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Source: https://theintercept.com/feed/

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23.                <title><![CDATA[The Right Wing Desperately Wants to Make Charlie Kirk Its MLK]]></title>
24.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/14/charlie-kirk-remembrance-mlk/</link>
25.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/14/charlie-kirk-remembrance-mlk/#respond</comments>
26.                <pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2025 21:50:24 +0000</pubDate>
27.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Alain Stephens]]></dc:creator>
28.                                 <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
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30.  
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32.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>On Kirk’s “National Day of Remembrance,” white supremacists want to replace a tradition of justice with their own manufactured myth.</p>
33. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/14/charlie-kirk-remembrance-mlk/">The Right Wing Desperately Wants to Make Charlie Kirk Its MLK</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
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41.    alt="GLENDALE, ARIZONA - AUGUST 23: Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks during a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. The rally, held in partnership with Turning Point PAC and Turning Point Action, comes come two weeks after Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Harris held a rally at the same location. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)"
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46.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
47.      <span class="photo__caption">Charlie Kirk speaks during a campaign rally for Donald Trump in Glendale, Ariz., on Aug. 23, 2024. </span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images</span>    </figcaption>
48.    </figure>
49.  
50.  
51.  
52. <p><span class="has-underline">They keep carving out</span> calendar space for Charlie Kirk — days of remembrance, resolutions, flag orders — demanding the hush and reverence reserved for real moral witnesses. Congress moved to mark <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/senate-passes-national-day-remembrance-charlie-kirk/story?id=125730824">today</a> as a “National Day of Remembrance”; the White House ordered <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/honoring-the-memory-of-charlie-kirk/">flags at half-staff</a> after his death; towns are <a href="https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2025/10/07/marion-county-names-road-for-charlie-kirk">issuing </a>local <a href="https://www.havasunews.com/news/mohave-county-expected-to-recognize-charlie-kirk-in-proclamation-next-week/article_031f6a71-31a5-48c7-9da0-22eab80dcc7e.html">proclamations</a> like it’s a civic sacrament.</p>
53.  
54.  
55.  
56. <p>“Every single American should take a long, hard look at the twisted soul and dark spirit of anyone who would want to kill a young man as good as Charlie Kirk,” President Donald Trump said at Kirk’s <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/white-house-press-release-president-trump-joins-nation-celebrating-charlie-kirks-enduring">funeral</a> last month.</p>
57.  
58.  
59.  
60. <p>You can feel the script they want you to read: grief scene, candles, a lesson about “free speech under attack,” a martyr who stood bravely before the mob. It’s not subtle.</p>
61.  
62.  
63.  
64. <p>It’s a bitter truth that America’s newest national days of celebration have honored Black and Brown activists, including Cesar Chavez and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., only after their deaths. These are activists who expanded civic liberties and legal protections to the far-reaching corners of American citizenry, with the latter being violently killed for his vocal outrage against the inhumane conditions of this country. </p>
65.  
66.  
67.  
68. <p>The goal of the far right, Christian nationalists, and white supremacists in this moment is clear: to fix Kirk in the public imagination where Dr. King once stood. But the point isn’t to honor a tradition of justice — it’s to replace it entirely.</p>
69.  
70.  
71.  
72.  
73.  
74.  
75.  
76. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-martin-luther-kirk-and-white-victimhood-nbsp"><strong>Martin Luther Kirk and White Victimhood&nbsp;</strong></h3>
77.  
78.  
79.  
80. <p>To build a white martyr, you first have to dismantle the Black one. Before conservatives could sell the story of Charlie Kirk as a civil rights figure, they had to burn down Martin Luther King Jr.’s hard-won moral framework.</p>
81.  
82.  
83.  
84. <p>During his life, Kirk took up that demolition as a <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/charlie-kirk-tpusa-mlk-civil-rights-act/">personal</a> crusade, calling King “awful,” dismissing him as “<a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2025/09/viral-claims-about-charlie-kirks-words/">not a good person</a>,” and branding the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake.”</p>
85.  
86.  
87.  
88. <p>So how do you go from tearing down King to demanding King-sized memorials? By flipping the script. Take the language of Black struggle — state violence, moral witness, public testimony — and repurpose it. Cast the critic as the “censor.” Rebrand accountability as “persecution.” Where Black organizers built the politics of survival, the conservative movement built the politics of inversion.&nbsp;</p>
89.  
90.  
91.  
92. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>White people have come to see victimhood as a kind of currency — something you can accumulate, trade, and spend politically.</p></blockquote></figure>
93.  
94.  
95.  
96. <p>White people have come to see victimhood as a kind of currency — something you can accumulate, trade, and spend politically. When people of color gained traction by naming real structural harm, the response wasn’t repentance, it was appropriation. Scholars call this “victimhood discourse.” In “The Plausible Deniability Playbook,” sociologists show how <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14791420.2025.2563831">white-victim claims</a> circulate online to legitimize grievance under the veneer of free speech and cancel culture. A Journal of Experimental Social Psychology study found dominant-group members more likely to claim “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103121001360?utm_source">digressive victimhood</a>”: responding to accusations of bias by framing themselves as the real victims. Victimhood becomes moral capital, politicking fuel, and a way to block critique.</p>
97.  
98.  
99.  
100. <p>You hear it on talk radio: “We’re silenced now.” You see it in legal briefs: “I was discriminated against for being white.” You see it online: endless posts about “woke mobs” and “cancel culture.” This isn’t random whining. It’s victimhood reimagined as land grab.</p>
101.  
102.  
103.  
104.  <div class="promote-related-post">
105.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
106.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/02/22/trump-dei-christians-woke-civil-rights/"
107.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
108.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-dei-christians-woke-civil-rights"
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111.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AP25037631241169_389bce-e1740169386864.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
112.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
113.        Related      </h2>
114.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">How Trump Twisted DEI to Only Benefit White Christians</h3>
115.    </span>
116.    </a>
117.  </div>
118.  
119.  
120.  
121. <p>It’s also not a new tactic. White racist hegemony has been selling the notion that they are the underdog rebels since concocting the pseudo-historical myth of the Confederate “<a href="https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/mississippi-and-lost-cause">Lost Cause</a>” in the ashes of post-war Reconstruction.</p>
122.  
123.  
124.  
125. <p>That’s why the sanctification of Kirk matters. The memorials aren’t sentiment; they’re staging. A movement that <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/17/military-hegseth-charlie-kirk-social-media-speech/">treats scrutiny as blasphemy </a>is a movement <a href="https://theintercept.com/collections/chilling-dissent/">preparing to outlaw scrutiny</a>. If critique of Kirk becomes sacrilege, then critiquing the institutions he attacked — diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/us/politics/supreme-court-voting-rights-act.html">voting protections</a>; race-conscious <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/06/27/robin-dg-kelley-intercepted/">remedies</a> — becomes sacrilege too. The martyr narrative isn’t ornament; it’s the capstone of inversion, now codified through courtrooms, policy, and holidays.</p>
126.  
127.  
128.  <aside class="promote-banner">
129.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="https://theintercept.com/collections/chilling-dissent/">
130.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
131.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=1000 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
132.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
133.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
134.            Read our complete coverage          </p>
135.        
136.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Chilling Dissent</h2>
137.      </div>
138.    </a>
139.  </aside>
140.  
141.  
142.  
143. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-martyr-making-machine"><strong>Martyr-Making Machine</strong></h3>
144.  
145.  
146.  
147. <p>After Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/spencer-cox-unity-speech-kirk-political-violence-17a8c23ba06428cbbc413a673cd0f986">political leaders</a> rushed to hit the familiar notes: unity, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/07/14/trump-shooting-political-violence/">civility</a>, calm. Fair enough — no one should celebrate political murder. But within days, there were national resolutions, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/turning-point-usa-charlie-kirk-erika-kirk-5ff7cc87a301f1b3e0067bc4cfca1f59">campus tours</a> under banners of inheritance, even a congressional push to mint a <a href="https://hamadeh.house.gov/media/press-releases/support-congressman-hamadehs-bill-honoring-late-charlie-kirk-commemorative">commemorative coin</a>. Turning Point USA, Kirk&#8217;s conservative nonprofit, is already <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/25/charlie-kirk-merch-social-media-ads">packaging the legend</a>. The grief is real for his family. The project built on top of it is too.</p>
148.  
149.  
150.  
151. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>In giving Kirk the same exaltation as King, we almost forget how King was actually killed — by a white racist, not by fate. </p></blockquote></figure>
152.  
153.  
154.  
155. <p>Statues, half-staff flags, and designated days are tools once used to honor people who fought state violence. Now, they’ve been <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/266925/sculpture-of-jesus-and-charlie-kirk-to-be-installed-at-ave-maria-university">repurposed to canonize a man</a> who called that struggle a con. And in giving Kirk the same exaltation as King, we almost forget how King was actually killed — a truth bleached out of his official sainthood. He was murdered <em>by a white racist</em>, not by fate. James Earl Ray, a segregationist, was convicted of the assassination; <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-2b.html">congressional records document his ties to extremist networks</a>. King’s assassination was born of white violence. The motivation behind Kirk’s killing, by contrast, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/13/charlie-kirk-killing-alleged-shooter-motivation">remains publicly murky</a>. The contrast matters: King’s legacy was forged through hidden networks — church circuits, grassroots coalitions, local organizers whose very lives were threatened by proximity. His killing by white violence is central to the story. </p>
156.  
157.  
158.  
159. <p>In Kirk’s case, the violence that consumed him is being rebranded before we even know what <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/25/ice-bullets-charlie-kirk-shooter-manifestos-viral/">kind of violence it was</a>. To obfuscate that mystery is to prematurely end what should be a public process of learning the truth. But in the quest to construct a white supremacist-rights figurehead, that step is inconsequential: Make the martyr first, ask questions later.</p>
160.  
161.  
162.  
163. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-anti-civil-rights-civil-rights-movement-nbsp"><strong>The Anti-Civil Rights Civil Rights Movement&nbsp;</strong></h3>
164.  
165.  
166.  
167. <p>This is the new tactic of nationalist white supremacy: Don’t just say “we’re the real victims.” Appeal to a judge or Congress to enshrine it.</p>
168.  
169.  
170.  
171. <p>In the 2010s, the backlash to Black Lives Matter calcified into a media diet of grievance. By 2020, boosting notions of “victimhood” had become big business, and Kirk was one of many beneficiaries. Now that same energy is migrating into courtrooms: lawsuits that recode DEI as “anti-white,” briefs that position white plaintiffs as a new protected class. Reuters recently<a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/conservative-group-ends-discrimination-lawsuit-against-michigan-law-review-2025-10-13/?utm_source"> reported</a> a conservative group dropping its claim that a law review discriminated against “heterosexual white males.”</p>
172.  
173.  
174.  
175.  <div class="promote-related-post">
176.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
177.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/chicago-ice-blitz-black-surveillance-state-violence/"
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183.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
184.        Related      </h2>
185.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Black People Knew This Would Happen</h3>
186.    </span>
187.    </a>
188.  </div>
189.  
190.  
191.  
192. <p>The Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision struck down race-conscious admissions, ruling that even limited use of race to ensure diversity <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf">violated the Equal Protection Clause</a>. Gutting <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/08/brett-kavanaugh-affirmative-action-at-universities/">affirmative action</a> handed the conservative legal movement a new playbook for recentering whiteness as grievance. Within days, America First Legal, founded by Stephen Miller, sent warning letters to more <a href="https://aflegal.org/press-release/america-first-legal-sends-letters-to-200-law-schools-demanding-the-end-of-all-racial-preferences-in-law-school-admissions-faculty-hiring-and-law-reviews/">than 200 law schools</a>, claiming that, after the ruling, diversity programs were discriminatory to white students. Miller’s network and allies like Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences have since <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/group-tied-stephen-miller-sues-northwestern-over-law-review-diversity-policy-2024-03-18/">filed suits</a> against university law reviews and DEI programs, arguing that “equity” is code for anti-white bias. What began as backlash to affirmative action has evolved into a coordinated <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/09/america-first-legal-universities-affirmative-action">legal campaign</a> to weaponize white victimhood — turning civil rights law itself into a shield for whiteness.</p>
193.  
194.  
195.  
196. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>The same movement that mocked “systemic racism” now insists systems are rigged against them. </p></blockquote></figure>
197.  
198.  
199.  
200. <p>White Americans have always feared white dispossession — the idea that any step toward racial equity means a loss of power, status, or safety for white people. It’s always been the ghost in America’s machine, and the panic in the aftermath of every civil rights gain. <a href="https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/what.htm">Jim Crow</a> sold it; “<a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/brown-vs-board/southern-manifesto-massive-resistance-brown/">Massive Resistance</a>” sold it; <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6343566240112">Fox News</a> sells it nightly. The modern twist is that the old dispossession story now relies on borrowed language. The same movement that mocked “systemic racism” now insists systems are rigged against them. The same crowd that sneered at “lived experience” delivers solemn monologues about being silenced and erased.</p>
201.  
202.  
203.  
204. <p>And because the market for pain is profitable, there’s always room for more books, speaking tours, podcasts, and congressional pageantry. Flags standing at half-mast and “days of remembrance” use state power to validate the brand. You don’t have to win every court case or pass every bill if you can win the calendar or Facebook post.</p>
205.  
206.  
207.  
208.  
209.  
210.  
211.  
212. <h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-they-can-t-take"><strong>What They Can’t Take</strong></h3>
213.  
214.  
215.  
216. <p>Here’s the part the mirror can’t capture: Black progress never sprang from victimhood alone. It came from resilience under pressure, from coalitions that refused to let one community’s win be another’s loss, from the hard administrative work of remaking schools, juries, housing codes, and police practice, brick by bureaucratic brick. You can hijack our language; you can cosplay with our symbols; you can even pass a resolution declaring a day in your hero’s honor. But you can’t counterfeit the practice that built freedom.</p>
217.  
218.  
219.  
220. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Black progress never sprang from victimhood alone. It came from resilience under pressure.</p></blockquote></figure>
221.  
222.  
223.  
224. <p>We don’t owe reverence to a man who called MLK “awful” and sneered at the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We owe reverence to the people who kept going when the cameras left, who held neighborhoods together under raids and budget cuts, and who fought to liberate <em>all</em> Americans, not just their own.</p>
225.  
226.  
227.  
228. <p>That is where moral authority lives. It isn’t bestowed by a proclamation. What white America mistakes for victimhood or even martyrdom has never been our power. Our power is invention under pressure — the ability to build new worlds out of ruin. Every time they copy our rallying cry, we change the language. Every time they hijack our symbols, we make new ones. It’s that existentially driven, backed-in-the-corner, cultural grit that creates the next revolutionary movement, and that is something the far-right white can emulate and try to steal, but can never comfortably — or confidently — embody.</p>
229.  
230.  
231.  
232. <p></p>
233. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/14/charlie-kirk-remembrance-mlk/">The Right Wing Desperately Wants to Make Charlie Kirk Its MLK</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
234. ]]></content:encoded>
235.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/14/charlie-kirk-remembrance-mlk/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
236.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
237.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2167287986-e1760473126520.jpg?fit=6368%2C3184' width='6368' height='3184' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500920</post-id>
238. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2167287986_7e75de.jpg?fit=6368%2C4245" />
239. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2167287986_7e75de.jpg?fit=6368%2C4245" medium="image">
240. <media:title type="html">GLENDALE, ARIZONA - AUGUST 23: Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks during a campaign rally for Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. The rally, held in partnership with Turning Point PAC and Turning Point Action, comes come two weeks after Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Harris held a rally at the same location. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)</media:title>
241. </media:content>
242. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
243. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
244. </media:content>
245. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
246. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
247. </media:content>
248. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
249. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/AP25037631241169_389bce-e1740169386864.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
250. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?fit=300%2C150" medium="image" />
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252.            </item>
253.        
254.            <item>
255.                <title><![CDATA[We Aren’t Finished in Gaza, U.S. Military Contractors Say]]></title>
256.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/13/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ug-solutions-ceasefire/</link>
257.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/13/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ug-solutions-ceasefire/#respond</comments>
258.                <pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2025 20:09:57 +0000</pubDate>
259.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Sledge]]></dc:creator>
260.                                 <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
261. <category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
262.  
263.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
264.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>UG Solutions, which works with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, said its “cadre of American veterans” was ready to keep working in Gaza.</p>
265. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/13/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ug-solutions-ceasefire/">We Aren’t Finished in Gaza, U.S. Military Contractors Say</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
266. ]]></description>
267.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
268. <p><span class="has-underline">The shooting may</span> have stopped for now — but the armed U.S. military veterans who once patrolled aid distribution sites in Gaza say they are ready and willing to return to work.</p>
269.  
270.  
271.  
272. <p>Amid ongoing uncertainty about the future of a controversial, Israel-approved aid distribution scheme, on Monday one of its lead contractors said it will keep working in the region.</p>
273.  
274.  
275.  
276. <p>The statement from UG Solutions hints at a continued presence for U.S. private military contractors in Gaza, despite pushback from Palestinian political parties and the international aid community.</p>
277.  
278.  
279.  
280.  
281.  
282.  
283.  
284. <p>The firm’s employees, many of them U.S. special forces veterans, have provided security at four aid distribution sites <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/24/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-israel-aid-starvation/">operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation</a> since May. Hundreds of Palestinians have been<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/27/israel-killed-palestinians-food-aid-gaza/"> killed</a> along the routes to the foundation’s aid sites under Israel Defense Forces gunfire, according to the United Nations.</p>
285.  
286.  
287.  
288. <p>“The situation in Gaza may be tenuous for the short to mid-term as the remnants of Hamas and clans vie for control of neighborhoods, cities, and the Gaza Strip as a whole,” a company spokesperson wrote in a statement released Monday. “UG stands ready to continue its work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or any other international organizations or local nongovernmental organizations that believe that an increased security posture would better protect their staff, aid supplies, and logistics lines.”&nbsp;</p>
289.  
290.  
291.  
292. <p>Critics said that in addition to violating humanitarian principles by deployed armed guards, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation served as a tool of Israeli policy by forcing Palestinians to make <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/02/gaza-aid-sites-killing-israel/">mileslong treks</a> to southern&nbsp;Gaza.</p>
293.  
294.  
295.  
296. <p>As the foundation began distributing food at four sites, hundreds of U.N. sites were kept shuttered. Dozens of aid organizations decried the situation in a July statement, where they said that Palestinians faced “an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families.”</p>
297.  
298.  
299.  
300.  <div class="promote-related-post">
301.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
302.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/24/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-israel-aid-starvation/"
303.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
304.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: gaza-humanitarian-foundation-israel-aid-starvation"
305.      data-ga-track-label="gaza-humanitarian-foundation-israel-aid-starvation"
306.          >
307.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2225506182-e1753308249668.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
308.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
309.        Related      </h2>
310.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Head Boasts Success as Palestinians Starve</h3>
311.    </span>
312.    </a>
313.  </div>
314.  
315.  
316.  
317. <p>“The humanitarian system is being deliberately and systematically dismantled by the Government of Israel’s blockade and restrictions, a blockade now being used to justify shutting down nearly all other aid operations in favour of a deadly, military-controlled alternative that neither protects civilians nor meets basic needs,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/07/gaza-starvation-or-gunfire-this-is-not-a-humanitarian-response/">the groups said.</a></p>
318.  
319.  
320.  
321. <p>UG Solutions, in particular, fell under intense scrutiny when The Intercept and other outlets reported on the background of some of its <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/06/gaza-aid-security-contractor-mulford-ghf/">private military contractors</a> in&nbsp;the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/12/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-aid-ghf-infidels-security/">Infidels Motorcycle Club.</a></p>
322.  
323.  
324.  
325.  
326.  
327.  
328.  
329. <p>Palestinians <a href="https://apnews.com/article/gaza-aid-group-us-israel-ceasefire-dec2aa4e5d33f58eca34bf21603176bc">speaking to The Associated Press</a> on Sunday said that at least three GHF aid sites had been abandoned as a condition of the ceasefire and hostage handover between Israel and Hamas. In a statement to the news outlet, however, the foundation cast the closure of the sites as a temporary pause.</p>
330.  
331.  
332.  
333. <p>For its part, UG Solutions told The Intercept that it is planning to redeploy in Gaza soon. The company said that one site in the Netzarim Corridor is “no longer sustainable” with the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces, but other sites near Gaza’s border with Egypt “remain active” despite a temporary pause.</p>
334.  
335.  
336.  
337. <p>“We anticipate these sites, plus additional site(s), reactivating or launching this week. UG Solutions remains eager to assist the people of Gaza by providing secure distribution sites where NGOs and international organizations can provide aid and services,” the company spokesperson said.</p>
338.  
339.  
340.  
341. <p>Even if the company’s work for GHF does not resume, its statements suggest that it is interested in working with other nonprofits in Gaza. The company says that it has stepped up the “vetting and training” of new employees in anticipation of added demand. Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C. it has <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/01/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ug-solutions-ballard-partners/">hired a lobbying firm closely associated</a> with Donald Trump’s administration.</p>
342.  
343.  
344.  <aside class="promote-banner">
345.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="https://theintercept.com/collections/israel-palestine/">
346.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
347.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=5760 5760w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=3600 3600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
348.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
349.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
350.            Read our complete coverage          </p>
351.        
352.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Israel’s War on Gaza</h2>
353.      </div>
354.    </a>
355.  </aside>
356.  
357.  
358.  
359. <p>In its statement, UG Solutions said that its “connections back to the U.S. Department of War and allied nations’ militaries and security services can enable seamless coordination between the soon to be established multinational forces and the humanitarian community.”</p>
360.  
361.  
362.  
363. <p>“Our cadre of American veterans each have decades of experience in areas facing civil unrest, terrorist threats, and limited to no governance,” the company’s statement reads. “Their knowledge of Gaza and what is likely forthcoming is second to none and positions UG as the go-to security firm to help those focused on rebuilding and delivering aid in the second phase of the peace plan.”</p>
364.  
365.  
366.  
367.  <div class="promote-related-post">
368.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
369.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/08/intercept-briefing-podcast-gaza-aid-food/"
370.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
371.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: intercept-briefing-podcast-gaza-aid-food"
372.      data-ga-track-label="intercept-briefing-podcast-gaza-aid-food"
373.          >
374.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GazaFamine_banner.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
375.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
376.        Related      </h2>
377.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">“A Purely Manmade Famine”: How Israel Is Starving Gaza</h3>
378.    </span>
379.    </a>
380.  </div>
381.  
382.  
383.  
384. <p><a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigations/2025/06/16/fogbow-operations-south-sudan-raise-red-flags-aid-private-sector">Critics warn</a>&nbsp;that UG Solutions’ work in Gaza could&nbsp;entrench the politicization of international aid, where food and medicine are used as even more naked tools of government policy than in past distribution arrangements — and traditional principles, such as neutrality, impartiality, and independence, are cast aside.</p>
385.  
386.  
387.  
388. <p>Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who has become a fierce critic of Israel’s war on Gaza and serves as president of the U.S./Middle East Project, said that he believes the GHF will only resume operations as part of a “recooked colonial governance structure” imposed on Gaza by the U.S., or in concert with Israeli-backed Palestinian militias.</p>
389.  
390.  
391.  
392. <p>He expressed optimism that “there is now an acknowledgement, an understanding that is built into this agreement that it is the UN agencies that know how to deliver aid at scale in a humanitarian fashion — not as a tool of displacement, not as an act of cruelty — but it is those UN agencies who have shown their capacity to do so that are going to be trusted with delivering the vast majority of aid,” Levy said. “One can anticipate that Israel is going to make that as difficult as possible.”</p>
393.  
394.  
395.  
396. <p>But he found the agreement’s lack of accountability for mass killing and starvation in Gaza disappointing.</p>
397.  
398.  
399.  
400. <p>“There also needs to be accountability when a private sector organization is set up in a way that turns humanitarian aid delivery into a weapon of war, which guarantees more killing, which is the story of the GHF,” he said.</p>
401.  
402.  
403.  
404. <p>Another Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractor also said Monday that it planned to keep operating in Gaza. Since the nonprofit’s start, a company founded by a former CIA employee and incorporated in Wyoming, Safe Reach Solutions, has served as its lead contractor.</p>
405.  
406.  
407.  
408. <p>Corporate records in Wyoming show that the company was “administratively dissolved” on October 7 for failing to have a registered agent on file. In a statement, the company described that as a “clerical error” that would be corrected and said it continues to work for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.</p>
409.  
410.  
411.  
412. <p><strong>Update: October 13, 2025, 6:33 p.m. ET</strong><br><em>This story has been updated with a comment from Daniel Levy of the U.S./Middle East Project.</em></p>
413. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/13/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ug-solutions-ceasefire/">We Aren’t Finished in Gaza, U.S. Military Contractors Say</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
414. ]]></content:encoded>
415.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/13/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ug-solutions-ceasefire/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
416.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
417.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2240212336-e1760384707893.jpg?fit=7782%2C3890' width='7782' height='3890' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500860</post-id>
418. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
419. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
420. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
421. </media:content>
422. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
423. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
424. </media:content>
425. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
426. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2225506182-e1753308249668.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
427. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?fit=300%2C150" medium="image">
428. <media:title type="html">DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)</media:title>
429. </media:content>
430. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GazaFamine_banner.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
431.            </item>
432.        
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434.                <title><![CDATA[ICE Will Hold Immigrants in Jail Accused of “Excessive, Invasive” Gynecological Procedures]]></title>
435.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/ice-georgia-irwin-detention-center-gynecological-procedures/</link>
436.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/ice-georgia-irwin-detention-center-gynecological-procedures/#respond</comments>
437.                <pubDate>Sat, 11 Oct 2025 16:09:03 +0000</pubDate>
438.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jose Olivares]]></dc:creator>
439.                                 <category><![CDATA[Justice]]></category>
440. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
441.  
442.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
443.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>The Georgia facility gained notoriety for allegations that women received “often unnecessary” gynecological treatment, at times lacking informed consent.</p>
444. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/ice-georgia-irwin-detention-center-gynecological-procedures/">ICE Will Hold Immigrants in Jail Accused of “Excessive, Invasive” Gynecological Procedures</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
445. ]]></description>
446.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
447. <p><span class="has-underline">The Trump administration</span> is planning to detain immigrants at a Georgia jail that became known for allegations that women detained there were subjected to non-consensual gynecological procedures, multiple sources told The Intercept.</p>
448.  
449.  
450.  
451. <p>An Immigrations and Customs Enforcement spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that the agency will be using the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, but the official could not say whether detentions there had already begun. Attorneys and advocates familiar with ICE’s operations in the state<strong> </strong>said the agency had started to temporarily detain people at the facility on Friday, citing communication with ICE officials in Georgia.</p>
452.  
453.  
454.  
455. <p>Irwin drew nationwide attention in the fall of 2020, when a number of detained women and a nurse-turned-whistleblower accused the facility of medical misconduct. After months of backlash, the Biden administration stopped detaining immigrant women there in 2021, and the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations embarked on an 18-month investigation. Their 2022 <a href="https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/2022-11-15%20PSI%20Staff%20Report%20-%20Medical%20Mistreatment%20of%20Women%20in%20ICE%20Detention.pdf?eType=EmailBlastContent&amp;eId=1129dae5-91d0-4b2d-950e-111820a50424">report</a> found that “female detainees appear to have been subjected to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures” and that there appeared to be “repeated failures” to secure informed consent for medical procedures for immigrant women detained at Irwin.&nbsp;</p>
456.  
457.  
458.  
459.  
460.  
461.  
462.  
463. <p>The allegations also set off court battles, brought both by detained women at Irwin and a doctor who worked at the facility. Fourteen<a href="https://nipnlg.org/work/litigation/oldaker-v-giles"> women</a> sued ICE and Irwin officials over the allegations in 2021, and at least 40 women testified to medical misconduct, including non-consensual gynecological procedures. After all the plaintiffs were released in 2021, a federal judge dismissed many of their claims in 2024 on procedural grounds. Early this year, the lawsuit was settled with no admission of liability.&nbsp;</p>
464.  
465.  
466.  
467. <p>A Georgia judge <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gasd.85242/gov.uscourts.gasd.85242.209.0.pdf">found</a> last year that statements accusing a doctor at Irwin of performing “mass hysterectomies” were false in a defamation case against a news organization. The Senate report found the claims of mass hysterectomies could not be substantiated, but did underscore that other gynecological procedures on immigrant women appeared to have been conducted without proper consent.&nbsp;</p>
468.  
469.  
470.  
471. <p>The use of the facility set off alarms for immigration advocates and a former Department of Homeland Security civil rights official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.</p>
472.  
473.  
474.  
475. <p>“It&#8217;s inhumane. It&#8217;s so bad,” said the official, who previously investigated the conditions at Irwin. Using the facility to detain immigrants again, they added, “would be an absolute mistake.”</p>
476.  
477.  
478.  
479.  <div class="promote-related-post">
480.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
481.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants/"
482.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
483.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants"
484.      data-ga-track-label="ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants"
485.          >
486.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238835005-e1760045824648.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
487.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
488.        Related      </h2>
489.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Trump Administration Is Hiding How Many Pregnant People Are in ICE Detention</h3>
490.    </span>
491.    </a>
492.  </div>
493.  
494.  
495.  
496. <p>An immigration attorney and a person familiar with the developments told The Intercept that both women and men under ICE custody would be detained at the facility on a temporary basis for only 72 hours. The ICE spokesperson said the agency could not yet confirm those details.</p>
497.  
498.  
499.  
500. <p>Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed to The Intercept after this story was published that there was an agreement with Irwin County and the U.S. Marshals to use up to 1,2000 beds at Irwin. </p>
501.  
502.  
503.  
504. <p>The facility “has begun taking male adult detainees and will not be used for families,” McLaughlin wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “The Irwin facility will be subject to inspection by the ICE Professional Responsibility Office of Detention Oversight and additional oversight by ICE’s Enforcement Removal Operations custody management.”</p>
505.  
506.  
507.  
508. <p>The Trump administration’s use of Irwin comes as the White House pressures ICE and its partner agencies to speed up arrests to support President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda. The increase in ICE-related arrests has overwhelmed the detention system.<br><br><!-- BLOCK(promote-post)[1](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PROMOTE_POST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22slug%22%3A%22immigrants%22%2C%22crop%22%3A%22promo%22%7D) -->  <aside class="promote-banner">
509.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="/collections/the-war-on-immigrants/">
510.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
511.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="MCALLEN, TX - JUNE 23: A Guatemalan father and his daughter arrives with dozens of other women, men and their children at a bus station following release from Customs and Border Protection on June 23, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. Once families and individuals are released and given a court hearing date they are brought to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center to rest, clean up, enjoy a meal and to get guidance to their next destination. Before President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that halts the practice of separating families who are seeking asylum, over 2,300 immigrant children had been separated from their parents in the zero-tolerance policy for border crossers (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=2270 2270w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=1000 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
512.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
513.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
514.            Read Our Complete Coverage          </p>
515.        
516.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">The War on Immigrants</h2>
517.      </div>
518.    </a>
519.  </aside>
520. <!-- END-BLOCK(promote-post)[1] -->&nbsp;</p>
521.  
522.  
523.  
524. <p>The administration has, in recent months, expanded and signed new contracts with private prison operators to detain more immigrants caught in its dragnet. The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/09/07/ice-detention-prisons-immigrants-trump/">reported</a> in September that ICE was looking to use Irwin again, along with other troubled facilities.</p>
525.  
526.  
527.  
528. <p>“This administration does not care about civil rights and they certainly don&#8217;t care about the conditions of these facilities,” said the former DHS official, who was among dozens of staff members removed from their positions this year by the Trump administration. “I think they’re just trying to round up as many people as they can and get rid of them without any due process and without any regard for conditions.”</p>
529.  
530.  
531.  
532. <p>Advocates and attorneys in the region are also deeply concerned.</p>
533.  
534.  
535.  
536. <p>“This shocking development is very much in line with this administration’s modus operandi of going to extreme lengths to dehumanize and brutalize migrants,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, the legal and advocacy director at Project South, a civil rights group that played a major role in drawing attention to the conditions in ICE detention at Irwin. “We stand with migrant women who were subjected to medical abuse and other egregious human rights violations at Irwin.”</p>
537.  
538.  
539.  
540.  
541.  
542.  
543.  
544. <p>The facility, which is run by the private prison contractor LaSalle Corrections, has historically held local detainees, U.S. Marshals Service federal detainees, and people under ICE custody. After the Biden administration stopped detaining immigrants at Irwin in 2021, Irwin County and the USMS continued to detain people in their custody, according to a <a href="https://lasallecorrections.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Irwin-County-Detention-Center-PREA-Report-2025.pdf">facility audit</a> from earlier this year.</p>
545.  
546.  
547.  
548. <p>The Irwin County sheriff, the USMS, and LaSalle Corrections did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication. An Irwin facility employee, when reached by phone, referred all questions to ICE’s Atlanta office.</p>
549.  
550.  
551.  
552. <p>LaSalle Corrections, the prison contractor running Irwin, posted a number of jobs available at Irwin on Thursday.</p>
553.  
554.  
555.  
556. <p>The DHS Office of Inspector General, the agency’s watchdog, <a href="https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2022-01/OIG-22-14-Jan22.pdf">found in</a> 2022 after its own investigation that medical care at Irwin, separate from gynecological procedures, was “inadequate.” Its findings regarding the allegations of nonconsensual gynecological procedures were not published, since they were taken on by another office within the OIG. DHS OIG did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.</p>
557.  
558.  
559.  
560. <p>After the Biden administration stopped detaining immigrant women at Irwin in 2021, ICE began detaining and transferring women to the Stewart Detention Center, another troubled Georgia facility. An Intercept <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/07/13/ice-stewart-detention-sexual-misconduct/">investigation</a> in 2022 found that women detained at Stewart alleged sexual assault by a nurse contractor working there.</p>
561.  
562.  
563.  
564. <p>“The survivors of [ICE detention at Irwin] still bear the scars, and given the DHS’s termination of nearly every oversight mechanism available to monitor and ameliorate violations of their own standards, it will be difficult for those affected to prevent or correct harms in yet another remote detention center,” said Sarah Owings, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney who represented immigrants detained at Irwin before they were transferred out in 2021. “Given Irwin’s history, I do not think it is a good idea to rekindle this contract.”</p>
565.  
566.  
567.  
568. <p><strong>Update: October 14, 2025</strong><br><em>This story has been updated with a comment from DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.</em></p>
569. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/ice-georgia-irwin-detention-center-gynecological-procedures/">ICE Will Hold Immigrants in Jail Accused of “Excessive, Invasive” Gynecological Procedures</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
570. ]]></content:encoded>
571.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/ice-georgia-irwin-detention-center-gynecological-procedures/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
572.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
573.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/irwin-detention-center.jpg?fit=1440%2C720' width='1440' height='720' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500785</post-id>
574. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
575. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
576. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
577. </media:content>
578. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
579. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
580. </media:content>
581. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
582. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238835005-e1760045824648.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
583. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?fit=300%2C150" medium="image">
584. <media:title type="html">MCALLEN, TX - JUNE 23: A Guatemalan father and his daughter arrives with dozens of other women, men and their children at a bus station following release from Customs and Border Protection on June 23, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. Once families and individuals are released and given a court hearing date they are brought to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center to rest, clean up, enjoy a meal and to get guidance to their next destination. Before President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that halts the practice of separating families who are seeking asylum, over 2,300 immigrant children had been separated from their parents in the zero-tolerance policy for border crossers (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)</media:title>
585. </media:content>
586.            </item>
587.        
588.            <item>
589.                <title><![CDATA[Did Qatari Money Drive Trump’s Push for Gaza Ceasefire?]]></title>
590.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/qatar-trump-gaza-ceasefire/</link>
591.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/qatar-trump-gaza-ceasefire/#respond</comments>
592.                <pubDate>Sat, 11 Oct 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
593.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonah Valdez]]></dc:creator>
594.                                 <category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
595.  
596.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
597.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>Trump’s stance on Gaza shifted after Israel’s attack on Qatar — a close ally where he and his family have key business deals.</p>
598. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/qatar-trump-gaza-ceasefire/">Did Qatari Money Drive Trump’s Push for Gaza Ceasefire?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
599. ]]></description>
600.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
601. <p><span class="has-underline">The notion that</span> President Donald Trump’s recent push toward a ceasefire in Gaza may have been motivated, in large part, by his <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-misses-out-on-nobel-peace-prize-729973788d8953da9af1cbc136232e96">failed campaign</a> to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-nobel-peace-prize-campaign-e30ec554?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAicxWZ3C18y1lWD4qHwp77Pd4S_r-3SL-qCmuJYwie2fxnzzYqHt7OgZlloH_4%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68e862a3&amp;gaa_sig=tPbV6YEpEeSpMCwguE4sGq-MXcF6Vhm7nphxRO7e-olTV0n2EtkM1BmRsdKka0ki2hHGewFdtX3SN9Kmqx_bjQ%3D%3D">win</a> a Nobel Peace Prize is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/us/politics/trump-nobel-peace-prize.html">well-documented</a>. Less discussed is Trump’s close relationship with Qatar — a Gulf state ally where he, his family, friends, and the U.S. have increasingly significant ties. </p>
602.  
603.  
604.  
605. <p>For much of Israel&#8217;s war on Gaza, Trump showed little interest in the suffering of Palestinians. Before he was reelected, Trump used the word “Palestinian” <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/06/28/presidential-debate-trump-palestinian/">as a slur</a> meant to insult then-President Joe Biden on the debate stage. In February, as Palestinians in Gaza had just begun to return to their homes amid a U.S.-brokered ceasefire, Trump called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza so that he could <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/02/04/trump-netanyahu-gaza-palestinians-displace/">redevelop it </a>into a “Middle East Riviera.” After Israel <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/19/israel-gaza-ceasefire-hamas/">breached the Trump ceasefire in March</a>, Trump put little overt pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end his war as the death toll mounted. Trump didn&#8217;t object when Israel attacked Syria, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/05/trump-lebanon-hezbollah-disarm-sovereignty/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lebanon</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/26/signal-chat-yemen-strike/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Yemen</a> and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/21/iran-israel-united-states-war/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Iran</a>.</p>
606.  
607.  
608.  
609. <p>That changed suddenly after Israeli fighter jets launched 10 missiles at a residential building in the Qatari capital of Doha in early September.</p>
610.  
