confiscated a lot of money, which he’s actually donated to Gaza.

So this is not a drug trafficker, but this is very politically motivated. It’s very clear, given the timing of all this, that the U.S. put him on the OFAC list to punish him. For one, being an advocate, a very outspoken advocate of Palestine. And for making it clear that he was against these bombings of the boats and also opposed to any intervention in Venezuela. That’s what this OFAC list designation is really about.

“It’s very clear, given the timing of all this, that the U.S. put him on the OFAC list to punish him. For one, being an advocate, a very outspoken advocate of Palestine.”

JW: Petro has also spoken about making cocaine legal. Can you speak to that at all?

DK: Yeah there’s a lot of discussion about legalizing all drugs. You see in the U.S. that we now have virtually legalized marijuana in most places.

And I think that makes a lot of sense. The Rand Corporation did a study years ago that showed it’s 20 times more effective to deal with drug addiction at home than to try to destroy drugs at their source like in Colombia.

The problem isn’t the drugs per se, but in the case of the United States, you have people who feel they need to be sedated most of the time. And instead of dealing with those underlying problems — of course, all the social programs we have that might alleviate that need and desire are being cut, right?

So there’s a lot of discussion about legalizing drugs so they could be better regulated and frankly, so they could be taxed so the sale could be taxed. You could gain revenue from those again, to deal with drug addiction and other social problems.

JW: Turning back to Mr. Medina’s case, I wanted to see if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to share.

DK: Just that I’ve been asked by a few journalists, “Do you think he was innocent?”

And do you know what my response is that I know that all of these people killed were innocent. You know why? Because where I come from, you’re innocent until proven guilty. None of these people were proven guilty in a court of law, and none of them were even charged, as far as I know, by the U.S. for a crime.

And by the way, even if they had been arrested, charged, tried, convicted, even in a death penalty state, they wouldn’t get the death penalty because drug trafficking is not a capital crime. So there’s nothing lawful about these. There’s no justification for what the U.S. is doing. And again, another journalist from CNN actually said, “How are you going to prove that Alejandro was innocent?”

“If the U.S. can get away with this, if they can just murder people … then none of us are safe.”

Again, I don’t have to prove he’s innocent. It’s the U.S. who had to prove he was guilty before meeting out punishment to him, and they never did. So those are the things I’d like people to keep in mind. The other thing is, if the U.S. can get away with this, if they can just murder people, and that’s what it is, murder people based on mere allegations, then none of us are safe.

There’s no difference between what they’re doing in the Caribbean than if a cop went up to a guy on the street in America, in Chicago, for example, and said, “Oh, I think you’re dealing in drugs.” And he shot the guy in the head. There’s no difference. And that’s not a world we want to live in. And we’re starting to live in that world with the ICE detentions.

So we’re fighting not only against specifically these killings or specifically for these families. We’re fighting for the rule of law that protects all of us — and people should welcome that, no matter how they view the drug issue.

“There’s no difference between what they’re doing in the Caribbean than if a cop went up to a guy on the street in America … and said, ‘Oh, I think you’re dealing in drugs.’ And he shot the guy in the head.”

JW: Thank you, Dan, for bringing your insights about this case and about what happened to Alejandro to our audience. And thank you for taking the time to speak with me on the Intercept Briefing.

DK: Thank you. I’m a big fan of The Intercept. Support The Intercept, people. Thank you very much. Appreciate you.

JW: Thank you.

Break

JW: Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse broke the story of the U.S. military launching a subsequent attack on survivors of a strike in the Caribbean Sea back in September. According to reporting from Turse, the survivors clung to the wreckage of the boat for roughly 45 minutes before being killed.

These strikes have horrified lawmakers on both sides of the aisles, including Republican Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who expressed his disgust with the attacks during a Fox Business Interview.

Rand Paul: It has not been the history of the United States to kill people who are out of combat. Even if there is a war, which most of us dispute, that a bunch of people who are unarmed allegedly running drugs is a war. We still don’t kill people when they’re incapacitated. People floating around in the water, clinging to the wreckage of a ship, are not in combat under any definition.

JW: Since the Trump administration launched its campaign targeting alleged “narco-terrorists” off the coast of Latin America, it has been laying the groundwork for a U.S. invasion of Venezuela without even the consent of Congress or, again, providing evidence for its claims.

Congress is now demanding the administration release unedited videos of the strikes to lawmakers, or they will withhold a quarter of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget.

And against this veil of secrecy and war crime allegations, the Pentagon has effectively replaced its seasoned press corps with a new crop of right-wing influencers, including Laura Loomer, James O’Keefe, and Matt Gaetz, who claim to be covering the military but have been accused of acting as a propaganda arm instead of a press corps.

Joining us now to discuss the boat strikes and the Trump administration’s attempts to eliminate critical coverage, are Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse and Gregg Leslie, executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

Nick, Gregg, Welcome to the show.

Nick Turse: Thanks so much for having me.

Gregg Leslie: Thanks.

JW: Nick, to start, can you tell us about this first strike and why it matters that the United States launched an additional strike against the survivors?

NT: Sure. This initial attack took place in the Caribbean on September 2. The United States attacked what they say are “narco-terrorists,” what’s come to be known as a drug boat.

They fired a missile at this boat. The boat was reduced to wreckage. Basically all that was left was a portion of the hull floating upside down, and there were two survivors of the initial attack. They climbed aboard that piece of wreckage and they sat there for roughly 45 minutes, while they were under U.S. video surveillance.

At the end of that 45 minutes, the United States fired another missile, which killed those two survivors. And then in quick succession, they fired two more missiles in order to sink that last remnant of the vessel. There are a number of reasons why I think it’s notable that there was a follow-up strike here.