611.  
612.  
613.  <div class="promote-related-post">
614.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
615.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/09/israel-attacks-doha-qatar/"
616.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
617.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: israel-attacks-doha-qatar"
618.      data-ga-track-label="israel-attacks-doha-qatar"
619.          >
620.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/GettyImages-2233913056-e1757431421513.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
621.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
622.        Related      </h2>
623.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Israel’s Peace Plan: Assassinate the Ceasefire Negotiators</h3>
624.    </span>
625.    </a>
626.  </div>
627.  
628.  
629.  
630. <p>The building in Doha housed Hamas political leaders and their families who at the time were engaged in peace talks with the Qataris serving as mediators. While the Hamas officials survived the attack, the strike killed six people, including a Qatari security official, and injured several others, including civilians.</p>
631.  
632.  
633.  
634. <p>Trump immediately took to Truth Social to say he was “unhappy” with the Israeli operation and denounced the strike on Qatar, which he called a “close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace.” Suddenly, Trump was facing pressure from his allies in the Middle East.</p>
635.  
636.  
637.  
638.  
639.  
640.  
641.  
642. <p>A U.S. ceasefire proposal followed several weeks later, with Trump strong-arming Netanyahu to accept. &#8220;He&#8217;s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine<em>,”</em> Trump told <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/10/04/trump-gaza-deal-netanyahu-call">Axios</a>. Prior to the press conference announcing his plan, Trump cornered Netanyahu in the Oval Office and pressed him to apologize over the phone to Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani for the September 9 airstrike. A Qatari official reportedly helped write Netanyahu’s apology, along with the White House, and remained in the Oval Office to ensure the Israeli leader stayed on script, according to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/08/trump-strategy-israel-gaza-peace-talks-00596898">Politico</a>. Trump went on to start the press conference by praising the Qatari leader as a “fantastic person” who “wants peace.” </p>
643.  
644.  
645.  
646. <p>Qatar has long been a key U.S. ally, but since Trump’s reelection, the Persian Gulf nation has forged an especially close alliance with Trump and his inner circle. Qatar has pumped billions of dollars into U.S. companies over the past year — in many cases enriching companies and business ventures linked to Trump’s family and friends. Meanwhile, it has forged deepening ties with the U.S. military. Whether it was fueled by geopolitics, personal profit, or some mix of the two, Israel’s attack on Qatar appears to have been a spark that spurred Trump into action on Gaza.</p>
647.  
648.  
649.  
650. <p>“It became quite clear that this really backfired on Israel, that it changed the balance of the debate inside of the administration,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an expert on the region.</p>
651.  
652.  
653.  
654. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-business-deals">Business Deals</h2>
655.  
656.  
657.  
658. <p>A mere 20-minute drive north along the Qatari coast from the Doha residence that Israel bombed is a new $5.5 billion Trump-branded <a href="https://www.trump.com/media/qatari-diar-signs-strategic-agreement-with-dar-global-to-develop-trump-international-golf-club-and-trump-villas-a-beachside-ultra-luxury-community-within-simaisma-masterplan">golf course</a> and luxury villa development. In early May, Trump’s son, Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, inked <a href="https://x.com/qataridiar/status/1917978330927632868/photo/3">a deal</a> with real estate firm Qatari Diar, backed by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund to launch the project.</p>
659.  
660.  
661.  
662. <p>That same month, Trump scored an economic deal between the U.S. and Qatar worth $1.2 trillion. Qatar pledged to buy more than 200 Boeing commercial jets and invest billions in energy and tech projects for the U.S.-based corporations McDermott, Parsons, and Quantinuum. It promised to purchase $1 billion in counter-drone technologies from Raytheon and $2 billion in military drones from General Atomics. And to sweeten the pot, the Qatari government gifted the Trump administration with a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy5lp4v594o">luxury Boeing jumbo jet</a> worth $400 million to be used as Trump’s Air Force One, a present that drew accusations of corruption.</p>
663.  
664.  
665.  
666. <p>During Trump’s first term, financial ties were more evident with other Gulf states, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/">such</a> as <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/16/donald-trump-saudi-arabia/">Saudi Arabia</a> and the United Arab Emirates, often sidelining Qatar due to alleged ties to Islamic militant groups in the region. But Qatar has recently managed to win Trump’s favor after delivering a plethora of financial deals with Trump, his family, and U.S. officials.</p>
667.  
668.  
669.  
670. <p>In the days following Trump’s reelection, the Qatari government fund, along with the United Arab Emirates, injected <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-says-15bn-qatar-uae-came-irrespective-trump-win-2004895">$1.5 billion</a> into Affinity Partners, an i<a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/04/18/saudi-russia-jared-kushner-affinity-partners/">nvestment firm </a>controlled by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. (Qatar, has in the past, <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/69094/timeline-on-jared-kushner-qatar-666-fifth-avenue-and-white-house-policy/">bailed out</a> Kushner from a failed real estate investment in Manhattan.) </p>
671.  
672.  
673.  
674. <p>Trump, Kushner, and Trump’s billionaire friend and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff have wide-ranging investments among Gulf Coast states, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The trio of families reaped a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/politics/trump-uae-chips-witkoff-world-liberty.html">$2 billion cash injection</a> from the UAE into Trump cryptocurrency ventures, including one co-founded by Witkoff. Witkoff’s son <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/10/02/mgx-usd1-binance-trump-stablecoin-world-liberty-financial/">Zach </a>brokered and announced the multibillion-dollar deal in May.<br><br><!-- BLOCK(promote-post)[1](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PROMOTE_POST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22slug%22%3A%22killing%22%2C%22crop%22%3A%22promo%22%7D) -->  <aside class="promote-banner">
675.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="/collections/making-a-killing/">
676.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
677.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/saudi-collection-promo-1540416194.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Senior White House Adviser Jared Kushner, and his wife, Assistant to the President Ivanka Trump, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus are seen as they arrive with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump to the Murabba Palace as honored guests of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Saturday evening, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/saudi-collection-promo-1540416194.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/saudi-collection-promo-1540416194.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/saudi-collection-promo-1540416194.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/saudi-collection-promo-1540416194.jpg?w=540 540w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
678.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
679.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
680.            Read our Complete Coverage          </p>
681.        
682.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Making a Killing</h2>
683.      </div>
684.    </a>
685.  </aside>
686. <!-- END-BLOCK(promote-post)[1] --></p>
687.  
688.  
689.  
690. <p>Experts on U.S. policy in the region say it’s not hard to understand the impetus for these deals and investments.</p>
691.  
692.  
693.  
694. <p>“This money is not being given to Jared Kushner because of his business acumen, it is being given to Jared Kushner because people understand that is a pathway to the president of the United States, to get the United States to do things for them,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders.</p>
695.  
696.  
697.  
698. <p>Though Kushner insists he would have secured the deal even if Trump had not won his reelection campaign, Duss calls such arrangements “blatant corruption.” He and other experts say it’s hard to overstate the role that personal enrichment plays in shaping Trump’s policy choices. Such links between<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/05/08/democrats-trump-crypto-stablecoin-maxine-waters/"> policy and personal profit</a> have drawn accusations of nepotism, <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/warren-slotkin-call-for-investigation-into-extent-of-donald-trump-trump-family-and-senior-trump-administration-officials-cashing-in-on-foreign-crypto-deals">conflict of interest</a>, and ethical violations.</p>
699.  
700.  
701.  
702. <p>“His calculations are always tied to his own personal and family and organizational financial calculation,” said Duss. Countries like Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, he said, understand that the easiest way to win favor from the U.S. government is to “give Donald Trump gifts.”</p>
703.  
704.  
705.  
706. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-long-standing-ties">Long-Standing Ties</h2>
707.  
708.  
709.  
710. <p>The U.S. working relationship with Qatar long predates the Trump administration. Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East — Al Udeid Air Base — and is the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command in the region. The base was built in 1996 but was not known to the public until 2002.</p>
711.  
712.  
713.  
714. <p>Qatar has also played an increasingly critical role in helping the U.S. broker diplomatic deals. In recent years, Qatar played a role in helping NATO and U.S. arrange the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Iran–U.S. prisoner swap, and the release of Ukrainian children from Russia. More recently, it has been a key mediator and drafter of ceasefire plans to end the genocide in Gaza.</p>
715.  
716.  
717.  
718. <p>Qatar was a major broker in the earlier Trump ceasefire in January. Since Israel broke that agreement, Qatar’s other attempts at forging an end to Israel’s war on Gaza fell short, with Trump ignoring a recent Qatari <a href="https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/hamas-israel-gaza-ceasefire-concessions-negotiations-netanyahu-trump">ceasefire plan</a> in August even after it won Hamas’s agreement. But the calculus changed after Israel’s September 9 airstrike. </p>
719.  
720.  
721.  
722. <p>Israel’s strike on Doha sent shockwaves through the region. At the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month, a coalition of Arab and Muslim majority states applied pressure on the Trump administration for a ceasefire in Gaza and also sought guarantees the U.S. would not tolerate another Israeli airstrike on its Gulf Coast allies.</p>
723.  
724.  
725.  
726. <p>The U.S. has long provided an unofficial security blanket over the Gulf states, including Qatar. Parsi of the Quincy Institute said Israel’s attack broke such unwritten rule, which &#8220;embarrassed&#8221; the U.S. on the global stage, prompting Trump to act.</p>
727.  
728.  
729.  
730. <p>“The trigger was this massive overreach by the Israelis by attacking Qatar and other U.S. partners in the region,” he said. The White House “decided that they needed to take some sort of initiative — they needed to stop Netanyahu.”</p>
731.  
732.  
733.  
734.  
735.  
736.  
737.  
738. <p>On September 29, Trump issued an executive order, pledging to defend Qatar’s security. While questions remain over how legally binding the order is since such security deals must be approved by Congress, it sent a clear message to Israel: “This is not something Israel can do again,” Parsi said.</p>
739.  
740.  
741.  
742. <p>Among those who reportedly encouraged Hamas to accept Trump&#8217;s ceasefire deal during talks this week in Egypt were Qatari and UAE officials. Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani served as one of the main mediators between Hamas and Israel. On the other side, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/oct/10/netanyahu-thanks-trump-kushner-and-witkoff-after-israel-approves-hostage-release-deal-video">Witkoff and Kushner</a> were the main brokers alongside Israeli officials. Hamas is relying heavily on Arab and Muslim states such as Qatar, along with the U.S., to make sure the pressure remains on Israel to uphold its end of the deal and ensure peace. Trump personally joined negotiations, Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/10/10/trump-gaza-israel-hamas-ceasefire-enforce">reported</a>, calling in several times to assure Hamas and its allies that the U.S. would ensure the ceasefire holds up. This week, the Trump administration deployed 200 U.S. troops to Israel to assist with the flow of aid into Gaza and that all parties uphold the agreement.</p>
743.  
744.  
745.  
746. <p>And Qatari troops will soon be headed to the U.S. On Friday, Qatar struck an unprecedented deal with the U.S., allowing the Qatari air force to build a military facility on U.S. soil. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a Qatari facility at <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-qatar-air-force-facility-us-base-idaho/">Idaho’s Mountain Home Air Force Base</a>, will house F-15 fighter jets and Qatari pilots who will receive training alongside U.S. soldiers.</p>
747.  
748.  
749.  
750. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-domestic-opinion">Domestic Opinion</h2>
751.  
752.  
753.  
754. <p>Trump’s shift on Israel’s war may also have been coming from home. Pressure was mounting within his America First constituency, which began to turn against Israel in recent months. Far-right voices started criticizing Israel’s war, including Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who began referring to Israel’s offensive as “a genocide.” Trump <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-said-to-warn-jewish-donor-that-maga-world-starting-to-hate-israel/">reportedly warned</a> a prominent Jewish donor of the shifting tides among his base toward Israel, according to the Financial Times. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday following the announcement that both Hamas and Israel accepted the initial phase of the ceasefire, Trump said he had told Netanyahu in a phone call, “‘Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi. They can&#8217;t fight the world.’ And he understands that very well.”</p>
755.  
756.  
757.  
758. <p>In choosing to unveil his ceasefire plan alongside Netanyahu, Trump gave the Israeli leader a chance to rehabilitate his image to the international community. But it was also a chance for Trump to signal to his base that he had a handle on Israel.&nbsp;</p>
759.  
760.  
761.  
762.  <div class="promote-related-post">
763.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
764.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/01/trump-israel-gaza-peace-deal/"
765.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
766.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-israel-gaza-peace-deal"
767.      data-ga-track-label="trump-israel-gaza-peace-deal"
768.          >
769.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AP25272692326395-e1759351284648.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
770.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
771.        Related      </h2>
772.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Trump–Netanyahu Gaza Peace Deal Promises Indefinite Occupation</h3>
773.    </span>
774.    </a>
775.  </div>
776.  
777.  
778.  
779. <p>Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan, which was heavily edited by Netanyahu before its release, does not bring an end to the Israeli occupation, nor does it guarantee a path toward Palestinian statehood. In fact, within the plan, the Israeli military would maintain strict control of Gaza’s borders, returning the territory to the status quo as an <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/10/14/israel-gaza-george-bush/">open-air prison</a>. And perhaps most troubling to Palestinians is the reserved right for Israel to resume its genocidal attacks if it decides the Palestinians have violated the agreement. Israel’s long-standing policy has been a push to maximize control over the West Bank and Gaza. </p>
780.  
781.  
782.  
783. <p>Also within the plan is a temporary governing structure led by Trump and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been accused of war crimes by critics over his involvement in the invasion of Iraq. While Trump had softened on his previous harsh statements about displacing all Palestinians from Gaza to build a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/f86dd56a-de7f-4943-af4a-84819111b727.pdf">Gaza Riviera</a>, the plan’s economic portions envision a panel of developers that would oversee “investment proposals and exciting development ideas” by international groups.</p>
784.  
785.  
786.  
787. <p>It’s the exact type of business deal that the Trumps, Kushners, and Witkoffs have been making across the Middle East. And maybe that will convince Trump to ensure Israel complies with its end of the deal.</p>
788.  
789.  
790.  
791. <p>“We have all these players, including Trump, who are now sort of invested into this working, and it sounds funny to say, but we&#8217;re hoping that this corruption works in support of this enduring ceasefire,” Duss said, referring to Trump’s business relationships with Gulf nations.</p>
792. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/qatar-trump-gaza-ceasefire/">Did Qatari Money Drive Trump’s Push for Gaza Ceasefire?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
793. ]]></content:encoded>
794.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/11/qatar-trump-gaza-ceasefire/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
795.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
796.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?fit=4000%2C2000' width='4000' height='2000' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500790</post-id>
797. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/GettyImages-2233913056-e1757431421513.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
798. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/GettyImages-2233913056-e1757431421513.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
799. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
800. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
801. </media:content>
802. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
803. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/irwin-detention-center.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
804. <media:title type="html">An overview of Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia.</media:title>
805. </media:content>
806. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/saudi-collection-promo-1540416194.jpg?fit=300%2C150" medium="image">
807. <media:title type="html">Senior White House Adviser Jared Kushner, and his wife, Assistant to the President Ivanka Trump, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus are seen as they arrive with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump to the Murabba Palace as honored guests of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Saturday evening, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)</media:title>
808. </media:content>
809. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AP25272692326395-e1759351284648.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
810.            </item>
811.        
812.            <item>
813.                <title><![CDATA[The State Department Isn’t Telling Congress When U.S. Weapons Fall Into the Wrong Hands]]></title>
814.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/state-department-track-missing-us-weapons/</link>
815.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/state-department-track-missing-us-weapons/#respond</comments>
816.                <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2025 15:32:49 +0000</pubDate>
817.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Alain Stephens]]></dc:creator>
818.                                 <category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
819. <category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
820.  
821.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
822.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>Congress is being left in the dark about the fate of U.S. weapons transfers, a new federal watchdog report found.</p>
823. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/state-department-track-missing-us-weapons/">The State Department Isn’t Telling Congress When U.S. Weapons Fall Into the Wrong Hands</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
824. ]]></description>
825.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
826. <p><span class="has-underline">On paper, the</span> guardrails are clear. When the U.S. ships weapons overseas, partner governments promise three things: That they’ll use them only for authorized purposes, keep them secure, and not hand them off to third parties.</p>
827.  
828.  
829.  
830. <p>If those conditions are violated or serious suspicions arise that they are, the State Department is obligated to investigate and, in many cases, alert Congress.</p>
831.  
832.  
833.  
834. <p>In practice, however, a new Government Accountability Office report shows the system is <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107622">ad hoc, with little guidance</a> or follow through.</p>
835.  
836.  
837.  
838. <p>The State Department largely relies on overseas Defense Department officials for tips about potential end-use violations.</p>
839.  
840.  
841.  
842. <p>Since 2019, the Pentagon has flagged more than 150 incidents that could be violations. But the State Department has reported just three end-use violations to Capitol Hill.</p>
843.  
844.  
845.  
846. <p>The report added that the State Department hasn’t informed Congress what merits reporting and that it investigates violations inconsistently.</p>
847.  
848.  
849.  
850.  
851.  
852.  
853.  
854. <p>Experts in the arms trafficking and conflict monitoring are dismayed, calling the reported gaps an affront to both national and global security.</p>
855.  
856.  
857.  
858. <p>“It was really shocking to see how far the U.S had fallen behind,” said Kathi Lynn Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project, who added the number of potential incidents flagged was “extraordinary.”</p>
859.  
860.  
861.  
862. <p>“We are violating our law and not protecting our own security — at a time when there is so much volatility in the world,” Austin said. “We need to understand this is urgent, and Congress needs to push to maintain transparency and public trust in our arms dealings.”</p>
863.  
864.  
865.  
866. <p>The 39-page GAO report, published to little notice in September, lays out a simple mismatch: Defense personnel stationed abroad are often the first to see or hear about possible violations, but diplomats with the State Department haven’t told military officials clearly what to flag. (GAO, Pentagon, and State Department officials said the government shutdown left them unavailable to comment.)</p>
867.  
868.  
869.  
870. <p>In other instances of being tipped to potential violations, the GAO says, the State Department could not produce records showing whether anyone ever decided if the law’s reporting thresholds were met.</p>
871.  
872.  
873.  
874.  <div class="promote-related-post">
875.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
876.            href="https://theintercept.com/2023/11/25/military-weapons-iraq-syria-theft/"
877.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
878.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: military-weapons-iraq-syria-theft"
879.      data-ga-track-label="military-weapons-iraq-syria-theft"
880.          >
881.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/6778066.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
882.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
883.        Related      </h2>
884.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Missiles and Drones Among Weapons Stolen From U.S. in Iraq and Syria</h3>
885.    </span>
886.    </a>
887.  </div>
888.  
889.  
890.  
891. <p>The Arms Export Control Act requires notifying Congress when there’s information that a substantial violation may have occurred regarding purpose, transfer, or security; it also requires reporting when an unauthorized transfer actually happens. Those are low thresholds for alerting the legislature, by design. Yet the GAO found no formal procedures inside the State Department for making, recording, and sharing their decision-making process.</p>
892.  
893.  
894.  
895. <p>In the report, the State Department agreed with GAO’s six recommendations, including providing concrete guidance to the Pentagon, standardizing investigations with timelines, and creating procedures for deciding and documenting what gets reported to Congress.</p>
896.  
897.  
898.  
899. <p>The GAO cannot force a federal agency to bend to its report and relies on voluntary compliance.</p>
900.  
901.  
902.  
903. <p>If the changes aren’t actually implemented, however, Congress will continue flying blind when it comes to U.S. arms sales negatively impacting national —&nbsp;and international — security.</p>
904.  
905.  
906.  
907. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-misuse-pipeline">The Misuse Pipeline</h2>
908.  
909.  
910.  
911. <p>The mechanics of “end-use” sound bureaucratic, but the stakes aren’t. Around the world, U.S.-made weapons moves from legal sale to illicit use on the battlefield, stolen from depots, through corrupt commanders, transfers to proxies, or simple loss.</p>
912.  
913.  
914.  
915. <p>The results are everywhere. In Afghanistan, for instance, vast quantities of U.S.-supplied small arms and vehicles seeded <a href="https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/afghanistans-unchecked-arsenal-under-taliban-rule/?utm_source">regional black markets</a>. Conflict Armament Research, a U.K. group that tracks conventional weapons, traced the Islamic State group’s ammunition stocks to dozens of countries — including <a href="https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/investigators-find-islamic-state-used-ammo-made-in-21-countries-including-america/?utm_source">U.S.-linked supply lines</a> — often thanks to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/08/isis-jihadis-using-arms-troop-carriers-supplied-by-us-saudi-arabia?utm_source">chaos of collapsing units and unsecured stockpiles</a>.</p>
916.  
917.  
918.  
919.  <div class="promote-related-post">
920.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
921.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/trump-mexico-drug-war-cartels-bullets/"
922.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
923.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-mexico-drug-war-cartels-bullets"
924.      data-ga-track-label="trump-mexico-drug-war-cartels-bullets"
925.          >
926.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/American-Ammo.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
927.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
928.        Related      </h2>
929.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Trump Calls Cartel Members “Terrorists.” They’re Armed With Bullets From a U.S. Army Factory.</h3>
930.    </span>
931.    </a>
932.  </div>
933.  
934.  
935.  
936. <p>A recent <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/trump-mexico-drug-war-cartels-bullets/">Intercept investigation</a> linked U.S manufactured rifle rounds to cartel slaughter in the heart of Mexico.</p>
937.  
938.  
939.  
940. <p>“The biggest concern for the average American citizen is the potential for these arms to be used against us,” said Brandon Philips, a public affairs professor at California State University, East Bay. “We are in a position right now where we aren&#8217;t everyone’s favorite country.”</p>
941.  
942.  
943.  
944. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>“The biggest concern for the average American citizen is the potential for these arms to be used against us.” </p></blockquote></figure>
945.  
946.  
947.  
948. <p>When the government puts tracking systems in place, however, more of the leaks get plugged. In Ukraine — a challenging venue for containing arms flows because of the sheer quantity of material being introduced — early Pentagon <a href="https://www.dodig.mil/In-the-Spotlight/Article/3994663/press-release-follow-up-evaluation-of-enhanced-end-use-monitoring-of-defense-ar">watchdog reviews</a> faulted shortfalls in tracking designated sensitive items amid an active war. Follow-ups found marked improvement as the U.S. expanded “enhanced end-use monitoring,” boosted staffing, and raised compliance rates.</p>
949.  
950.  
951.  
952. <p>Even with a partner government that has strong incentives to cooperate, effective control requires sustained, well-resourced checks. But the U.S doesn’t even have a system for how those checks should happen. <a></a></p>
953.  
954.  
955.  
956. <p>In its report, the GAO zeroed in on this vagueness. Overseas Defense Department  staffers told the watchdog they’re using “professional judgment” to decide what should rise to the State Department’s attention because the State Department hasn’t defined the incident types, thresholds, or timelines.</p>
957.  
958.  
959.  
960.  <div class="promote-related-post">
961.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
962.            href="https://theintercept.com/2023/02/23/us-foreign-arms-trade/"
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965.      data-ga-track-label="us-foreign-arms-trade"
966.          >
967.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1459402712-biden-blinken-arms.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
968.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
969.        Related      </h2>
970.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Advocates Demand Oversight and Accountability for U.S. Arms Trade</h3>
971.    </span>
972.    </a>
973.  </div>
974.  
975.  
976.  
977. <p>The ambiguity increases the odds that important cases fall into a bureaucratic void, never formally investigated or reported. The GAO even found examples where one incident drew a full document review and coordination, while a similar one drew no action at all.</p>
978.  
979.  
980.  
981. <p>“A number of us for years have talked about insufficiencies around end-of-use monitoring, and this report continues to show the problems of how this is done,” said Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. “The American people are attuned that a lot of harm is caused in the world by our weapons.”</p>
982.  
983.  
984.  
985. <p>The <a href="https://www.state.gov/end-use-monitoring-of-u-s-origin-defense-articles?utm_source">infrastructure exists</a> to track weapons — the State Department has systems to vet its direct buyers, and the Pentagon has a<a href="https://www.dsca.mil/Programs/Golden-Sentry-End-Use-Monitoring?utm_source"> program</a> for enhanced <a href="https://samm.dsca.mil/chapter/chapter-8?utm_source">end-use monitoring</a>. But the GAO found that the connective tissue of such programs doesn’t.</p>
986.  
987.  
988.  
989. <p>“The fact that this report is mostly about things that happened during the Biden administration, and the second part of Trump, shows it’s a systemic problem. It shows that we are going sell things and not bother,” said<a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/04/26/mexico-arms-trade-us-gun-sales/"> John Lindsay-Poland</a>, coordinator of the nonprofit Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico. Poland noted that the report only covers a small portion of government-to-government sales, while the bulk of U.S. arms exports are <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/10/06/mexico-weapons-sale-biden-murder-kidnapping/">commercial sales </a>and small arms.</p>
990.  
991.  
992.  
993. <p>“If your priority is selling stuff,” he said, “taking into account whether the stuff you&#8217;re selling is massacring people, destroying communities, strengthening terrorists and drug trafficking, or driving immigration is secondary.”</p>
994.  
995.  
996.  
997. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-gaza-and-double-standards">Gaza and Double Standards</h2>
998.  
999.  
1000.  
1001. <p>The GAO’s accounting of the oversight vacuum comes at an incendiary moment.</p>
1002.  
1003.  
1004.  
1005. <p>In 2024, the Biden administration <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Report-to-Congress-under-Section-2-of-the-National-Security-Memorandum-on-Safeguards-and-Accountability-with-Respect-to-Transferred-Defense.pdf?utm_source">put a policy in place</a> that required assessments of whether partners receiving U.S. arms in active conflicts were using them consistent with international humanitarian law.</p>
1006.  
1007.  
1008.  
1009.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1010.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1011.            href="https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/israel-human-rights-gaza-report/"
1012.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1013.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: israel-human-rights-gaza-report"
1014.      data-ga-track-label="israel-human-rights-gaza-report"
1015.          >
1016.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/AP24120362594411-e1715393520799.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1017.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1018.        Related      </h2>
1019.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Israel “Likely” Used U.S.-Supplied Weapons in Violation of International Law. That’s OK, Though, State Department Says.</h3>
1020.    </span>
1021.    </a>
1022.  </div>
1023.  
1024.  
1025.  
1026. <p>In May 2024, the administration’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/israel-human-rights-gaza-report/">report to Congress </a>concluded it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had used U.S.-provided arms in ways “inconsistent” with international law in some instances, while adding that wartime conditions made case-by-case attribution hard. Human rights groups blasted the equivocation and urged suspensions; Israel rejected the accusations.</p>
1027.  
1028.  
1029.  
1030. <p>In February 2025, the new administration scrapped the policy.</p>
1031.  
1032.  
1033.  
1034. <p>The Gaza debate is precisely where a functioning end-use system should be strongest.</p>
1035.  
1036.  
1037.  
1038.  
1039.  
1040.  
1041.  
1042. <p>Independent investigators and journalists have <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/08/07/gaza-israeli-school-strikes-magnify-civilian-peril?utm_source">documented repeated</a> Israeli strikes that allegedly used<a href="https://apnews.com/article/us-israel-gaza-war-nsm-international-law-c83b6f39ce2799e5d2c473a337e2f857"> U.S.-origin munitions </a>against protected sites or in ways that were indiscriminate. The State Department’s own human rights reporting, before becoming<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/13/us-report-israel-human-rights-abuses/"> hollowed out </a>this <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/14/state-department-human-rights-reports/">year</a> under President Donald Trump, catalogued grave harms.</p>
1043.  
1044.  
1045.  
1046. <p>Abramson, who has tracked global armament and misuse, said failure to monitor end-use violations and report them to Congress can put American foreign policy in a diplomatic chokehold. </p>
1047.  
1048.  
1049.  
1050. <p>“Around the world,” he said, “we are trying to make friends, But when they have seen our weapons being misused it undermines that ability, and makes us seem hypocritical, dangerous.”</p>
1051. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/state-department-track-missing-us-weapons/">The State Department Isn’t Telling Congress When U.S. Weapons Fall Into the Wrong Hands</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
1052. ]]></content:encoded>
1053.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/state-department-track-missing-us-weapons/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
1054.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
1055.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2240008789-e1760106927494.jpg?fit=3960%2C1980' width='3960' height='1980' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500747</post-id>
1056. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
1057. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
1058. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
1059. </media:content>
1060. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
1061. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
1062. </media:content>
1063. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1064. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/6778066.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1065. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/American-Ammo.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1066. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GettyImages-1459402712-biden-blinken-arms.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1067. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/AP24120362594411-e1715393520799.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1068.            </item>
1069.        
1070.            <item>
1071.                <title><![CDATA[License to Kill: Trump’s Extrajudicial Executions]]></title>
1072.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/briefing-podcast-trump-venezuela-boat-strikes/</link>
1073.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/briefing-podcast-trump-venezuela-boat-strikes/#respond</comments>
1074.                <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
1075.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[The Intercept Briefing]]></dc:creator>
1076.                                 <category><![CDATA[The Intercept Briefing]]></category>
1077.  
1078.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
1079.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>Akela Lacy, Radley Balko, and Nick Turse discuss the administration’s rhetoric and rationale to justify extrajudicial killings abroad — and possibly at home.</p>
1080. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/briefing-podcast-trump-venezuela-boat-strikes/">License to Kill: Trump’s Extrajudicial Executions</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
1081. ]]></description>
1082.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
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1084. <div class="acast-player">
1085.  <iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/intercept-presents/license-to-kill-trumps-extrajudicial-executions?accentColor=111111&#038;bgColor=f5f6f7&#038;logo=false" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="acast-player__embed"></iframe>
1086. </div>
1087. <!-- END-BLOCK(acast)[0] -->
1088.  
1089.  
1090.  
1091. <p><span class="has-underline">The United States</span> has executed 21 people over the last month in targeted drone strikes off the coast of Venezuela. The Trump administration has so far authorized at least four strikes against people it claims are suspected “narco-terrorists.”</p>
1092.  
1093.  
1094.  
1095. <p>The strikes mark a dark shift in the administration’s approach to what it’s framing as an international drug war — one it’s waging <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/">without </a>congressional <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/11/venezuela-boat-attack-trump-ilhan-omar/">oversight</a>.</p>
1096.  
1097.  
1098.  
1099. <p>“There actually could be more strikes,” says Intercept senior reporter <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/nickturse/">Nick Turse</a>. This week on The Intercept Briefing, Turse joins host <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/akelalacy/">Akela Lacy </a>and investigative journalist <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/radley-balko/">Radley Balko</a> to discuss how the administration is laying the groundwork to justify extrajudicial killings abroad and possibly at home.</p>
1100.  
1101.  
1102.  
1103. <p>The Trump administration’s claims that it’s going after <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/26/trump-venezuela-boat-strike-drugs/">high-level drug kingpins </a>don’t hold water, Turse says. “Trump is killing civilians because he &#8216;suspects&#8217; that they&#8217;re smuggling drugs. Experts that I talk to say this is illegal. Former government lawyers, experts on the laws of war, they say it&#8217;s outright <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/15/venezuela-boat-attack-trump-legality/">murder</a>.”&nbsp; </p>
1104.  
1105.  
1106.  
1107. <p>Trump has repeated claims, without evidence, that a combination of immigration and drug trafficking is driving crime in the United States. It’s part of a story Trump has crafted: The U.S. and the international community are under siege, and it’s his job to stop it — whether by executing fishermen or deploying the National Guard on his own people.&nbsp;And while the latest turn toward extrajudicial killings is cause for alarm, it’s also more of the same, says Radley Balko, an investigative journalist who has covered the drug war for two decades and host of the new Intercept podcast, <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/collateraldamage/">Collateral Damage</a>.&nbsp;</p>
1108.  
1109.  
1110.  
1111. <p>“The notion of collateral damage is just that: this very idea that, when you&#8217;re in war, there are some who can be sacrificed because we have this greater cause that we have to win or this threat we have to overcome. And these people that are being killed in these incidents, they&#8217;re collateral damage from the perspective of the U.S. government because Trump clearly doesn&#8217;t care,” Balko says.</p>
1112.  
1113.  
1114.  
1115. <p>“There are a lot of parallels between what Trump is doing with immigration now and what we saw during the 1980s with the drug war. There was an effort to bring the military in,” Balko says. “This idea that Reagan declared illicit drugs a national security threat — just like Trump has done with immigration, with migrants — this idea that we&#8217;re facing this threat that is so existential and so dangerous that we have to take these extraconstitutional measures, this is a playbook that we&#8217;ve seen before. It&#8217;s a playbook we saw with drugs. It&#8217;s the same thing we&#8217;re seeing now with immigration.”</p>
1116.  
1117.  
1118.  
1119. <p>Turse adds, &#8220;Since 9/11, U.S. counter-terrorism operations have consistently eroded respect for international law, and it&#8217;s left Americans pretty much inured to the idea of targeted killings by U.S. forces from Afghanistan to Somalia. And I&#8217;m not sure that people see a difference between what&#8217;s been done for the last almost quarter-century as part of the war on terror and what we&#8217;re seeing today.”</p>
1120.  
1121.  
1122.  
1123. <p>Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-intercept-briefing/id1195206601" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Apple Podcasts</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2js8lwDRiK1TB4rUgiYb24?si=e3ce772344ee4170" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Spotify</a>, or wherever you listen.</p>
1124.  
1125.  
1126.  
1127. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></h2>
1128.  
1129.  
1130.  
1131. <p><strong>Akela Lacy: </strong>Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy.&nbsp;</p>
1132.  
1133.  
1134.  
1135. <p>The United States military attacked <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/us/politics/hegseth-military-boat-venezuela.html">another boat</a> in international waters near Venezuela, according to an announcement by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth late last week. It’s the fourth reported strike the Trump administration has authorized against alleged narco-traffickers.&nbsp;</p>
1136.  
1137.  
1138.  
1139. <p><strong>Donald Trump</strong>: Combating this sinister enemy, we have to put the traffickers and cartels on notice, and we&#8217;ve done that. And we&#8217;ve put them — a lot of them, we&#8217;ve called them a terrorist organization, which is actually a big thing to do. </p>
1140.  
1141.  
1142.  
1143. <p><strong>DT</strong>: In recent weeks the Navy has supported our mission to blow the cartel terrorists the hell out of the water. You see that?</p>
1144.  
1145.  
1146.  
1147. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Through these extrajudicial actions, reminiscent of the U.S. <a href="https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/">covert drone war</a>, the U.S. government has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/us/politics/hegseth-military-boat-venezuela.html">killed at least 21 people</a>. The latest escalations represent a remarkable and illegal turn in U.S. drug war policies. One in which, without evidence and due process, suspects are now simply executed. </p>
1148.  
1149.  
1150.  
1151. <p><strong>Reporter: </strong>Are you preparing to take strikes against drug gangs in Venezuela, sir?</p>
1152.  
1153.  
1154.  
1155. <p><strong>DT:</strong> We&#8217;ll see what happens with Venezuela. Venezuela has been very dangerous with drugs and with other things. </p>
1156.  
1157.  
1158.  
1159. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Trump is not just rewriting the rules of the drug war, he’s shredding the Constitution’s most fundamental principle: the requirement that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war.</p>
1160.  
1161.  
1162.  
1163. <p><strong>DT: </strong>I’ve also designated multiple savage drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations along with two bloodthirsty transnational gangs … </p>
1164.  
1165.  
1166.  
1167. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Meanwhile, over the last nine months the Trump administration has used that same rhetoric to unleash federal agents — donned in full tactical gear — on the American public to push its mass deportation agenda. And he has deployed roughly <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/17/trump-total-military-troops-deployed-cost/">35,000 troops</a> across the country to support that effort.&nbsp;</p>
1168.  
1169.  
1170.  
1171. <p>How did we get here? Well, over the last half-century, the U.S. has been fighting the so-called war on drugs that built the machinery and the legal protections for militarized police we’re now seeing the Trump administration deploy both internationally and in communities across the country. </p>
1172.  
1173.  
1174.  
1175. <p>A new podcast series from The Intercept out this week called <a href="https://theintercept.com/podcasts/collateral-damage/">Collateral Damage</a> examines the enduring ripple effects of the war on drugs, and the devastating consequences of the bipartisan effort to build a massive war machine aimed at the public. One that is now in the hands of Donald Trump.</p>
1176.  
1177.  
1178.  
1179. <p>Joining me now is the creator and the host of the show Radley Balko, an investigative journalist who has been covering the war on drugs for more than 20 years.</p>
1180.  
1181.  
1182.  
1183. <p>Welcome back to the show, Radley.&nbsp;</p>
1184.  
1185.  
1186.  
1187. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>Thank you. Good to be here.</p>
1188.  
1189.  
1190.  
1191. <p><strong>AL: </strong>We’re also joined by Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse, who has been covering the Trump administration’s lethal strikes of alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the deployment of U.S. troops across the country. </p>
1192.  
1193.  
1194.  
1195. <p>Nick, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.&nbsp;</p>
1196.  
1197.  
1198.  
1199. <p><strong>Nick Turse:</strong> It&#8217;s great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.</p>
1200.  
1201.  
1202.  
1203. <p><strong>AL: </strong>And just a note, we’re speaking on Wednesday, October 10. </p>
1204.  
1205.  
1206.  
1207. <p>Radley, we&#8217;ll start with you. The U.S. military strikes of alleged drug boats in the Caribbean that began in September appear to be the first actual formation of the Trump administration&#8217;s approach to fighting the “war on drugs.” How far of a departure are Trump&#8217;s actions when it comes to these strikes and his posture towards Venezuela compared to how the U.S. has traditionally waged its war on drugs?</p>
1208.  
1209.  
1210.  
1211. <p><strong>RB:</strong> There are some common themes from previous foreign policy drug endeavors. The Coast Guard has long intercepted boats in international waters that they suspect of drug trafficking.</p>
1212.  
1213.  
1214.  
1215. <p>One of the episodes of Collateral Damage, of the podcast, that we focus on the case of a Christian missionary and her daughter who were in a plane over Peru. The Peruvian air force in conjunction with CIA contractors shot down this plane, but they&#8217;d been doing this for years with Peru and other Latin American countries.</p>
1216.  
1217.  
1218.  
1219. <p>In this case, it made international news and we had congressional hearings because the people on board were white missionaries from Michigan. But this idea of extrajudicial executions when we&#8217;re talking about overseas anti-drug operations — that part isn&#8217;t so new. I guess in this case, it&#8217;s not Venezuela sinking these boats with the assistance of the CIA outside of Venezuela waters.</p>
1220.  
1221.  
1222.  
1223. <p>This is the U.S. military acting on its own without any input — in fact, over the vocal opposition of the country where these people are from. It&#8217;s definitely a departure. There are some common themes, but it&#8217;s definitely taking everything to a whole new level in terms of executive power and acting with impunity.</p>
1224.  
1225.  
1226.  
1227. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Nick, let&#8217;s back up just a little bit. Can you tell us more about the strikes in the Caribbean? What do we know about the people on board and what was being transported on these boats?</p>
1228.  
1229.  
1230.  
1231. <p><strong>NT:</strong> So the United States has carried out, as you said, at least four attacks on alleged drug carrying boats in the Caribbean in recent weeks, with at least two of the vessels originating from Venezuela. There actually could be more strikes. President Trump seemed to suggest this over the weekend, but notably, the Pentagon refuses to give me a total number. It&#8217;s one of the many details they&#8217;ve tried to keep secret and I&#8217;ve been working to expose. </p>
1232.  
1233.  
1234.  
1235. <p>To be clear, these are drone strikes. They&#8217;re conducted by elite U.S. commandos. And they&#8217;re targeting supposed drug boats. The president often says that they&#8217;re carrying fentanyl. That&#8217;s likely not the case if there are drugs on these boats. And these are the types of vessels that used to be interdicted by the Coast Guard. Our self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the fourth strike last week saying that “four male narco terrorists” — that&#8217;s a <a href="https://x.com/SecWar/status/1974150886084485503">quote</a> — were killed. But he offered no other details on exactly who they were. </p>
1236.  
1237.  
1238.  
1239.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1240.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1241.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/26/trump-venezuela-boat-strike-drugs/"
1242.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1243.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-venezuela-boat-strike-drugs"
1244.      data-ga-track-label="trump-venezuela-boat-strike-drugs"
1245.          >
1246.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Drug-smugglers-death-sentence.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1247.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1248.        Related      </h2>
1249.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Venezuela Boat Crews Targeted by Trump Are Low-Level Pawns in the Drug Game</h3>
1250.    </span>
1251.    </a>
1252.  </div>
1253.  
1254.  
1255.  
1256. <p>And our colleague Matt Sledge actually dug into this question: <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/26/trump-venezuela-boat-strike-drugs/">Who&#8217;s on these boats?</a> And he found that the crews of these types of drug smuggling vessels were, in the words of one federal judge, “completely unsophisticated, desperately poor fishermen or peasants” who he said are recruited into the drug trade.</p>
1257.  
1258.  
1259.  
1260. <p>The prison sentences back that assessment. Since 2018, such smugglers received on average an eight-year prison sentence. So we&#8217;re obviously not talking about drug kingpins here. The difference now is that instead of eight years of prison, the sentence is death.</p>
1261.  
1262.  
1263.  
1264. <p><strong>RB:</strong> This idea of going after very low-ranking people in these organizations is also not at all uncommon. I actually talked to a federal public defender, or contract public defender, a couple months ago who&#8217;s been doing this work since the early ’80s. She told me she had many, many, many clients, more than she could count, who were people who basically [were] cleaning staff or janitors in Colombia where U.S. agents — DEA, other U.S. officials — had gone and arrested them in their home countries, extradited them into the U.S., [and] tried to get them to give people up the ladder. Most of the time they couldn&#8217;t because they weren&#8217;t high-ranking. And then they would get these five or six-year sentences, and then they&#8217;d be deported as soon as they were released. Like she said, this was a very common tactic throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. So we&#8217;re adopting the worst practices over the last 30 or 40 years, and then pushing them even further.</p>
1265.  
1266.  
1267.  
1268. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Right. And it&#8217;s reminiscent of the strategy that we&#8217;re seeing both with the National Guard and with ICE deployments creating this justification for immense use of militarized police forces and extrajudicial drone strikes because of this presupposition of this amorphous crime threat, which again, is not necessarily based on fact.&nbsp;</p>
1269.  
1270.  
1271.  
1272. <p>The news of the latest strike came as the administration was also drafting language to justify its actions to Congress, which you reported on Nick. Can you tell us more about this confidential notice? And is it paving the way for the administration to unilaterally — without the consent of Congress — invade Venezuela?</p>
1273.  
1274.  
1275.  
1276.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1277.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1278.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/"
1279.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1280.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: venezuela-boat-strike-justification"
1281.      data-ga-track-label="venezuela-boat-strike-justification"
1282.          >
1283.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-02-at-11.56.35-AM.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1284.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1285.        Related      </h2>
1286.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Trump Declares He Can Wage Secret Wars Against Anyone He Calls an Enemy</h3>
1287.    </span>
1288.    </a>
1289.  </div>
1290.  
1291.  
1292.  
1293. <p><strong>NT:</strong> Sure. I <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/">obtained this confidential notice</a> that was sent to several congressional committees last week, and it offers the most detailed explanation of the legal underpinnings offered by the administration for this series of lethal boat attacks in the Caribbean. After stonewalling congressional leadership for weeks, Pentagon lawyers held a meeting with the key staff and then offered up a memo — a notice — that explained that President Trump decided unilaterally that the United States is engaged in a state of what they called <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/">“non-international armed conflict</a>,” which makes little to no sense.</p>
1294.  
1295.  
1296.  
1297. <p><strong>AL:</strong> I&#8217;m sorry — what does that mean? What does that actually mean?</p>
1298.  
1299.  
1300.  
1301. <p><strong>NT: </strong>Yeah, it&#8217;s a very good question, and one that neither the Pentagon nor the White House seems to have an answer for. Again, they call it a NIAC, or a “non-international armed conflict,” even though they are at the same time saying they&#8217;re attacking Venezuelan drug boats in international waters. </p>
1302.  
1303.  
1304.  
1305. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Who aren&#8217;t armed, at least from what we know, right? Haven’t been armed.</p>
1306.  
1307.  
1308.  
1309. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Right.&nbsp;</p>
1310.  
1311.  
1312.  
1313. <p><strong>NT:</strong> Exactly.</p>
1314.  
1315.  
1316.  
1317. <p><strong>AL:</strong> They’re armed as [in] describing the United States in this situation, I assume.</p>
1318.  
1319.  
1320.  
1321. <p><strong>NT: </strong>They&#8217;re the only armed belligerent in this. And they are in this state of non-international armed conflict with what they call “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/01/trump-venezuela-boat-strike-designated-terror-organization/">designated terrorist organizations</a>,” or DTOs. And they&#8217;ve been pushing this idea of DTOs for a couple weeks now in classified briefings to Congress.</p>
1322.  
1323.  
1324.  
1325. <p>We actually exposed the use of this designation a few weeks back. It&#8217;s an extremely vague phrase, which has previously appeared in government publications, but it lacks a clear definition. And one defense official that I spoke with called the label “meaningless.” And it appears to be so. And for weeks, the Trump administration has justified these strikes by asserting on social media that it&#8217;s attacking terrorists. </p>
1326.  
1327.  
1328.  
1329. <p>But this notice from the Department of War to Congress offers something more. It&#8217;s a legal rationale and an explanation of official policy. Trump has, according to the notice, unilaterally determined that cartels are “nonstate armed groups,” whose transported drugs constitute an “armed attack against the United States.” The notice describes, for example, three people killed on a boat in the Caribbean last month as “unlawful combatants,” as if they were soldiers on a battlefield.&nbsp;</p>
1330.  
1331.  
1332.  
1333. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>The U.S. is “the only armed belligerent in this.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1334.  
1335.  
1336.  
1337. <p>This is a significant departure from what is at least supposed to be a standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs. Typically, law enforcement arrests suspected drug dealers, as opposed to summarily executing them. If you distill it all down, basically, the Trump administration through this notice admits that it&#8217;s waging a secret war against undisclosed enemies without the consent of Congress. </p>
1338.  
1339.  
1340.  
1341. <p>So Trump is killing civilians because he suspects that they&#8217;re smuggling drugs. Experts that I talk to say this is illegal. Former government lawyers, experts on the laws of war, they say it&#8217;s outright murder.</p>
1342.  
1343.  
1344.  
1345. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Not to shamelessly plug the podcast, but —</p>
1346.  
1347.  
1348.  
1349. <p><strong>AL:</strong> That&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing.</p>
1350.  
1351.  
1352.  
1353. <p><strong>NT: </strong>Yeah, please do.</p>
1354.  
1355.  
1356.  
1357. <p><strong>RB:</strong> But the notion of collateral damage is just that: this very idea that when you&#8217;re in war, there are some who can be sacrificed because we have this greater cause that we have to win or this threat we have to overcome. And these people that are being killed in these incidents, they&#8217;re collateral damage from the perspective of the U.S. government because Trump clearly doesn&#8217;t care. They joke that they might be fishermen who are just trying to earn a livelihood, which is nauseating.</p>
1358.  
1359.  
1360.  
1361. <p>And then even if they were working for the cartels — from the perspective of the cartels, they&#8217;re also collateral damage. I mean, cartels don&#8217;t care about these people, right? They can find more fishermen that they can pay to smuggle the drugs for them.</p>
1362.  
1363.  
1364.  
1365. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p> “We don’t have the death penalty for dealing drugs in the United States, as much as Trump would like there to be one.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1366.  
1367.  
1368.  
1369. <p>Nick has touched on a lot of this, but every single part of this, every single justification for it is just transparently false and ridiculous and an insult to our intelligence. No fentanyl comes to the U.S. from Venezuela. Most of these boats, it&#8217;s not clear that they were even coming to the U.S. I know that one was supposed to be going to Trinidad. They aren&#8217;t armed. They presented no threat to the U.S. military. We don&#8217;t have the death penalty for dealing drugs in the United States, as much as Trump would like there to be one.</p>
1370.  
1371.  
1372.  
1373. <p>We don&#8217;t even get a significant amount of illegal drugs from Venezuela. Most fentanyl that does come into the U.S. comes through U.S. citizens at the border. So every single reason or justification that they are laying out for these attacks just is transparently ridiculous. There&#8217;s no evidence for any of it.</p>
1374.  
1375.  
1376.  
1377. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Are people buying this? I get the sense that the reaction to these strikes, at least in circles of people who are paying attention, is obviously, this is patently ridiculous. But are people buying these arguments?</p>
1378.  
1379.  
1380.  
1381. <p><strong>NT: </strong>I think since 9/11, U.S. counter-terrorism operations have consistently eroded respect for international law, and it&#8217;s left Americans pretty much inured to the idea of targeted killings by U.S. forces from <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/08/30/drone-kabul-afghanistan-civilian-casualties-children/">Afghanistan</a> to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/11/12/somalia-drone-strike-civilian-deaths/">Somalia</a>. And I&#8217;m not sure that people see a difference between what&#8217;s been done for the last almost quarter-century as part of the war on terror and what we&#8217;re seeing today. Presidents Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump have all undermined or ignored the rule of law by conducting extrajudicial killings and by killing civilians without consequence.</p>
1382.  
1383.  
1384.  
1385.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1386.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1387.            href="https://theintercept.com/2021/10/05/afghanistan-icc-war-crimes/"
1388.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1389.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: afghanistan-icc-war-crimes"
1390.      data-ga-track-label="afghanistan-icc-war-crimes"
1391.          >
1392.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GettyImages-1235325412-Afghanistan-ICC-e1633381519699.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1393.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1394.        Related      </h2>
1395.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">How the U.S. Derailed an Effort to Prosecute Its Crimes in Afghanistan</h3>
1396.    </span>
1397.    </a>
1398.  </div>
1399.  
1400.  
1401.  
1402. <p>And I think that&#8217;s left us in the place we are today where people hear that the United States took unilateral action and killed suspected so-called narco-terrorists, and they don&#8217;t see it as fundamentally different from killing a terrorist in <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/09/19/yemen-drone-survivor-civilian-compensation/">Yemen</a> or Somalia.</p>
1403.  
1404.  
1405.  
1406. <p><strong>RB:</strong> There was a report a couple weeks ago that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/29/stephen-miller-venezuela-drug-boat-strike">Stephen Miller</a> was the person who had, I don&#8217;t know, encouraged or was overseeing these attacks. And that makes perfect sense. And to the extent that, do people care about this? I think you can ask that question about a lot of the policies that Miller&#8217;s overseeing, which is, what they are banking on is that most of white middle-class America is not going to bother to look into this or not bother to verify their claims. </p>
1407.  
1408.  
1409.  
1410. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“What they are banking on is that most of white middle-class America is not going to bother to look into this or not bother to verify their claims.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1411.  
1412.  
1413.  
1414. <p>When Trump started going after immigrants, people seeking refugee status from Venezuela, when he revoked their protected status, claiming that we were at war with Venezuela, claiming that<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/27/trump-deport-venezuela-gang-tren-de-aragua/"> all these people were Tren de Aragua,</a> Trump&#8217;s entire 2024 campaign was basically foreigners are bad, right? When he was asked about his housing policy, his housing policy was, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/10/20/trump-affordable-housing-republican-platform/">we&#8217;re going to deport a bunch of people and that&#8217;s going to make more housing available</a>. When he was asked about inflation, it was, we&#8217;re going to deport a bunch of people and somehow that&#8217;s going to make prices go down, right? Everything was about <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/09/11/kamala-harris-debate-immigration/">hating foreigners</a>. And so I think they&#8217;re banking on the fact that people don&#8217;t care. </p>
1415.  
1416.  
1417.  
1418. <p>That&#8217;s not really an answer to your question about whether people do or don&#8217;t. I haven&#8217;t seen much polling on this. I hope they do. I hope that the reaction that we&#8217;ve seen to sending people to CECOT.</p>
1419.  
1420.  
1421.  
1422. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Right. CECOT is the maximum security prison in El Salvador that Trump was sending Deportees to.</p>
1423.  
1424.  
1425.  
1426. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>“Trump’s entire 2024 campaign was basically foreigners are bad.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1427.  
1428.  
1429.  
1430. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Right. So I do think there was a significant public backlash against that. I hope we eventually see that here. But you know, again, to go back to the podcast, it took killing white Christian missionaries from Michigan for there to be outrage and headlines and congressional hearings. So unfortunately, I think as long as they&#8217;re killing impoverished Venezuela fishermen, it&#8217;s going to be hard to get the American public to care</p>
1431.  
1432.  
1433.  
1434. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Radley, we actually want to play a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/">clip</a> <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/">from Collateral Damage </a>about this.</p>
1435.  
1436.  
1437.  
1438. <p><strong>Richard Nixon: </strong>To the extent money can help in meeting the problem of dangerous drugs, it will be available. This is one area where we cannot have budget cuts because we must wage what I have called “total war” against public enemy No. 1 in the United States: the problem of dangerous drugs.</p>
1439.  
1440.  
1441.  
1442. <p><strong>Radley Balko [narrating Collateral Damage]: </strong>The modern drug war began during President Richard Nixon’s administration and, like Trump’s fight against undocumented immigration, it was predicated on false claims designed to stir up fear and anger, particularly among white, middle- and low-income voters.</p>
1443.  
1444.  
1445.  
1446. <p><strong>Richard Nixon: </strong>It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States.</p>
1447.  
1448.  
1449.  
1450. <p><strong>AL: </strong>How has the legacy of the war on drugs led us here?</p>
1451.  
1452.  
1453.  
1454. <p><strong>RB:</strong> I think there are a lot of parallels between what Trump is doing with immigration now and what we saw during the 1980s with the drug war. So there was an effort to bring the military in to fight the drug war. Both Congress and the Reagan administration wanted the Pentagon conducting drug raids — Marines breaking into houses. The main reason that didn&#8217;t happen was opposition from the Pentagon itself, which, you know, is a healthy thing. We also saw opposition from the Pentagon itself during Trump&#8217;s first term when he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and bring the military in to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/13/trump-republicans-protests-national-guard-marines/">put down protests</a>. </p>
1455.  
1456.  
1457.  
1458.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1459.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1460.            href="https://theintercept.com/2022/05/06/mark-esper-trump-george-floyd-protests/"
1461.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1462.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: mark-esper-trump-george-floyd-protests"
1463.      data-ga-track-label="mark-esper-trump-george-floyd-protests"
1464.          >
1465.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/050622_esper1.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1466.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1467.        Related      </h2>
1468.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Mark Esper Waited Two Years to Tell Us Trump Wanted Troops to Shoot George Floyd Protesters</h3>
1469.    </span>
1470.    </a>
1471.  </div>
1472.  
1473.  
1474.  
1475. <p>There were still a lot of excesses in the ’80s. We still saw National Guard troops and helicopters invading entire towns and parts of Northern California where they thought there was marijuana being grown. The raid we saw in Chicago and the South Shore of the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/chicago-immigration-federal-arrests-helicopter-trump-ice-8dbf688f78f3b6d1b8fdb989557b28c4">entire apartment complex </a>that happened fairly often during the drug war. In the ’80s and ’90s, we saw entire public housing projects being raided. We saw some in cases entire city blocks being raided. Those raids were also completely illegal and unconstitutional. The courts had to sort it out after the fact, which I think is probably <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/chicago-ice-blitz-black-surveillance-state-violence/">what&#8217;s going to happen in Chicago also</a>.</p>
1476.  
1477.  
1478.  
1479. <p>But this idea that Reagan declared illicit drugs a national security threat — just like Trump has done with immigration, with migrants — this idea that we&#8217;re facing this threat that is so existential and so dangerous that we have to take these extraconstitutional measures, this is a playbook that we&#8217;ve seen before. It&#8217;s a playbook we saw with drugs. It&#8217;s the same thing we&#8217;re seeing now with immigration.</p>
1480.  
1481.  
1482.  
1483. <p>I think the one main difference is that there really was a crack epidemic. We really did see a pretty big increase in crime in the ’90s [and] crack did kill a lot of people. That isn&#8217;t the case with immigration. Immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at lower rates than native-born people. There is no epidemic of violence in crime related to immigration or the surge in migrants that we saw. </p>
1484.  
1485.  
1486.  
1487. <p>So as ill-considered, racially disproportionate, and unjustified as the war on drugs in the ’80s and ’90s was, it was at least more justified than what we&#8217;re seeing now in response to immigration.</p>
1488.  
1489.  
1490.  
1491. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Right. And not only is the purported nexus between immigration and crime completely overblown, but basically every study that has come out about the effect of this kind of response to immigration has shown that it has basically no effect on public safety — except for making it worse.</p>
1492.  
1493.  
1494.  
1495. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Except for making it worse.&nbsp;</p>
1496.  
1497.  
1498.  
1499. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Right.<strong> </strong></p>
1500.  
1501.  
1502.  
1503. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>Police chiefs “know how essential it is to get the cooperation from immigrant communities in order to fight crime.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1504.  
1505.  
1506.  
1507. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Yeah. When you arrest people when they show up for their hearings as they&#8217;re supposed to do, people stop going to courthouses. They stop being witnesses in criminal cases. They stop reporting domestic violence. They stop cooperating with the police altogether because they&#8217;re terrified.</p>
1508.  
1509.  
1510.  
1511. <p>That&#8217;s why police chiefs around the country want sanctuary cities, particularly in urban areas because they know how essential it is to get the cooperation from immigrant communities in order to fight crime.</p>
1512.  
1513.  
1514.  
1515.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1516.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1517.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/"
1518.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1519.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs"
1520.      data-ga-track-label="collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs"
1521.          >
1522.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00_Prelude_Article-crop2.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1523.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1524.        Related      </h2>
1525.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Trump’s War on Drugs</h3>
1526.    </span>
1527.    </a>
1528.  </div>
1529.  
1530.  
1531.  
1532. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Radley, as you&#8217;ve illustrated in Collateral Damage, Trump has a long history of applauding lethal approaches to eradicating drugs in the U.S. What has Trump said publicly over the years about how he envisions fighting his war on drugs?</p>
1533.  
1534.  
1535.  
1536. <p><strong>RB:</strong> He&#8217;s praised places like China and Indonesia, which give the death penalty for drug dealing [and] drug smuggling. He praised <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/24/trump-rodrigo-duterte-call-transcript-238758">Rodrigo Duterte</a>, the Filipino president who&#8217;s now actually on trial for <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5e1v85lrdo">crimes against humanity</a> with the International Criminal Court for carrying out extrajudicial executions in the name of fighting the war on drugs.</p>
1537.  
1538.  
1539.  
1540. <p>Trump praised Duterte, not just generally or broadly. He <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/05/23/trump-called-rodrigo-duterte-to-congratulate-him-on-his-murderous-drug-war-you-are-doing-an-amazing-job/">praised him</a> specifically for his drug war policy. The very policy that now <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/19/rodrigo-duterte-icc-arrest-accountability/">has him in the International Criminal Court</a>. This is something Trump has always wanted to do. Even he and Miller probably think it&#8217;s too far for him to just start summarily executing Americans like Duterte was doing with Filipino citizens. But what he&#8217;s doing in the Caribbean is, some version of, I think what he would love to do here if he could.</p>
1541.  
1542.  
1543.  
1544.  
1545.  
1546.  
1547.  
1548. <p><strong>Break</strong></p>
1549.  
1550.  
1551.  
1552. <p><strong>AL: </strong>In Trump&#8217;s second term, we&#8217;ve seen numerous executive orders broadening the definition of terrorists, designating <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization/">anyone critical of the administration</a> as terrorists, as well as alleged <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/designating-cartels-and-other-organizations-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-and-specially-designated-global-terrorists/">drug traffickers and dealers</a>. What do you make of these efforts, and do they have teeth? And what are your thoughts on how the administration is deploying this war on terror rhetoric and policies to justify everything from immigration enforcement to drug eradication? Nick, we&#8217;ll start with you.</p>
1553.  
1554.  
1555.  
1556. <p><strong>NT:</strong> Sure. So the Trump administration is using a rhetorical sleight of hand here. It&#8217;s applying the language and the legal framework that the U.S. relied on for the war on terror to kill unspecified and supposed “narco terrorists.” To begin with, the entire war on terror paradigm was, or I should say, is illegitimate.</p>
1557.  
1558.  
1559.  
1560. <p>But even if you buy into the war on terror paradigm this undeclared war in the Caribbean is fundamentally different. The U.S. has not suffered an armed attack as on 9/11. The congressional notice that we mentioned, it doesn&#8217;t even identify which groups the U.S. is supposedly engaged in an armed conflict with.</p>
1561.  
1562.  
1563.  
1564. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“This campaign against boats in the Caribbean relies exclusively on the president making both factual and legal determinations by sheer fiat. ”</p></blockquote></figure>
1565.  
1566.  
1567.  
1568. <p>That&#8217;s another secret of this <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/">secret war</a>. But even those that we know of, like the Venezuelan gang Tren de Araguaa, they&#8217;re not organized armed groups that the U.S. could even be engaged in an armed conflict with. There isn&#8217;t even some fig leaf, like the AUMF — the Authorization for the Use of Military Force — that was passed after 9/11 that underpins the entire war on terror.</p>
1569.  
1570.  
1571.  
1572. <p>This campaign against boats in the Caribbean relies exclusively on the president making both factual and legal determinations by sheer fiat. As Brian Finucane, a former State Department government lawyer and a law war expert <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/">told me</a>, Trump has given himself a “license to kill based solely on his own determinations.”</p>
1573.  
1574.  
1575.  
1576. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Radley?</p>
1577.  
1578.  
1579.  
1580. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Everything Nick said, but also, a huge part of this is just “Trust us,” right? We don&#8217;t have to provide you the evidence for this, that they were actually smuggling drugs. We don&#8217;t have to provide you with the evidence that they were working for cartels. And as we know from when they were sending people to CECOT, they were claiming that an autism tattoo was proof of membership in Tren de Aragua, or that a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/04/andry-jose-hernandez-romero-makeup-artist-venezuela">makeup artist</a> who had no criminal history. I think it was the <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/50-venezuelans-imprisoned-el-salvador-came-us-legally-never-violated-immigration-law">Cato Institute</a> maybe did a study, I think finding like maybe 9 in 10 of the people sent to CECOT had no prior criminal convictions.</p>
1581.  
1582.  
1583.  
1584. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“They will fire anyone who contradicts what they need to carry out the powers that they want to carry out anyway.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1585.  
1586.  
1587.  
1588. <p>They&#8217;re asking us to trust us when their track record provides no reason to trust them whatsoever. When members of the intelligence community, I can&#8217;t remember exactly what body came back and said that Tren de Aragua was <a href="https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/25931290/pages/1/?embed=1">not a state-sponsored gang</a>, that it actually had no affiliation with [Nicolás] Maduro, and the fact that Maduro <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/us/trump-venezuela-gang-ties-spy-memo.html">had taken actions against this gang</a>, Trump <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/15/gabbard-fires-intelligence-officials-venezuela-tren-de-aragua">fired the intelligence officials </a>that produced that report. So it&#8217;s “Trust us,” but we know that they&#8217;ve lied in the past, and we also know that they will fire anyone who contradicts what they need to carry out the powers that they want to carry out anyway.</p>
1589.  
1590.  
1591.  
1592. <p>There&#8217;s, I don&#8217;t even— Kafkaesque doesn&#8217;t even quite describe what&#8217;s going on. I think Kafka would be embarrassed by what&#8217;s happening.</p>
1593.  
1594.  
1595.  
1596. <p><strong>AL:</strong> We&#8217;re running out of metaphors.&nbsp;</p>
1597.  
1598.  
1599.  
1600. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Yeah, right.&nbsp;</p>
1601.  
1602.  
1603.  
1604. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>“Kafkaesque doesn’t even quite describe what’s going on. I think Kafka would be embarrassed by what&#8217;s happening.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1605.  
1606.  
1607.  
1608. <p><strong>AL:</strong> I want to talk about how the administration&#8217;s grand vision is playing out domestically. Nick, you&#8217;ve been reporting on <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/17/trump-total-military-troops-deployed-cost/">Trump deploying U.S. military forces in cities across the country</a>. Where has the administration sent troops so far? What are they actually doing and what are the implications here?</p>
1609.  
1610.  
1611.  
1612. <p><strong>Nick Turse:</strong> President Trump teased or he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act earlier this week to facilitate the military occupations of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/29/trump-portland-troops-antifa/">Portland, Oregon</a>, and Chicago, Illinois. And the administration is pursuing military occupations there as they pursue an unprecedented militarization of America.</p>
1613.  
1614.  
1615.  
1616. <p>In addition to the administration&#8217;s efforts to occupy those cities, armed forces deployed to Los Angeles in June; Washington, D.C., in August; and Memphis, Tennessee, earlier this month, or it&#8217;s going on it right as we&#8217;re speaking. Members of the Army, the Navy, Air Force, Marines, the Reserves, the National Guard, they&#8217;ve all have been or will soon be deployed under Title 10 authority. That&#8217;s federal control in at least seven states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas. The occupation of Washington, D.C., while technically under Title 32 authority or state control, puts Trump in charge of the troops because D.C. has no governor. And there&#8217;s a Title 32 deployment to Memphis, and that was welcomed by the state&#8217;s Republican governor. Although the city&#8217;s mayor, the Democrat, was less enthusiastic about this. </p>
1617.  
1618.  
1619.  
1620.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1621.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1622.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/20/trump-federalize-washington-dc-military-troops-cost/"
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1625.      data-ga-track-label="trump-federalize-washington-dc-military-troops-cost"
1626.          >
1627.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/9260452-e1755706200476.jpeg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1628.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1629.        Related      </h2>
1630.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Price Tag for Trump’s D.C. Military Surge: At Least $1 Million a Day</h3>
1631.    </span>
1632.    </a>
1633.  </div>
1634.  
1635.  
1636.  
1637. <p>One of the things that these troops have been doing is burning through a tremendous amount of money: U.S. tax dollars. We broke the news that the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/20/trump-federalize-washington-dc-military-troops-cost/">D.C. deployment cost about $1 million per day</a>. Trump has claimed that he eradicated crime in the District, which obviously it&#8217;s untrue. But it is true that troops there have had little to do in a lot of circumstances. There&#8217;s footage of them cleaning up garbage, doing yard work in parks, that sort of thing.</p>
1638.  
1639.  
1640.  
1641. <p>I don&#8217;t want to be flippant about it either. A federal judge ruled late last month that Trump&#8217;s deployment of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/16/federal-troops-la-doing-nothing/">federal troops to Los Angeles</a>, which began in June and is ongoing, was <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/03/trump-military-occupy-dc-la-chicago/">illegal</a>, and it harkened back to Britain&#8217;s use of soldiers as law enforcement in colonial America.</p>
1642.  
1643.  
1644.  
1645. <p>The judge noted that the occupation of LA is an extraordinary violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is a bedrock 19th-century law banning the use of federal military forces to execute domestic law. And the judge also noted that Trump has been clear about his intent to turn the National Guard into a national police force with the president as its chief. So it&#8217;s a frightening prospect, and it&#8217;s fast becoming a reality.</p>
1646.  
1647.  
1648.  
1649. <p><strong>AL: </strong>I just want to put this on the record because I was not aware of this until a couple days ago. So when the National Guard was deployed to Los Angeles, the administration was very explicit about — whether this was true or not, and obviously it wasn&#8217;t true — but they were saying they&#8217;re there to protect ICE agents from protest activity. They&#8217;re there to police these protests. Now all of these <a href="https://stateline.org/2025/09/04/governors-split-over-mobilizing-national-guard-as-trump-seeks-more-troops/">Republican governors </a>are coming out and saying actually they&#8217;re there to assist ICE in finding and detaining and deporting people.</p>
1650.  
1651.  
1652.  
1653. <p>Can you walk us through the significance of that? That seems outrageous. It is outrageous, but it&#8217;s notable to me that they were trying to give plausible deniability, at least a few months ago, to what the National Guard was doing here, and now they&#8217;re being very explicit about it.</p>
1654.  
1655.  
1656.  
1657. <p><strong>NT:</strong> Yeah, there&#8217;s been two tracks here. The White House constantly uses this language, and recently, over the last week they&#8217;ve used the language of insurrection, I think with the explicit intent of eventually trying to invoke the Insurrection Act, which has been used only 30 times or those powers have been used only 30 times since the 1790s.</p>
1658.  
1659.  
1660.  
1661.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1662.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1663.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/"
1664.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1665.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-insurrection-act"
1666.      data-ga-track-label="trump-insurrection-act"
1667.          >
1668.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/crop_GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7-e1759856025406.webp?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1669.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1670.        Related      </h2>
1671.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act</h3>
1672.    </span>
1673.    </a>
1674.  </div>
1675.  
1676.  
1677.  
1678. <p>It&#8217;s usually used in extraordinary circumstances. We&#8217;re talking about things like the U.S. Civil War in the 1860s. So the administration has said that when they deployed troops to Los Angeles. They said it was to quell a rebellion, when there were just basically muted protests in a very tiny area of Los Angeles. Vice President JD Vance went and vacationed 25 miles away in Disneyland from this area that was supposed to be in a state of rebellion against the United States. So farcical, but they&#8217;ve trotted that out. </p>
1679.  
1680.  
1681.  
1682. <p>On the other hand, those troops in LA were also used to invade, alongside ICE, MacArthur Park to roust a children&#8217;s summer day camp there and little else. They were used to back up immigration raids outside of the city.</p>
1683.  
1684.  
1685.  
1686. <p>They&#8217;ve used twin tracks here, and sometimes they talk about these cities in a state of rebellion because of just a crime problem, and sometimes it sounds like Trump has used the language of war, like it&#8217;s an actual rebellion. But when they&#8217;re actually performing functions on the ground, it&#8217;s often backing up ICE and the anti-immigrant agenda in some way.</p>
1687.  
1688.  
1689.  
1690. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Yeah. I would add that crime was going down in all these cities before Trump decided he needed to send them in. There was no rioting. There was some protest in Los Angeles, and I think maybe one car was burned somewhere in the city, which probably happens quite often in this country. It&#8217;s not a sign of rebellion. </p>
1691.  
1692.  
1693.  
1694. <p>There&#8217;s an old legal doctrine that the 9th Circuit used to have — that the Supreme Court struck down unfortunately — called the Provocation Doctrine. And basically what it said was that if the police violate your rights in a way that makes you retaliate out of self-defense or fear, and then they kill you, even if they had justification to kill you in that particular moment, if there’s a violation of your right to start this chain of events that led to that they did not have qualified immunity, they could still be sued. </p>
1695.  
1696.  
1697.  
1698. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“ They’re creating the very circumstances by which they&#8217;re then justifying the need to send in the military.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1699.  
1700.  
1701.  
1702. <p>I think about that a lot when I&#8217;m seeing what&#8217;s happening around the country, which is that Trump is sending ICE and Border Patrol and other agencies into these cities basically with aggression. They are roughing people up, they&#8217;re separating families. In Chicago, they were pulling naked children out of their homes and zip-tying them and throwing [them] in the back of U-Hauls. Just really horrific stuff. And then when people get angry and protest as this happens to their neighbors, that&#8217;s then cited as justification that we need to send in the National Guard because these immigration officers aren&#8217;t allowed to do their jobs. And so they&#8217;re creating the very circumstances by which they&#8217;re then justifying the need to send in the military.</p>
1703.  
1704.  
1705.  
1706. <p><strong>AL:</strong> And it&#8217;s not just the National Guard. We&#8217;re talking about how Trump is creating this national police force. We&#8217;ve also seen him massively expand his reach into state and local law enforcement with a 600 percent increase in 287(g) agreements, which allow police to help detain people for ICE. I have a story out on that program this week. </p>
1707.  
1708.  
1709.  
1710. <p>For both of you, how does that piece fit into this larger project to create this national police force under the president&#8217;s command?</p>
1711.  
1712.  
1713.  
1714. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Yeah, so what he&#8217;s doing is, as I mentioned before, there are police chiefs, particularly in cities that don&#8217;t want to cooperate with immigration enforcement because it makes it harder to do their jobs. When you go after immigrant communities like this, they don&#8217;t want to cooperate with you. They&#8217;re afraid of the police. So they don&#8217;t report crimes, they don&#8217;t testify as witnesses. So what Trump is doing is they&#8217;re really pushing these agreements, a lot of times with sheriff&#8217;s departments, but the goal is to bring on people to assist who agree with his — basically share his worldview. And share their method of enforcement, which as we saw with the Supreme Court recently in the <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/09/justice-brett-kavanaugh-and-racial-proxies/">Kavanaugh concurrence</a> is people who don&#8217;t look white, people who speak with an accent, people who congregate at places where immigrants congregate — that&#8217;s who we&#8217;re going to target.</p>
1715.  
1716.  
1717.  
1718. <p>So it&#8217;s basically a way of getting around, anyone in law enforcement who may have moral objections or ethical or constitutional objections. And that&#8217;s the same thing with this massive increase in the ICE and Border Patrol budgets. They&#8217;re going to start hiring. They&#8217;re going to hire people who respond to the pretty blatantly white supremacist social media marketing that DHS is doing now. It&#8217;s also going to be people who are looking at these videos of cops beating people up and separating families and shooting protesters in the head with less lethal munitions. They&#8217;re now recruiting people who look at those videos and they&#8217;re not horrified. They say, that&#8217;s what I want to do for a living. Give me the bonus. I&#8217;m going to sign up. And so that&#8217;s how they are filling out the roster of ICE, which ICE is soon to be one of the largest militaries in the world if you compare it to the militaries of other countries.</p>
1719.  
1720.  
1721.  
1722. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>“ICE is soon to be one of the largest militaries in the world if you compare it to the militaries of other countries.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1723.  
1724.  
1725.  
1726. <p><strong>AL:</strong> And I think this is a really important point that I just want to highlight this idea that there is no room for dissent within— Not that I&#8217;m giving it, I&#8217;m handing it to police officers for, like having principles. But this idea that there was a time where sheriffs were campaigning on not joining 287(g) agreements. It was pretty much on its deathbed under Barack Obama. And we&#8217;ve seen this massive upsurge, not only under Trump&#8217;s first term, but his second term, and this intense political pressure on departments that don&#8217;t want to comply. There&#8217;s been several Republican governors who have sued local sheriffs for refusing to participate in these agreements. And this separation, this idea of separation of powers, or of any sort of ability to not comply with the administration&#8217;s demands is becoming more and more farfetched.</p>
1727.  
1728.  
1729.  
1730. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Everything is pushing these officers in the direction of more use of force, more abuse, more violations of rights. State and local officers, we hear a lot about qualified immunity and their protected state and local police officers are protected by that when they violate people&#8217;s constitutional rights. But qualified immunity is still qualified. You can still, in theory, get beyond it and get into court and sue one of them.</p>
1731.  
1732.  
1733.  
1734. <p>Federal officers have almost complete immunity. In 2022, the Supreme Court basically killed this decision from the ’70s called <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/403/388/">Bivens</a>, which created a way for people whose rights were violated by federal police to sue those officers in court. The Supreme Court basically just dispensed with Bivens entirely, and qualified immunity doesn&#8217;t apply to federal officers.</p>
1735.  
1736.  
1737.  
1738. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“There’s really no way to sue a federal police officer no matter what they do to you.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1739.  
1740.  
1741.  
1742. <p>So there&#8217;s really no way to sue a federal police officer no matter what they do to you. There was a case where — I think it was a Federal Appeals Court, but it was relying on Supreme Court precedent — where they agreed upon facts were [that] a federal law enforcement officer framed an innocent person of a crime. That person went to prison in order to protect an informant. The courts <em>agreed</em> with that characterization of what happened and still ruled that there was no way for this person who was wronged to sue. So when we see these social media responses to these videos, “I hope they sue those people into oblivion” — it’s just not going to happen. The only way these officers are going to be held accountable is if the DOJ charges them and prosecutes them. And of course we know that&#8217;s not going to happen during this administration.</p>
1743.  
1744.  
1745.  
1746. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Right. Nick, I&#8217;ll turn to you. I wonder if you could just speak to what all of this means for the future of presidential power and civil liberties beyond the Trump administration. We talked a little bit about the congressional authority to declare war. Obviously Congress hasn&#8217;t officially declared war since World War II, but has that authority become obsolete? And what does this mean for future administrations? If we have them.</p>
1747.  
1748.  
1749.  