First off, there’s a lie by omission behind all of this, and by extension, a Pentagon cover-up. The Intercept, as you say, was the first outlet to reveal that this “double tap” strike took place. And when we went to the Pentagon about it at the time, all we got was an anodyne response. So it’s notable that they wanted to keep it secret in the first place.

We of course went ahead and published, but it took the Washington Post, the CNN, the New York Times months to catch up. The question becomes, why did the Pentagon want to keep it under wraps, and why didn’t they admit this when we first asked?

“Why did the Pentagon want to keep it under wraps, and why didn’t they admit this when we first asked?”

The Department of War says the U.S. military is in a “non-international armed conflict” with 20-plus gangs and cartels, whose identities it’s keeping secret. And if this is true, if we’re engaged in some sort of secret quasi-war, then a double tap strike to kill survivors is illegal under international law. In fact, the Pentagon’s own Law of War manual is clear on attacking defenseless people. Combatants that are incapacitated by wounds, sickness, or, very specifically, shipwreck are considered “hors de combat,” the French term for those out of combat, or those out of the fight. At that point, combatants have become protected persons. They’re non-combatants at that point, so that’s another reason why this matters. There’s also something viscerally distasteful about killing people clinging to wreckage. It’s a summary execution of wounded, helpless people.

What’s worse is that the U.S. had the survivors under surveillance for 45 minutes and only then executed them. But, I also want to be clear that while the optics of this are especially horrendous, experts say that those follow-up strikes aren’t materially different than the other drug boat attacks. There have been 22 attacks thus far by the U.S. on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

The U.S. has killed 87 people. And experts on the laws of war, former Pentagon lawyers, State Department lawyers who are experts, say that those are 87 extrajudicial killings, or, put another way, 87 murders. There’s no war, there’s no actual armed conflict despite what the Trump administration claims. So these aren’t crimes of war. They can’t be; there’s no war. They’re just murders. The president and the military are conducting murders, and in my book, that’s what matters most.

“These aren’t crimes of war. They can’t be; there’s no war. They’re just murders.”

JW: So the administration has tried to justify these strikes by claiming the men that were killed were narco terrorists. Since your initial reporting, has the White House or the Pentagon provided any credible evidence that the people killed were drug traffickers?

NT: Yeah, they’ve never provided the public with any evidence of this. You’ll recall there was a strike on a semi-submersible craft that left two survivors that the military did not execute. They didn’t arrest them, they didn’t prosecute them. They instead repatriated them to their countries of origin after blowing up their boat and sinking it.

And the question is why? And I think it’s because they didn’t have viable evidence to prosecute. What they have when they target these boats is advanced intelligence, signals intelligence, maybe human intelligence, that is, informants — but they’re not going to disclose those sources and methods in court, so they don’t have a court case.

“Is a poor fisherman moving cargo that Americans want, love, and pay big money for a smuggler?”

Now, I don’t know if everyone on board these boats are drug smugglers. It’s a question of what that even means. Is a poor fisherman moving cargo that Americans want, love, and pay big money for a smuggler? I don’t know, but I do believe these boats are transporting drugs. That’s what my sources say.

But that’s beyond the point because these aren’t capital offenses. If the offenders were arrested, tried, or convicted, they’d get eight or 10 years in prison. They wouldn’t face a death penalty, much less be convicted or executed.

Even more of a farce is the legal theory that’s been advanced in a still classified Justice Department finding. And it differs from some of what President Trump and the Pentagon has said in public statements about these killings of supposed narco-terrorists. This classified finding says that the targets of the attacks are not the supposed narco-traffickers. The people on board are, in bloodless military speak, “collateral damage.”

The government claims that the narcotics on the boats are the lawful military targets because their cargo generates revenue for the cartels, which the Trump administration claims they’re at war with. And the cartels could theoretically sell the drugs, take the money, and buy arms to engage in this nonexistent war with America. So it’s a farce based on a fiction.

JW: Nick, you touched on this a little bit, but why should people in the United States care about the legality of these strikes? Are there implications for how the government could engage with people it considers even domestic adversaries?

NT: Yeah, I think Americans should be very concerned because President Trump has appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner.

He has a secret list of terrorist groups. He decided they’re at war with America. He decides if you’re a member of that group, if he says that you are, he says he has the right to kill you. And Donald Trump doesn’t just have a list of foreign groups either. Under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, the shorthand is NSPM-7, which he issued this fall, he has a secret list of domestic terror groups or, it’s being compiled as we speak, I think. So what’s to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists? If he’s doing this, close to home in the Caribbean or the Pacific. It’s the illegal use of lethal force that should worry Americans.

These boat strikes, the murders of people convicted of no crimes, if they become accepted as normal — there’s really nothing to stop the president from launching such attacks within the United States.

JW: Yeah, that’s really terrifying Nick, and we appreciate you explaining to us what this expanded scope could mean.

And Gregg, I want to pivot a little bit. In the midst of everything that we’re discussing here, the Pentagon has effectively replaced its original press corps with a group of right-wing influencers. Gregg, does that make uncovering the truth here more difficult?

GL: Yeah, it always does, and we see this from a lot of administrations to different degrees, but they all know that controlling the information can get them what they want in the short term. So it’s a reflexive reaction that almost always backfires because people know when they’re being lied to or when they’re having information withheld from them.

“Amateurs are basically the ones reporting to us now.”

What we’re seeing at the Pentagon where, yeah, amateurs are basically the ones reporting to us now, it doesn’t go without notice, so it’s not a good solution. It’s a blatant, blatantly unconstitutional denial of rights. They’re actually keeping people out of covering the Pentagon for the American people because they won’t sign a pledge restricting what they can report on. I think it’s an overwhelmingly improper way to handle a government.

JW: Gregg, I want to push a little bit and ask, we’ve obviously seen reporters outside of the building break stories. Nick is one example, but there are countless others. Does it matter for the Pentagon press corps to actually be inside of the Pentagon?