1750. <p><strong>NT:</strong> The Trump administration&#8217;s combination of military occupations of American cities, of the deployment of tens of thousands of troops across the United States, the emerging framework for designating and targeting domestic enemies, combined with its assertion that the president has a right to wage secret war, and summarily execute those the president deems to be terrorists has left America — and I don&#8217;t think this is overstating it — on the precipice of complete authoritarian rule.</p>
1751.  
1752.  
1753.  
1754.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1755.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1756.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/"
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1759.      data-ga-track-label="venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers"
1760.          >
1761.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238577683_3052da-e1759968677521.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1762.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1763.        Related      </h2>
1764.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Fetterman Is Sole Democrat to Vote Against Blocking Caribbean Drug Boat Attacks</h3>
1765.    </span>
1766.    </a>
1767.  </div>
1768.  
1769.  
1770.  
1771. <p>They&#8217;ve set the machinery in place. And with Trump attempting to fashion a presidential police force of armed soldiers for domestic deployment, at the same time, he&#8217;s claiming the right to kill anyone he deems a terrorist, I think the threat to the rule of law in the United States is nothing short or profound.</p>
1772.  
1773.  
1774.  
1775. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Radley?</p>
1776.  
1777.  
1778.  
1779. <p><strong>RB:</strong> To a large extent, I think the courts have held, the federal courts, particularly at the district court level, have done a good job of articulating the principles that are at stake here and limiting this administration&#8217;s lurches for power. Unfortunately, one court has done a pretty poor job of all of that, and that&#8217;s the court that matters most which is the U.S. Supreme Court.</p>
1780.  
1781.  
1782.  
1783. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Is there any way to come back from this? Is it in the public interest to dismantle this machinery and how would that even happen?</p>
1784.  
1785.  
1786.  
1787. <p><strong>RB:</strong> On the civil liberty side of things, we need people who are as creative and inventive and show the same sort of ingenuity at protecting our rights as this administration has shown to destroying them. There&#8217;s been this kind of asymmetrical decency, asymmetrical adherence to the rule of law where one side is trying to do things by the book and the other side is—</p>
1788.  
1789.  
1790.  
1791. <p><strong>AL: </strong>Burning it.</p>
1792.  
1793.  
1794.  
1795. <p><strong>RB:</strong> Right. I think enough damage has been done at this point that it&#8217;s hard for me to see a way back while adhering to the same principles that have been shattered and destroyed.&nbsp;</p>
1796.  
1797.  
1798.  
1799. <p>I think we may have to reset. I think there may be a time when, you know, we need to get things back on track and then we can worry about reestablishing norms and principles.&nbsp;</p>
1800.  
1801.  
1802.  
1803. <p>Yeah, we&#8217;re in a bad place. I don&#8217;t know how we easily get back from here.</p>
1804.  
1805.  
1806.  
1807. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Nick.</p>
1808.  
1809.  
1810.  
1811. <p><strong>NT:</strong> These questions are far beyond my pay grade. Someone smarter has got to figure out how to unwind all this if it can be done. I think Radley said it best when he said, people are going to have to get creative. Also, he mentioned the courts. The district courts have put up some roadblocks there.&nbsp;</p>
1812.  
1813.  
1814.  
1815. <p>I think this administration is still susceptible to public opinion. I think people in the streets matter.&nbsp;</p>
1816.  
1817.  
1818.  
1819. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Absolutely.&nbsp;</p>
1820.  
1821.  
1822.  
1823. <p><strong>NT: </strong>And I think people need to get creative. I&#8217;m not sure that protests as usual are going to work, but there are smart people out there and I hope they figure out new ways to throw up roadblocks.&nbsp;</p>
1824.  
1825.  
1826.  
1827. <p>In the future, again, just echoing Radley, I think if things are to be reset, it&#8217;s going to mean an assertive Congress. It&#8217;s going to mean a new Supreme Court and a president who&#8217;s willing to tie her or his own hands — someone far more moral and ethical and principle than we&#8217;ve had in that role for some time.</p>
1828.  
1829.  
1830.  
1831. <p><strong>AL:</strong> Well, we are going to leave it on that bright note. Thank you both for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.</p>
1832.  
1833.  
1834.  
1835. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Thank you.&nbsp;</p>
1836.  
1837.  
1838.  
1839. <p><strong>Nick Turse:</strong>&nbsp;Thanks very much.</p>
1840.  
1841.  
1842.  
1843. <p><strong>AL: </strong>That’s Radley Balko, host and creator of the new Intercept podcast <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/collateraldamage/">Collateral Damage</a>, and Nick Turse, Intercept senior reporter. </p>
1844.  
1845.  
1846.  
1847. <p>We’ll drop the first episode of Collateral Damage in the feed for listeners to check out.&nbsp;</p>
1848.  
1849.  
1850.  
1851. <p>And that does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing.&nbsp;</p>
1852.  
1853.  
1854.  
1855. <p>We want to hear from you.&nbsp;</p>
1856.  
1857.  
1858.  
1859. <p>Share your story with us at 530-POD-CAST. That’s&nbsp;530-763-2278. You can also email us at podcasts at the intercept dot com.&nbsp;</p>
1860.  
1861.  
1862.  
1863. <p>This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. 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 Shawn Musgrave.&nbsp;</p>
1864.  
1865.  
1866.  
1867. <p>Slip Stream provided our theme music.</p>
1868.  
1869.  
1870.  
1871. <p>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, and better yet, leave us a rating or a review to help other listeners find our reporting.</p>
1872.  
1873.  
1874.  
1875. <p>Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.&nbsp;</p>
1876.  
1877.  
1878.  
1879. <p>Thanks for listening.</p>
1880. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/briefing-podcast-trump-venezuela-boat-strikes/">License to Kill: Trump’s Extrajudicial Executions</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
1881. ]]></content:encoded>
1882.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/briefing-podcast-trump-venezuela-boat-strikes/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
1883.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
1884.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Collateral-Damage-boat-strike.jpg?fit=2000%2C1000' width='2000' height='1000' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500566</post-id>
1885. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Drug-smugglers-death-sentence.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
1886. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Drug-smugglers-death-sentence.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1887. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-02-at-11.56.35-AM.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1888. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GettyImages-1235325412-Afghanistan-ICC-e1633381519699.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1889. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/050622_esper1.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1890. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00_Prelude_Article-crop2.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1891. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
1892. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
1893. </media:content>
1894. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
1895. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
1896. </media:content>
1897. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1898. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/9260452-e1755706200476.jpeg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1899. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/crop_GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7-e1759856025406.webp?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1900. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238577683_3052da-e1759968677521.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
1901.            </item>
1902.        
1903.            <item>
1904.                <title><![CDATA[The Trump Administration Is Hiding How Many Pregnant People Are in ICE Detention]]></title>
1905.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants/</link>
1906.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants/#respond</comments>
1907.                <pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
1908.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Jessica Washington]]></dc:creator>
1909.                                 <category><![CDATA[Justice]]></category>
1910. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
1911.  
1912.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
1913.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>The evidence indicates ICE is detaining pregnant women at alarming rates, in rapidly deteriorating conditions.</p>
1914. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants/">The Trump Administration Is Hiding How Many Pregnant People Are in ICE Detention</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
1915. ]]></description>
1916.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
1917. <p><span class="has-underline">The putrid smell</span> emanating from breakfast turned Daniela’s stomach, which wailed internally from hunger and nausea. For months, she had lived mostly on bread and the pantry items she could cobble together from the commissary in her ICE detention facility. Pregnant and trapped at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, she felt the gnawing of hunger and isolation.</p>
1918.  
1919.  
1920.  
1921. <p>“This is not a place for me,” Daniela, whose name has been changed to protect her from retaliation from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in Spanish in a message to The Intercept.&nbsp;</p>
1922.  
1923.  
1924.  
1925. <p>She’d been having abdominal pain, and she caught Covid in early September. According to Amanda Heffernan, a nurse midwife and professor at Seattle University who reviewed Daniela’s medical records at her request, for roughly two months, Daniela never received a prenatal visit with an OB-GYN.</p>
1926.  
1927.  
1928.  
1929. <p>Pregnant people generally aren’t supposed to be held in immigration detention at all.&nbsp;Official <a href="https://www.ice.gov/directive-identification-and-monitoring-pregnant-postpartum-or-nursing-individuals">guidance</a>&nbsp;in place since 2021 directs ICE to avoid detaining pregnant, postpartum, and lactating women, unless their release is “prohibited by law” or in “exceptional circumstances.” In cases where the government determines that pregnant women must be detained, the guidelines impose strict obligations on detention facilities to monitor their conditions and ensure that facilities meet their mental and physical needs.</p>
1930.  
1931.  
1932.  
1933. <p>The Trump administration appears to be ignoring that directive, according to immigration experts, advocates, a pregnant detainee, and The Intercept’s analysis of congressional reports and letters. Taken together, the evidence indicates that the Department of Homeland Security is detaining pregnant women at alarming rates, in rapidly deteriorating detention conditions.</p>
1934.  
1935.  
1936.  
1937. <p>“This is the first time I’ve seen so many pregnant people in [ICE] detention,” said Tania Wolf, the Southeast advocacy manager at the National Immigration Project.&nbsp;Experts at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Women’s Refugee Commission made similar observations.</p>
1938.  
1939.  
1940.  
1941.  <div class="promote-related-post">
1942.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
1943.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/03/ice-children-deportation-payment/"
1944.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
1945.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: ice-children-deportation-payment"
1946.      data-ga-track-label="ice-children-deportation-payment"
1947.          >
1948.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2195569259-e1759512751353.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
1949.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
1950.        Related      </h2>
1951.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">ICE Targets Unaccompanied Immigrant Children, Offering $2,500 Payment for Deportation</h3>
1952.    </span>
1953.    </a>
1954.  </div>
1955.  
1956.  
1957.  
1958. <p>“There are cases of people who clearly meet the criteria not to be detained, and that ICE has gone ahead and detained anyway,” said Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU National Prison Project. Zain Lakhani, the&nbsp;director of migrant rights and justice&nbsp;at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said her group&nbsp;has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/press-releases/womens-refugee-commission-launches-first-ever-detention-pregnancy-tracker/">noticed</a>&nbsp;“a significant increase in the number of pregnant detainees, of pregnant women, postpartum and lactating women in detention,” in the months since President Donald Trump returned to office.&nbsp;</p>
1959.  
1960.  
1961.  
1962. <p>Hard numbers on the number of pregnant women in immigration detention are nearly impossible to find. The Trump administration has stopped publishing semiannual reports on&nbsp;the condition and number of pregnant, postpartum, and lactating women&nbsp;in immigration detention facilities.&nbsp;Congress used to require that DHS compile the reports, but as of the last funding bill, it had dropped the mandate.&nbsp;</p>
1963.  
1964.  
1965.  
1966. <p>“Right now, we don’t have functional transparency and oversight mechanisms for DHS and for immigration detention,” said Nithya Nathan-Pineau, policy attorney and strategist for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.</p>
1967.  
1968.  
1969.  
1970. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“This is the first time I’ve seen so many pregnant people in [ICE] detention.”</p></blockquote></figure>
1971.  
1972.  
1973.  
1974. <p>That leaves the public unaware of how many people there are like Daniela, who said there were two other pregnant women in her unit at the detention facility. The Intercept was not able to speak with the women directly.&nbsp;</p>
1975.  
1976.  
1977.  
1978. <p>Christopher Ferreira, a spokesperson for&nbsp;GEO Group,&nbsp;the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/05/08/ice-private-prison-profits-corecivic-geo-group/">for-profit prison company</a> that operates Northwest Detention Center and 19 other ICE detention facilities, told The Intercept that GEO provides “high-quality services,” including medical care, “governed by&nbsp;standards set by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and independently accredited by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care.” Ferreira also noted that at the center where Daniela was detained, ICE provides government-administered health care to detainees.&nbsp;</p>
1979.  
1980.  
1981.  
1982. <p>Daniela, who is 27, immigrated to the United States in 2023 from Venezuela to seek asylum while pregnant with her first child, now a 2-year-old U.S. citizen. She missed her daughter while in ICE detention, she told The Intercept. They were kept apart for those two months.</p>
1983.  
1984.  
1985.  
1986. <p>“I have never left her alone,” Daniela said of her daughter.</p>
1987.  
1988.  
1989.  
1990. <p>Last week, after The Intercept made inquiries to DHS and GEO group, Daniela was released from ICE custody and reunited with her daughter.</p>
1991.  
1992.  
1993.  
1994.  
1995.  
1996.  
1997.  
1998. <p><span class="has-underline">“Detention is inherently</span> dangerous and damaging for children and pregnant women,” said Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., at a press conference in August.&nbsp;He was announcing a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/250721_Pregnancy_Report_v7.pdf">report</a>&nbsp;his staff compiled over the summer, which found 14 credible accounts of pregnant women being mistreated within immigration detention.&nbsp;</p>
1999.  
2000.  
2001.  
2002. <p>Pregnant detainees, their partners, ICE officials, and their attorneys have reported pregnant women being denied adequate medical care, being forced to sleep on the floor, and being denied sufficient meals and snacks. Attorneys claimed their pregnant clients had waited “weeks” to see a doctor.&nbsp;</p>
2003.  
2004.  
2005.  
2006. <p>The partner of a woman in DHS custody told Senate staff that the woman was pregnant and had been left to bleed for days before facility staff would take her to the hospital. According to their report, once the woman arrived at the hospital, she was left alone in a room to miscarry without any water or medical assistance for 24 hours.</p>
2007.  
2008.  
2009.  
2010.  
2011.  
2012.  
2013.  
2014. <p>A Senate Judiciary Committee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SENATE%20JUDICIARY%20COMMITTEE%20RANKING%20MEMBER%20REVEALS%20DEVASTATING%20INSIGHTS%20INTO%20ICE%20DETENTION%20IN%20EXCLUSIVE%20SITE%20VISIT.pdf">report</a>&nbsp;released in May found similar allegations of abuse against pregnant women within two Louisiana detention facilities.&nbsp;</p>
2015.  
2016.  
2017.  
2018. <p>One of the women described in the report, who was roughly four months pregnant and had experienced bleeding, said&nbsp;she&nbsp;had not seen a doctor in months. Another woman detained at the facility, who was two months pregnant, alleged that she had not been seen by a doctor since her arrival. Many women told staffers about a pregnant woman who had miscarried while detained and was allegedly still bleeding while being deported.</p>
2019.  
2020.  
2021.  
2022. <p>Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin denied allegations of the mistreatment of pregnant women.&nbsp;</p>
2023.  
2024.  
2025.  
2026. <p>“There have been no miscarriages on removal flights since President Trump took office,” McLaughlin wrote in a statement to The Intercept.&nbsp;“Detention of pregnant women is rare and has elevated oversight and review. No pregnant woman has been forced to sleep on the floor. Meals are certified by dieticians, and they are given their prenatal vitamins. These smears about ICE mistreating and denying women medical care are contributing to our ICE officers facing a 1,000% increase in assaults against them.”</p>
2027.  
2028.  
2029.  
2030. <p>Access to medical care is practically nonexistent within detention facilities, said Amanda Diaz, organizing director at Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant-led advocacy organization that runs a national reporting hotline for people in detention.&nbsp;</p>
2031.  
2032.  
2033.  
2034. <p>“Medical care inside of detention facilities is insufficient in general. So, when we add in more specified procedures or medical care, that’s just completely inexistent,” said Diaz.&nbsp;</p>
2035.  
2036.  
2037.  <aside class="promote-banner">
2038.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="/collections/the-war-on-immigrants/">
2039.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
2040.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="MCALLEN, TX - JUNE 23: A Guatemalan father and his daughter arrives with dozens of other women, men and their children at a bus station following release from Customs and Border Protection on June 23, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. Once families and individuals are released and given a court hearing date they are brought to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center to rest, clean up, enjoy a meal and to get guidance to their next destination. Before President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that halts the practice of separating families who are seeking asylum, over 2,300 immigrant children had been separated from their parents in the zero-tolerance policy for border crossers (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=2270 2270w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?w=1000 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
2041.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
2042.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
2043.            Read Our Complete Coverage          </p>
2044.        
2045.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">The War on Immigrants</h2>
2046.      </div>
2047.    </a>
2048.  </aside>
2049.  
2050.  
2051.  
2052. <p>Diaz’s group runs a national detention hotline, and she said that in June, they received a call from a woman who was two months pregnant and said she was&nbsp;detained in the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, another GEO Group facility.</p>
2053.  
2054.  
2055.  
2056. <p>The woman said she began experiencing abdominal pain and bleeding large blood clots. “The people around her in her pod and her cell started to call the nurse, and the medical care team, but they did not have a doctor present, nor did they have urgent medical staff there to respond,” said Diaz.</p>
2057.  
2058.  
2059.  
2060. <p>Diaz said the woman said she was forced to wait days to be seen at a hospital. Her organization has not been able to get in touch with the woman since her initial disclosure in June 2025.&nbsp;</p>
2061.  
2062.  
2063.  
2064. <p>Ferreira, the GEO Group spokesperson, said that people incarcerated at GEO Group facilities “are provided with access to teams of medical professionals including physicians, nurses, dentists, psychologists, and psychiatrists” as well as off-site specialists, emergency services, and hospitals.&nbsp;</p>
2065.  
2066.  
2067.  
2068. <p><span class="has-underline">In March,</span> Homeland Security&nbsp;<a href="https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/03/homeland-security-makes-cuts-to-offices-overseeing-civil-rights-protections/">announced</a>&nbsp;massive cuts to its civil rights and immigration oversight offices, which collected complaints about detention facilities and monitored conditions, leaving much of the agency’s conduct a black box. While the offices “haven’t been fully shut down,” according to Nathan-Pineau, “they’re essentially not functioning according to their mission.”</p>
2069.  
2070.  
2071.  
2072. <p>“They don’t want people to be able to report out what’s happening, what conditions are like, how they&#8217;re being mistreated,” said Nathan-Pineau.&nbsp;</p>
2073.  
2074.  
2075.  
2076. <p>In addition&nbsp;to allegations of inadequate medical care, experts also attest to poor food quality and inadequate nutrition within ICE facilities. “Food is usually expired or moldy or has maggots in them,” said Diaz.&nbsp;</p>
2077.  
2078.  
2079.  
2080. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“They don’t want people to be able to report how they’re being mistreated.”</p></blockquote></figure>
2081.  
2082.  
2083.  
2084. <p>Seven experts on immigration detention told The Intercept that the food quality within most ICE detention centers was extremely poor. “People report that they&#8217;re being fed maybe only once or twice a day, and that what they&#8217;re given is like a small sandwich or a burrito and like maybe a juice box, and that sometimes the food that they&#8217;re getting smells like it&#8217;s gone bad, or it might be expired,” said Nathan-Pineau. “I saw one report of a person who said they were given food that had visible mold on it.”&nbsp;</p>
2085.  
2086.  
2087.  
2088. <p>ICE facilities, which are often run by private contractors like the GEO Group, take “the lowest possible&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/geo-group-ice-detainees-wage">bid</a>” they can get for a food contractor, said&nbsp;Heffernan, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on pregnancy and immigration detention.</p>
2089.  
2090.  
2091.  
2092. <p>Because of the low-quality meals available, one of the only options for people detained in immigration facilities is purchasing food from the commissary, often at exorbitant prices.&nbsp;</p>
2093.  
2094.  
2095.  
2096. <p>“It’s a giant exploitation machine for private companies because they make the telecommunications and commissary food really expensive,” she said. “In most detention centers around the country, people are working for like $1 a day and then the can of tuna fish is like $6. … It’s just a whole racket.”</p>
2097.  
2098.  
2099.  
2100. <p>McLaughlin also denied these allegations.</p>
2101.  
2102.  
2103.  
2104. <p>“Another day and another hoax about ICE facilities. These FALSE allegations about mistreatment and denying pregnant woman medical care are disgusting. Pregnant women receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care,” she wrote&nbsp;in a statement to The Intercept.</p>
2105.  
2106.  
2107.  
2108. <p>With transparency eroded,&nbsp;the massive ramp-up of the Trump administration’s deportation machine has almost certainly contributed to an uptick in pregnant women in immigration detention.&nbsp;</p>
2109.  
2110.  
2111.  
2112. <p>Lakhani pointed to the Trump administration’s immigration arrest quota of 3,000 people per day.&nbsp;“Given the commitments of the administration to ramping up immigration enforcement,” she said, she expects to see “an extreme escalation.”</p>
2113.  
2114.  
2115.  
2116.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2117.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2118.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/05/08/ice-private-prison-profits-corecivic-geo-group/"
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2122.          >
2123.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/GettyImages-2213257788_4abae7-e1746736109743.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2124.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2125.        Related      </h2>
2126.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Private Prison CEO on ICE Contracts: We’re a Better Deal Than El Salvador’s CECOT</h3>
2127.    </span>
2128.    </a>
2129.  </div>
2130.  
2131.  
2132.  
2133. <p>Experts predict that the recent <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/10/corecivic-trump-big-beautiful-bill/">$45 billion cash infusion</a> from the Big, Beautiful Bill for immigration detention facilities is going to make the situation worse. The funding change will give immigration enforcement a budget that is 62 percent larger than the entire federal Bureau of Prisons, making immigration detention the largest carceral network in the&nbsp;country.</p>
2134.  
2135.  
2136.  
2137. <p>The issues predate the second Trump administration, said Heffernan. “Neither recent Democratic nor Republican administrations actually take the well-being of detained pregnant folks into account in a very real way,” she said. </p>
2138.  
2139.  
2140.  
2141. <p>Diaz agreed that the lack of compliance preexisted the current administration. But, she wrote, “this problem is even worse now that ICE is emboldened to act with impunity and zero accountability.”</p>
2142. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants/">The Trump Administration Is Hiding How Many Pregnant People Are in ICE Detention</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2143. ]]></content:encoded>
2144.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/ice-detention-pregnant-immigrants/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
2145.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
2146.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238835005-e1760045824648.jpg?fit=8667%2C4334' width='8667' height='4334' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500696</post-id>
2147. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2195569259-e1759512751353.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
2148. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2195569259-e1759512751353.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2149. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2150. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
2151. </media:content>
2152. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2153. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
2154. </media:content>
2155. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2156. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/guatemalan-immigrant-cpb-feat-1530033149.jpg?fit=300%2C150" medium="image">
2157. <media:title type="html">MCALLEN, TX - JUNE 23: A Guatemalan father and his daughter arrives with dozens of other women, men and their children at a bus station following release from Customs and Border Protection on June 23, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. Once families and individuals are released and given a court hearing date they are brought to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center to rest, clean up, enjoy a meal and to get guidance to their next destination. Before President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that halts the practice of separating families who are seeking asylum, over 2,300 immigrant children had been separated from their parents in the zero-tolerance policy for border crossers (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)</media:title>
2158. </media:content>
2159. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/GettyImages-2213257788_4abae7-e1746736109743.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2160.            </item>
2161.        
2162.            <item>
2163.                <title><![CDATA[Republican Governors Eagerly Join Trump’s Military Campaign Against Blue Cities]]></title>
2164.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/republican-governors-national-guard-trump/</link>
2165.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/republican-governors-national-guard-trump/#respond</comments>
2166.                <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2025 20:09:34 +0000</pubDate>
2167.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Nick Turse]]></dc:creator>
2168.                                 <category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
2169.  
2170.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
2171.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>An Intercept analysis finds nearly every Republican governor has deployed National Guard members to aid Trump’s domestic military agenda.</p>
2172. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/republican-governors-national-guard-trump/">Republican Governors Eagerly Join Trump’s Military Campaign Against Blue Cities</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2173. ]]></description>
2174.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
2175. <p><span class="has-underline">President Donald Trump</span> is conducting a partisan war on America, claiming extraordinary powers to target immigrants and deploy military forces to cities run by Democrats. In doing so, he has found willing allies: Republican governors have lined up behind him, providing troops to further his administration’s aims.</p>
2176.  
2177.  
2178.  
2179. <p>An Intercept analysis finds that almost all Republican-led states — 23 of the 27 with Republican governors — have been involved in deploying National Guard troops in support of <a href="https://theintercept.com/collections/the-war-on-immigrants/">Trump’s war on immigrants</a> and his urban occupations. In at least 19 states with Republican governors, Guard members are assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. National Guard troops from two additional red states have deployed to the nation’s capital, along with D.C. Guard members and soldiers from six of those 19 states assigned to help ICE. Another two Republican-led states have sent troops to aid Trump’s further militarization of the southern border.</p>
2180.  
2181.  
2182.  
2183. <p>Trump doesn’t hide the fact that he is <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/03/trump-military-occupy-dc-la-chicago/">targeting </a>Democratic<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/20/trump-federalize-washington-dc-military-troops-cost/"> strongholds</a>. “Almost all of these cities, most of these cities are Democrat-run,” Trump said on Monday, threatening that he might invoke the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/">Insurrection Act</a> — one of the executive branch’s most potent, oldest, and rarely used emergency powers — to facilitate the military occupations of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/29/trump-portland-troops-antifa/">Portland, Oregon</a>, and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/08/trump-chicago-ice-dhs-apocalypse-now/">Chicago</a> against the wishes of the Democratic mayors and governors of those cities and states.</p>
2184.  
2185.  
2186.  
2187. <p>National Guard troops serve under three statuses: Title 10 or federal control; Title 32, a federal-state hybrid; and state active duty, under full state control.</p>
2188.  
2189.  
2190.  
2191. <p>Members of the National Guard have been activated or deployed under&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/16/la-ice-protests-military-cost/">Title 10 authority</a> in at least seven states — Arizona,&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/16/la-ice-protests-military-cost/">California</a>, <a href="https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4218703/statement-by-chief-pentagon-spokesman-sean-parnell-on-dod-administrative-and-lo/">Florida</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/08/trump-chicago-ice-dhs-apocalypse-now/">Illinois</a>, New Mexico, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/29/trump-portland-troops-antifa/">Oregon</a>, and Texas — as occupation forces or to conduct anti-immigrant border operations. While the Democratic governors of California, Illinois, and Oregon have tried to fight off Title 10 deployments, Trump has found eager support from Republican governors.</p>
2192.  
2193.  
2194.  
2195.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2196.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2197.            href="https://theintercept.com/2022/02/02/texas-greg-abbott-operation-lone-star-national-guard/"
2198.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
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2202.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/GettyImages-1235507454.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2203.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2204.        Related      </h2>
2205.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Greg Abbott’s Border Theater Is Having Disastrous Consequences for Everyone Involved</h3>
2206.    </span>
2207.    </a>
2208.  </div>
2209.  
2210.  
2211.  
2212. <p>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott cheered his state’s support of Trump’s domestic military agenda. “I fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials,” Abbott&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1975027635295007073">posted on X</a> on Sunday night, touting his state’s other major contribution to Trump’s anti-immigration initiatives. “America must also know that Texas still has thousands of National Guard assisting with the Border security.”</p>
2213.  
2214.  
2215.  
2216. <p>About 200 soldiers from the Texas National Guard activated into Title 10 status were already in the greater Chicago area, a Northern Command spokesperson told The Intercept on Wednesday.&nbsp;They join 300 members of the Illinois National Guard who were also called into federal service by Trump.</p>
2217.  
2218.  
2219.  
2220. <p>The <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/20/trump-federalize-washington-dc-military-troops-cost/">occupation of Washington, D.C.</a>, is technically a Title 32 deployment, but since the capital has no governor, the D.C. National Guard’s chain of command runs from its commanding general to the secretary of the Army, to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, to Trump.&nbsp;Guard members from Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio,&nbsp;South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia — all of them Republican-led — have deployed to Washington alongside D.C. Guard troops.</p>
2221.  
2222.  
2223.  
2224. <p>Deployments to Memphis and New Orleans, under Title 32, are backed by the Republican governors of Tennessee and Louisiana.</p>
2225.  
2226.  
2227.  
2228. <p>After Trump floated a military occupation of New Orleans, in fact, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry did him two better. Late last month, Landry <a href="https://gov.louisiana.gov/assets/2025-Letters/9-29-25-LANG-RFApdf.pdf">sent a&nbsp;letter</a> to Hegseth asking him to “activate up to 1,000 Louisiana National Guard personnel under Title 32” to “deploy throughout the state to urban centers,” naming not only New Orleans but also Shreveport and Baton Rouge.</p>
2229.  
2230.  
2231.  
2232. <p>Other states headed by Republican governors, such as <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DFqgo7ZBaRz/">Alaska</a> and <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/9278960/army-national-guard-conducts-operation-giant-alp-laredo-texas">North Dakota</a>, have sent National Guard forces to aid the president’s anti-immigrant agenda at the <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/8909764/us-general-nordhaus-visits-national-guard-soldiers-southern-border">southern border</a>.</p>
2233.  
2234.  
2235.  
2236.  
2237.  
2238.  
2239.  
2240. <p>Governors can and have declined to supply troops for Trump’s domestic military campaign.&nbsp;</p>
2241.  
2242.  
2243.  
2244. <p>Republican Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont “politely declined” a federal request to deploy members of the Vermont National Guard to D.C. after also denying the Trump administration’s request to use Vermont National Guard soldiers to perform administrative duties at ICE detention facilities. Republican-led <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/kenklippenstein.bsky.social/post/3m25yz5grpk2s">Montana</a>, <a href="https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-08-27/ayotte-says-she-would-evaluate-nh-natl-guard-deployment-to-cities-but-no-request-has-come">New Hampshire, and Oklahoma </a>Guard members also have not aided either mission yet.&nbsp;</p>
2245.  
2246.  
2247.  
2248. <p>Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, the chair of the National Governors Association, on Thursday criticized the deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois as a violation of “states’ rights” in an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/us/politics/oklahoma-governor-national-guard.html">interview</a> with the New York Times. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration,” he said.</p>
2249.  
2250.  
2251.  
2252. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“Neither the National Guard’s legitimacy nor a governor’s political career can long survive being the face of a menacing police state.”</p></blockquote></figure>
2253.  
2254.  
2255.  
2256. <p>Sara Haghdoosti, the executive director of Win Without War, urged more governors to resist Trump’s militarization of America. &#8220;Governors should think seriously before rushing to implicate their state National Guard units in Trump&#8217;s mass deportation campaign,” she told The Intercept. “Communities ripped apart by ICE will long remember who abetted the raids they are experiencing. Neither the National Guard&#8217;s legitimacy nor a governor&#8217;s political career can long survive being the face of a menacing police state.&#8221;</p>
2257.  
2258.  
2259.  
2260. <p>Some red states have, however, gone above and beyond. The South Carolina National Guard are aiding ICE, joined the occupation forces in the nation’s capital, and have deployed as part of <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/9243820/army-national-guard-military-police-operate-black-hornet-drones-mcallen-texas">Joint Task Force-Southern Border</a> in support of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. National Guard members from Democrat-led states, like <a href="https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article-View/Article/4184257/arizona-national-guards-task-force-safe-strengthens-border-security/">Arizona</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article-View/Article/4118418/oregon-national-guard-prepares-for-southern-border-mission/">Oregon</a>, are also involved in operations along the increasingly <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/22/military-troops-deployed-border-ice/">militarized southern border</a>.</p>
2261.  
2262.  
2263.  
2264. <p>Attorneys representing Illinois and Oregon argued that the muted protests in their cities didn’t justify Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops, as legal hearings played out in two federal courtrooms at the same time on Thursday.&nbsp;</p>
2265.  
2266.  
2267.  
2268. <p>Asked to define the limits of the Guard deployment in Illinois, a lawyer for the Trump administration insisted it would be a “limited mission” of protecting federal property and federal agents, but he would not rule out its expansion. “I am very much struggling to figure out where this would ever stop,” the judge responded.</p>
2269.  
2270.  
2271.  
2272. <p><span class="has-underline">Trump and his</span> top aides are increasingly using the word “insurrection” in their discussions of Chicago and Portland after a federal judge ruled last month that Trump’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/09/la-ice-protests-national-guard-marines-trump/">deployment of&nbsp;federal&nbsp;troops to Los Angeles</a>&nbsp;was <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/03/trump-military-occupy-dc-la-chicago/">illegal</a>, and lawsuits have sought to block the occupations of Portland and Chicago.</p>
2273.  
2274.  
2275.  
2276. <p>During hyperbolic, and sometimes incoherent, <a href="https://www.rev.com/transcripts/trump-executive-order-10-06-25">comments</a> on Monday Trump continued to claim that Portland was <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/29/trump-portland-troops-antifa/">war-ravaged</a> and in a state of rebellion. “Portland has been on fire for years and not so much saving it. We have to save something else because I think that&#8217;s all insurrection. I really think that&#8217;s really criminal insurrection,” he told reporters. “We have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it, I&#8217;d do that. If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I&#8217;d do that.”</p>
2277.  
2278.  
2279.  
2280.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2281.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2282.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/"
2283.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
2284.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-insurrection-act"
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2287.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/crop_GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7-e1759856025406.webp?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2288.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2289.        Related      </h2>
2290.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act</h3>
2291.    </span>
2292.    </a>
2293.  </div>
2294.  
2295.  
2296.  
2297. <p>The Insurrection Act was signed into law in 1807 by then-President Thomas Jefferson and has roots in the Militia Acts of 1792, which defined the president’s power to call state militias into federal service during emergencies. Since the 1790s, the powers have been invoked in response to <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/guide-invocations-insurrection-act">30 crises including armed rebellions</a>, like the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s, when normal law enforcement and courts ceased to function. Under the Insurrection Act, the president can circumvent the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, a bedrock 19th-century law banning the use of federal troops to execute domestic law enforcement that is seen as fundamental to the democratic tradition in the United States.</p>
2298.  
2299.  
2300.  
2301. <p>Trump has also threatened to deploy National Guard troops to&nbsp;Baltimore,&nbsp;New York City,&nbsp;Oakland,&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/RedWave_Press/status/1967701966970065006" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. Louis</a>, San Francisco, and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-national-guard-crime-stats-92ee575c0d445320aa633f6abe2a26b9">Seattle</a> to put down supposed rebellions and to aid law enforcement agencies, despite <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/chicago-ice-blitz-black-surveillance-state-violence/">falling crime numbers </a>and pushback by local officials. “We&#8217;re going to make Chicago really great again, and we&#8217;re going to stop this crime,” Trump <a href="https://www.rev.com/transcripts/trump-executive-order-10-06-25">said </a>on Monday. “Then we&#8217;re going to go to another one, and we&#8217;re going to go city by city.”</p>
2302.  
2303.  
2304.  
2305. <p>“This level of involvement of the military within the United States is unprecedented and dangerous,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program. “The general prohibition, both in the law and in norms, against using the military for domestic law enforcement is intended to protect democracy and individual liberty. If we reach a place where the President can use the military against the American people at his whim, the danger to our democracy cannot be overstated.”</p>
2306.  
2307.  
2308.  
2309. <p>Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project, echoed these concerns and pointed to the danger of the president militarizing America’s cities. “We can&#8217;t let this president normalize military and armed federal policing in our country. Not only does it put troops in legal and ethical jeopardy, it does the same to our civil rights and civil liberties. It leaves, for example, the protection of vital Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights in the hands of those who are not trained to uphold those rights,” she said on a Monday press call. “It risks chilling the rights to speak and to assemble. In other words, that very fundamental American right to protest.”</p>
2310.  
2311.  
2312.  
2313. <p>Trump, in a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/30/trump-hegseth-generals-admirals-military-meeting/">rambling address</a> to hundreds of generals and admirals late last month, threatened to unleash the military on more American cities and use the occupations to hone the skills of the armed forces. “We’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room,” he <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/30/trump-hegseth-generals-admirals-military-meeting/">threatened</a>, calling out cities he said are “run by the radical left Democrats.” “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within,”&nbsp;he continued. “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”</p>
2314.  
2315.  
2316.  
2317.  
2318.  
2319.  
2320.  
2321. <p>Goitein sees Trump’s threat as one of the most worrying developments in his efforts to militarize the United States. “That is so far beyond the pale it&#8217;s hard to even know where to begin,” she said. “The military is trained to fight and destroy an enemy. That is what they&#8217;re trained to do — and he is saying he wants them to practice that training in the streets of U.S. cities. Every American should be horrified at that notion.”</p>
2322.  
2323.  
2324.  
2325. <p>U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled last month that Trump’s deployment of&nbsp;federal&nbsp;troops to Los Angeles,&nbsp;which began in June, was illegal and harkened back to Britain’s use of soldiers as law enforcement in colonial America. He warned that Trump intends to transform the National Guard into a presidential police force.</p>
2326.  
2327.  
2328.  
2329. <p>“Congress spoke clearly in 1878 when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law. Nearly 140 years later, Defendants — President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and the Department of Defense — deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” Breyer wrote in his&nbsp;<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.450934/gov.uscourts.cand.450934.176.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">52-page opinion</a>. “Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”</p>
2330.  
2331.  
2332.  
2333. <p>Breyer ruled that the Pentagon systematically used armed soldiers to perform police functions in California in violation of Posse Comitatus and planned to do so elsewhere in America. “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,”&nbsp;he <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.450934/gov.uscourts.cand.450934.176.0_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>, “have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal service in other cities across the country … thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”</p>
2334.  
2335.  
2336.  
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2342.      data-ga-track-label="trump-portland-troops-antifa"
2343.          >
2344.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AP25271862146810-e1759172477188.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2345.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2346.        Related      </h2>
2347.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Ignoring Court Ruling, Trump Sends Troops to Portland to Break Imagined Antifa “Siege”</h3>
2348.    </span>
2349.    </a>
2350.  </div>
2351.  
2352.  
2353.  
2354. <p>The administration has appealed the ruling and, in the face of the scathing opinion which applies only to California, Trump doubled down by ordering the occupations of Memphis, Portland, and Chicago.</p>
2355.  
2356.  
2357.  
2358. <p>“This is wildly out of step with American traditions and principles,” said Goitein. “If you just compare what&#8217;s happened in the last eight months with what happened in the nine presidencies before this — discounting Trump’s first term — there were exactly two deployments in those nine presidencies to quell civil unrest or enforce the law. Now we&#8217;ve seen five that have happened or been authorized or requested in eight months.”</p>
2359.  
2360.  
2361.  