GL: I think it does, and it’s not just the Pentagon. I’ve seen this at other agencies too, where the U.S. government has an incredible array of experts on every topic, and people who are fundamentally involved in the controversies that we want to know more about. Any official channel of communication never really tells the full story. There’s always somebody who wants to limit that flow of information. So you can always get better information if you know who the people are behind the scenes. And there’s nothing nefarious or wrong with that. You just get better information to tell the American people how their government is operating. So that’s the way it should work. You don’t sit there and wait for press briefings. You go out and find the information, and you can do that better if you’re in the building.

“Any official channel of communication never really tells the full story. There’s always somebody who wants to limit that flow of information.”

JW: Nick, I want to get your thoughts on this. Does it matter to be in the Pentagon?

NT: You know, it might seem odd coming from someone who’s covered national security for 20-some odd years but never reported from the Pentagon — but I also think that physical access to the building matters.

Maybe I should back up. I never liked the idea of reporters having office space in the Pentagon. I never really thought that reporters should be sharing the same facility. But I firmly believe that reporters should have access to that military facility and every other one, by the same token. And, I’ve been known to grumble some about mainstream defense reporters from major outlets sometimes being too chummy with Pentagon sources, and laundering too many Pentagon talking points, also failing to push back or call out Pentagon lies. But they also get information and tips that you sometimes just will not get if you’re an adversarial reporter outside of the building.

“Maybe this treatment by the Department of War will, in the long run, lead to less reliance on official leaks and maybe finding more dissenters inside the building.”

I’ve always thought that there were better ways for folks on the outside and the inside to work together to share information. Sometimes that one or the other couldn’t use, for whatever reason. But I still believe that even failing that, there are people inside the building who can get scoops that I and other reporters outside just can’t. Being in the building can help that, it can help in building rapport.

I’d like to see them get back inside the building. But I also think that maybe this treatment by the Department of War will, in the long run, lead to less reliance on official leaks and maybe finding more dissenters inside the building.

JW: Gregg, I want to go back a second and ask you to talk a little bit more about the pledge. Can you explain for our listeners what the pledge was that outlets were being asked to sign in order to have permission to be in the Pentagon?

GL: It’s not a simple answer to that because it was a massive document they were expected to go through, and the big issue was, they couldn’t print anything that wasn’t officially given to them or officially cleared through Pentagon officials.

“It’s saying, you have to agree that you will only print authorized officially released information — and that’s just not how journalism works.”

And you would have to write in a pledge that, “I understand that I’m in violation of the law if I print anything that comes from somebody that hasn’t been, somebody gives me information that hasn’t been officially cleared.” That’s just such an outrageous comment. It’s not just saying you can’t talk to people, you can’t go outside of this office, but it’s saying, you have to agree that you will only print authorized officially released information — and that’s just not how journalism works or should work.

JW: Outside of the boat strikes, outside of the Pentagon, Gregg, what is the dangerous precedent that’s being set by replacing the Pentagon press corps?

GL: I think it’s just that fundamental issue of, who gets to cover the government? Is it only government-sanctioned information that gets out to the people, or is it people working on behalf of the United States public who get to really hold people to account and dive deep for greater information? And all of that is being compromised, if there’s an administration that says, “We get to completely put a chokehold on any information that we don’t want to be released.” That is not in any way consistent with the American tradition and it just flies in the face of our well-established preference for a free press. You just don’t have a free press if you have to pledge that you’re not going to give away information just because it hasn’t been cleared. It just shouldn’t work that way, and it hasn’t worked that way. And it’s frightening that we’ve gotten an administration trying to make that the norm.

JW: Nick, do you have any final thoughts?

NT: Since the dawn of the republic, the United States military has been killing civilians and they’ve been getting away with it. Native Americans in the so-called Indian Wars, Filipinos at the turn of the 20th century, Japanese during World War II, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians.

And for the last 20-plus years, Republican and Democratic administrations pioneered lawless killings in the back lands of the planet during the forever wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and on, and on. The details of these wars were kept secret. Civilian casualties were covered up. And now this new extension of the war on terror melded with the war on drugs has come to our doorstep.

We have bogus terrorist designations that are being used to murder people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean, and it could soon occur within the United States. The president has been killing people using the most specious legal reasoning imaginable. And, it makes a classic war on terror as unlawful and murders as it was look almost reasonable by comparison.

So I think Americans should be demanding answers and speaking out about a secret enemy’s list that’s being used to excuse summary executions or to put it plainly murder. And a domestic enemies list that the White House and the Justice Department just refused to say anything about.

JW: Nick, we appreciate your thoughtful analysis. And Gregg, do you have any final thoughts?

GL: Yeah, I think every few years something comes along that reminds us that we need a free press. If things are going too well, people take a free press for a given. They think, “Of course, we’re able to have reporters do what they want.” So in a sense, the bad news can lead to a good effect.

“Every few years, something comes along that reminds us that we need a free press.”

We know that since the time of James Madison, when he said, popular government without popular knowledge is a tragedy or a farce; or perhaps both. Right from the start, we knew that kind of information has to reach the people to have a meaningful democracy.

And as a media lawyer, people get tired of me and other media lawyers saying this kind of access is fundamentally important to democracy, as if we’re saying every incident like this is going to destroy democracy. But in the big picture, they will. When this keeps happening and if this becomes an official policy, it fundamentally threatens how democracy works.

And so I don’t think we’re ever going to overstate the case here. Something like this where you’re actually removing reporters from the Pentagon just truly interferes with how the people of the United States learn about what their government is up to.

JW: We’re going to leave it there. But thank you both so much for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.

GL: Thanks for having me.

NT: Thanks very much.

JW: On Wednesday, the United States intercepted and seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. President Trump bragged about the move, claiming the tanker was the “largest one ever seized.”

It was a shocking escalation in the United States’ aggression toward the country, as Trump increases pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Follow the Intercept for more reporting on this developing story.

That does it for this episode.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

If you want to send us a message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.

The post “Trump Has Appointed Himself Judge, Jury, and Executioner” appeared first on The Intercept.

Lethal Illusion: Understanding the Death Penalty Apparatus

The Intercept Briefing — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000

As of December 1, officials across the U.S. have executed 44 people in 11 states, making 2025 one of the deadliest years for state-sanctioned executions in recent history. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, three more people are scheduled for execution before the new year.

The justification for the death penalty is that it’s supposed to be the ultimate punishment for the worst crimes. But in reality, who gets sentenced to die depends on things that often have nothing to do with guilt or innocence.

Historically, judges have disproportionately sentenced Black and Latino people to death. A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union released in November found that more than half of the 200 people exonerated from death row since 1973 were Black.

Executions had been on a steady decline since their peak in the late 1990s. But the numbers slowly started to creep back up in recent years, more than doubling from 11 in 2021 to 25 last year, and we’ve almost doubled that again this year. Several states have stood out in their efforts to ramp up executions and conduct them at a faster pace — including Alabama.

Malcolm Gladwell’s new podcast series “The Alabama Murders” dives into one case to understand what the system really looks like and how it operates. Death by lethal injection involves a three-drug protocol: a sedative, a paralytic, and, lastly, potassium chloride, which is supposed to stop the heart. Gladwell explains to Intercept Briefing host Akela Lacy how it was developed, “It was dreamt up in an afternoon in Oklahoma in the 1970s by a state senator and the Oklahoma medical examiner who were just spitballing about how they might replace the electric chair with something ‘more humane.’ And their model was why don’t we do for humans what we do with horses?”

Liliana Segura, an Intercept senior reporter who has covered capital punishment and criminal justice for two decades , adds that the protocol is focused on appearances. “It is absolutely true that these are protocols that are designed with all of these different steps and all of these different parts and made to look, using the tools of medicine to kill … like this has really been thought through.” She says, “These were invented for the purpose of having a humane-appearing protocol, a humane-appearing method, and it amounts to junk science.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Malcolm and Liliana, welcome to the show.

Malcolm Gladwell: Thank you.

Liliana Segura: Thank you.

AL: Malcolm, the series starts by recounting the killing of Elizabeth Sennett, but very quickly delves into what happens to the two men convicted of killing her, John Parker and Kenny Smith. You spend a lot of time in this series explaining, sometimes in graphic detail, how the cruelty of the death penalty isn’t only about the execution, but also about the system around it — the paperwork, the waiting. This is not the kind of subject matter that you typically tackle. What drew you to wanting to report on the death penalty and criminal justice?

MG: I wasn’t initially intending to do a story about the death penalty. I, on a kind of whim, spent a lot of time with Kate Porterfield, who’s the psychologist who studies trauma, who shows up halfway through “The Alabama Murders.”

I was just interviewing her about, because I was interested in the treatment of traumatized people, and she just happened to mention that she’d been involved with the death penalty case — and her description of it was so moving and compelling that I realized, oh, that’s the story I want to tell. But this did not start as a death penalty project. It started as an exploration of a psychologist’s work, and it kind of took a detour.

AL: Tell us a little bit more about how the bureaucracy around the death penalty masks its inherent cruelty.

MG: There’s a wonderful phrase that one of the people we interviewed, Joel Zivot, uses. He talks about how the death penalty — he was talking about lethal injection, but this is also true of nitrogen gas — he said it is the impersonation of a medical act. And I think that phrase speaks volumes, that a lot of what is going on here is a kind of performance that is for the benefit of the viewer. It has to look acceptable to those who are watching, to those who are in society who are judging or observing the process.

“They’re interested in the impersonation of a medical act, not the implementation of a medical act.”

It is the management of perception that is compelling and driving the behavior here — not the actual treatment of the condemned prisoner him/herself. And once you understand that, oh, it’s a performance, then a lot of it makes sense.

One of the crucial moments in the story we tell is, where there is a hearing in which the attorneys for Kenny Smith are trying to get a stay of execution, and they start asking the state of Alabama, the corrections people in the state of Alabama to explain, did they understand what they would do? They were contemplating the use of nitrogen gas. Did they ever talk to a doctor about the risks associated with it? Did they ever contemplate any of the potential side effects? And it turns out they had done none of that. And it makes sense when you realize that’s not what they’re interested in.

They’re interested in the impersonation of a medical act, not the implementation of a medical act. The bureaucracy is there to make it look good, and that was one of the compelling lessons of the piece.

AL: And it’s impersonating a medical act with people who are not doctors, right? Like people who are not, do not have this training.

MG: In that hearing, there’s this real incredible moment where one of the attorneys asks the man who heads Alabama’s Department of Corrections, did you ever consult with any medical personnel about the choice of execution method and its possible problems? And the guy says no.

You just realize, they’re just mailing it in. Like they have no — the state of Alabama is not interested in exploring the kind of full implications of what they’re doing. They’re just engaged in this kind of incredibly slapdash operation.

“It has to look acceptable to those who are watching, to those who are in society who are judging or observing the process.”

AL: Liliana, I wanna bring you in here. You’ve spent years reporting on capital punishment in the U.S. and looked into many cases in different states. Why are states like Florida and Alabama ramping up the number of executions? Is it all politics? What’s going on there?

LS: That is one of the questions that I think a lot of us who cover this stuff have been asking ourselves all year long. And to some degree, it’s always politics. The story of the death penalty, the story of executions, so often really boils down to that.

We are in a political moment right now where the climate around executions, certainly, but I think in general, the kind of appetite for or promotion of vengeance and brutality toward our enemies is really shockingly real right now. And I was reluctant about a year ago to really trace our current moment to Trump. The death penalty has been a bipartisan project; I don’t want to pretend like this is something that begins and ends with somebody like Trump.