2362. <p>The urban military occupations and National Guard deployments to aid ICE come as lines between local, state, and federal law enforcement and the military have increasingly <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/04/united-police-state-of-america/">blurred</a> and the Trump administration pursues a raft of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/27/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-injunction/">authoritarian measures</a>&nbsp;designed to&nbsp;undermine the Constitution and weaken democracy, like&nbsp;attacks&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/05/14/delia-ramirez-birthright-citizenship-supreme-court-immigration/">birthright citizenship</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/30/rubio-noem-deport-aaup-ruling-free-speech/">free speech</a>,&nbsp;the exercise of expansive unilateral powers like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/us/politics/trump-immigrants-trials-deportation.html">deporting </a>people <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/25/trump-kilmar-abrego-garcia-deport/">without due process</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/climate/trump-coal-gas-plants-energy-emergency.html">rolling back energy regulations</a>, citing wartime and emergency powers; and using the Justice Department to target the president’s <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/top-prosecutor-trump-pressure-charge-new-york-ag-rcna235922">political enemies</a>.</p>
2363.  
2364.  
2365.  
2366. <p>Goitein said the United States was not yet a police state, but that between the militarization of cities, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/07/ice-raids-la-violence-video-bystanders/">aggressive actions</a> by armed federal agents, officials stopping people to ask for identification, and the government stoking fear and <a href="https://theintercept.com/collections/chilling-dissent/">chilling dissent</a>, America was on the precipice. “I would say we&#8217;re dangerously close to that. I think we are getting a taste of it in D.C.,” she said. “We don’t live in a police state yet. But that’s the direction in which we seem to be heading unless this is stopped.”</p>
2367. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/republican-governors-national-guard-trump/">Republican Governors Eagerly Join Trump’s Military Campaign Against Blue Cities</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2368. ]]></content:encoded>
2369.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/republican-governors-national-guard-trump/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
2370.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
2371.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?fit=3929%2C1964' width='3929' height='1964' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500571</post-id>
2372. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/GettyImages-1235507454.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
2373. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/GettyImages-1235507454.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2374. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2375. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
2376. </media:content>
2377. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2378. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
2379. </media:content>
2380. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/irwin-detention-center.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2381. <media:title type="html">An overview of Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia.</media:title>
2382. </media:content>
2383. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/crop_GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7-e1759856025406.webp?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2384. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AP25271862146810-e1759172477188.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2385.            </item>
2386.        
2387.            <item>
2388.                <title><![CDATA[Indiana Killed Their Partners Under Cover Of Darkness. They Want Answers.]]></title>
2389.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/indiana-execution-death-penalty-pentobarbital-injection/</link>
2390.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/indiana-execution-death-penalty-pentobarbital-injection/#respond</comments>
2391.                <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2025 17:37:03 +0000</pubDate>
2392.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Liliana Segura]]></dc:creator>
2393.                                 <category><![CDATA[Justice]]></category>
2394.  
2395.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
2396.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>On the eve of another midnight execution, questions are mounting over recent lethal injections that witnesses fear were botched.</p>
2397. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/indiana-execution-death-penalty-pentobarbital-injection/">Indiana Killed Their Partners Under Cover Of Darkness. They Want Answers.</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2398. ]]></description>
2399.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
2400. <p><span class="has-underline">On the night</span> Tahina Corcoran watched the state kill her husband at the Indiana State Prison, she rushed back to her car as fast as she could. It was around 1 a.m. on December 18, and she had already checked out of her hotel. “I knew before we headed to the prison for the execution that I would most likely want to get as far away from Michigan City as possible,” she said. She didn’t stop to talk to anyone. “I hated everybody there.”</p>
2401.  
2402.  
2403.  
2404. <p>She broke down when she got inside the car. Tahina’s 30-year-old son Justin, who also witnessed the execution, tried to comfort her. Then they started the two-hour trip back home. They didn’t discuss what they had seen. “I just kept thinking, ‘I gotta get me home, I gotta get me and my son home.’”</p>
2405.  
2406.  
2407.  
2408. <p>The following days were a blur. She was in shock and felt numb. She’d had the foresight to finish all her holiday preparations long before the execution. “Everything was wrapped, all the decorations were up, all the food was bought for Christmas dinner,” she recalled. So she focused on retrieving her husband’s remains, picking them up just before New Year&#8217;s. “And as I was carrying his box of ashes, I just remember thinking to myself, ‘Wow, this is our first actual car ride together.’”</p>
2409.  
2410.  
2411.  
2412. <p>Tahina, 48, had known Joseph Corcoran since middle school. Over his 26 years on death row, she actually married him twice: first about five years after he was sentenced to die, and again two months before his execution. Her two kids, now grown, had been raised to know Corcoran and why he was on death row. “They knew that, you know, Joe was sick and that he was in prison,” Tahina said. “And they just knew that their mommy was very happy with Joe, and Joe was always a part of our family.”</p>
2413.  
2414.  
2415.  
2416. <p>Corcoran was 22 years old when he shot his brother, James, and three other men in Fort Wayne. His lawyers would argue that his actions were driven by undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. From the start of his incarceration, Corcoran was convinced that prison guards were using an ultrasound machine to force him to speak. He repeatedly said he wished to drop his appeals and volunteer for execution. Although prosecutors accused him of faking his delusions, Tahina saw them firsthand. “He was very mentally ill,” she said. “And Joe believed that the only way that he could escape this torment and torture was by dying.”</p>
2417.  
2418.  
2419.  
2420.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2421.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2422.            href="https://theintercept.com/2024/12/22/indiana-execution-joseph-corcoran-death-penalty/"
2423.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
2424.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: indiana-execution-joseph-corcoran-death-penalty"
2425.      data-ga-track-label="indiana-execution-joseph-corcoran-death-penalty"
2426.          >
2427.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/fence-outside-1-e1734648251448.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2428.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2429.        Related      </h2>
2430.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Indiana’s Midnight Executions Are a Relic of Another Age</h3>
2431.    </span>
2432.    </a>
2433.  </div>
2434.  
2435.  
2436.  
2437. <p>Corcoran was the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/12/22/indiana-execution-joseph-corcoran-death-penalty/">first person executed by the state of Indiana in 15 years</a>. As in many places, the state’s execution chamber had remained dormant due to a lack of available drugs used to carry out lethal injection. But in June 2024, then-Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb made an announcement. “After years of effort, the Indiana Department of Correction has acquired a drug — pentobarbital — which can be used to carry out executions,” he said. Within months, at the state attorney general’s request, the Indiana Supreme Court had scheduled two execution dates: Corcoran on December 18, and Benjamin Ritchie on May 20, 2025.</p>
2438.  
2439.  
2440.  
2441. <p>Indiana’s new drug protocol — a single, massive dose of pentobarbital — was the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/04/25/absolute-standards-execution-drug-pentobarbital/">same formula used by the federal government</a>, which carried out <a href="https://theintercept.com/collections/out-for-blood/">13 executions</a> at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute during President Donald Trump’s first term. Death penalty states had adopted the one-drug method despite doubts over its efficacy and turned to <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution/lethal-injection/compounding-pharmacies">compounding pharmacies</a> to obtain it. But the results could be disturbing. Some people executed with the pentobarbital appeared to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/06/byron-black-tennessee-exeuction/">suffer</a> on the gurney, and autopsies consistently showed pulmonary edema — fluid in the lungs that, according to experts, would feel like drowning.</p>
2442.  
2443.  
2444.  
2445. <p>“Joe knew that he was kind of a guinea pig,” Tahina said. He wanted an autopsy to be carried out after his death, she said, because he knew something could go wrong. He also allowed a journalist with the <a href="https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/">Indiana Capital Chronicle</a> to be added to his personal witness list — a way to circumvent a state ban on media witnesses. But in the end, things seemed to go mostly according to plan. The curtains went up at 12:34 a.m. Corcoran was declared dead 10 minutes later. “After a brief movement of his left hand and fingers at about 12:37 a.m.,” the journalist<a href="https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/12/18/death-row-inmate-jospeh-corcoran-executed-for-quadruple-murder/"> reported</a>, “Corcoran did not move again.”</p>
2446.  
2447.  
2448.  
2449. <p>But the execution of Benjamin Ritchie five months later did not go smoothly. Tahina was watching the livestream of a vigil outside the prison hosted by <a href="https://deathpenaltyaction.org/">Death Penalty Action</a> that night, when viewers received word that Ritchie had moved unexpectedly on the gurney. “He violently sat up — raised his shoulders — and twitched violently for about three seconds,” one defense attorney <a href="https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/05/20/state-executes-death-row-inmate-benjamin-ritchie-for-fatal-shooting-of-police-officer/">told reporters</a>.</p>
2450.  
2451.  
2452.  
2453. <p>Tahina was horrified. But it wasn’t until she read additional coverage weeks later that she began to question what she had seen at her husband’s execution. One expert <a href="https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/05/22/violent-moment-during-indiana-execution-draws-scrutiny-doc-officials-deny-botched-process/">said</a> that pentobarbital “should be really, really effective — really fast. No one should move.” This had not been the case with Corcoran. “You could see his hands twitching,” Tahina said. This echoed the initial news reports. But she also saw something other witnesses did not: “Joe tried to raise his head up.” Justin, who was sitting behind her, described the same thing. “To me, he tried to sit up, or at least it looked like it,” he said.</p>
2454.  
2455.  
2456.  
2457. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“How was I supposed to know that wasn’t normal?”</p></blockquote></figure>
2458.  
2459.  
2460.  
2461. <p>Tahina felt sick, then angry. “How was I supposed to know that wasn’t normal?”</p>
2462.  
2463.  
2464.  
2465. <p>She grew even more alarmed when she heard comments in the news from Indiana’s newly inaugurated Republican Gov. Mike Braun. His predecessor, Holcomb, had announced the state’s procurement of pentobarbital in June 2024 — six months before Corcoran’s execution. But Braun had since told reporters that the drugs only had “a 90-day shelf life” — and that the state had previously gotten “in a pickle” by purchasing pentobarbital that expired before it could be used.</p>
2466.  
2467.  
2468.  
2469. <p>Braun insisted that neither of the executions were carried out with expired pentobarbital. But Tahina didn’t believe him. His claims were confusing and contradictory. Shortly after Ritchie’s execution, Braun <a href="https://www.theindianalawyer.com/articles/braun-says-indiana-out-of-execution-drugs-signals-willingness-to-debate-death-penalty">told reporters</a> that the state had no more pentobarbital — and no plans to buy more. “We’ve got to address the broad issue of, what are other methods, the discussion of capital punishment in general,” he said. But just a few weeks later, his attorney general <a href="https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/06/27/indiana-seeks-execution-date-for-death-row-inmate-roy-lee-ward/">requested to schedule a third execution</a>.</p>
2470.  
2471.  
2472.  
2473. <p>Today, Tahina has more questions than answers. “I want to know what happened,” she said. As Indiana prepares to kill again this week, she is furious at the lack of transparency and accountability surrounding executions — as well as the apathy of the public toward the people executed in their name.</p>
2474.  
2475.  
2476.  
2477. <p>But she is especially enraged at the thought that her husband’s execution will be swept under the rug. “All of those people — the governor, everybody — have moved on. No big deal. But it’s a big deal to me. And it’s a big deal to my family. And I want the public to know what really goes on.”</p>
2478.  
2479.  
2480.  
2481. <figure class="wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default">
2482.    <img decoding="async"
2483.    src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?fit=4032%2C3024"
2484.    srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=4032 4032w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?w=3600 3600w"
2485.    sizes="auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)"
2486.    alt=""
2487.    width="4032"
2488.    height="3024"
2489.    loading="lazy"
2490.  />
2491.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
2492.      <span class="photo__caption">A printed photo of Tahina Corcoran posing with her husband Joseph Corcoran at the Indiana State Prison in October 2024.</span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Liliana Segura</span>    </figcaption>
2493.    </figure>
2494.  
2495.  
2496.  
2497. <p><span class="has-underline">Just after midnight</span> on Friday, October 10, barring any last-minute intervention, Indiana will execute 53-year-old Roy Ward by lethal injection. Despite the questions still swirling around the last two executions, the method will be the same as the one used to kill Corcoran and Ritchie. “No changes have been made to the execution protocol since Mr. Ritchie’s execution,” the Indiana attorney general’s office wrote in a federal court filing last month. Although there was a debrief and “verbal review” among members of the execution team, “a formal investigation or post-execution review was not conducted.”</p>
2498.  
2499.  
2500.  
2501. <p>Indiana’s revival of capital punishment is part of a wider resurgence across the country. The midnight execution will be the first of six executions in seven days, with death sentences subsequently set to be carried out in Florida, Missouri, Mississippi, Texas, and Arizona. To date, 34 people have been executed in the U.S. this year alone, with 10 more executions scheduled before the end of 2025. While the vast majority have been killed by lethal injection, two have been killed using nitrogen gas and another two by <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/04/06/firing-squad-execution-south-carolina-death-penalty/">firing squad</a>.</p>
2502.  
2503.  
2504.  
2505.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2506.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2507.            href="https://theintercept.com/2019/04/06/supreme-court-death-penalty-torture-bucklew/"
2508.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
2509.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: supreme-court-death-penalty-torture-bucklew"
2510.      data-ga-track-label="supreme-court-death-penalty-torture-bucklew"
2511.          >
2512.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/AP_429820822888-1554502309-e1554502449182.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2513.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2514.        Related      </h2>
2515.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">When It Comes to the Death Penalty, the Supreme Court Legalized Torture Long Ago</h3>
2516.    </span>
2517.    </a>
2518.  </div>
2519.  
2520.  
2521.  
2522. <p>Designed to resemble a medical procedure, lethal injection is still widely perceived as the most humane form of execution. But states have spent the past two decades retooling their formulas due to key drug shortages. As states have experimented with different drug combinations, manufacturers have been increasingly<a href="https://theintercept.com/2016/05/19/pfizers-death-penalty-ban-highlights-the-black-market-in-execution-drugs/"> reluctant to supply products for lethal injection</a>, prompting officials to seek out less reputable sources. To escape scrutiny, states have also passed legislation to make their drug sources secret — ostensibly to protect drug suppliers from anti-death penalty activists.</p>
2523.  
2524.  
2525.  
2526. <p>Today, all death penalty states hide the sources of their lethal injection drugs. But Indiana stands apart for its secrecy. It is the only active death penalty state that prohibits media witnesses from attending executions. While other states offer a designated media area on prison grounds, along with a chance to hear from witnesses, the Indiana Department of Correction provides a parking lot across the street and a brief statement delivered by email.</p>
2527.  
2528.  
2529.  
2530. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>Indiana is the only active death penalty state that prohibits media witnesses from attending executions. </p></blockquote></figure>
2531.  
2532.  
2533.  
2534. <p>Until recently, there was almost no publicly available information about the drugs used by the Indiana Department of Correction. This changed in late September with a series of state disclosures to Ward’s attorneys as part of federal litigation challenging his execution. Death penalty attorneys had spent months asking for records pertaining to the acquisition, storage, and destruction of the drugs. According to the state, “the pentobarbital arrived in a sealed cardboard box with a Styrofoam container inside.” The package contained the drug vials along with “inventory slips and certificates of analysis.” At the prison, the pentobarbital is put in “a safe behind three levels of locks,” the state wrote. “Three Indiana State Prison employees have the ability to unlock the safe.”</p>
2535.  
2536.  
2537.  
2538. <p>But the biggest revelation was that, according to the state, the Indiana Department of Correction does not rely on compounded pentobarbital as previously suspected but instead uses manufactured pentobarbital, procured from an unnamed pharmacy, to carry out executions. Although the source of the drugs remains secret, the presiding judge privately reviewed photographs, labeled “Highly Sensitive Documents,” and concluded that the evidence supported the state’s claims.</p>
2539.  
2540.  
2541.  
2542. <p>This was especially surprising in light of the 90-day shelf life invoked by the governor earlier this year, which strongly hinted at compounded pentobarbital, since compounded drugs are known to degrade faster than manufactured drugs. And it only deepened confusion over why Indiana has apparently destroyed at least three unused doses of pentobarbital, as revealed in records previously released through separate litigation. The heavily redacted documents include Drug Enforcement Administration forms documenting the destruction of the drugs through dubious means. One dose was destroyed by fire in June at a penitentiary three hours south of Michigan City. Another two doses were destroyed in July at the Indiana State Prison. The method of destruction reads “Poured in kitty litter.”</p>
2543.  
2544.  
2545.  
2546. <p>“Our biggest concern was that compounded pentobarbital was going to be used,” said Indiana defense attorney Joanna Green, who represents Ward. “We know now that it’s not.” Ward’s legal team has since dropped their remaining federal challenges, filing a joint motion requiring the state to show that it complied with its own protocol when executing Ward. “There are still a lot of questions about how Indiana obtains manufactured pentobarbital,” Green said. “And there are still significant questions about what happened in the previous two executions.”</p>
2547.  
2548.  
2549.  
2550.  
2551.  
2552.  
2553.  
2554. <p><span class="has-underline">Not long after</span> Ritchie’s execution, Tahina got a message via Facebook from a woman in Canada named Colleen Villeneuve. Tahina had been responding to cruel comments about Ritchie and the woman wanted to say thank you. She introduced herself as Ritchie’s girlfriend.</p>
2555.  
2556.  
2557.  
2558. <p>“Nobody wants to be connected with somebody through these circumstances,” Villeneuve told me. But the two women quickly bonded. For people whose loved ones are executed by the state, the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/10/17/trump-execution-christopher-vialva/">experience</a> can be <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/12/26/execution-death-penalty-families-orlando-hall/">crushingly isolating</a>. “It’s not the same as when anyone else dies,” Villeneuve said. “You have to deal with not only them being killed, but you have a whole army of people who talk bad about the person.”</p>
2559.  
2560.  
2561.  
2562. <p>Villeneuve had not witnessed Ritchie’s execution. She was at her hotel a few miles away when she heard the first reports from outside the prison about his violent movement on the gurney. Another lawyer sent her a text message saying the execution had gone quickly — “and that’s what I focused on.”</p>
2563.  
2564.  
2565.  
2566. <p>Villeneuve had first written to Richie six years earlier. Before that, “I’d never been to a prison, I’d never talked to anyone that was in prison.” But she stumbled upon a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKX-YBD4nIPfzZgp1bLARdUXYwNCxHR4V">documentary</a> on YouTube starring famed British journalist Trevor McDonald, who gained rare access to the penitentiary in Michigan City. Among those interviewed was Ritchie, a tattooed 30-something who talked bluntly about his life and his crime with a mix of self-reflection and bravado.</p>
2567.  
2568.  
2569.  
2570. <p>Ritchie was 20 years old when he shot a police officer during a botched robbery. Although he disputed the state’s version of events — prosecutors said he ambushed his victim, while Ritchie said he fired while running away — he did not deny his guilt. He was a “stupid kid,” he said. “I would do things without thinking about ’em.”</p>
2571.  
2572.  
2573.  
2574. <p>Villeneuve was struck by Ritchie. “He just didn’t fit, you know, the Ted Bundy type” she imagined to be on death row. Instead, she saw a man acting “full of himself,” trying to be tough for the cameras. On a whim, she wrote to Ritchie, who replied with “the most ridiculous letter,” trying to “make himself sound cool and available.” Nevertheless, the two kept writing. A year later, Villeneuve went to visit Ritchie for the first time.</p>
2575.  
2576.  
2577.  
2578. <p>The closer Villeneuve became to Ritchie, the less he resembled the swaggering convict he tried to portray in the documentary. She found him to be a funny, compassionate man who would do anything for his cat, Cletus, a black and white shorthair whom he’d raised as part of the prison’s cat therapy program. She was also confronted with his painful family history. As his lawyers would explain in his clemency petition, Ritchie’s childhood was filled with trauma and neglect that shaped his early life. When he was 10 years old, Ritchie was sent to a psychiatric facility, where he “attempted suicide and told hospital staff he felt like ‘everyone would be better off if I were dead.’”</p>
2579.  
2580.  
2581.  
2582. <p>Ritchie seemed determined to help Villeneuve raise her own daughter, Shiloh, with the love he’d lacked growing up. In a letter asking for clemency, Villeneuve wrote that he had been “instrumental with her growth. … Shiloh enjoys nothing more than to tell Benjamin about a test she aced or a new move she learned in kick-boxing.” In the days leading up to his execution, Shiloh shared videos he sent<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/03/fcc-brendan-carr-cellphone-prison-censorship/"> via a contraband cellphone </a>on TikTok.</p>
2583.  
2584.  
2585.  
2586. <figure class="wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default">
2587.    <img decoding="async"
2588.    src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?fit=1372%2C828"
2589.    srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?w=1372 1372w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?w=1000 1000w"
2590.    sizes="auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)"
2591.    alt=""
2592.    width="1372"
2593.    height="828"
2594.    loading="lazy"
2595.  />
2596.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
2597.      <span class="photo__caption">An undated photo of Benjamin Ritchie posing in his death row cell with his cat, Cletus, at the Indiana State Prison.</span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Colleen Villeneuve</span>    </figcaption>
2598.    </figure>
2599.  
2600.  
2601.  
2602. <p>Ritchie had never really dwelled on the state’s plan to kill him. “He didn’t think they were ever going to,” Villeneuve said. In the documentary, he pointed out that “a lot of us are getting off death row” — and the odds were indeed in his favor. Until Corcoran’s execution last December, only 20 of the 97 people sentenced to die in Indiana’s “modern” death penalty era had died at the hands of the state. The majority have been removed from death row due to reversals by appellate courts, commutations, or deals reached with prosecutors.</p>
2603.  
2604.  
2605.  
2606. <p>Villeneuve was less optimistic about Ritchie’s chances of surviving death row. Still, in retrospect, she said she was in denial too. She and Ritchie did not discuss any end-of-life preparations “I honestly didn’t think we were going to get to that,” she said.</p>
2607.  
2608.  
2609.  
2610. <p>The last time she saw him was on video, right before they came to take him away, she said. What came next is contained in affidavits later filed in court. Witnesses were led into the small room. The curtains went up at 12:35 a.m. A couple minutes in, Ritchie suddenly raised up his torso from the gurney, pushing hard against the restraints before collapsing back down. One witness gasped and grabbed one of the attorneys by the arm. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said, bowing her head. When she looked back up, he was gone.</p>
2611.  
2612.  
2613.  
2614.  
2615.  
2616.  
2617.  
2618. <p><span class="has-underline">In August I</span> went to see Tahina at her home in a rural suburb about an hour from Fort Wayne. Corcoran’s paintings hung throughout the house; on her refrigerator was a handwritten letter from Corcoran listing songs he liked. “Remember me when you listen,” it said. In the living room, a blue urn holding Corcoran’s ashes were displayed in a large wooden cabinet.</p>
2619.  
2620.  
2621.  
2622. <p>Tahina had shared Corcoran’s private autopsy report, giving me permission to send it to two different experts. But both said that the reports did not contain sufficient detail to draw any firm conclusions about whether his execution had been botched. Although it noted congestion in Corcoran’s organs — one potential sign of pulmonary edema — his lungs were not as heavy as those seen in other autopsies of people killed by lethal injection.</p>
2623.  
2624.  
2625.  
2626. <p>Tahina found the lack of clarity frustrating. She was still trying to make sense of her husband’s death. Yet much of the visit centered on his life. She showed me the top she wore to his execution — a gray sweatshirt stamped with a pink palmprint reading “Joseph Corcoran touched this heart” — along with a scrapbook stuffed with photos, handmade greeting cards, and newspaper clippings. There were pages of wedding pictures; she had the request Corcoran submitted seeking permission to marry her in 2004 and the index cards with the handwritten script from their ceremony 20 years later.</p>
2627.  
2628.  
2629.  
2630. <p>Tahina had asked her son Justin to join us, along with Corcoran’s spiritual adviser, Rev. David Leitzel, who knew Corcoran’s family from his church. Whereas Tahina’s early recollections of Corcoran were of a school crush on a boy who dressed like Wally Cleaver from “Leave It to Beaver,” Leitzel remembered a child who seemed slightly out of step with his peers. “If I pull up pictures, you’ll be hard pressed to find one of Joe smiling,” he said.&nbsp;</p>
2631.  
2632.  
2633.  
2634. <p>Conversations about Corcoran were haunted by the death of his parents. They were murdered in 1992, five years before Corcoran committed the killings that sent him to death row. Corcoran was tried as a juvenile for his parents’ murders but acquitted. Many believed he did it. Although Tahina didn’t, she also questioned why he never received the help he clearly needed afterward. If he’d been properly diagnosed and medicated, she said, he might have been able to live a normal life outside prison.</p>
2635.  
2636.  
2637.  
2638. <p>Instead, like many condemned people with mental illness, Corcoran’s delusions worsened during his decades on death row. Tahina read one of his later letters aloud, in which he chronicled a “typical day.” It began with a harrowing account of trying to sleep, which he could only do by conjuring violent images of killing prison officers. “That is the nonsense the people who man the ultrasound surveillance devices put me through whenever I try to sleep,” he wrote. The mind control technology dictated his thoughts, speech, and muscles, he wrote, causing pain and involuntary movement throughout his body. “That is why people around me think I have Tourettes.”</p>
2639.  
2640.  
2641.  
2642. <p>Leitzel was disturbed by the letter. He had never heard Corcoran talk that way. Tahina said Corcoran probably hid his delusions from Leitzel because he felt ashamed. But the two also shared many of the same positive impressions of Corcoran. He was highly intelligent, had a sense of humor, and was deeply devout. To Tahina, he was the closest thing there was to a soulmate. “He could always make me smile.”</p>
2643.  
2644.  
2645.  
2646.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2647.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2648.            href="https://theintercept.com/2020/12/26/execution-death-penalty-families-orlando-hall/"
2649.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
2650.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: execution-death-penalty-families-orlando-hall"
2651.      data-ga-track-label="execution-death-penalty-families-orlando-hall"
2652.          >
2653.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12212020OrlandoHall-052-ft.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2654.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2655.        Related      </h2>
2656.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Death Penalty’s Other Victims</h3>
2657.    </span>
2658.    </a>
2659.  </div>
2660.  
2661.  
2662.  
2663. <p>Throughout my visit to their home, Justin had mostly listened. He had not wanted to attend the execution. But he had gone to support his mother. When it came time to describe what he saw, he spoke quietly and deliberately. “It’s been almost a year and I’m still having nightmares,” he said.</p>
2664.  
2665.  
2666.  
2667. <p>The days before were a blur. He remembered sharing Corcoran’s last meal with him, which was served several days before the execution. The warden brought several pints of Ben &amp; Jerry’s ice cream, which they ate as a family. It was then that the warden ran down the logistics of what would happen on the night of the execution.</p>
2668.  
2669.  
2670.  
2671. <p>The vans had picked them up from their hotel around 10 p.m. They arrived at the prison, went through security, and were taken to a building toward the back of the sprawling penitentiary. It was after 12:30 a.m. when they were led to the witness chamber, a cramped room with two rows of chairs facing a small window. The lights were lowered. At 12:34 a.m. the blinds were raised. Corcoran was strapped down to the gurney, with Leitzel by his side.</p>
2672.  
2673.  
2674.  
2675. <p>Tahina stood in front of a living room window to recreate the scene. “I had a full view of my husband’s body,” she said. But she could not hear anything in the chamber. Nor could she tell when the drugs were actually delivered. But she was firm that Corcoran&nbsp;moved. “He went like this,” she said, straining her head forward. “And tried to raise up.”</p>
2676.  
2677.  
2678.  
2679. <p>“Yeah,” Justin said. “He looked like he was trying to look,” he said, turning his own head to the side.</p>
2680.  
2681.  
2682.  
2683. <p>“And then he literally tried to raise the top part of his body,” Tahina said. She went over to the couch and laid down with her arms out, acting out what she had seen.</p>
2684.  
2685.  
2686.  
2687. <p>Although he was sitting beside him in the death chamber, Leitzel did not see Corcoran move. But he conceded that his eyes were closed in prayer the whole time. He also said something startling. Looking out from the death chamber, he could not see the witnesses at all. He realized that the window between the rooms was made up of one-way glass. Corcoran had always told Tahina that her face was the last thing he wanted to see before he died. But in the end, he could not see her at all.&nbsp;</p>
2688.  
2689.  
2690.  
2691. <p>Tahina, meanwhile, cannot escape the images from that night. “Once you see it you can’t unsee it,” she said. “So I try to keep my mind scrambled, I try to keep everything busy, busy, busy in my head all the time.” If she doesn’t, she said, taking a deep breath, “All I can see is my husband strapped down on that gurney.”</p>
2692.  
2693.  
2694.  
2695. <p><strong>Update: October 10, 2025</strong><br><em>Roy Ward was executed by lethal injection on Friday, October 10, at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. According to the Indiana Department of Correction, the execution began &#8220;shortly after&#8221; midnight. He was pronounced dead at 12:33 a.m. </em></p>
2696. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/indiana-execution-death-penalty-pentobarbital-injection/">Indiana Killed Their Partners Under Cover Of Darkness. They Want Answers.</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2697. ]]></content:encoded>
2698.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/indiana-execution-death-penalty-pentobarbital-injection/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
2699.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
2700.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?fit=4032%2C2016' width='4032' height='2016' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500589</post-id>
2701. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/fence-outside-1-e1734648251448.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
2702. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/fence-outside-1-e1734648251448.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2703. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6442.jpg?fit=4032%2C3024" medium="image" />
2704. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/AP_429820822888-1554502309-e1554502449182.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2705. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2706. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
2707. </media:content>
2708. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2709. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/irwin-detention-center.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2710. <media:title type="html">An overview of Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia.</media:title>
2711. </media:content>
2712. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/123_1.jpg?fit=1372%2C828" medium="image" />
2713. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12212020OrlandoHall-052-ft.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2714.            </item>
2715.        
2716.            <item>
2717.                <title><![CDATA[I Have Hope for This Ceasefire, But It Can’t Undo Two Years of Genocide]]></title>
2718.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/gaza-israel-genocide-ceasefire-trump-netanyahu/</link>
2719.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/gaza-israel-genocide-ceasefire-trump-netanyahu/#respond</comments>
2720.                <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2025 16:02:05 +0000</pubDate>
2721.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sara Awad]]></dc:creator>
2722.                                 <category><![CDATA[Voices]]></category>
2723. <category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
2724.  
2725.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
2726.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>U.S. President Donald Trump said the ceasefire deal marked “a wonderful day for everybody.” Why did it take two years to arrive?</p>
2727. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/gaza-israel-genocide-ceasefire-trump-netanyahu/">I Have Hope for This Ceasefire, But It Can’t Undo Two Years of Genocide</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2728. ]]></description>
2729.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
2730. <figure class="wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default">
2731.    <img decoding="async"
2732.    src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239185252_25fd70-e1760026678991.jpg?fit=1890%2C1890"
2733.    srcset=""
2734.    sizes="auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)"
2735.    alt="GAZA CITY, GAZA - OCTOBER 6: Smoke rises over southern Gaza City following a series of Israeli airstrikes on October 6, 2025, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's call to immediately halt the offensive. Israeli forces continued attacks from air, land, and sea, striking multiple areas across the city as destruction spread along the coastline and dense residential zones. (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)"
2736.    width="1890"
2737.    height="1890"
2738.    loading="lazy"
2739.  />
2740.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
2741.      <span class="photo__caption">Smoke from Israeli airstrikes rises over Gaza City amid ceasefire negotiations on Oct. 6, 2025.</span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Hassan Jedi / Anadolu via Getty Images</span>    </figcaption>
2742.    </figure>
2743.  
2744.  
2745.  
2746. <p><span class="has-underline">When I heard</span> that the latest round of ceasefire negotiations was happening, I felt nothing. I had zero interest in these talks. Countless times I’d followed the news and put my hopes into the idea that the politicians would decide it was time to stop the massacre of my people. <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/30/gaza-ceasefire-famine-starvation/">Countless times</a> I’d been<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/19/israel-gaza-ceasefire-hamas/"> disappointed</a>.</p>
2747.  
2748.  
2749.  
2750. <p>On October 9, 2025, at 2 a.m., it was quiet outside my family’s tent, where we’ve lived since Israel drove us from our home in Gaza City. I was reading the latest news like a child searching for even the smallest hope of going back home.</p>
2751.  
2752.  
2753.  
2754. <p>“This is a great day for the world,” the U.S. president <a href="https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-war-10-08-25#cmgin1qz800003b6nx7nmspoq">said</a> when the first phase of a ceasefire agreement was announced. “This is a wonderful day, a wonderful day for everybody.”</p>
2755.  
2756.  
2757.  
2758.  
2759.  
2760.  
2761.  
2762. <p>It has taken two years of unrelenting genocide for us to finally hear this. I keep wondering: Is it real? Might our suffering actually end soon?</p>
2763.  
2764.  
2765.  
2766. <p>This partial ceasefire deal comes amid the most horrific phase the Gaza Strip has witnessed since the war began. Gaza City has been under a rapidly advancing Israeli occupation, putting the roughly 200,000 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/24/gaza-city-diary-palestinian-displacement/">people who remain there</a> into unimaginable circumstances. According to the latest reports, Israel has displaced nearly 900,000 people from the city.</p>
2767.  
2768.  
2769.  
2770. <p>I became one of them just one month ago. It feels like a whole year. I left everything behind and fled to the south, where Israel has said it would be safer, but bombs still rain down around us. Now, the thought of returning home again brings life back into me. It brings peace even for a rare moment.</p>
2771.  
2772.  
2773.  
2774.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2775.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2776.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/26/gaza-starvation-hunger-diary/"
2777.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
2778.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: gaza-starvation-hunger-diary"
2779.      data-ga-track-label="gaza-starvation-hunger-diary"
2780.          >
2781.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2226013337-e1753493548272.jpeg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2782.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2783.        Related      </h2>
2784.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">“Food Has Become a Memory”: My Hunger Diary in Gaza</h3>
2785.    </span>
2786.    </a>
2787.  </div>
2788.  
2789.  
2790.  
2791. <p>“Will we go back home? Can I play with my cousins again?” my 5-year-old brother asked our mother. Even the youngest among us are clinging to the promise of starting our lives again, lives that have been on hold since 2023.</p>
2792.  
2793.  
2794.  
2795. <p>I hope Israel hasn’t destroyed my home, as it is my last remaining hope.</p>
2796.  
2797.  
2798.  
2799. <p>If the war really does come to an end, it could protect families from having&nbsp;to sleep with their children in the streets of Gaza, with no safe shelter to prevent them. It could shield us from the harshness of the approaching winter storms. It could <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/08/intercept-briefing-podcast-gaza-aid-food/">end our starvation</a> and allow us to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/01/13/israel-gaza-war-hiv-aids-medication/">access medicine</a> to treat illnesses.</p>
2800.  
2801.  
2802.  
2803. <p>A true end to the war could protect us from the overwhelming absence of peace, comfort, and dignity we have suffered throughout these two brutal years.&nbsp;</p>
2804.  
2805.  
2806.  
2807. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>Israel expects us to feel grateful for obtaining our basic rights to life and liberty — as if they were favors, not ordinary human rights.</p></blockquote></figure>
2808.  
2809.  
2810.  
2811. <p>My heart pounded as I followed the news last night. It was “the final minutes,”&nbsp;all the channels reported. Everyone was ready to sign. I watched my people finally smile — finally feel a moment of comfort — after two long years of sadness and grief.&nbsp;</p>
2812.  
2813.  
2814.  
2815. <p>Why did it take two full years? Were they waiting for us to suffer even more? Children, women, and men have been killed in this genocide. Generations are growing up and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/06/mothers-pregnant-gaza/">being born</a> amid these unfathomable horrors. This war has shaped new identities — minds and hearts forged in pain, loss, and resilience.</p>
2816.  
2817.  
2818.  
2819. <p>Now, Israel expects us to feel grateful for obtaining our basic rights to life and liberty — as if they were favors, not ordinary human rights.</p>
2820.  
2821.  
2822.  
2823. <p>In the tent camps where I am now displaced, the word “ceasefire” feels empty. The last round of ceasefire negotiations began with enthusiasm. It ended with my family displaced in a tent.&nbsp;</p>
2824.  
2825.  
2826.  
2827. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>A ceasefire cannot rebuild their homes, or restore their peace and stability.</p></blockquote></figure>
2828.  
2829.  
2830.  
2831. <p>The suffering is far beyond what any agreement can fix. I’ve only lived in a tent for one month, and already I feel suffocated. Some have been here for two years. A ceasefire cannot rebuild their homes, or restore their peace and stability.</p>
2832.  
2833.  
2834.  
2835. <p>“I have no home. I’ll stay in this tent,” said Abu Ihsan, a young man who recently became our neighbor in shared displacement.</p>
2836.  
2837.  
2838.  
2839. <p>And for the families of the martyrs, a ceasefire will not bring their loved ones back. A daughter has lost her <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/02/gaza-aid-sites-killing-israel/">mother</a>; a wife, her husband; a friend, their lifelong companion. The fighting may stop, but their grief has only just begun. People post photos and beg their loved ones to come back. Who will have the heart to tell them the truth?<br><br><!-- BLOCK(promote-post)[1](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PROMOTE_POST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22slug%22%3A%22israel-palestine%22%2C%22crop%22%3A%22promo%22%7D) -->  <aside class="promote-banner">
2840.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="https://theintercept.com/collections/israel-palestine/">
2841.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
2842.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=5760 5760w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=3600 3600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
2843.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
2844.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
2845.            Read our complete coverage          </p>
2846.        
2847.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Israel’s War on Gaza</h2>
2848.      </div>
2849.    </a>
2850.  </aside>
2851. <!-- END-BLOCK(promote-post)[1] --></p>
2852.  
2853.  
2854.  
2855. <p>Ceasefire doesn’t mean the end of our suffering. It is simply a step toward justice after <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/06/26/intercepted-gaza-palestine-families-documentary/">endless days and nights</a> filled with fear and violence against us in Gaza. It doesn’t bring back the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/10/06/israel-bombing-schools-children-gaza-education/">schools</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/02/09/deconstructed-gaza-university-education/">universities</a>, hospitals, streets, or homes that Israel bombed. It cannot heal the<a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/12/11/north-gaza-israel-generals-plan-survivors/"> trauma</a> we carry from those long nights of pain and terror. The sounds of drones and explosions will forever echo in our minds. A ceasefire cannot erase that.</p>
2856.  
2857.  
2858.  