That said, it’s really shocking to see the number of executions that are being pushed through, especially in Florida. And this is something that has been ramped up by Gov. DeSantis for purely political reasons. This death penalty push in Florida began with his political ambitions when he was originally going to run for president. And I think that to some degree is a story behind a lot of death penalty policy, certainly going back decades, and certainly speaks to the moment we’re in.

I did want to just also touch on some of what Malcolm was talking about when it comes to the performance of executions themselves. Over the past many years, I’ve reported on litigation, death penalty trials, that have taken place in states like Oklahoma and here in Tennessee where I live, where we restarted executions some years ago after a long time of not carrying any out. And these trials had, at the center, the three-drug protocol that is described so thoroughly in the podcast.

It is absolutely true that these are protocols that are designed with all of these different steps and all of these different parts and made to look — using the tools of medicine to kill — and made to look like this has really been thought through. But when you really trace that history — as you do, Malcolm, in your podcast — there’s no there there.

These were invented for the purpose of having a humane-appearing protocol, a humane-appearing method, and it amounts to junk science. There was no way to test these methods. Nobody can tell us, as you described in your podcast, what it feels like to undergo this execution process. And I think it’s really important to remember that this is not only the story of lethal injection, this is the story of executions writ large.

When the electric chair came on the scene generations ago, it was also touted as the height of technology because it was using electricity and it was supposed to be more humane than hanging. There had been botched hangings that were seen as gruesome ordeals. So there’s this bizarre way in which history repeats itself when it comes to these methods that are promoted as the height of modernity and humanity —and it’s just completely bankrupt and false.

AL: Malcolm, do you want to add something?

MG: Yeah, we have a big focus in the case I’m describing, Kenny Smith, was notorious because he had a botched execution where they couldn’t find a vein. And one of the points that Joel Zivot makes is that, of course, it’s not surprising that they, in that case and in many others, they can’t find a vein because that is a medical procedure that is designed to be undertaken in a hospital setting by trained personnel with the cooperation of the patient. Usually we’d find a vein, and the patient cooperates because we’re trying to save their life or make them healthier. This is a use of this procedure that is completely different. It is outside of a medical institution, not being done by people who are experienced medical professionals, and is not being done with the cooperation of the patient. The patient in this case is a condemned prisoner who is not in the same situation as someone who’s ill and trying to get better.

AL: I want to just walk our listeners through this. So this is, again, one of the pieces of the series, this three-drug protocol. First there’s a sedative, then there’s a paralytic, and then there’s finally potassium chloride, which is supposed to stop the heart. How did that protocol come to be developed?

MG: It was dreamt up in an afternoon in Oklahoma in the 1970s by a state senator and the Oklahoma medical examiner who were just spitballing about how they might replace the electric chair with something “more humane.”

And their model was, well, why don’t we do for humans what we do with horses? Which was a suggestion that had come from Ronald Reagan, then governor of California. So they just generally thought, well, we can do a version of what we do in those instances, only we’ll just ramp up the dose. This is also a kind of anesthesia sometimes.

AL: This is advertised as something that is supposed to be painless.

MG: And these drugs were also in use in the medical setting, but their idea was, we’ll take a protocol that is loosely based on what is used in a medical setting and ramp up the doses so that instead of merely sedating somebody, we’re killing them.

“ It wasn’t thought through, tested, analyzed, peer-reviewed. It was literally two guys.”

And it wasn’t thought through, tested, analyzed, peer-reviewed. It was literally two guys, dreaming up something on the back of an envelope. And one of the guys, the medical examiner, later regretted his part in the whole procedure, but the genie was out of the bottle. And everybody jumped on this as an advance over the previous iteration of killing technology.

AL: In addition to being advertised as painless, it’s also supposed to be within the bounds of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Can you tell us about that?

MG: In order to satisfy that prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, you have to have some insight as to what the condemned prisoner is going through when they are being subjected to this protocol. The universe of people engaged in the capital punishment project were universally indifferent to trying to find out how exactly this worked. They weren’t curious at all to figure out, for example, was there any suffering that was associated with this three-drug protocol, or which of the three drugs is killing you? Or, I could go on and on and on.

They just implemented it and because it looked good from the outside, because you have given someone a sedative and a paralytic, it’s impossible to tell from the outside whether they’re going through any kind of suffering. It was just assumed that there should be no, there must be no suffering going on the inside.

And the Eighth Amendment does not say that people should not be subjected to the appearance of cruel and unusual punishment. It says, no, the actual punishment itself for the individual should not be cruel and unusual. So there was, at no point could anyone, in the early history of this, did anyone truly satisfy the intent of the Eighth Amendment.

AL: Liliana, you’ve written a lot about this protocol as well, and the Supreme Court has taken a stance on it. Tell us about that.

LS: So one thing that’s really important to understand about the Eighth Amendment and the death penalty in this country is that the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in on the death penalty numerous times, but has never invalidated a method of execution as violating the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. And that fact right there I think speaks volumes.

But one of the cases that I go back to over and over again in my work about lethal injection and about other execution methods, dates back to the 1940s, and it’s a case involving a man named Willie Francis, who was a teenager, a Black teenager who had been condemned to die in Louisiana. They sent him to the electric chair in 1946, and he survived. He survived their initial attempts to execute him. It’s a grotesque ordeal, there’s been a lot written historically about this.

That case, they stopped the execution. He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a majority of justices found that attempting to kill him again, wouldn’t violate the Eighth Amendment, and they sent him back in 1947, they succeeded in killing him. But the language that comes out of the court in this case really goes a long way to helping us understand how we ended up where we are now. They essentially said, “Accidents happen. Accidents happen for which no man is to blame.” And there’s another turn of phrase that’s really galling in which essentially they call this ordeal that he suffered “an innocent misadventure.” And this language, this idea that this was an innocent misadventure finds its way into subsequent rulings decades later.

So in 2008, I believe it was, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the three-drug protocol, which at the time was being used by Kentucky. This was a case called Baze v. Rees. There was a lot of evidence, there was a lot that the justices had to look at that should have given them pause about the fact that this protocol was not rooted in science. That there had been many botched executions — in terms of the inability to find a vein, in terms of evidence that people were suffering on the gurney.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that protocol, and yet right around the time that they handed down that ruling, states began tinkering with the lethal injection protocol that had been the prevailing method for so long.

Without getting too deep in the weeds, the initial drug — the drug that was supposed to anesthetize people who were being killed by lethal injection — had been originally a drug called sodium thiopental, which was thought to be, believed to be, for good reasons something that could basically put a person under, where they wouldn’t necessarily feel the noxious effects of the subsequent drugs.

States were unable to get their hands on this drug for a number of reasons, and subsequently began swapping out other drugs to replace that drug. And different states tried different things. A number of states eventually settled on this drug called midazolam, which is a sedative, which does not have the same properties as the previous drug — and over and over again, experts have said that this is not a drug that’s going to be effective in providing and anesthetizing people for the purpose of lethal injection.

The Supreme Court once again ruled that this was true. In Oklahoma, this was the case Glossip v. Gross, which the Supreme Court heard after there had been a very high profile really gruesome, botched execution, a man named Clayton Lockett who was executed in 2014. This ended up going up to the Supreme Court. And I covered that oral argument and what was really astonishing about that oral argument wasn’t just how grotesque it all was, but the fact that the justices were very clearly, very annoyed, very cranky about the fact that, only a few years after having upheld this three-drug protocol, now they’re having to deal with this thing again. And again, they upheld this protocol, despite a lot of evidence that this was completely inhumane, that there was a lot of reason to be concerned that people were suffering on the gurney, while being put to death by lethal injection.

And so the reason I go back to the Willie Francis case is that it really tells us everything that we need to know. Which is that if you have decided that people condemned to die in this country are less than human, and that their suffering doesn’t matter, then there’s no limits on what you are willing to tolerate in upholding this death protocol that we’ve invented in this country. And so the Supreme Court has weighed in not only on the three-drug protocol, but on execution methods in general. And they have always found that there’s not really a problem here.

“If you have decided that people condemned to die in this country are less than human, and that their suffering doesn’t matter, then there’s no limits on what you are willing to tolerate in upholding this death protocol that we’ve invented in this country.’

MG: At a certain point, it becomes obvious that the cruelty is the point. The Eighth Amendment does not actually have any kind of impact on their thinking because they are anxious to preserve the very thing about capital punishment that is so morally noxious, which is that it’s cruel.

AL: Malcolm, one interesting thing that you talk about in this series is this concept of judicial override in Alabama, where a judge was able to impose a death sentence even if the jury recommended life in prison. This went on until 2017. As we know, death penalty cases can take decades, so it’s possible that there are still people on death row who have been impacted by judicial override. What’s your sense about how judges who went that route justified their decisions, if at all?

MG: So Alabama was one of a small number of states who, in response to the Supreme Court’s hesitancy about capital punishment in the 1970s, instituted rules which said that a judge can override a jury’s sentencing determination in a capital case.

So if a jury says, “We want life imprisonment without parole,” the judge could impose a death penalty or vice versa. The motivation for these series of override laws — and there are only about three or four states in Florida, Alabama, a couple of others had them — is murky. But I suspect what they wanted to do was to guard against the possibility that juries would become overwhelmingly lenient.

The concern was that if the public sentiment was moving away from death penalty to the extent that it would be difficult to impose a death penalty in capital cases, unless you allowed judges to independently assert their opinion when it came to sentencing. And I also suspect that there’s, in states like Alabama, there was a little bit of a racial motivation that they thought that Black juries would be unlikely to vote for the death penalty for Black defendants, and they wanted to reserve the right to act in those cases.

And what happens in Alabama is that other states gradually abandon this policy, but Alabama sticks to it — not only that, they have the most extreme version of it. They basically allow the judge to overrule under any circumstances without giving an explanation for why.

And when they finally get rid of this, they don’t make it retroactive. So they only say, “Going forward, we’re not going to do override. But we’re not going to spare people who are on death row now because of override — we’re not going to spare their lives.” And so it raises this question about, the reason we call our series “The Alabama Murders” is that when you look very closely at the case we’re interested in, you quickly come to the conclusion there’s something particularly barbaric about the political culture of Alabama. Not news, by the way, for anyone who knows anything about Alabama. But Alabama, it’s its own thing, and they remain to this day clinging to this notion that they need every possible defense against the possibility that a convicted murderer could escape with his life.

AL: Speaking of this idea of the title of the show, I also want to bring up that I did not know that the autopsy in an execution, and I don’t know that this is unique to Alabama, but that it marks the death as a homicide. I was actually shocked to hear that.

MG: Yeah, isn’t that interesting? That is the one moment of honesty and self-awareness in this entire process.

AL: Right, that’s why it’s shocking. It’s not shocking because we know it’s a homicide. It’s shocking because they’re admitting to it in a record that is accessible to the public at some point.

[Break]

AL: Malcolm, you mentioned the racial dynamic with Alabama in particular, but Liliana, I want to ask if you could maybe speak to the historic link between the development of the death penalty and the history of lynching in the South.

LS: So it’s really interesting. Alabama is, in many ways, the poster child for this line that can be drawn between not only lynching, but slavery to lynching, to Reconstruction, to state-sanctioned murder. And that’s an uneasy line to draw in the sense of — there’s a reason that Bryan Stevenson, who is the head of the Equal Justice Initiative, has called the death penalty the “stepchild of lynching.”