2859. <p>As ceasefire headlines fill the news, we are told to be hopeful. Is our hope fragile, or truly impossible? After Israel<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/19/israel-gaza-ceasefire-hamas/"> broke the last ceasefire&nbsp;in March</a>, fear filled our hearts. We told each other to balance our enthusiasm, as we’re dealing with Israel, and the word “Israel” carried the weight of broken promises.&nbsp;</p>
2860.  
2861.  
2862.  
2863. <p>Yet we are chasing every chance to reclaim our peace. This ceasefire might offer us a moment to begin healing from the pain we have carried for so long.</p>
2864.  
2865.  
2866.  
2867. <p>I cannot wait to see my people happy again — to hear children laugh, to watch students return to their schools. I long to see cafes filled with friends, tables full of food, and faces free of pain.</p>
2868.  
2869.  
2870.  
2871. <p>I have waited two long years to document this news: I have survived this genocide. I am alive, and I write in hope for better days ahead.&nbsp;</p>
2872.  
2873.  
2874.  
2875. <p>Gaza breathes, again.</p>
2876. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/gaza-israel-genocide-ceasefire-trump-netanyahu/">I Have Hope for This Ceasefire, But It Can’t Undo Two Years of Genocide</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2877. ]]></content:encoded>
2878.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/09/gaza-israel-genocide-ceasefire-trump-netanyahu/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
2879.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
2880.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239185252-e1760021721184.jpg?fit=2835%2C1418' width='2835' height='1418' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500606</post-id>
2881. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239185252_25fd70-e1760026678991.jpg?fit=1890%2C1890" />
2882. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239185252_25fd70-e1760026678991.jpg?fit=1890%2C1890" medium="image">
2883. <media:title type="html">GAZA CITY, GAZA - OCTOBER 6: Smoke rises over southern Gaza City following a series of Israeli airstrikes on October 6, 2025, despite U.S. President Donald Trump&#039;s call to immediately halt the offensive. Israeli forces continued attacks from air, land, and sea, striking multiple areas across the city as destruction spread along the coastline and dense residential zones. (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu via Getty Images)</media:title>
2884. </media:content>
2885. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2886. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
2887. </media:content>
2888. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
2889. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
2890. </media:content>
2891. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2892. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2226013337-e1753493548272.jpeg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
2893. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?fit=300%2C150" medium="image">
2894. <media:title type="html">DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)</media:title>
2895. </media:content>
2896.            </item>
2897.        
2898.            <item>
2899.                <title><![CDATA[Fetterman Is Sole Democrat to Vote Against Blocking Caribbean Drug Boat Attacks]]></title>
2900.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/</link>
2901.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/#respond</comments>
2902.                <pubDate>Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:27:14 +0000</pubDate>
2903.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Sledge]]></dc:creator>
2904.                                 <category><![CDATA[National Security]]></category>
2905. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
2906.  
2907.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
2908.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>It was the first time members of Congress were put on record about whether they supported or opposed the president’s war in the Caribbean.</p>
2909. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/">Fetterman Is Sole Democrat to Vote Against Blocking Caribbean Drug Boat Attacks</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
2910. ]]></description>
2911.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
2912. <p><span class="has-underline">Republican Senators, with</span> an assist from Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., voted down an attempt block the Trump administration’s missile strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats on Wednesday, hours after a nominee to serve as the CIA’s top lawyer dodged questions from Democrats about the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/">secret legal justification</a> for the strikes at his confirmation hearing.</p>
2913.  
2914.  
2915.  
2916. <p>The Senate voted 51-48 against a War Powers Act resolution sponsored by Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tim Kaine, D-Va. — the first time members of Congress went on the record about the strikes.</p>
2917.  
2918.  
2919.  
2920. <p>If passed, the resolution would have blocked Donald Trump’s administration from conducting further strikes without congressional approval.</p>
2921.  
2922.  
2923.  
2924. <p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/10/trump-venezuela-boat-attack-drone/">Sen. Rand Paul</a> of Kentucky and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans<strong> </strong>to vote in favor of the resolution. Fetterman was the sole Democrat to break with the rest of his caucus, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/28/fetterman-iran-trump-war-powers/">mirroring his vote earlier this year</a> for a similar resolution in response to the Trump administration’s strike on Iran. (Fetterman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, did not vote.</p>
2925.  
2926.  
2927.  
2928. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“There is also the policy issue of the risk of the U.S. getting embroiled in another war.”</p></blockquote></figure>
2929.  
2930.  
2931.  
2932. <p>The vote came days after the fourth confirmed boat strike conducted by the U.S. military. Those strikes, which the administration claims hit boats carrying drugs, have taken the lives of at least 21 people.</p>
2933.  
2934.  
2935.  
2936. <p>Hours before the vote, Colombian President Gustavo Petro <a href="https://x.com/petrogustavo/status/1976004606829498869">said on social media</a> that evidence suggested that the fourth boat strike was against a Colombian vessel carrying Colombian citizens.</p>
2937.  
2938.  
2939.  
2940.  
2941.  
2942.  
2943.  
2944. <p>While Colombia is a nominal U.S. ally in the war on drugs, the strikes have led to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/09/venezuela-boat-oil-trump-latin-america/">increased tensions </a>with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has pledged to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/07/venezuela-on-edge-trump-regime-change-whispers">defend his country by force if necessary</a> as the U.S. deploys thousands of military personnel in the Caribbean.</p>
2945.  
2946.  
2947.  
2948. <p>Schiff said the strikes raised questions about the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.</p>
2949.  
2950.  
2951.  
2952. <p>“There is also the policy issue of the risk of the U.S. getting embroiled in another war,” he said.</p>
2953.  
2954.  
2955.  
2956.  <div class="promote-related-post">
2957.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
2958.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/28/fetterman-iran-trump-war-powers/"
2959.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
2960.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: fetterman-iran-trump-war-powers"
2961.      data-ga-track-label="fetterman-iran-trump-war-powers"
2962.          >
2963.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GettyImages-2221649272-e1751091648412.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
2964.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
2965.        Related      </h2>
2966.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Fetterman Voted With GOP to Make Sure Trump Can Attack Iran Again</h3>
2967.    </span>
2968.    </a>
2969.  </div>
2970.  
2971.  
2972.  
2973. <p>The Trump administration has not sought congressional approval for the strikes, despite declaring last week that it was at war with drug traffickers. Scholars have said the Trump administration’s legal case for the attacks is <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/10/trump-venezuela-boat-attack-drone/">baseless</a>.</p>
2974.  
2975.  
2976.  
2977. <p>Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, defended the Trump administration’s actions.</p>
2978.  
2979.  
2980.  
2981. <p>“People were attacking our country by bringing in poisonous substances,” he said. “The people carrying those drugs were terrorists, plain and simple. They were trafficking drugs that finance a designated foreign terrorist organization.”</p>
2982.  
2983.  
2984.  
2985. <!-- BLOCK(pullquote)[1](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PULLQUOTE%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22pull%22%3A%22left%22%7D) --><blockquote class="stylized pull-left" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="left"><!-- CONTENT(pullquote)[1] -->“We will never know, because they were blown to smithereens.”<!-- END-CONTENT(pullquote)[1] --></blockquote><!-- END-BLOCK(pullquote)[1] -->
2986.  
2987.  
2988.  
2989. <p>His fellow Republican, Paul, said that the terrorist label has been twisted out of recognition.</p>
2990.  
2991.  
2992.  
2993. <p>“The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd might stop to ponder that a good percentage of the ships that we actually search turn out not to be drug smugglers,” Paul said. “We will never know, because they were blown to smithereens.”</p>
2994.  
2995.  
2996.  
2997. <p>Ahead of the vote, Schiff and Kaine sought to cast it as an attempt to force the administration to comply with the Constitution in order to win over Republicans who might take a principled vote in favor of checks and balances. That prospect was dashed by the vote, which turned into a nearly party-line affair.</p>
2998.  
2999.  
3000.  
3001.  
3002.  
3003.  
3004.  
3005. <p>The most salient political effect for Democrats may have been putting virtually the entire Republican caucus on record.</p>
3006.  
3007.  
3008.  
3009. <p>Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has introduced a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/11/venezuela-boat-attack-trump-ilhan-omar/">similar </a>War Powers Resolution in the House of Representatives that has yet to come up for a vote.</p>
3010.  
3011.  
3012.  
3013. <p>As Kaine acknowledged earlier Wednesday, Trump could veto the measures even if they overcome an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Congress.</p>
3014.  
3015.  
3016.  
3017. <p>Still, he argued that a similar <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/30/house-repeal-authorized-use-military-force-iran/">War Powers Resolution</a> that Trump vetoed in 2020, after he ordered a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/09/donald-trump-iran-suleimani-murder/">strike on an Iranian military commander</a>, served as a check on further military actions.</p>
3018.  
3019.  
3020.  
3021.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3022.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3023.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/"
3024.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3025.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs"
3026.      data-ga-track-label="collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs"
3027.          >
3028.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00_Prelude_Article-crop2.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3029.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3030.        Related      </h2>
3031.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Trump’s War on Drugs</h3>
3032.    </span>
3033.    </a>
3034.  </div>
3035.  
3036.  
3037.  
3038. <p>Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the debate over the boat strikes spilled over into the confirmation hearing of Joshua Simmons, a top legal adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to serve as general counsel for the CIA.</p>
3039.  
3040.  
3041.  
3042. <p>Simmons evaded questions from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee about whether he was involved in internal discussions about the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/">legal basis </a>for <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/01/trump-venezuela-boat-strike-designated-terror-organization/">the strikes</a>, which has not been made public.</p>
3043.  
3044.  
3045.  
3046. <p>Simmons said, “I’m not in a position to discuss any legal advice that I may or may not have provided.”</p>
3047. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/">Fetterman Is Sole Democrat to Vote Against Blocking Caribbean Drug Boat Attacks</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3048. ]]></content:encoded>
3049.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/venezuela-boat-strikes-senate-war-powers/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
3050.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
3051.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238577683-e1759968641799.jpg?fit=3000%2C1500' width='3000' height='1500' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500573</post-id>
3052. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
3053. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3054. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
3055. </media:content>
3056. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3057. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
3058. </media:content>
3059. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3060. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GettyImages-2221649272-e1751091648412.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3061. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00_Prelude_Article-crop2.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3062.            </item>
3063.        
3064.            <item>
3065.                <title><![CDATA[Trump’s Plan to Deprive Palestinians Any Say in Their Future]]></title>
3066.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-netanyahu-peace-plan-gaza-protest/</link>
3067.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-netanyahu-peace-plan-gaza-protest/#respond</comments>
3068.                <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 18:14:31 +0000</pubDate>
3069.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Sunjeev Bery]]></dc:creator>
3070.                                 <category><![CDATA[Voices]]></category>
3071. <category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
3072.  
3073.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
3074.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>This is not the time for supporters of Palestinian self-determination to be quiet. It’s the moment for us to demand more.</p>
3075. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-netanyahu-peace-plan-gaza-protest/">Trump’s Plan to Deprive Palestinians Any Say in Their Future</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3076. ]]></description>
3077.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
3078. <figure class="wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default">
3079.    <img decoding="async"
3080.    src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?fit=3664%2C2442"
3081.    srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=3664 3664w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?w=3600 3600w"
3082.    sizes="auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)"
3083.    alt="President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the West Wing of the White House, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington."
3084.    width="3664"
3085.    height="2442"
3086.    loading="lazy"
3087.  />
3088.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
3089.      <span class="photo__caption">Donald Trump greets Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington, D.C.</span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Alex Brandon/AP Photo</span>    </figcaption>
3090.    </figure>
3091.  
3092.  
3093.  
3094. <p><span class="has-underline">For everyone horrified</span> by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, it is easy to be seduced by the latest headlines regarding President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-gaza-plan-israel-palestine-benjamin-netanyahu-10800335">so-called peace plan</a>. After two years of mass destruction, the present moment offers the contradictory possibility of a near-term pause in Israel’s deadly assault combined with the continued long-term subjugation of the Palestinian people.</p>
3095.  
3096.  
3097.  
3098. <p>How we arrived at this moment is the result of multiple factors, but it’s hard to overstate the impact of public outrage. Trump has never been subtle about his narcissistic desire to be seen as a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Prize. At the same time, anti-Israel sentiment is now <a href="https://www.jta.org/2025/06/12/united-states/sympathy-for-israelis-drops-among-republican-voters-poll-finds">negatively affecting</a> Trump’s approval ratings, with only 35 percent of American voters approving of his handling of Gaza. The Republican Party <a href="https://www.jta.org/2025/06/12/united-states/sympathy-for-israelis-drops-among-republican-voters-poll-finds">base</a> is increasingly <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/younger-generations-growing-unfavorable-towards-israel-polls">skeptical</a> of the U.S.–Israel alliance, and Jewish Americans are demonstrating rising <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/06/jewish-americans-israel-poll-gaza/">revulsion</a> over Israel’s crimes against humanity. And no one should be surprised if there has been private engagement by <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-military-mossad-spy-agency-end-war-gaza-letters-netanyahu-rcna201280">Israeli elites</a> who are already<a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-863123"> fed up </a>with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and are seeking an off-ramp that enables them to escape global isolation — while preserving their domination over Palestinians.</p>
3099.  
3100.  
3101.  
3102. <p>The simple reality is that public opinion matters. Even if political elites in the U.S. and Israel pretend otherwise, they are impacted in different ways by public opposition to their policy choices. Though Trump’s long-term plan for Gaza is an ugly vision of neocolonial control, it can be bent and blocked by more of the global pressure that has made even this moment possible.</p>
3103.  
3104.  
3105.  
3106. <p>That’s why this is not the time for supporters of Palestinian self-determination to be quiet. It’s the moment for us to demand more.</p>
3107.  
3108.  
3109.  
3110.  
3111.  
3112.  
3113.  
3114. <p>To understand just how much has shifted in recent days, it is worth recalling the surprising headlines of the last week. First, Trump humiliated Netanyahu by releasing a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/P20250929DT-0537.jpg?resize=1200,800">photo</a> of the Israeli leader <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/29/israeli-pm-netanyahu-apologises-to-qatar-over-doha-attack">apologizing</a> to Qatar’s ruler for <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/09/israel-attacks-doha-qatar/">bombing his country</a>. Then Trump announced his 20-point Gaza plan, threatening Palestinians in Gaza with more violence if Hamas didn&#8217;t accept his terms. When Hamas offered its limited acceptance, Trump called on Israel to stop bombing the Palestinian territory. “I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST,” he <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115323790604734426">declared</a> as he <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251004-us-envoy-witkoff-trumps-son-in-law-to-travel-to-egypt-for-gaza-talks/">dispatched</a> Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, to Egypt to mediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas.</p>
3115.  
3116.  
3117.  
3118.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3119.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3120.            href="https://theintercept.com/2023/11/28/israel-palestine-history-peace/"
3121.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3122.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: israel-palestine-history-peace"
3123.      data-ga-track-label="israel-palestine-history-peace"
3124.          >
3125.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1807268716-1.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3126.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3127.        Related      </h2>
3128.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">All the Times Israel Has Rejected Peace With Palestinians</h3>
3129.    </span>
3130.    </a>
3131.  </div>
3132.  
3133.  
3134.  
3135. <p>Despite the headlines, there are some sobering realities to consider. Israel is still bombing Gaza, regardless of Trump’s <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115316576281168745">claims</a> to the contrary. And Trump’s plan for Gaza calls for Israeli military withdrawal based on “standards, milestones, and timeframes” that would be decided in the future, a day that may never come. Israel has a decadeslong history of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/11/28/israel-palestine-history-peace/">violating agreements</a> in order to continue <a href="https://peacenow.org.il/en/settlements-watch/settlements-data/population">stealing</a> what is <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/12/15/us-embassy-israel-biden-jerusalem/">left </a>of Palestinian <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/11/netanyahu-hints-trump-peace-plan-will-allow-israel-annex-key-west-bank-territory/">land</a>. And the U.S. has a long history of sending Israel <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/10/09/israel-war-cost/">billions of dollars</a> in military funding, no matter what Israel does or <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/11/12/israel-aid-block-gaza-biden/">doesn&#8217;t do</a>.</p>
3136.  
3137.  
3138.  
3139. <p>While Trump’s plan offers the important possibility of a pause or end to Israel’s genocide, the worst of Trump’s plan for Gaza is embedded in its long-term vision. The plan amounts to a blueprint for external neocolonial domination over Gaza, under which Palestinians will have no formal ability to assert their rights or determine their future. Trump’s plan for Gaza denies Palestinians self-determination and says nothing of Israel’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/01/awdah-hathaleen-killed-settler-yinon-levi/">ongoing campaign</a> of ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.</p>
3140.  
3141.  
3142.  
3143. <p>Under the plan, Trump would personally chair an Orwellian “Board of Peace” that would rule over Gaza, with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side. The Trump-run “board” would convene an unnamed “panel of experts” who would create a “Trump economic development plan” that would “rebuild and energize Gaza.” But dig a little deeper, and it is clear that Trump’s vision for Gaza is yet another page from the Trump family playbook for corruption and self-enrichment.</p>
3144.  
3145.  
3146.  
3147. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>Trump’s vision for Gaza is yet another page from the Trump family playbook for corruption and self-enrichment.</p></blockquote></figure>
3148.  
3149.  
3150.  
3151. <p>Back in February, after meeting with Netanyahu for hours, Trump <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/trump-gaza-strip-middle-east-n9srczqcv">called</a> for Gaza to be developed into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” with “the United States owning that piece of land” and Palestinians being moved elsewhere. Though the plan no longer calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, it — like so many Trump proposals — appears to be a handout to his family businesses. (Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is already <a href="https://www.levernews.com/as-ceasefire-nears-jared-kushners-new-investments-could-boost-israeli-settlements/">heavily invested</a> in Israeli business interests that profit from Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, with at least <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/04/18/saudi-russia-jared-kushner-affinity-partners/">$2 billion in financial support</a> from Saudi Arabia’s ruling dictator, Mohammed bin Salman.)</p>
3152.  
3153.  
3154.  
3155. <p>But the Trump family is not alone in profiting heavily from this plan. In July, the Financial Times <a href="https://archive.ph/DeDib#selection-2251.0-2251.200">reported</a> that the Tony Blair Institute, Boston Consulting Group, and <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/four-takeaways-plan-trying-bring-trump-gaza-riviera-life">Israeli businessmen</a> Michael Eisenberg and Liran Tancman developed an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/f86dd56a-de7f-4943-af4a-84819111b727.pdf?itid=sr_0_54a8aea3-f09f-4ab8-a113-93c5f2f11820">investment plan</a> for Gaza that included building an “<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/four-takeaways-plan-trying-bring-trump-gaza-riviera-life">Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone</a>.” The investment plan called for cutting development costs by removing Palestinians from the territory. No surprise that the Tony Blair Institute has received <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/09/inside-the-tony-blair-institute">at least $345 million</a> from <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/02/18/oracle-tiktok-israel-palestine-gaza/">pro-Israel billionaire</a> and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.</p>
3156.  
3157.  
3158.  
3159.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3160.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3161.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/01/trump-israel-gaza-peace-deal/"
3162.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3163.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-israel-gaza-peace-deal"
3164.      data-ga-track-label="trump-israel-gaza-peace-deal"
3165.          >
3166.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AP25272692326395-e1759351284648.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3167.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3168.        Related      </h2>
3169.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Trump–Netanyahu Gaza Peace Deal Promises Indefinite Occupation</h3>
3170.    </span>
3171.    </a>
3172.  </div>
3173.  
3174.  
3175.  
3176. <p>Under Trump’s plan, Palestinians would be required to relinquish all forms of resistance to Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide. While Trump’s “Board of Peace” would cash in on Gaza, it would delegate daily governance in Gaza to “a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” that would be “responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.”</p>
3177.  
3178.  
3179.  
3180. <p>The plan proposes that the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, could eventually take over Gaza, but only if it meets the so-called “reform” conditions previously outlined in an earlier plan<a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/28/trump-netanyahu-dictate-terms-palestinian-surrender-israel-call-peace/"> Trump put forward in 2020</a>. That <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Peace_to_Prosperity.pdf">2020 plan</a> required that the Palestinian Authority give up all claims against Israel or the U.S. before the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, “and all other tribunals.” Of course, the Palestinian Authority is already considered by many to be an <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/07/palestine-students-detained-political-opinions">undemocratic</a> and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/cement-and-corruption/5123">corrupt</a> institution that rules over Palestinians and serves as a <a href="https://www.newarab.com/analysis/whats-behind-palestinian-authoritys-crackdown-jenin">subcontractor</a> to the<a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/01/24/gaza-palestinian-authority-israel/"> Israeli occupation</a>. These new requirements would block any last vestige of justice for Palestinians.</p>
3181.  
3182.  
3183.  
3184. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The long-term implications of Trump’s latest “peace plan” appear startlingly similar to the goals that America’s white settlers must have had for Native Americans.</p></blockquote></figure>
3185.  
3186.  
3187.  
3188. <p>The plan also requires that Hamas demilitarize as part of making Gaza “a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.” But no mention is made of the fact that Israel has bombed <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/09/israel-attacks-doha-qatar/">Qatar</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/14/israel-iran-attack-netanyahu-trump/">Iran</a>, Yemen, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/12/10/israel-syria-golan-heights/">Syria</a>,<a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/11/26/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-ceasefire-gaza/"> Lebanon</a>, and, of course, the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Nor is there any mention of “deradicalizing” the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/25/israeli-settler-violence-hamdan-ballal-no-other-land-arrest/">violent </a>Israeli <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/04/01/israel-palestine-apartheid-settlements/">settler movement</a> or holding accountable the thousands of Israeli soldiers and their leaders who are still committing genocide in Gaza today.</p>
3189.  
3190.  
3191.  
3192. <p>Given these details, the long-term implications of Trump’s latest “peace plan” appear startlingly similar to the goals that America’s white settlers must have had for Native American populations: Confiscate their resources and drive them into smaller and smaller parcels of land, whether through <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/11/28/army-native-american-heritage-month/">murder</a>, violent <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/01/confederacy-inc-donald-trump-racist-police-and-the-whitewashing-of-history/">displacement</a>,<a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/17/mcgirt-v-oklahoma-indian-native-treaties/"> treaties </a>that would later be ignored, or all of the above.</p>
3193.  
3194.  
3195.  
3196.  
3197.  
3198.  
3199.  
3200. <p>While Trump pushes for an immediate, headline-grabbing “win,” the broader political trends make it clear that time is not on Israel’s side. A June Quinnipiac <a href="https://www.jta.org/2025/06/12/united-states/sympathy-for-israelis-drops-among-republican-voters-poll-finds">poll</a> revealed that sympathy for Israel dropped 14 percent among Republicans over the last year, from a May 2024 level of 78% down to 64%. An April <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/younger-generations-growing-unfavorable-towards-israel-polls">Pew Research poll</a> showed that Israel’s unfavorable rating among Republicans aged 18 to 49 had risen from 35 to 50 percent. Meanwhile, loud conservative voices like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens have all spoken critically of America’s alliance with Israel. And a September <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/polls/israel-gaza-war-us-poll.html">New York Times/Siena survey</a> found more American voters “siding with Palestinians over Israelis for the first time since The Times began asking voters about their sympathies in 1998.”</p>
3201.  
3202.  
3203.  
3204. <p>These shifts in U.S. public opinion reveal the path ahead. Activists across the U.S., Europe, and worldwide must continue isolating Israel and begin explicitly pushing their own governments to reject the full arc of Trump’s plan. Yes, an immediate deal that ends Israel’s genocidal violence and mass starvation of Palestinians is critical. But Trump’s longer-term vision for Gaza must be defeated.&nbsp;</p>
3205.  
3206.  
3207.  
3208. <p>Massive waves of opposition to Israel’s genocide have already flooded cities worldwide, from the hundreds of thousands who protested in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hundreds-thousands-protest-amsterdam-against-gaza-war-2025-10-05/">Amsterdam</a> and <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/residente-gaza-concert-protest/">Mexico City</a>, to the millions who took to the streets in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/italy-gaza-protests-meloni-2-million-0fcc2fc85f53209100beb3dbff1256a9">Italy</a>. Protesters should now consider taking direct aim at Trump’s plan itself. Global pressure is critical if we are to see a future in which Palestinians can live free from Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide.</p>
3209.  
3210.  
3211.  
3212. <p></p>
3213. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-netanyahu-peace-plan-gaza-protest/">Trump’s Plan to Deprive Palestinians Any Say in Their Future</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3214. ]]></content:encoded>
3215.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-netanyahu-peace-plan-gaza-protest/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
3216.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
3217.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?fit=3664%2C2442' width='3664' height='2442' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500344</post-id>
3218. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?fit=3664%2C2442" />
3219. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AP25272554792797.jpg?fit=3664%2C2442" medium="image">
3220. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the West Wing of the White House, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington.</media:title>
3221. </media:content>
3222. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3223. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
3224. </media:content>
3225. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3226. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
3227. </media:content>
3228. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3229. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1807268716-1.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3230. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/AP25272692326395-e1759351284648.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3231.            </item>
3232.        
3233.            <item>
3234.                <title><![CDATA[Black People Knew This Would Happen]]></title>
3235.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/chicago-ice-blitz-black-surveillance-state-violence/</link>
3236.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/chicago-ice-blitz-black-surveillance-state-violence/#respond</comments>
3237.                <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 16:41:37 +0000</pubDate>
3238.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Alain Stephens]]></dc:creator>
3239.                                 <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
3240. <category><![CDATA[Voices]]></category>
3241.  
3242.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
3243.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>Generational experience has taught us what happens when the state builds a weapon for someone else: Sooner or later, it finds a way back to us.</p>
3244. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/chicago-ice-blitz-black-surveillance-state-violence/">Black People Knew This Would Happen</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3245. ]]></description>
3246.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
3247. <figure class="wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default">
3248.    <img decoding="async"
3249.    src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?fit=8256%2C5504"
3250.    srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=8256 8256w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?w=3600 3600w"
3251.    sizes="auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)"
3252.    alt="The Trumps administration's Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago on October 4, 2025."
3253.    width="8256"
3254.    height="5504"
3255.    loading="lazy"
3256.  />
3257.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
3258.      <span class="photo__caption">The Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago on Oct. 4, 2025.</span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images</span>    </figcaption>
3259.    </figure>
3260.  
3261.  
3262.  
3263. <p><span class="has-underline">Before dawn, federal</span> agents moved on Chicago’s South Shore in camouflage uniforms with rifles drawn, the thrum of chopper rotors breaking the sky. Officially, it was a “<a href="https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated">targeted immigration enforcement operation.</a>” In reality, it looked like a military incursion into a historic Black neighborhood — home to working families, elders, and churches that have held the South Side together for generations. By the end of the night, an entire apartment building was under siege.</p>
3264.  
3265.  
3266.  
3267. <p>U.S citizens and children were zip-tied, families separated, and residents of a community that is 92 percent African American reported being met with guns and flash-bang grenades. When a Chicago alderperson went to check on hospitalized residents, she says she was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ald-jessie-fuentes-arrested-ice-agents-humboldt-park-hospital/">handcuffed by agents</a>.</p>
3268.  
3269.  
3270.  
3271. <p>For some, the Trump administration’s Chicago assault was a shock. But for Black Americans, none of it felt extraordinary. It felt remembered. Generational experience has taught us what happens <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/04/30/israel-palestine-us-ai-surveillance-state/">when the state builds a weapon for someone else</a>: Sooner or later, it finds a way back to us.</p>
3272.  
3273.  
3274.  
3275. <p>The raid wasn’t an aberration; it was a continuation, the latest verse in a long American refrain where safety is promised, and Black lives become the proving grounds. What the nation calls “targeted enforcement,” we recognize as the same searchlight sweeping back across the map.</p>
3276.  
3277.  
3278.  
3279. <p>We’ve seen this movie before, and Black communities have been telling America how it ends.</p>
3280.  
3281.  
3282.  
3283. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-from-red-scares-to-black-files"><a></a><strong>From Red Scares to Black Files</strong></h2>
3284.  
3285.  
3286.  
3287. <p>For more than a century, Black Americans have watched the United States build extraordinary enforcement tools for a supposedly narrow enemy — and then turn them inward. The<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-dissent/"> Palmer Raids of the 1920s </a>were justified as a way to root out communists but <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/1919-the-year-of-racial-violence/conclusion/E4EC57097F1AF79D4D4C3B100EC48E1C">swept up Black labor leaders</a>. COINTELPRO was sold as means to counter “subversives” but was used to <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/federal-bureau-investigation-fbi?utm_source=">wiretap </a>Martin Luther King Jr. and <a href="https://www.history.com/articles/black-panther-fred-hampton-killing">raid </a>Black Panther homes. After 9/11, the war on terror built fusion centers, joint task forces, and counter-extremism programs that soon labeled Black activists as “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/">Black Identity Extremists</a>.” The Department of Homeland Security grants and surplus weapons meant to stop terrorism rolled into <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/04/08/black-protesters-terrorism-threat-isis/">Ferguson and Baltimore</a> in armored vehicles.</p>
3288.  
3289.  
3290.  
3291. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p> The Chicago raid didn’t just catch “gang-linked migrants” — it detained U.S. citizens in a majority-Black area under the same machinery.</p></blockquote></figure>
3292.  
3293.  
3294.  
3295. <p>Now the same pattern is playing out with immigration enforcement. Databases, cross-deputized local cops, and DHS-led raids built to target migrants have expanded into Black neighborhoods. The Chicago raid didn’t just catch “gang-linked migrants” — it detained U.S. citizens in a majority-Black area under the same machinery.</p>
3296.  
3297.  
3298.  
3299. <p>After 9/11, Washington rewired the government around suspicion. The Department of Homeland Security <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/09/29/intercepted-podcast-dhs-immigration-ryan-devereaux/">absorbed 22 agencies</a> and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/09/10/immigration-enforcement-homeland-security-911/">cast immigration as a national security threat</a>. Programs like NSEERS<a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/two-decades-after-sept-11-immigration-national-security?utm_source"> singled out Muslim and Arab men</a> for registration and interrogation before being <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-obama-rescinding-muslim-and-arab-special-registration-system?utm_source">scrapped </a>years later. DHS-funded “fusion centers,” sold as vital to counterterrorism, were later blasted by a bipartisan Senate investigation for producing “<a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/10/fusion-centers/?utm_source">a bunch of crap</a>” intelligence while <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/11/30/austin-fusion-center-surveillance-black-lives-matter-cultural-events/">eroding civil liberties</a>. Despite mounting criticism, that infrastructure didn’t disappear. It morphed and migrated into everyday policing and immigration enforcement.</p>
3300.  
3301.  
3302.  
3303.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3304.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3305.            href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/"
3306.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3307.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism"
3308.      data-ga-track-label="black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism"
3309.          >
3310.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Polaris06462788-1553003622-e1553003675475.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3311.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3312.        Related      </h2>
3313.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Strange Tale of the FBI’s Fictional “Black Identity Extremism” Movement</h3>
3314.    </span>
3315.    </a>
3316.  </div>
3317.  
3318.  
3319.  
3320. <p>Built to hunt terrorists, those intelligence hubs eventually began circulating threat bulletins on Black activists and protest movements, labeling them<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/26/fbi-black-activism-protests-history"> </a>“<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/">Black Identity Extremists</a>,” and once again shifting the federal sword of authority to point toward domestic Blackness. In practice, the “BIE” label surfaced in instances like the firearms case against Dallas activist Rakem Balogun, also known as Christopher Daniels, in which the government cited his Facebook posts praising a Dallas gunman who shot police. A federal judge ultimately released him, and the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/07/07/fbi-border-vigilante-black-identity-extremist/">case collapsed in May 2018</a>.&nbsp;</p>
3321.  
3322.  
3323.  
3324. <p>After public backlash, FBI officials told Congress in 2019 that the bureau had <a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/chrg/CHRG-116hhrg37474/CHRG-116hhrg37474.pdf?utm_source">stopped </a>using “BIE” and folded activities into “Racially Motivated Violent Extremism,” yet leaked records show an <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/06/22/socialists-counterterrorism-political-terrorists-navy-antifa/">“Iron Fist” program </a>directing <a href="https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/2020.06.11_Racially_Motivated_Extremism_FOIA.pdf">undercover surveillance </a>of Black activists<a href="https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/2020.06.11_Racially_Motivated_Extremism_FOIA.pdf"> </a>under the rebranded category.&nbsp;</p>
3325.  
3326.  
3327.  
3328. <p>Activists and civil liberties advocates are echoing the similarities to COINTELPRO all over again.&nbsp;The very machinery designed to guard the homeland ended up treating Black dissent as a domestic threat. Now amid waning political interest in the global war on terror, America has recast its gaze and fear to a new subject: the immigrant.</p>
3329.  
3330.  
3331.  
3332. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>The very machinery designed to guard the homeland ended up treating Black dissent as a domestic threat.</p></blockquote></figure>
3333.  
3334.  
3335.  
3336. <p>The current crackdown on immigrants shows how this bleed-over works. ICE’s <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/17/dhs-287g-reaches-more-1000-partnerships-state-and-local-enforcement-help-remove?utm_source">287(g) agreements</a> deputize local police as immigration agents. The program has ballooned in scope and reach, with DHS touting more than 1,000 partnerships. Research finds<a href="https://www.prb.org/articles/local-immigration-enforcement-was-supposed-to-make-communities-safer/?utm_source"> </a>these entanglements<a href="https://www.prb.org/articles/local-immigration-enforcement-was-supposed-to-make-communities-safer/?utm_source"> don’t reduce violent crime</a> — what they do is make entire neighborhoods too scared to call the police. Meanwhile, the feds cast wider and wider nets. In 2008, the <a href="https://www.ice.gov/secure-communities">Secure Communities</a> data pipeline was installed, funneling every American’s arrest fingerprints and biometric data to immigration databases, supercharging <a href="https://www.cato.org/immigration-research-policy-brief/us-citizens-targeted-ice-us-citizens-targeted-immigration-customs?utm_source">dragnet mistakes</a>.</p>
3337.  
3338.  
3339.  
3340.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3341.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3342.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/"
3343.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3344.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs"
3345.      data-ga-track-label="collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs"
3346.          >
3347.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00_Prelude_Article-crop2.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3348.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3349.        Related      </h2>
3350.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Trump’s War on Drugs</h3>
3351.    </span>
3352.    </a>
3353.  </div>
3354.  
3355.  
3356.  
3357. <p>One 2011 <a href="https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/new-data-highlights-devastating-impact-of-secure-communities-on-immigrant-and-latino-communities/#:~:text=The%20results%20are%20startling.,court%20who%20are%20granted%20relief.">independent analysis</a> found that the system had led to false hits and culminated in the arrest of 3,600 U.S. citizens by ICE. A 2018 Los Angeles Times investigation found ICE had to release more than <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/story/2018-04-27/ice-held-an-american-man-in-custody-for-1273-days?utm_source">1,480 people from custody after they asserted U.S. citizenship</a>. Other analyses estimate thousands of citizens have been wrongfully targeted by detainers. The point isn’t that every raid snags the wrong person — it’s that the system is designed to view these unconstitutional detentions as <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/collateraldamage/">collateral damage</a>.</p>
3358.  
3359.  
3360.  
3361. <p>And Black people, historically over-represented in the criminal legal system and targeted by law enforcement officials, knew we’d eat the collateral most.</p>
3362.  
3363.  
3364.  
3365. <p>Black organizers have been warning about this for years. The Movement for Black Lives explicitly called for <a href="https://mydocumentedlife.org/2020/05/31/building-solidarity-between-the-immigrant-rights-and-black-lives-matter-movements/?utm_source">ending deportations and the 1996 crime–immigration laws</a> that knit policing to banishment. The Black Alliance for Just Immigration has documented how immigration detention is “<a href="https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/news-and-updates/uncovering-the-truth-press-release?utm_source">anti-Black</a>” in its outcomes. And long before the rest of the country learned to say “surveillance state,” Malkia Devich-Cyril wrote and organized about the way <a href="https://mediajustice.org/news/targeted-surveillance-civil-rights-and-the-fight-for-democracy/?utm_source">targeted spying on Black neighborhoods</a> would metastasize into mass surveillance.</p>
3366.  
3367.  
3368.  
3369.  
3370.  
3371.  
3372.  
3373. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-s-about-flexing-power">It’s About <strong>Flexing Power</strong></h2>
3374.  
3375.  
3376.  
3377. <p>Many Americans were sold a comforting bargain: If you’re innocent, government “vetting” will sort it out; body cameras will guarantee accountability; and an attorney will fix any mistake. The reality is rougher.</p>
3378.  
3379.  
3380.  
3381. <p>Immigration courts are civil, not criminal. That means there is no general <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12158?utm_source=">right </a>to a government-appointed lawyer, and most detained people go to court alone. As for body-worn cameras, the best meta-analyses find<a href="https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/research-body-worn-cameras-and-law-enforcement?utm_source"> mixed or null effects</a> on police use of force and accountability. And “vetting”? Ask the<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/tracking-us-citizens-children-detained-deported-ice-trump-updates.html"> U.S. citizens who’ve been cuffed, jailed, or even deported </a>by mistake how that worked out.</p>
3382.  
3383.  
3384.  
3385. <p>But most of all, on the street, the liquid dialect of “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause” will always bend hardest toward the poor, the immigrant, and — most of all — us. Too often, those lessons are learned at the wrong end of a police door ram, or in the back of a van.</p>
3386.  
3387.  
3388.  
3389. <p>And it’s not effective.</p>
3390.  
3391.  
3392.  
3393. <p>Here’s the part national TV pundits won’t tell you: Chicago’s shootings and homicides have <a href="https://news.wttw.com/2025/07/11/shootings-homicides-chicago-both-down-more-30-through-first-half-2025-police?utm_source">fallen dramatically </a>this year. Through the first half of 2025, homicides are down roughly a third and shootings nearly 40 percent, with independent analysts calling it a <a href="https://counciloncj.org/crime-in-chicago-what-you-need-to-know/">historic decline</a>. Federal claims that heavy-handed immigration raids are a necessary crime-fighting tool don’t square with the city’s own data. The crackdown isn’t about safety; it’s about flexing power.</p>
3394.  
3395.  
3396.  
3397. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>We know “them” becomes “you” sooner than you think.</p></blockquote></figure>
3398.  
3399.  
3400.  