He calls it the stepchild of lynching and it’s because, there’s something of an indirect link, but it’s an absolutely — that link is real. And you really see it in Alabama and certainly in the South. I think it was in 2018, I went down to Montgomery a number of times for the opening of EJI’s lynching memorial that they had launched there and this was a major event. At the time I went with this link in mind to try to interrogate and understand this history a little bit better. And I ended up writing this big long piece, which I only recently went back to reread because it’s not fresh in my mind anymore.

But one of the things that is absolutely, undoubtedly true is that the death penalty in the South in its early days was justified using the exact same rationale that people used for lynching, which was that this was about protecting white women from sexually predatory Black men.

“The death penalty in the South in its early days was justified using the exact same rationale that people used for lynching.”

And that line, that consistent feature of executions — whether it was an extrajudicial lynching or an execution carried out by the state — has been really consistent and I think overlooked in the history of the death penalty. And part of the reason it’s overlooked is that, again, going back to the Supreme Court, there have been a number of times that this history has come before the Supreme Court and other courts, and by and large, the reaction has been to look away, to deny this.

That is absolutely true in the years leading up to the 1972 case, Furman v. Georgia, which Malcolm alluded to earlier, there was this moment where the Supreme Court had to pause executions. And this was a four-year period in the ’70s. 1972 was Furman v. Georgia. 1976 was Gregg v. Georgia. Part of the reason that Furman, which was this 1972 case, invalidated the death penalty across the country, was because there was evidence that executions, that death sentences were being handed down in what they called an arbitrary way.

And in reality, it wasn’t so much arbitrariness, as very clear evidence of sentences that were being given disproportionately to people of color, to Black people, and history showed that that was largely motivated by cases in which a victim was white. It was a white woman maybe who had been subjected to sexual violence. There is that link, and I think it’s really important to remember that.

In Alabama, one of the really interesting things too, going back to judicial override, there’s this kind of irony in the history of judicial override in the way that it was carried out by judges. Alabama, when they restarted the death penalty in the early ’80s, was getting a lot of flack for essentially having a racist death penalty system. Of course, there was a lot of defensiveness around this, and there were judges who, actually, in cases where juries did not come back with a death sentence for a white defendant, there were cases where judges then overrode that decision in a sort of display of fairness.

One of the things that I found when I was researching my piece from 2018 was that there was a judge in, I believe it was 1999, who explained why he overrode the jury in sentencing this particular white man to die. And he said, “If I had not imposed the death sentence, I would’ve sentenced three Black people to death and no white people.” So this was his way of ensuring fairness. “Well, I’ve gotta override it here,” never mind what it might say about the jury in the decision not to hand down a death sentence for a white person.

“They needed the appearance of fairness.”

Again, it goes back to appearance. They needed the appearance of fairness. And so Alabama really does typify a certain kind of racial dynamic and early history of the death penalty that you see throughout the South, not just the South, but especially in the South.

AL: One of the things proponents of the death penalty are adamant about is that it requires some element of secrecy to survive.

Executions happen behind closed walls, in small rooms, late at night. The people involved never have their identities publicly revealed or their credentials. The concern being that if people really knew what was involved, there would be a massive public outcry. Malcolm, in this series you describe in gruesome detail what is actually involved in an execution. For folks who haven’t heard the series, tell us about that.

MG: In Alabama, there is a long execution protocol. A written script, which was made public only because it came out during a lawsuit, which kind of lays out all the steps that the state takes. And Alabama also has, to your point, an unusual level of secrecy.

For example, in many states, the entire execution process is open, at least to witnesses. In Alabama, you only see the person after they’ve found a vein. So the Kenny Smith case, we were talking about where they spent hours unsuccessfully trying to find a vein — that was all done behind closed doors.

And the second thing that you pointed out is the people who are involved remain anonymous, and you can understand why. It is an acknowledgment on the part of these states that they are engaged in something shameful. If they were as morally clearheaded as they claim to be, then what would be the problem with making every aspect of the process public?

But instead, they go in the opposite direction and they try and shroud it. They make it as much of a mystery as they can. And it’s funny, so much of our knowledge about death penalty procedures only comes out because of lawsuits.

“If they were as morally clearheaded as they claim to be, then what would be the problem with making every aspect of the process public?”

It is only under the compulsion of the judicial process that we learn even the smallest tidbit about what’s going on or what kind of thought went into a particular procedure. When we’re talking about the state taking the life of a citizen of the United States, that’s weird, right?

We have more transparency over the most prosaic aspects of government practice than we do about something that involves something as important as taking someone’s life.

AL: Liliana, you’ve witnessed two executions. Tell us about your experience, and particularly this aspect of secrecy surrounding the process.

LS: Let me just pick up first on the secrecy piece because one of the really bizarre aspects of the death penalty, when you’ve covered it in different states and looked at the federal system as well, is that there’s just this wide range when it comes to what states and jurisdictions are willing to reveal and show.

What they are not willing to reveal is certainly the individuals involved. A ton of states have or death penalty states have passed secrecy legislation essentially bringing all of that information even further behind closed doors. The identity of the executioners was always sort of a secret. But now we don’t get to know where they get the drugs, and in some states, in some places, the secrecy is really shocking. I just wrote a story about Indiana, which recently restarted executions. And Indiana is the only active death penalty state that does not allow any media witnesses. There is nothing, and that’s exceptional.

And if you go out and try as a journalist to cover an execution in Indiana, it’s not going to be like in Alabama or in Oklahoma, where the head of the DOC comes out and addresses things and says, whether true or not true, “Everything went great.” No, you are in a parking lot at midnight across from the prison. There is absolutely nobody coming to tell you what happened. It’s a ludicrous display of indifference and contempt, frankly, for the press or for the public that has a right and an interest in knowing what’s happening in their names. So secrecy — there’s a range, I guess is my point, and yes, most places err on the side of not revealing anything, but some take that a lot further than others.