3401. <p>Black voters aren’t a monolith in our beliefs, but we have <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/geography-of-racially-polarized-voting-calibrating-surveys-at-the-district-level/6BEF8C3000B763699C27A4F9E8590516?utm_source">long voted cohesively</a> when the stakes are existential. Political science calls it “linked fate.” History calls it survival. Survey work and decades of elections show Black voters remain the most reliably aligned bloc against authoritarian drift — not because we love any party, but because we recognize the pattern when the state builds machines of exception and promises to deploy those tools only on “them.” We know “them” becomes “you” sooner than you think.</p>
3402.  
3403.  
3404.  
3405. <p>Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones once reminded readers that the real outlier in American electoral life is the Black vote — no other group, including Asians or Latinos, votes with such cohesion. Her <a href="https://archive.ph/5EMlK">point</a> was simple: We have always recognized the stakes most clearly.</p>
3406.  
3407.  
3408.  
3409. <p>Decades of polling show that issues of criminal justice and policing have remained top concerns for Black voters, because our safety and freedom have always been the first to be tested when state power expands.</p>
3410.  
3411.  
3412.  
3413.  
3414.  
3415.  
3416.  
3417. <p>After Trump’s reelection, far fewer Black Americans took to the streets — or even to social media — to protest. Instead of marching, many watched quietly, feeling a sharp sting of <a href="https://seattlemedium.com/election-proves-black-americans-have-no-allies/">betrayal</a>: betrayed that our persistent warnings about white supremacist power went ignored, and betrayed by the system that insists on invalidating our lived experience until it becomes everyone’s problem. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-black-women-democrats-harris-base-votecast-0c646e888c999b03d1798e1aa1331937">Some Black women</a> publicly expressed a<a href="https://19thnews.org/2025/04/black-women-resistance-strategy/?utm_source"> tactical withholding</a> — “stepping back,” “rethinking our role,” “not showing up in the same way”— because the emotional weight of being the reliable backbone in a democracy that constantly disfranchises you is too heavy. Particularly without giving them rest, pause, or reflection to their words.</p>
3418.  
3419.  
3420.  
3421. <p>During Trump’s second inauguration and early policy blitzkrieg, Black organizers didn’t pivot to spectacle; they braced for bleed-over. They’d already watched terrorism authorities <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/09/13/fbi-protest-terrorism-stop-camp-grayling-michigan/">spill</a> into <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/02/10/deconstructed-fbi-informant-protests/">protest monitoring</a>; already watched immigration powers <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/new-class-action-lawsuit-challenges-widespread-denial-of-due-process-in-immigration-courts">swallow due process</a>; already watched fusion centers and data-sharing as routes to harass communities over unmerited suspicions. They also watched red-state leaders preside over <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-gun-violence-red-states/">higher gun deaths while labeling</a> liberal big cities as lawless war zones — facts we reported here at The Intercept. That context makes what happened in South Shore feel less like an aberration and more like the next link in a chain.</p>
3422.  
3423.  
3424.  
3425.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3426.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3427.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/04/30/israel-palestine-us-ai-surveillance-state/"
3428.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
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3430.      data-ga-track-label="israel-palestine-us-ai-surveillance-state"
3431.          >
3432.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Dissent-Israel-tech-copy-e1745864257861.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3433.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3434.        Related      </h2>
3435.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">U.S. Companies Honed Their Surveillance Tech in Israel. Now It’s Coming Home.</h3>
3436.    </span>
3437.    </a>
3438.  </div>
3439.  
3440.  
3441.  
3442. <p>Listen to the voices who warned you: the freedom-movement veterans who endured COINTELPRO; the Muslim organizers targeted after 9/11; the Black immigration advocates who saw detention’s cruelty up close. The lesson isn’t merely solidarity, it’s self-interest. The tools built for “others” always come home.</p>
3443.  
3444.  
3445.  
3446. <p>Black America has always been the first to feel the temperature drop in the room of democracy. We have mapped this country’s overreaches with our bodies and our ballots. When we speak of raids, of suspicion, of the quiet erosion of rights, we’re not predicting — we’re recalling. Listen to Black people. The warning isn’t a sermon; it’s a survival manual.</p>
3447. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/chicago-ice-blitz-black-surveillance-state-violence/">Black People Knew This Would Happen</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3448. ]]></content:encoded>
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3450.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
3451.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?fit=8256%2C5504' width='8256' height='5504' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500502</post-id>
3452. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?fit=8256%2C5504" />
3453. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2238891028.jpg?fit=8256%2C5504" medium="image">
3454. <media:title type="html">The Trumps administration&#039;s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago on October 4, 2025.</media:title>
3455. </media:content>
3456. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Polaris06462788-1553003622-e1553003675475.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3457. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00_Prelude_Article-crop2.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3458. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3459. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
3460. </media:content>
3461. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3462. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
3463. </media:content>
3464. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3465. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Dissent-Israel-tech-copy-e1745864257861.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3466.            </item>
3467.        
3468.            <item>
3469.                <title><![CDATA[Trump Sacrifices Alaska Wilderness to Help AI Companies]]></title>
3470.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-ai-alaska-national-park-ambler-road/</link>
3471.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-ai-alaska-national-park-ambler-road/#respond</comments>
3472.                <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 13:12:07 +0000</pubDate>
3473.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Gavin Feek]]></dc:creator>
3474.                                 <category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
3475. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
3476.  
3477.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
3478.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>Trump’s approval of the 211-mile Ambler Road Project through Gates of the Arctic National Park hinges on winning an “AI arms race.”</p>
3479. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-ai-alaska-national-park-ambler-road/">Trump Sacrifices Alaska Wilderness to Help AI Companies</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3480. ]]></description>
3481.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
3482. <p><span class="has-underline">President Donald Trump</span> approved on Monday the construction of a 211-mile road right through the Brooks Range Foothills and across the Northwestern Alaskan Arctic, including 26 miles of Gates of the Arctic National Park. The administration justified its decision to allow a mining company to<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/decision-of-the-president-and-statement-of-reasons-on-2025-ambler-road-appeal/"> carve through the arctic foothills </a>with a simple explanation: Building the road will benefit the American artificial intelligence industry.</p>
3483.  
3484.  
3485.  
3486. <p>Trump’s approval of the Ambler Road Project is a reversal for the federal government. Only last year, the Bureau of Land Management released its Record of Decision selecting “No Action” on Ambler Road, in cooperation with Alaska tribal councils, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and many others.</p>
3487.  
3488.  
3489.  
3490. <p>In the document, the impact on fish habitat, water and air quality, disruption of groundwater flow, hazardous materials from spills, and the negative impact on the Western Arctic caribou herd, which has been steadily declining since 2017, were all cited as reasons for denial. The Record of Decision also stated that the Ambler Road Project would forever alter the culture and traditional practices of Alaska Native communities, who have lived and thrived in the region for centuries.</p>
3491.  
3492.  
3493.  
3494. <p>Thanks to the BLM’s findings, the Biden administration denied the Ambler Road Project on June 28, 2024. The project resurfaced after the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority filed a direct appeal to Trump over his predecessor’s denial of transportation permits.</p>
3495.  
3496.  
3497.  
3498. <p>Trump&#8217;s decision to approve the Ambler Road Project comes months after his administration announced plans to<a href="https://apnews.com/article/logging-national-forests-0607a77e0ab812ea6fa609034fbb20d9"> rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule,</a> opening<a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/planning/roadless"> 45 million acres </a>of national forest land to logging and road construction. While the Ambler Road Project is not directly tied to the “roadless rule,” it&#8217;s one of a growing list of examples of the U.S. government prioritizing corporate interests over the natural world.</p>
3499.  
3500.  
3501.  
3502. <p>Ambler Road will begin at milepost 161 on the Dalton Highway, near the towns of Wiseman and Coldfoot, before crossing over 3,000 streams and multiple rivers. It will require up to 50 various bridge projects, as well as aid stations, airstrips, turnouts, and culverts, before ending at the proposed mining site near the town of Ambler.</p>
3503.  
3504.  
3505.  
3506.  
3507.  
3508.  
3509.  
3510. <p>On Monday, Trump sat in the Oval Office with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright and made it clear that he was approving the project to stay ahead in what he considers an <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/07/21/ai-race-china-artificial-intelligence/">AI race against China</a>.</p>
3511.  
3512.  
3513.  
3514. <p>“Ambler Mining District, at the end of [the 211-mile road] has some of the richest mining deposits in all of America,” Burgum said, while gesturing at a map of Alaska behind the Resolute desk. “These are minerals that are absolutely essential to defense, to industry. &#8230; Just take copper alone. This is one of the richest copper locations in the country.”</p>
3515.  
3516.  
3517.  
3518. <p>The haul at the end of the 211-mile road is presumed to be a copper deposit worth more than $7 billion. Copper has many uses, among them being the primary component to efficiently help power and cool the massive data centers that run AI applications. As a result, and as AI advances, copper is in massively high demand. According to the 2025 <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook-2025">Global Critical Minerals Outlook</a>, copper supplies will fall 30 percent short of the required demand by 2035.</p>
3519.  
3520.  
3521.  
3522. <p>“China controls 85 to 100 percent of all the mining and refining of all the top 20 critical minerals,” Burgum said. “And in this mine area up here, we got copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver, gallium, germanium — rich in all of the minerals that we need to win the AI arms race against China.”</p>
3523.  
3524.  
3525.  
3526. <p>Burgum said that the U.S. has “gotten out of the energy and mining area,” and that when Trump said, “Drill, baby, drill,” he also meant “Mine, baby, mine.”</p>
3527.  
3528.  
3529.  
3530. <p>Trump emphasized that the copper was needed to power AI data centers — but also immediately contradicted himself on whether it’s needed to surpass China, or rather to maintain what he described as America’s undisputed lead in AI.</p>
3531.  
3532.  
3533.  
3534. <p>“We get a road done, and with that, we unleash billions and billions of dollars in wealth,” Trump said to the press on Monday. “It’s pretty amazing when you think of it. And it’s wealth that we need if we’re going to be the number one country. We’re number one now with AI, you’ve probably read. We’re beating everybody with AI at levels that nobody ever thought even possible.”</p>
3535.  
3536.  
3537.  
3538. <p>But Trump said the U.S. currently lacks the power to support its tech companies, so he has greenlit them to “build their own power.”</p>
3539.  
3540.  
3541.  
3542.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3543.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3544.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/03/openai-sam-altman-trump-china/"
3545.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3546.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: openai-sam-altman-trump-china"
3547.      data-ga-track-label="openai-sam-altman-trump-china"
3548.          >
3549.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GettyImages-2194581816-e1748962105445.webp?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3550.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3551.        Related      </h2>
3552.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">OpenAI&#8217;s Pitch to Trump: Rank the World on U.S. Tech Interests</h3>
3553.    </span>
3554.    </a>
3555.  </div>
3556.  
3557.  
3558.  
3559. <p>Immediately after taking office, Trump announced a $500 billion investment in artificial intelligence — led by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank — called the Stargate Project, aiming to create a nationwide network of AI data centers. The first opened in Abilene, Texas, in September, after which five more were immediately announced.</p>
3560.  
3561.  
3562.  
3563. <p>Also in September, Trump hosted a roundtable of AI giants to discuss AI innovation and investments into its future. Included in the guest list were OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Each of whom, coincidentally, donated exactly $1 million to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/07/white-house-crypto-summit-trump-donors/">Trump’s inaugural fund</a>.</p>
3564.  
3565.  
3566.  
3567. <p>AI data centers significantly impact the environment due to their immense electricity consumption, high water usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and demand from local power grids.</p>
3568.  
3569.  
3570.  
3571. <p>But along with the AI craze, a modern copper rush has begun, and it’s moving quickly. What was originally proposed as a three to four-year timeline for the Ambler Road Project appears to have been significantly sped up. Burgum said that construction will begin next spring with “planning throughout the winter.”</p>
3572.  
3573.  
3574.  
3575. <p>“We’ll get it done in less than a year,” Trump added.</p>
3576.  
3577.  
3578.  
3579. <p>Following the announcement of the approval for the Ambler Road Project, Burgum stated that the Department of War and the U.S. government will take a 10 percent stake in Trilogy Metals, a Canadian mining company with claims in the area.</p>
3580.  
3581.  
3582.  
3583. <p>“America was a mining powerhouse for a long, long time, and our mining industry got squelched,” Burgum said. “Now we’re seeing it come back to life.”<br><br><!-- BLOCK(promote-post)[1](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PROMOTE_POST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22slug%22%3A%22climate%22%2C%22crop%22%3A%22promo%22%7D) -->  <aside class="promote-banner">
3584.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="http://theintercept.com/collections/climate-crimes/">
3585.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
3586.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="TOPSHOT - Firefighters struggle to contain backfire in the Pollard Flat area of California in the Shasta Trinity National Forest on September 6, 2018. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP)        (Photo credit should read JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=3000 3000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?w=2400 2400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
3587.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
3588.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
3589.            Read our Complete Coverage          </p>
3590.        
3591.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Climate Crimes</h2>
3592.      </div>
3593.    </a>
3594.  </aside>
3595. <!-- END-BLOCK(promote-post)[1] --> </p>
3596.  
3597.  
3598.  
3599. <p><span class="has-underline">In March 2025</span>, Trump signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/immediate-measures-to-increase-american-mineral-production/">executive order</a> to take immediate measures to increase American mineral production. The order states: “It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent.”</p>
3600.  
3601.  
3602.  
3603.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3604.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3605.            href="https://theintercept.com/2023/03/22/oak-flat-mine-arizona-biden/"
3606.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3607.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: oak-flat-mine-arizona-biden"
3608.      data-ga-track-label="oak-flat-mine-arizona-biden"
3609.          >
3610.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RTSHF78E-oak-flat-sacred-copper.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3611.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3612.        Related      </h2>
3613.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Biden Moves Forward With Mining Project That Will Obliterate a Sacred Apache Religious Site</h3>
3614.    </span>
3615.    </a>
3616.  </div>
3617.  
3618.  
3619.  
3620. <p>In April, the Trump administration fast-tracked a controversial transfer of ownership of Oak Flat, Arizona, from the U.S. Forest Service to Resolution Copper. The Apache Stronghold, who have sacred and ceremonial ties to the land, have been in<a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/03/22/oak-flat-mine-arizona-biden/"> lengthy legal battles </a>to try to halt the transfer. Resolution Copper, a conglomerate owned by British and Australian mining companies, plans to blast a hole 2 miles wide and 1,000 feet deep, decimating the sacred Apache site to gain access to the deep copper reserve.</p>
3621.  
3622.  
3623.  
3624. <p>In August, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge put a temporary injunction on the land transfer, and Trump released a scathing post on Truth Social in which he called the 9th Circuit “radical left” and the Apache Stronghold “anti-American.”</p>
3625.  
3626.  
3627.  
3628. <p>On October 6, the Supreme Court declined to hear the Apache Stronghold case.</p>
3629.  
3630.  
3631.  
3632.  
3633.  
3634.  
3635.  
3636. <p>The proposed destruction of public land — held sacred by Native Americans at Oak Flat and the Northwestern Arctic of Alaska — and numerous other sites, every year across America, in the name of progress, is merely one more example of a continued and very pointed genocide of Native American culture.</p>
3637.  
3638.  
3639.  
3640. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>The proposed destruction of public land in the name of progress is merely one more example of a continued and very pointed genocide of Native American culture.</p></blockquote></figure>
3641.  
3642.  
3643.  
3644. <p>In response to Trump’s approval of the Ambler Road Project, environmental advocacy groups blasted the decision, saying it’s another example of Trump protecting business interests over the planet.</p>
3645.  
3646.  
3647.  
3648. <p>“As with every other shortsighted, self-serving decision by this administration, this move is silencing the people who will be impacted the most,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee. “Trump is sidestepping the views of Native Alaskans and short circuiting the federal government’s obligation to hear from them.”</p>
3649.  
3650.  
3651.  
3652. <p>“We build a road that’s over 200 miles long through a very beautiful area of the world,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “It’s incredible when you look at it. But a rough area from the standpoint of building.”</p>
3653. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-ai-alaska-national-park-ambler-road/">Trump Sacrifices Alaska Wilderness to Help AI Companies</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3654. ]]></content:encoded>
3655.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-ai-alaska-national-park-ambler-road/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
3656.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
3657.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-1723110650-e1759925740808.jpg?fit=5970%2C2985' width='5970' height='2985' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500491</post-id>
3658. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
3659. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3660. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
3661. </media:content>
3662. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
3663. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
3664. </media:content>
3665. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3666. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GettyImages-2194581816-e1748962105445.webp?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3667. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/GettyImages-1028173796_Cal-Fires_web-1568324896.jpg?fit=300%2C150" medium="image">
3668. <media:title type="html">TOPSHOT - Firefighters struggle to contain backfire in the Pollard Flat area of California in the Shasta Trinity National Forest on September 6, 2018. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON / AFP)        (Photo credit should read JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)</media:title>
3669. </media:content>
3670. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/RTSHF78E-oak-flat-sacred-copper.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
3671.            </item>
3672.        
3673.            <item>
3674.                <title><![CDATA[Trump’s War on Drugs]]></title>
3675.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/</link>
3676.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/#respond</comments>
3677.                <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
3678.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Collateral Damage]]></dc:creator>
3679.                                 <category><![CDATA[Collateral Damage]]></category>
3680.  
3681.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
3682.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>Journalist Radley Balko examines how Trump’s war on immigrants merges and expands the lethal policies of the wars on drugs and terror.</p>
3683. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/">Trump’s War on Drugs</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
3684. ]]></description>
3685.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
3686. <!-- BLOCK(acast)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22ACAST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Afalse%7D)(%7B%22id%22%3A%22trumps-war-on-drugs%22%2C%22podcast%22%3A%22collateral-damage%22%2C%22subscribe%22%3Atrue%7D) -->
3687. <div class="acast-player">
3688.  <iframe src="https://embed.acast.com/collateral-damage/trumps-war-on-drugs?accentColor=111111&#038;bgColor=f5f6f7&#038;logo=false" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" class="acast-player__embed"></iframe>
3689. </div>
3690. <!-- END-BLOCK(acast)[0] -->
3691.  
3692.  
3693.  
3694. <p><span class="has-underline">From Afghanistan to Iraq,</span> the United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges are terrorists or insurgents. It’s a legacy that started under President George W. Bush and <a href="https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/">greatly expanded under President Barack Obama</a>. President Donald Trump has taken this tactic to new extremes, boasting about <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/10/trump-venezuela-boat-attack-drone/">lethal strikes</a> against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and declaring the U.S. is in a “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/">non-international armed conflict</a>” with narcotics traffickers.</p>
3695.  
3696.  
3697.  
3698. <p>Trump appears to be merging the war on terror with the war on drugs. This comes as he’s simultaneously ramping up the use of troops to police inside American cities. It&#8217;s a chilling escalation. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen a president stoke public fear and deploy overwhelming force in the name of law and order.&nbsp;</p>
3699.  
3700.  
3701.  
3702. <p>In the modern war on drugs — which dates back more than 50 years to President Richard Nixon’s administration — the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn’t just tolerated, it’s inevitable.</p>
3703.  
3704.  
3705.  
3706. <p>This is the prelude.<br></p>
3707.  
3708.  
3709.  
3710. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></h2>
3711.  
3712.  
3713.  
3714. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>The United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges to be terrorists or insurgents. Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Syria. It’s a <a href="https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/explainers/history-of-drone-warfare">legacy</a> that started under President George W. Bush’s war on terror and then was greatly expanded under President Barack Obama. But now President Donald Trump has taken the tactic to new extremes.</p>
3715.  
3716.  
3717.  
3718. <p><strong>NBC: </strong>Moments ago, President Trump posted on social media that the U.S. military carried out a second strike targeting drug cartels.&nbsp;</p>
3719.  
3720.  
3721.  
3722. <p><strong>CBS: </strong>This attack just two weeks after the military struck another boat from Venezuela in the Caribbean.</p>
3723.  
3724.  
3725.  
3726. <p><strong>WPLG Local 10: </strong>The president says three narco-terrorists were killed, posting this video of the strike on Truth Social. The president <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/18/us-maritime-strikes-amount-to-extrajudicial-killings">saying</a>, “Be warned — if you are transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you.”</p>
3727.  
3728.  
3729.  
3730. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Following Trump&#8217;s announcement of those strikes, the U.S. Navy took out another boat —&nbsp;a speedboat in which authorities in the Dominican Republic allege they confiscated <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boat-destroyed-us-navy-cocaine-dominican-republic/">1,000 kilograms of cocaine</a>.&nbsp;</p>
3731.  
3732.  
3733.  
3734. <p>The U.S. president is directing the full force of the U.S. military to kill alleged drug traffickers.</p>
3735.  
3736.  
3737.  
3738. <p><strong>DT: </strong>We’re telling the cartels right now we’re going to stop them too. When they come by land, we’re going to stop them the same way we stopped the boats.</p>
3739.  
3740.  
3741.  
3742. <p><strong>RB: </strong>And as Trump justifies this expanded role for the president as judge, jury, and executioner, he defines and casts villains, real or imagined, to fit his narrative.&nbsp;</p>
3743.  
3744.  
3745.  
3746. <p><strong>DT: </strong>They killed 300,000 people in our country last year. And we’re not letting it happen anymore.&nbsp;</p>
3747.  
3748.  
3749.  
3750. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Trump appears to be merging the war on terror with the war on drugs.&nbsp;And this comes simultaneously as he&#8217;s ramping up the use of troops to police inside American cities.&nbsp;</p>
3751.  
3752.  
3753.  
3754. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>As Trump justifies this expanded role of judge, jury, and executioner, he defines and casts villains, real or imagined, to fit his narrative.</p></blockquote></figure>
3755.  
3756.  
3757.  
3758. <p><strong>DT: </strong>What they&#8217;ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they&#8217;re very unsafe places and we&#8217;re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That&#8217;s a war too. It&#8217;s a war from within. &#8230;&nbsp;</p>
3759.  
3760.  
3761.  
3762. <p>We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military.&nbsp;</p>
3763.  
3764.  
3765.  
3766. <p><strong>RB: </strong>It&#8217;s a chilling escalation. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen a president stoke public fear and deploy overwhelming force in the name of law and order.</p>
3767.  
3768.  
3769.  
3770. <p>From The Intercept, this is <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/collateraldamage/">Collateral Damage</a>: a podcast about the half-century-long war on drugs, its enduring ripple effects, and the devastating consequences of building a massive war machine aimed at the public itself.&nbsp;</p>
3771.  
3772.  
3773.  
3774. <p>I’m Radley Balko, an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than 20 years.</p>
3775.  
3776.  
3777.  
3778. <p>The so-called “war on drugs” began as a metaphor to demonstrate the country’s fervent commitment to defeating drug addiction, but the “war” part of that metaphor is now all too literal.</p>
3779.  
3780.  
3781.  
3782. <p>When the drug war ramped up in the 1980s and ’90s, it brought helicopters, tanks, and SWAT teams to U.S. neighborhoods. It brought dehumanizing rhetoric and the suspension of basic civil liberties protections.</p>
3783.  
3784.  
3785.  
3786. <p>All wars have collateral damage: the people whose deaths are tragic but deemed necessary for the greater cause.&nbsp;</p>
3787.  
3788.  
3789.  
3790. <p>But once the country dehumanized people suspected of using and selling drugs, we were more willing to accept some collateral damage.&nbsp;</p>
3791.  
3792.  
3793.  
3794. <p>In the modern war on drugs — which dates back more than 50 years to the Nixon administration — the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn’t just tolerated, it’s inevitable.</p>
3795.  
3796.  
3797.  
3798. <p>This is the prelude.</p>
3799.  
3800.  
3801.  
3802. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>Once the country dehumanized people suspected of using and selling drugs, we were more willing to accept some collateral damage.</p></blockquote></figure>
3803.  
3804.  
3805.  
3806. <p>Donald Trump has begun his second presidential term by unleashing aggressive, abusive immigration enforcement officers all over the country. Federal agencies from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE; Customs and Border Protection; Homeland Security Investigations; even the DEA and ATF are teaming up with local sheriffs and police.&nbsp;</p>
3807.  
3808.  
3809.  
3810. <p><strong>KTLA: </strong>New video shows dozens of carwash workers being detained by federal agents including at least one customer.</p>
3811.  
3812.  
3813.  
3814. <p><strong>WFLA:</strong> A Tampa family says they were roughed up and their home thrown into disarray by federal ICE agents and Homeland Security investigator.</p>
3815.  
3816.  
3817.  
3818. <p><strong>WFLA:</strong> They just pointed guns at us in our face. They told us to open the door, if not they were going to break it down. They didn’t have no warrant.&nbsp;</p>
3819.  
3820.  
3821.  
3822. <p><strong>RB: </strong>In some parts of the country, the administration has deployed federal troops, about <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/17/trump-total-military-troops-deployed-cost/">35,000 </a>personnel from the National Guard, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines, according to reporting from The Intercept.&nbsp;In service of Trump&#8217;s mass deportation agenda, these forces operate now in at least five states.</p>
3823.  
3824.  
3825.  
3826.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3827.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3828.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/16/federal-troops-la-doing-nothing/"
3829.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3830.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: federal-troops-la-doing-nothing"
3831.      data-ga-track-label="federal-troops-la-doing-nothing"
3832.          >
3833.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2220432330_2e50d5-e1752609569478.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3834.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3835.        Related      </h2>
3836.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">The Military Occupied LA for 40 Days and All They Did Was Detain One Guy</h3>
3837.    </span>
3838.    </a>
3839.  </div>
3840.  
3841.  
3842.  
3843. <p>One of the first places Trump sent troops was Los Angeles, California, to quell anti-ICE <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/10/la-police-ice-raids-protests/">protests</a> that had erupted in response to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/07/ice-raids-la-violence-video-bystanders/">violent immigration raids</a>.</p>
3844.  
3845.  
3846.  
3847. <p><strong>FOX 11: </strong>About 700 U.S. Marines from the Second Battalion, 7<sup>th</sup> Marine Regiment out of Twentynine Palms received weekend orders and are on the way expected to arrive this morning. And although they’re trained for close combat, officials say these Marines won’t be on the front lines. Instead, they’ll be focused on crowd control.</p>
3848.  
3849.  
3850.  
3851. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Trump&#8217;s mass deportation policy has many analogs to the drug war.&nbsp;</p>
3852.  
3853.  
3854.  
3855. <p><strong>Richard Nixon</strong>: To the extent money can help in meeting the problem of dangerous drugs, it will be available. This is one area where we cannot have budget cuts because we must wage what I have called “total war” against public enemy No. 1 in the United States: the problem of dangerous drugs.</p>
3856.  
3857.  
3858.  
3859. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>Trump’s mass deportation policy has many analogs to the drug war.&nbsp;</p></blockquote></figure>
3860.  
3861.  
3862.  
3863. <p><strong>RB: </strong>The modern drug war began during President Richard Nixon’s administration and, like Trump&#8217;s fight against undocumented immigration, it was predicated on <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/09/12/trump-springfield-haiti-cats-dogs-racism-immigration/">false claims designed</a> to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/09/11/kamala-harris-debate-immigration/">stir up fear</a> and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/09/23/trump-campaign-conspiracy-theories/">anger</a>, particularly among white, middle- and low-income voters.</p>
3864.  
3865.  
3866.  
3867. <p><strong>RN</strong>: It is time for an honest look at the problem of order in the United States.&nbsp;</p>
3868.  
3869.  
3870.  
3871. <p><strong>RN</strong>: In recent years crime in this country has grown nine times as fast as population. At the current rate, the crimes of violence in America will double by 1972. We cannot accept that kind of future for America. We owe it to the decent and law-abiding citizens of America to take the offensive.&nbsp;</p>
3872.  
3873.  
3874.  
3875. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Nixon was also obsessed with enemies and held paranoid fears.&nbsp;</p>
3876.  
3877.  
3878.  
3879. <p><strong>RN:</strong> You see, homosexuality, dope, immorality in general — these are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the communists and the left-wingers, they’re trying to destroy us.&nbsp;</p>
3880.  
3881.  
3882.  
3883. <p><strong>RB: </strong>His aides dehumanized drug offenders with terms like &#8220;vermin&#8221; and lied about crime statistics to both terrify voters and play to their prejudices.</p>
3884.  
3885.  
3886.  
3887. <p>In 1994, the journalist Dan Baum tracked down Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and interviewed him.&nbsp;</p>
3888.  
3889.  
3890.  
3891. <p>On a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI3hPN1ttV4">talk show</a>, Baum recounted Ehrlichman’s frankness about their goals.</p>
3892.  
3893.  
3894.  
3895. <p><strong>Dan Baum</strong>: He said, “Look. The Nixon campaign in ’68 and the Nixon White House had two enemies: Black people and the antiwar left.”</p>
3896.  
3897.  
3898.  
3899. <p><strong>RB: </strong>He went on to say:&nbsp;</p>
3900.  
3901.  
3902.  
3903. <p><strong>DB: “</strong>[V]ilify them night after night on the evening news, and we thought if we can associate heroin with Black people in the public mind and marijuana with the hippies this would be perfect.” And he looked me in the eye and said, “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”</p>
3904.  
3905.  
3906.  
3907. <p><strong>RB: </strong>That ought to sound familiar.</p>
3908.  
3909.  
3910.  
3911. <p><strong>DT: </strong>She&#8217;s eradicated our sovereign border and unleashed an army of gangs and criminal migrants from prisons and jails, insane asylums and mental institutions, from all around the world, from Venezuela and the Congo in Africa.</p>
3912.  
3913.  
3914.  
3915. <p><strong>DT: </strong>Democrats have vowed mass invasion and mass migration. We are delivering mass deportation. And it&#8217;s happening very fast. And the worst of the worst are being sent to a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/05/09/trump-bukele-kilmar-abrego-garcia-el-salvador-cecot-prison/">no-nonsense prison in El Salvador</a>.</p>
3916.  
3917.  
3918.  
3919. <p><strong>DT: </strong>It&#8217;s a great honor to be deep in Florida, the Florida Everglades, to open America’s newest migrant detention center. It&#8217;s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate, because I looked outside and that&#8217;s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon. But very soon this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.</p>
3920.  
3921.  
3922.  
3923. <p><strong>RB: </strong>The rhetoric of the Nixon administration resulted in more aggressive, less accountable, and ultimately more reckless and abusive police tactics.&nbsp;</p>
3924.  
3925.  
3926.  
3927. <p>It was this era, for example, that gave us the no-knock raid, or the policy that allows police to get prior permission from a judge to forcibly enter a home without knocking.&nbsp;</p>
3928.  
3929.  
3930.  
3931. <p>The policy upended a centuries-old tradition in common law that the home should be a place of peace and sanctuary.</p>
3932.  
3933.  
3934.  
3935. <p>But the no-knock raid wasn&#8217;t a policy police groups were demanding or clamoring for.&nbsp;</p>
3936.  
3937.  
3938.  
3939. <p>It was a policy dreamed up by a 31-year-old Senate staffer who had been recruited to Nixon&#8217;s 1968 presidential campaign. Donald Santarelli came up with the policy as a way for Nixon to show he was tough on crime.</p>
3940.  
3941.  
3942.  
3943. <p>&#8220;There was an increasing fear of crime,” Santarelli told me in an interview for my book “Rise of the Warrior Cop.” Santarelli said, “At the same time you had the rise of the civil rights movement, the riots, the Black Panthers, and this increase in drug use. I think the public started to pick up on the idea that these things were linked, because they were all happening simultaneously.&#8221;&nbsp;</p>
3944.  
3945.  
3946.  
3947. <p>This line of thinking drove policies designed to &#8220;unleash&#8221; law enforcement. The Nixon administration tried to relax wiretapping laws, roll back Miranda rights, and erode Fourth Amendment protections against unconstitutional searches and seizures.</p>
3948.  
3949.  
3950.  
3951.  <div class="promote-related-post">
3952.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
3953.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/05/02/trump-police-executive-order/"
3954.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
3955.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-police-executive-order"
3956.      data-ga-track-label="trump-police-executive-order"
3957.          >
3958.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/GettyImages-1220444884-e1746142151896.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
3959.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
3960.        Related      </h2>
3961.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Cops Are Already Unleashed. Trump Is Telling Them to Run Wild.</h3>
3962.    </span>
3963.    </a>
3964.  </div>
3965.  
3966.  
3967.  
3968. <p>And now we’re seeing the Trump administration push even harder to roll back constitutional protections under the guise of immigration enforcement, fighting crime, and what they call “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/enforcing-the-death-penalty-laws-in-the-district-of-columbia-to-deter-and-punish-the-most-heinous-crimes/">domestic terrorism</a>.”&nbsp;</p>
3969.  
3970.  
3971.  
3972. <p>“Law enforcement is just like any other interest group,” Santarelli told me at the time, &#8220;They’re always after greater power. There was a sense that they needed to capitalize on these historic events. And I think there was a real willingness on the part of the public to give them whatever powers they sought.”</p>
3973.  
3974.  
3975.  
3976. <p>That too should sound familiar.</p>
3977.  
3978.  
3979.  
3980. <p><strong>DT: </strong>On day one of the Trump administration, we declared an all-out war on the dealers, smugglers, traffickers, and cartels. Within moments of taking office, I deployed the U.S. military to our border and unleashed the patriots of ICE and Border Patrol to defend our country from an invasion. This was an invasion. This wasn’t people coming in. This was an invasion of our country.&nbsp;</p>
3981.  
3982.  
3983.  
3984. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Like Nixon, Trump also demagogues fear of crime. The main difference is that while Nixon merely exaggerated crime statistics, Trump just simply fabricated them.&nbsp;</p>
3985.  
3986.  
3987.  
3988. <p>The Justice Department announced in January that <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/11/trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops/">violent crime in D.C. hit a 30-year low in 2024</a>.&nbsp;</p>
3989.  
3990.  
3991.  
3992. <p>So far this year, it’s down 26 percent from that. This, in other words, is a curious time for the president to declare that the nation’s capital is a violent cesspool that it demands the sort of crime-fighting expertise that only a 79-year-old man who fetishizes strongmen and dictators can provide.</p>
3993.  
3994.  
3995.  
3996. <p><strong>DT</strong>: We have to give power back to the police, because crime is rampant.&nbsp;</p>
3997.  
3998.  
3999.  
4000. <p><strong>DT: </strong>There is a literal crimewave going on. You know, and if you look, we have spent last year $113 billion on illegal immigrants. We have to do something about it. And we have to start by building a wall, a big beautiful powerful wall.</p>
4001.  
4002.  
4003.  
4004. <p><strong>RB: </strong>In truth, when Trump first took office in 2017, he inherited the lowest homicide rate of any president in modern history. He was also the first president since George H.W. Bush to leave office with a higher homicide rate than when he entered.</p>
4005.  
4006.  
4007.  
4008. <p>But Trump&#8217;s biggest lies have always come when he blames crime on immigrants.</p>
4009.  
4010.  
4011.  
4012. <p><strong>DT: </strong>When Mexico sends its people, they&#8217;re not sending their best. They&#8217;re not sending you. They&#8217;re not sending you. They&#8217;re sending people that have lots of problems, and they&#8217;re bringing those problems with us. They&#8217;re bringing drugs. They&#8217;re bringing crime. They&#8217;re rapists.</p>
4013.  
4014.  
4015.  
4016. <p><strong>DT: </strong>A lot of towns don&#8217;t want to talk because they&#8217;re so embarrassed by it. <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/09/12/trump-springfield-haiti-cats-dogs-racism-immigration/">In Springfield</a>, they&#8217;re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they&#8217;re eating the cats. They&#8217;re eating the pets.</p>
4017.  
4018.  
4019.  
4020. <p><strong>RB: </strong>The truth is that immigrants — documented and otherwise — commit far <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/debunking-myth-migrant-crime-wave">fewer crimes</a> than native-born people. Historically, when undocumented immigration has gone up, crime has gone down. And so-called sanctuary cities actually have lower crime rates than cities that cooperate with federal immigration authorities.</p>
4021.  
4022.  
4023.  
4024.  
4025.  
4026.  
4027.  
4028. <p>[Break]</p>
4029.  
4030.  
4031.  
4032. <p>There are also some interesting parallels and contrasts between what&#8217;s happening now and the Reagan administration, in which fear of illicit drugs and crime would again be exploited to grow the power of police, prosecutors, and government.</p>
4033.  
4034.  
4035.  
4036. <p><strong>Ronald Reagan: </strong>Drugs are menacing our society, they&#8217;re threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They&#8217;re killing our children.&nbsp;</p>
4037.  
4038.  
4039.  
4040. <p><strong>RR</strong>: We will no longer tolerate those who sell drugs and those who buy drugs. All Americans of good will are determined to stamp out those parasites.&nbsp;</p>
4041.  
4042.  
4043.  
4044. <p><strong>RR</strong>: Well now we&#8217;re in another war for our freedom.</p>
4045.  
4046.  
4047.  
4048. <p><strong>RR: </strong>[T]reating drug trafficking as a threat to our national security.&nbsp;</p>
4049.  
4050.  
4051.  
4052. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Illicit drugs were not a threat to national security. And to the extent that they were, it was the way in which aggressive U.S. drug policy overseas had turned vast swaths of the world against America.</p>
4053.  
4054.  
4055.  
4056. <p>As with Nixon, Reagan turned drugs into a culture war battle, pitting middle class American values against hippies, activists, urban advocates, and the counterculture.&nbsp;</p>
4057.  
4058.  
4059.  
4060. <p>Recreational drug use was immoral.&nbsp;</p>
4061.  
4062.  
4063.  
4064. <p>So drug addicts weren&#8217;t suffering from a health condition; they were simply bad people.</p>
4065.  
4066.  
4067.  
4068. <p><strong>RR:</strong> Drug use is not a victimless crime, it is not a private matter. While we must be concerned with the personal consequences for the individual, we must demonstrate our great concern for the millions of innocent citizens who pay the high price for the illegal drug use of some. These costs are measured by crime and terrorism.</p>
4069.  
4070.  
4071.  
4072. <p><strong>RB: </strong>This sort of dehumanization made it easier for federal and state government to kick down doors, raid entire towns, city blocks, and housing projects, and bring in National Guard troops and helicopters to invade entire counties where they suspected people were growing marijuana. It also helped Reagan create federal–local task forces with broad new powers, and to begin to blur the lines between domestic policing and the military.</p>
4073.  