In terms of the experience of witnessing an execution, that’s obviously a big question. I will say that both those executions were in Oklahoma. That is a state that has a really ugly sordid history of botched executions going back longer than 10 years.

But Oklahoma became infamous on the world stage about 10 years ago, a little more, for botching a series of executions. I’ve been covering the case of Richard Glossip for a while. Richard Glossip is a man with a long-standing innocence claim whose death sentence and conviction was overturned only this year. Richard Glossip was almost put to death by the state of Oklahoma in 2015, and I was outside the prison that day. And it’s only because they had the wrong drug on hand that it did not go through.

And so going into a situation where I was preparing to witness an execution in Oklahoma, I was all too keenly aware of the possibility that something could go wrong — and that’s just something you know when you’re covering this stuff. And instead, Oklahoma carried out the three-drug protocol execution of a man named Anthony Sanchez in September of 2023. I had written about Anthony’s case. I had spoken to him the day before and for the better part of a year. And I think I’m still trying to understand what I saw that day because, by all appearances, things looked like they went as smoothly as one would hope, right?

He was covered with a sheet. You saw the color in his face change. He went still. And as a journalist or just an ordinary person trying to describe what that meant, what I was seeing — I couldn’t really tell you, because the process by design was made to look that way, but I could not possibly guess as to what he was experiencing.

Again, that’s because lethal injection and that three-drug protocol has been designed to make it look humane and make it look like everything’s gone smoothly.

I will say one thing that has really stuck with me about that execution was that I was sitting right behind the attorney general of Oklahoma, Gentner Drummond, who has attended — I think to his credit, frankly — every execution that has been carried out in Oklahoma under his tenure. And he was sitting in front of me and a member of the one witness who was there, who, I believe, was a member of Anthony’s family was sitting one seat over. After the execution was over, she was quietly weeping, and Gentner Drummond, the attorney general who was responsible for this execution, put his hand on her and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” And it was this really bizarre moment because he was acknowledging that this was a loss, that this death of this person that she clearly cared about — he was responsible for it.

And I don’t know that he has ever said something like that since, because a lot of us journalists in the room reported back. And it’s almost like, you’re not supposed to say that — there shouldn’t be sorrow here, really. This is justice. This is what’s being done in our name. And I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about that. Because by and large in the executions I’ve reported on, you don’t have the attorney general himself or the prosecutor who sent this person to death row attending the execution. It’s out of sight, out of mind.

AL: Malcolm, as we’ve talked about and has been repeatedly documented, the way that the death penalty has been applied has been racist and classist, disproportionately affecting Black and Latino people and poor people. It has also historically penalized people who have mental health issues or intellectual disabilities. Even with all that evidence, why does this persist? How has vengeance become such a core part of the American justice system?

MG: As I spoke before, I think what’s happened is that the people who are opposed to death penalty are having a different conversation than the people who are in favor of it.

The people who are in favor are trying to make a kind of moral statement about society’s ultimate intolerance of people who violate certain kinds of norms, and they are in the pursuit of that kind of moral statement, willing to go to almost any lengths. And on the other side are people who are saying that going this far is outside of the moral boundaries of a civilized state.

Those are two very different claims that proceed on very different assumptions. And we’re talking past each other. It doesn’t matter to those who are making a broad moral statement about society’s intolerance what this condition, status, background, makeup of the convicted criminal is — because they’re not basing their decision on the humanity of the defendant, the criminal defendant. They’re making a broad moral point.

“I’ve often wondered whether in doing series, as I did, that focus so heavily on the details of an execution, I’m contributing to the problem.”

I’ve often wondered whether in doing series, as I did, that focus so heavily on the details of an execution, I’m contributing to the problem. That if opponents make it all about the individual circumstances of the defendant, the details of the case, was the person guilty or not, was the kind of punishment cruel and unusual — we’re kind of buying into the moral error here.

Because we’re opening the possibility that if all we were doing was executing people who were 100% guilty and if our method of execution was proven without a shadow of a doubt to be “humane,” then we don’t have a case anymore.

AL: Right, then it’d be fine.

MG: So I look at what I’ve done — that’s my one reservation about spending all this time on the Kenny Smith case, is that we shouldn’t have to do this. It should be enough to say that even the worst person in the world does not deserve to be murdered by a state.

That’s not what states do, right, in a civilized society. That one sentence ought to be enough. And it’s a symptom of how distorted this argument has become — that it’s not enough.

AL: Liliana, I want to briefly get your thoughts on this too.

LS: I think that people who are opposed to death penalty and abolitionists oftentimes say, “This is a broken system.” And we talk about prisons in that way; “this is a broken system.”

I think it’s a mistake to say that this is a broken system because I don’t think that this system, at its best, as you’ve just discussed, would be fine if it only worked correctly. I think that that’s absolutely not the case. So I do agree that, this system — I don’t hide the fact that I’m very opposed to the death penalty. I don’t think that you can design it and improve it and make it fair and make it just.

“I don’t think that you can design it and improve it and make it fair and make it just.”

I also think that part of the reason that people have a hard time saying that is: If you were to say that about the death penalty in this country, for all of the reasons that may be true, then you would be forced to deal with the criminal justice system more broadly, and with prisons and sentencing as a whole. And I think that there’s a real reluctance to see the problems that we see in death penalty cases in that broader context, because what does that mean for this country, if you’re calling into question on mass incarceration and in the purpose that these sentences serve.?

AL: We’ve covered a lot here. I want to thank you both for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.

MG: Thank you so much.

LS: Thank you.

The post Lethal Illusion: Understanding the Death Penalty Apparatus appeared first on The Intercept.

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