4074.  
4075.  
4076. <p><strong>Anchor: </strong>We have a report from Spencer Michaels of Public Station KQED, San Francisco.</p>
4077.  
4078.  
4079.  
4080. <p><strong>VOX:</strong> Good afternoon skipper, this is the United States Coast Guard. We&#8217;re going to be placing a boarding party aboard your vessel this afternoon to ensure your compliance with all federal regulations…&nbsp;</p>
4081.  
4082.  
4083.  
4084. <p><strong>Spencer Michaels: </strong>What they’re really looking for is drugs: marijuana and cocaine, smuggled into the U.S. from South America and Asia. San Francisco Bay may not look like a war zone, but this is the Western front of the Reagan administration&#8217;s war on drugs. And it is a real war complete with an Air Force and a Navy.</p>
4085.  
4086.  
4087.  
4088. <p><strong>RB: </strong>This too echoes in the Trump administration&#8217;s version of the war on drugs — one that also folds in war on terror-level racism and propaganda.&nbsp;</p>
4089.  
4090.  
4091.  
4092. <p><strong>DT: </strong>In the 21st century, we&#8217;ve seen one terror attack after another, carried out by foreign visa overstayers from dangerous places all over the world. And thanks to Biden&#8217;s open-door policies, today there are millions and millions of these illegals who should not be in our country.&nbsp;</p>
4093.  
4094.  
4095.  
4096. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>Trump’s false claim that immigration poses a threat to national security has provided his administration the legal basis to claim sweeping new powers for police agencies. </p></blockquote></figure>
4097.  
4098.  
4099.  
4100. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Trump&#8217;s false claim that immigration poses a threat to national security — that we&#8217;re being &#8220;invaded&#8221; and that this poses a &#8220;national emergency&#8221; — has provided his administration the legal basis to claim sweeping new powers for police agencies. These include the power to arrest and deport immigrants for<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/30/rubio-noem-deport-aaup-ruling-free-speech/"> speech protected by the First Amendment</a>, to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/09/la-ice-protests-national-guard-marines-trump/">deploy the Marines </a>and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/20/trump-federalize-washington-dc-military-troops-cost/">National Guards</a> to American cities, and to ship people off without due process to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/05/09/trump-bukele-kilmar-abrego-garcia-el-salvador-cecot-prison/">slave labor prisons like CECOT </a>in El Salvador.&nbsp;</p>
4101.  
4102.  
4103.  
4104. <p><strong>Stephen Miller: </strong>Tren de Aragua has the same legal status as Al Qaeda and ISIS. MS-13 has the same legal status as Al Qaeda and ISIS. These are foreign terrorists operating on our soil. And our gratitude to El Salvador for agreeing to take custody of these terrorists is immense.</p>
4105.  
4106.  
4107.  
4108. <p><strong>Kristi Noem:&nbsp;</strong>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.&nbsp;</p>
4109.  
4110.  
4111.  
4112. <p><strong>RB: </strong>The argument that immigrants pose a threat to national security is just as ridiculous as the argument that illicit drugs do. But as we saw during the Reagan administration, the federal courts have thus far been reluctant to question the president when he makes such proclamations.&nbsp;</p>
4113.  
4114.  
4115.  
4116. <p>As many political <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/25/us/politics/trump-1980s-manhattan.html">commentators</a> have pointed out, Donald Trump is in many ways stuck in the 1980s. He seems to think American cities are wastelands of crime and decay.&nbsp;</p>
4117.  
4118.  
4119.  
4120. <p><strong>DT</strong>: The capital of America was a bloodthirsty, horrible, dangerous place. One of the worst.</p>
4121.  
4122.  
4123.  
4124. <p><strong>DT</strong>: These are high-crime areas. As high as there is in the world. You can go to Afghanistan, you can go to places that you think of are, like, unsafe. You&#8217;re safer there than you are in Chicago at night.</p>
4125.  
4126.  
4127.  
4128. <p><strong>RB: </strong>In truth, despite the increase in some crimes during the Covid pandemic, crime is falling again. And it’s now at near <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/08/06/violent-crime-rate-fell-lowest-fbi">historic lows</a>.&nbsp;</p>
4129.  
4130.  
4131.  
4132. <p>He seems to think that New York especially is a violent, dystopian hellscape, when in truth it&#8217;s safer than most cities a fraction of its size.</p>
4133.  
4134.  
4135.  
4136. <p><strong>DT:</strong> I&#8217;ve seen New York through good times and bad, through boom times and crimewaves, through market crashes and terrorist attacks, but I&#8217;ve never seen it quite like this. We have filthy encampments of drugged out homeless people living in our places that we&#8217;ve spent so much time with children where they used to play.</p>
4137.  
4138.  
4139.  
4140. <p><strong>RB: </strong>During the 1980s, the Reagan administration and congressional leaders wanted to bring in active-duty military to patrol U.S. streets and raid U.S. homes. That didn&#8217;t happen in large part due to opposition from the military itself. And that’s a sign of a healthy democracy.</p>
4141.  
4142.  
4143.  
4144. <p><strong>Rep. Benjamin Gilman: </strong>And I would appreciate your comment with regards to the military — the need for the military’s involvement in being a backup force in our war against the narcotics traffickers that are affecting our national security as much as any other common enemy.&nbsp;</p>
4145.  
4146.  
4147.  
4148. <p><strong>RB: </strong>That’s Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., during a <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/house-committee/national-security-policy/935">1988 hearing</a> on the defense budget, asking then Secretary of Defense <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190926230650/https:/www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Regional%20Security/2010/preachwhatyoupractice.pdf">Frank Carlucci</a> about his opposition to relaxing restrictions on the use of military in the drug war.</p>
4149.  
4150.  
4151.  
4152. <p><strong>Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci: </strong>My statement was that I would be opposed to making the Defense Department the front-line agency. You and I agree, when you said you don’t think we ought to have the capability to arrest people — that is what I am talking about. But I also have a responsibility to make certain that the military isn’t diverted from its mission, that is, the national security, the security of the country.</p>
4153.  
4154.  
4155.  
4156. <p><strong>RB: </strong>That separation is eroding under Trump.&nbsp;</p>
4157.  
4158.  
4159.  
4160. <p><strong>DT: </strong>Under the authorities vested in me as the president of the United States, I&#8217;m officially invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act — you know what that is — and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control.</p>
4161.  
4162.  
4163.  
4164. <p><strong>ABC: </strong>This next wave of troops expected to join the more than 800 National Guard troops that President Trump activated just last week. Up to this point, we’re told the Guardsmen have been unarmed, but Defense officials say that could change.&nbsp;</p>
4165.  
4166.  
4167.  
4168. <p><strong>RB: </strong>The crackdown in D.C. came 10 days after the New Republic reported on a Pentagon memo authored by Phil Hegseth, the defense secretary’s brother. The memo laid out the administration’s plans to deploy active-duty troops around the country to aid in immigration enforcement “for years to come.”</p>
4169.  
4170.  
4171.  
4172. <p>If enacted, that memo would once and for all end this country’s centuries-old tradition of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/22/military-troops-deployed-border-ice/">keeping the military out of routine domestic law enforcement</a>. It would eradicate one of the cornerstone principles that drove the American Revolution. And it could well end with <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/08/trump-national-guard-ice-immigration-protests-los-angeles/">U.S. soldiers firing their guns at U.S. citizens</a>.</p>
4173.  
4174.  
4175.  
4176. <p>Despite the best efforts of the politicians who represent them, the American public finally began to see that declaring war on drugs was never really going to make them go away.</p>
4177.  
4178.  
4179.  
4180. <p>States around the country finally began to see the folly of spending billions and incarcerating thousands to prohibit a mostly harmless drug like marijuana.</p>
4181.  
4182.  
4183.  
4184. <p>After the George Floyd protests, we saw dozens of cities and even a couple states <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/state-policing-reforms-george-floyds-murder">roll back</a> some of the broad powers granted to police during the drug war era, particularly when it comes to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/12/17/no-knock-raid-new-york-breonna-taylor/">no-knock raids</a>.</p>
4185.  
4186.  
4187.  
4188. <p>And yet in other parts of the country, the drug war never really ended.&nbsp;</p>
4189.  
4190.  
4191.  
4192. <p>The raids continued, the violence continued, the unnecessary deaths continued.</p>
4193.  
4194.  
4195.  
4196. <p>Even as we were producing this podcast, I continued to find stories about innocent people killed in botched raids, including for marijuana.</p>
4197.  
4198.  
4199.  
4200. <p>The election and reelection of Donald Trump also represents a regression on these issues. Trump has repeatedly <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/05/23/trump-called-rodrigo-duterte-to-congratulate-him-on-his-murderous-drug-war-you-are-doing-an-amazing-job/">fawned over governments that execute drug dealers</a>.&nbsp;</p>
4201.  
4202.  
4203.  
4204. <p><strong>DT:</strong> China has the death penalty. I said to him, “Do you have a drug problem?” when I first met him. He looked at me like what a stupid question. He said “No, no, no drug problem.” I said, “Well, what do you do?” “Death penalty. Immediate death penalty.”</p>
4205.  
4206.  
4207.  
4208. <p><strong>DT:</strong> They execute the drug dealers. They have zero drug problem, zero.&nbsp;</p>
4209.  
4210.  
4211.  
4212. <p><strong>DT:</strong> If you notice that every country that has the death penalty has no drug problem, they execute drug dealers.</p>
4213.  
4214.  
4215.  
4216. <p><strong>RB: </strong>And during the 2024 campaign, Trump vowed on Fox’s Jesse Watters show to invade Mexico.&nbsp;</p>
4217.  
4218.  
4219.  
4220. <p><strong>Jesse Watters:</strong> Mexico, are strikes against the cartels still on the table?</p>
4221.  
4222.  
4223.  
4224. <p><strong>DT</strong>: Absolutely.</p>
4225.  
4226.  
4227.  
4228. <p><strong>JW: </strong>Even against our biggest trading partner?&nbsp;</p>
4229.  
4230.  
4231.  
4232. <p><strong>DT: </strong>Absolutely.&nbsp;</p>
4233.  
4234.  
4235.  
4236. <p><strong>RB: </strong>And since taking office again, Trump has claimed sweeping new powers that have alarmed presidential scholars and historians. In a major escalation Trump has boasted about attacking boats in the Caribbean, killing at least 17 people.</p>
4237.  
4238.  
4239.  
4240. <p>These attacks were illegal both under domestic and <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/05/pentagon-official-trump-boat-strike-was-a-criminal-attack-on-civilians/">international law</a>.&nbsp;</p>
4241.  
4242.  
4243.  
4244. <p>Trump justified these extrajudicial<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/26/trump-venezuela-boat-strike-drugs/"> execution</a> by claiming without evidence that the vessels were “trafficking illicit narcotics.”&nbsp;</p>
4245.  
4246.  
4247.  
4248. <p><strong>NBC: </strong>The Trump administration says it’s blown up boats near Venezuela that were used by drug traffickers. But the Venezuela government has denied it. And the country’s leader Nicholas Maduro says the U.S. wants to force him from power.&nbsp;</p>
4249.  
4250.  
4251.  
4252. <p><strong>ABC: </strong>President Trump has declared drug cartels operating in the Caribbean unlawful combatants. The president says the United States is now in a non-international armed conflict.</p>
4253.  
4254.  
4255.  
4256. <p><strong>RB: </strong>His administration has also expanded the definition of terrorist to go after suspected drug dealers, designating gangs and cartels as “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/designating-cartels-and-other-organizations-as-foreign-terrorist-organizations-and-specially-designated-global-terrorists/">Foreign Terrorist Organizations</a>.”</p>
4257.  
4258.  
4259.  
4260.  <div class="promote-related-post">
4261.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
4262.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/23/feds-criminalize-protests-masked-ice/"
4263.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
4264.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: feds-criminalize-protests-masked-ice"
4265.      data-ga-track-label="feds-criminalize-protests-masked-ice"
4266.          >
4267.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2220042152-e1753221573387.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
4268.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
4269.        Related      </h2>
4270.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Feds Make It a Crime to Give PPE to ICE Protesters</h3>
4271.    </span>
4272.    </a>
4273.  </div>
4274.  
4275.  
4276.  
4277. <p>And it doesn’t stop there. The administration has also designated “anti-fascists” as <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/18/trump-antifa-domestic-terrorism/">domestic terrorists</a>, directing the full weight of the federal government against everyone from people <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/24/court-block-instagram-subpoena-ice-border-patrol/">protesting </a>violent immigration <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/07/ice-raids-la-violence-video-bystanders/">raids </a>to police brutality, to even media outlets covering those protests.</p>
4278.  
4279.  
4280.  
4281. <p>Trump has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/politics/trump-police-military-surplus-equipment.html">rolled back</a> many of the Obama-era reforms such as restrictions on transferring military weapons, armor, and vehicles to local police departments.</p>
4282.  
4283.  
4284.  
4285. <p>He has instructed his Justice Department to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/25/trump-ends-police-reform-consent-decrees">relax oversight</a> and end civil rights investigations of abusive police departments.&nbsp;</p>
4286.  
4287.  
4288.  
4289. <p>And of course, Trump has exploited public fear of the potent, dangerous drug fentanyl to impose ridiculous, destructive tariffs on virtually every country on earth, including countries with zero connections to fentanyl.</p>
4290.  
4291.  
4292.  
4293. <p><strong>DT:</strong> This open border nightmare flooded our country with fentanyl and with people that shouldn&#8217;t be here. Some of the worst people on Earth.&nbsp;</p>
4294.  
4295.  
4296.  
4297. <p><strong>DT:</strong> We are tariffing countries that are sending us fentanyl and working with fentanyl.</p>
4298.  
4299.  
4300.  
4301. <p><strong>RB: </strong>But the most alarming way the stories you&#8217;re about to hear on this podcast echo what&#8217;s happening today is the way Trump has framed immigration as an existential crisis that demands urgent, extra-constitutional action.&nbsp;</p>
4302.  
4303.  
4304.  
4305. <p><strong>DT: </strong>Joe Biden allowed 21 million people — that&#8217;s a minimum, I think it was much higher than that — illegal aliens to invade our country.&nbsp;</p>
4306.  
4307.  
4308.  
4309. <p><strong>DT: </strong>They allowed millions and millions of criminals into our country, 11,888 murderers, 50 percent of whom murdered more than one person.</p>
4310.  
4311.  
4312.  
4313. <p><strong>DT: </strong>That&#8217;s what came into our country from prisons, from mental institutions, from street gangs, drug dealers. Disgusting. This enormous country-destroying invasion has swamped communities nationwide with massive crime, crippling costs and burdens far beyond what any nation could withstand. No nation could withstand what we did. &nbsp;</p>
4314.  
4315.  
4316.  
4317. <p><strong>RB: </strong>While Pentagon opposition thwarted Reagan-era attempts to enlist the military in the drug war, Trump is keeping his promise to deploy active-duty troops to combat everything from immigration, to drugs, to protest, to homelessness. And he has repeatedly promised to send troops to more cities and states.</p>
4318.  
4319.  
4320.  
4321. <p><strong>DT: </strong>Because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That&#8217;s a big city. </p>
4322.  
4323.  
4324.  
4325. <p><strong>Chris Hayes</strong>: Hundreds of armed federal agents and police — backed up by riot trucks, smoke grenades, and helicopters — breached fences and busted doors in an immigration raid on an entire apartment building on the city&#8217;s South Side. They pulled dozens of residents from their homes in zip ties, including children, some of them without any clothes.</p>
4326.  
4327.  
4328.  
4329. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Trump has also attempted to purge the Pentagon of anyone who he believes might stand in his way.</p>
4330.  
4331.  
4332.  
4333. <p>We’ve also seen aggressiveness, violence, bigotry, and disregard for the basic dignity and rights of immigrants we&#8217;ve seen from Trump&#8217;s deportation forces. This is strikingly similar to the aggressiveness and abuse we saw from drug cops at the height of the crack epidemic.</p>
4334.  
4335.  
4336.  
4337.  <div class="promote-related-post">
4338.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
4339.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/11/trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops/"
4340.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
4341.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops"
4342.      data-ga-track-label="trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops"
4343.          >
4344.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AP25223626271595-e1755014116535.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
4345.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
4346.        Related      </h2>
4347.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Trump’s Trial Run for a Police State</h3>
4348.    </span>
4349.    </a>
4350.  </div>
4351.  
4352.  
4353.  
4354. <p>Now, Congress has <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/01/trump-big-beautiful-bill-passes-ice-budget/">appropriated enough money </a>to make Trump&#8217;s deportation army — ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and Homeland Security Investigations — into the largest police force in government, and a force larger than most country’s military.</p>
4355.  
4356.  
4357.  
4358. <p>Meanwhile, the protections the courts created during the drug war to grant police officers new powers and shield them from any real accountability are still in place. So the stories you&#8217;re about to hear don&#8217;t merely remain relevant today, they are why we are here.</p>
4359.  
4360.  
4361.  
4362. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>The protections the courts created during the drug war to grant police officers new powers and shield them from any real accountability are still in place.</p></blockquote></figure>
4363.  
4364.  
4365.  
4366. <p>Coming up this season on Collateral Damage.&nbsp;</p>
4367.  
4368.  
4369.  
4370. <p><strong>Bill Aylesworth: </strong>So they cooked up a scheme, a story that he was growing marijuana on the property.</p>
4371.  
4372.  
4373.  
4374. <p><strong>Rev. Markel Hutchins: </strong>The judge would just sign the no-knock warrant. And they were kicking in people’s doors and violating people’s rights.&nbsp;</p>
4375.  
4376.  
4377.  
4378. <p><strong>C. Virginia Fields: </strong>Police officers knocked on her door, threw in a grenade.&nbsp;</p>
4379.  
4380.  
4381.  
4382. <p><strong>BA: </strong>And raided his house and killed him.&nbsp;</p>
4383.  
4384.  
4385.  
4386. <p><strong>Ryan Frederick: </strong>What do you do when the police are telling you a lie? And how much are you going to argue with the people that make the law?&nbsp;</p>
4387.  
4388.  
4389.  
4390. <p><strong>Cristina Beamud: </strong>The goal was to eliminate the enemy. And the people were the enemy.</p>
4391.  
4392.  
4393.  
4394.  
4395.  
4396.  
4397.  
4398. <p><strong>RB: </strong>Collateral Damage is a production of The Intercept.&nbsp;</p>
4399.  
4400.  
4401.  
4402. <p>It was reported and written by me, Radley Balko.</p>
4403.  
4404.  
4405.  
4406. <p>Additional writing by Andrew Stelzer, who also served as producer and editor.</p>
4407.  
4408.  
4409.  
4410. <p>Laura Flynn is our showrunner.</p>
4411.  
4412.  
4413.  
4414. <p>Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief.</p>
4415.  
4416.  
4417.  
4418. <p>The executive producers are me and Sumi Aggarwal.</p>
4419.  
4420.  
4421.  
4422. <p>We had editing support from Maryam Saleh.&nbsp;</p>
4423.  
4424.  
4425.  
4426. <p>Truc Nguyen mixed our show.&nbsp;</p>
4427.  
4428.  
4429.  
4430. <p>Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and David Bralow.&nbsp;</p>
4431.  
4432.  
4433.  
4434. <p>Fact-checking by Kadal Jesuthasan.</p>
4435.  
4436.  
4437.  
4438. <p>Art direction by Fei Liu.</p>
4439.  
4440.  
4441.  
4442. <p>Illustrations by Tara Anand.</p>
4443.  
4444.  
4445.  
4446. <p>Copy editing by Nara Shin.</p>
4447.  
4448.  
4449.  
4450. <p>Social and video media by Chelsey B. Coombs.</p>
4451.  
4452.  
4453.  
4454. <p>Special thanks to Peter Beck for research assistance.&nbsp;</p>
4455.  
4456.  
4457.  
4458. <p>This series was made possible by a grant from the Vital Projects Fund.&nbsp;</p>
4459.  
4460.  
4461.  
4462. <p>Thank you for listening.</p>
4463. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/">Trump’s War on Drugs</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
4464. ]]></content:encoded>
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4466.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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4470. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/GettyImages-1220444884-e1746142151896.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
4471. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
4472. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
4473. </media:content>
4474. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
4475. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
4476. </media:content>
4477. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
4478. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2220042152-e1753221573387.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
4479. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AP25223626271595-e1755014116535.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
4480.            </item>
4481.        
4482.            <item>
4483.                <title><![CDATA[Episode One: Dirty Business]]></title>
4484.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-episode-one-dirty-business/</link>
4485.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-episode-one-dirty-business/#respond</comments>
4486.                <pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 10:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
4487.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Collateral Damage]]></dc:creator>
4488.                                 <category><![CDATA[Collateral Damage]]></category>
4489.  
4490.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
4491.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>The Atlanta narcotics unit’s deadly raid on 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston.</p>
4492. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-episode-one-dirty-business/">Episode One: Dirty Business</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
4493. ]]></description>
4494.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
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4500.  
4501.  
4502.  
4503. <p><span class="has-underline">In 2006,</span> a 92-year-old Atlanta woman was gunned down in her own home by police during a drug raid. The police initially claimed the woman was a marijuana dealer who fired a gun at them. The story might have ended there. But an informant bravely came forward to set the record straight. Subsequent investigations and reports revealed that the police had raided the wrong home, killed an innocent woman, then planted marijuana in her basement to cover up their mistake.</p>
4504.  
4505.  
4506.  
4507. <p>In the ensuing months, we’d learn that the Atlanta Police Department’s narcotics unit routinely conducted mistaken raids on terrified people. The problem was driven by perverse federal, state, and local financial incentives that pushed cops to take shortcuts in procuring warrants for drug raids in order to boost their arrest and seizure statistics. Most of those incentives are still in place today.</p>
4508.  
4509.  
4510.  
4511. <p>The raids haven’t stopped. And neither have the deaths.</p>
4512.  
4513.  
4514.  
4515. <p><strong>Transcript</strong></p>
4516.  
4517.  
4518.  
4519. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> It&#8217;s November 22, 2006, the day before Thanksgiving. Alex White, a hustler and small-time drug dealer sits in the back of an Atlanta Police Department squad car.</p>
4520.  
4521.  
4522.  
4523. <p>As the car stops in front of The Varsity — a burger joint in downtown Atlanta — White rolls down the window, grabs the exterior handle, and pops open the door. Then he runs. The officers abandon their car in the middle of the street and give chase.&nbsp;</p>
4524.  
4525.  
4526.  
4527. <p>White rushes into the burger spot and exits out the back. The officers follow. White eventually loses them long enough to duck behind a gas station. He then makes this remarkable phone call to 911.</p>
4528.  
4529.  
4530.  
4531. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>[Unintelligible] How can I help you?&nbsp;</p>
4532.  
4533.  
4534.  
4535. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>Yes, yes. I have two, two cops chasing me. They, they, they on the dirty side. I have two undercover police officers chasing me. One of &#8217;em name is Detective —&nbsp;</p>
4536.  
4537.  
4538.  
4539. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>Are they chasing you now?&nbsp;</p>
4540.  
4541.  
4542.  
4543. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>Yes. I just jumped out the car with ’em. See, I&#8217;m working with —</p>
4544.  
4545.  
4546.  
4547. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>OK. Are you wanted?</p>
4548.  
4549.  
4550.  
4551. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>Huh?&nbsp;</p>
4552.  
4553.  
4554.  
4555. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>Are you wanted, sir?</p>
4556.  
4557.  
4558.  
4559. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>No, no, ma&#8217;am. No, ma&#8217;am. I&#8217;m not wanted at all. You —</p>
4560.  
4561.  
4562.  
4563. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>OK. So you&#8217;re calling the police to the police …</p>
4564.  
4565.  
4566.  
4567. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong>&nbsp;Alex White was calling 911 on the police officers who had detained him. His years as a narcotics informant had just taken a dangerous turn. And he was scared.</p>
4568.  
4569.  
4570.  
4571. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>OK, sir, hold on. I can send you an officer. What&#8217;s your location? There&#8217;s nothing —&nbsp;</p>
4572.  
4573.  
4574.  
4575. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>I can&#8217;t tell you that. I can&#8217;t tell you that.&nbsp;</p>
4576.  
4577.  
4578.  
4579. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>OK, sir. This is the police. We send officers out when you dial 911.&nbsp;</p>
4580.  
4581.  
4582.  
4583. <p><strong>Alex White:</strong> OK. OK.&nbsp;</p>
4584.  
4585.  
4586.  
4587. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>You want to talk to someone at a precinct?&nbsp;</p>
4588.  
4589.  
4590.  
4591. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>I&#8217;m waiting on the ATF, I mean, I&#8217;m on North Avenue, waiting on ATF to come pick me up.</p>
4592.  
4593.  
4594.  
4595. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>You waiting for ATF?&nbsp;</p>
4596.  
4597.  
4598.  
4599. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> White&#8217;s work as an informant usually went like this: In exchange for a small payout, he would tip the cops off to other drug dealers. According to White, the police let him continue to sell drugs, as long as he cut them in. He&#8217;d also occasionally go undercover to buy drugs on behalf of law enforcement. He’s said the cops had him buy illegal guns too. He’d done these jobs for several police agencies, including the Atlanta Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, or ATF — a federal agency.&nbsp;</p>
4600.  
4601.  
4602.  
4603. <p>During this panicked call, White told the dispatcher he was waiting for the ATF to come rescue him — to rescue him from the Atlanta Police.</p>
4604.  
4605.  
4606.  
4607. <p><strong>Alex White:</strong>&nbsp;I don&#8217;t know who on whose side, man. They playing dirty.</p>
4608.  
4609.  
4610.  
4611. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>[Crosstalk] Do you want to talk to someone at the precinct?&nbsp;</p>
4612.  
4613.  
4614.  
4615. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>[Crosstalk] You see what happened yesterday that was on the news, yeah, they involved me in there, I had nothing to do with it. … They keep talking in code, saying they had to take me down there, then once I told them ATF was on the way to pick me up.</p>
4616.  
4617.  
4618.  
4619. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> White referenced seeing a news report he had seen on TV, and how the police who picked him up were speaking in code. It made him nervous enough to flee.</p>
4620.  
4621.  
4622.  
4623. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>I jumped out of the car. So they around here looking for me right now. [Unintelligible]</p>
4624.  
4625.  
4626.  
4627. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>OK. The most I can do is send a police officer to come pick you up, sir. I don&#8217;t know what else you think I can do.&nbsp;</p>
4628.  
4629.  
4630.  
4631. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>All right, cool.&nbsp;</p>
4632.  
4633.  
4634.  
4635. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p> White had received an urgent phone call from one of his handlers at the Atlanta Police Department. They needed him to lie for them.</p></blockquote></figure>
4636.  
4637.  
4638.  
4639. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The dispatcher was pretty confused, and who could blame her? White himself was still trying to figure out what was going on, and who, if anyone, he could trust. The previous evening, White had received an urgent phone call from one of his handlers at the Atlanta Police Department. They needed him to lie for them. That wasn&#8217;t unusual. White had lied for the cops before.&nbsp;</p>
4640.  
4641.  
4642.  
4643. <p>But this time, Atlanta narcotics detectives wanted White to say he had bought drugs from a house at 933 Neal Street, in a rough section of Atlanta called &#8220;The Bluff.&#8221;&nbsp;The detective offered to pay White more than the $30 they usually gave him. So he agreed. But later, White saw a breaking news story on TV that would change his mind — and eventually his life.</p>
4644.  
4645.  
4646.  
4647. <p><strong>Alan Dreher: </strong>It was a very tragic and unfortunate incident.&nbsp;</p>
4648.  
4649.  
4650.  
4651. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>That&#8217;s how Assistant Police Chief Alan Dreher describes the botched drug raid that left a 92-year-old woman dead and three officers with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. Police say those shots were fired by the elderly victim, Kathryn Johnston.</p>
4652.  
4653.  
4654.  
4655. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The same narcotics officers who were asking White to lie had raided that same house on Neal Street. 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston lived inside. When Johnston heard the officers break open the burglar bars on her front door, she rose from her bed and<em> </em>grabbed the revolver she kept in her nightstand.</p>
4656.  
4657.  
4658.  
4659. <p><strong>News reporter:</strong> Investigators say 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston fired a handgun at officers who entered her home November 21, using a no-knock warrant, injuring three officers. The officers responded by opening fire, killing Johnston. Angry relatives called for justice.&nbsp;</p>
4660.  
4661.  
4662.  
4663. <p><strong>Sarah Dozier: </strong>They shot her down like a dog! She is 92 years old!&nbsp;</p>
4664.  
4665.  
4666.  
4667. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> After the officers forced open her door, Johnston fired a single shot that hit no one. The officers responded with a swarm of 39 bullets screaming through Johnston&#8217;s living room. They shot her five or six times.</p>
4668.  
4669.  
4670.  
4671. <p>Three cops were struck too — but by shrapnel from bullets fired by their fellow officers. They would eventually call an ambulance for those wounded colleagues.&nbsp;</p>
4672.  
4673.  
4674.  
4675. <p>They would not call an ambulance for Kathryn Johnston.</p>
4676.  
4677.  
4678.  
4679. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>Neighbors of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston are devastated.</p>
4680.  
4681.  
4682.  
4683. <p><strong>Neighbor:</strong> It&#8217;s insane. I&#8217;ve been crying all night for this lady, man, her family.</p>
4684.  
4685.  
4686.  
4687. <p><strong>News reporter:</strong> Atlanta police say there was an undercover drug buy at Johnston&#8217;s Neal Street home. People who live nearby say no way.&nbsp;</p>
4688.  
4689.  
4690.  
4691. <p><strong>Neighbor: </strong>Never. Never. This is a 92-year-old lady that lives by herself. She don&#8217;t know no young folks like that.&nbsp;</p>
4692.  
4693.  
4694.  
4695. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The police had acted on a bad tip — one they hadn&#8217;t bothered to corroborate. Upon realizing their mistake — that Kathryn Johnston was no drug dealer — the officers decided to cover it all up. They left Johnston to bleed to death on the floor of her own home, while one officer planted marijuana in her basement.&nbsp;</p>
4696.  
4697.  
4698.  
4699. <p>When the informant Alex White saw the report about Johnston&#8217;s death on TV, he made the connection and quickly decided he wanted no part in concealing the killing of an innocent elderly woman. In the days that followed, Alex White — petty thief, two-bit drug dealer, hustler, snitch — would come forward with allegations that would posthumously vindicate Kathryn Johnston. They would also bring down the Atlanta police department’s entire narcotics division.&nbsp;</p>
4700.  
4701.  
4702.  
4703. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>I think justice was served, and it couldn&#8217;t have came at a better time. I&#8217;m glad that the truth came out, and I got to clear my name out of all this.</p>
4704.  
4705.  
4706.  
4707. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>After five months of living in a hotel room and looking over his shoulder for those who might do him harm, professional informant Alex White is ready to fight publicly against police practices, which drew him into the center of the deadly Neal Street shooting investigation.&nbsp;</p>
4708.  
4709.  
4710.  
4711. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> White’s story would launch an investigation that sent shockwaves throughout the country. It exposed widespread corruption and abuses in the Atlanta Police Department, and resulted in the disbanding of the agency&#8217;s entire narcotics division. The incident would prove damning not just for Atlanta police, but the city&#8217;s courts, prosecutors, and its political leadership.</p>
4712.  
4713.  
4714.  
4715. <p>When the raid on Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s house happened, I was just a few years into my career in journalism. I had been covering the rise of violent drug raids on my blog and as a freelance reporter. Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s death had every red flag. The idea that this 92-year-old woman was dealing drugs and knowingly took on a team of police officers — well, I guess it was possible. But even at that point in my career, it was clear to me that something had gone terribly wrong.&nbsp;</p>
4716.  
4717.  
4718.  
4719. <p>I started to write about what seemed to be holes in the police account of what happened. The story quickly made national headlines. Then, slowly, we started to learn that, sure enough, things really didn&#8217;t happen the way the police had claimed.</p>
4720.  
4721.  
4722.  
4723. <p><strong>News reporter:</strong> There are a lot of questions police have yet to answer.</p>
4724.  
4725.  
4726.  
4727. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins (speaking to the news): </strong>Assistant Police Chief Alan Dreher, I think, really insulted and offended this family by saying that proper procedure was followed. What kind of proper procedure would lead to the death of a 92-year-old woman in her own home?</p>
4728.  
4729.  
4730.  
4731. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>Kathryn Johnston’s death illustrates the disregard the drug war nurtures in police for the very people that they claim to be serving.</p></blockquote></figure>
4732.  
4733.  
4734.  
4735. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The Kathryn Johnston case embodies the worst excesses of the war on drugs. It has militarized and aggressive policing. Abuse of informants. A no-knock &#8220;dynamic entry&#8221; raid. Rampant police corruption. Perverse incentives and well-intentioned policies with horrific unintended consequences. Her killing is a case study in how the drug war is fought.&nbsp;</p>
4736.  
4737.  
4738.  
4739. <p>Her death illustrates the disregard the drug war nurtures in police for the very people that they claim to be serving, and the people politicians claim to be protecting when they pass and enforce these laws in the first place.</p>
4740.  
4741.  
4742.  
4743. <p>From The Intercept, this is Collateral Damage.&nbsp;</p>
4744.  
4745.  
4746.  
4747. <p>I’m <a href="https://theintercept.com/staff/radley-balko/">Radley Balko</a>. I&#8217;m an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than 20 years.&nbsp;</p>
4748.  
4749.  
4750.  
4751. <p>The so-called “war on drugs” began as a metaphor to demonstrate the country’s fervent commitment to defeating drug addiction, but the “war” part of that metaphor quickly became all too literal.</p>
4752.  
4753.  
4754.  
4755. <p>When the drug war ramped up in the 1980s and 90s, it brought helicopters, tanks, and SWAT teams to U.S. neighborhoods. It brought dehumanizing rhetoric, and the suspension of basic civil liberties protections.&nbsp;</p>
4756.  
4757.  
4758.  
4759. <p>All wars have collateral damage: the people whose deaths are tragic but deemed necessary for the greater cause. But once the country dehumanized people suspected of using and selling drugs, we were more willing to accept some collateral damage.</p>
4760.  
4761.  
4762.  
4763. <p>In the modern war on drugs — which dates back more than 50 years to the Nixon administration — the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn’t just tolerated, it’s inevitable.</p>
4764.  
4765.  
4766.  
4767. <p>This podcast will look at people who died because of the war on drugs, but didn&#8217;t need to. We&#8217;ll tell the stories of completely innocent people caught in the drug war crossfire. We’ll also look at the unnecessary deaths of small-time users and offenders, and of people who legitimately used illicit drugs as medication. We&#8217;ll look at cops who were needlessly killed. And we&#8217;ll look into the thousands of people U.S. drug policy has unnecessarily killed in other countries.&nbsp;</p>
4768.  
4769.  
4770.  
4771. <p>The legacy of the drug war now rests in the hands of Donald Trump, whose administration has wasted no time expanding law enforcement power with little regard for the human cost.&nbsp;</p>
4772.  
4773.  
4774.  
4775. <p>This is Episode One: Dirty Business: The Atlanta narcotics unit’s deadly raid on Kathryn Johnston.</p>
4776.  
4777.  
4778.  
4779.  
4780.  
4781.  
4782.  
4783. <p><strong>Markel</strong> <strong>Hutchins:</strong> Ms. Johnston was clearly a person that was full of life. She was vivacious. Although she was 92 years old, she was not someone that was broken down.</p>
4784.  
4785.  
4786.  
4787. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> That&#8217;s Rev. Markel Hutchins, a civil rights activist who became a spokesperson for Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s family after her death. Today, he’s the head of MovementForward Inc., a civil rights group in Atlanta.</p>
4788.  
4789.  
4790.  
4791. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>She didn&#8217;t have a lot of illness. She’d not been in the hospital. She wasn&#8217;t sick. She would dance and like music.&nbsp;</p>
4792.  
4793.  
4794.  
4795. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Johnston had no children and was fiercely independent. Even in her 90s, she did her own cooking and cleaning.&nbsp;</p>
4796.  
4797.  
4798.  
4799. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>Ms. Johnston would regularly work at the daycare. And she was not some meek little woman that needed somebody to protect her, somebody to care for her, anything like that. She was full of life, which is what made Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s death so tragic.</p>
4800.  
4801.  
4802.  
4803. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> In 1989, Johnston moved into a small, yellow brick house on Neal Street owned by her niece. The house was in a neighborhood known as The Bluff, named for the narrow streets that run up and down its hills. It&#8217;s a historically Black part of town, where graduates of Morehouse and Spelman colleges bought houses and made lives for themselves in the late 1800s. But The Bluff and adjacent neighborhoods hit hard times in the 1970s as the city&#8217;s wealth fled to the suburbs.&nbsp;</p>
4804.  
4805.  
4806.  
4807. <p><strong>News archive: </strong>The Atlanta Planning Department has warned that if this trend continues, it&#8217;s just a matter of time until Atlanta will become an island of Negroes surrounded by a sea of white suburbanites.</p>
4808.  
4809.  
4810.  
4811. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Then, in the late 1980s, the city cleared an adjacent Black neighborhood to make way for a football stadium and a convention hall. Despite promises of a spillover economic benefit, the development only served as a barrier between those Black neighborhoods and downtown. Poverty, blight, and crime festered.&nbsp;</p>
4812.  
4813.  
4814.  
4815. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>The community that Kathryn Johnston lived in was a community that had for decades been under-resourced and under-supported and under-invested in.</p>
4816.  
4817.  
4818.  
4819. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>Four years after Johnston’s death, the website NeighborhoodScout.com ranked The Bluff as the fifth most dangerous neighborhood in the United States. Locals joked that &#8220;BLUFF&#8221; was actually an acronym for &#8220;Better Leave, You Fucking Fool.&#8221;</p>
4820.  
4821.  
4822.  
4823. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins:</strong> Quite frankly, it was a community that was and still is suffering with the vestiges of drugs and despair and poverty and lack of opportunity. So with those things come crime and violence.</p>
4824.  
4825.  
4826.  
4827. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Because of the crime in her neighborhood, Kathryn Johnston took precautions to keep herself safe. She typically only came to the door to meet visitors if they called ahead and she knew they were coming. She installed security bars on the front door. And Johnston&#8217;s niece, Sarah Dozier, gave her aunt an additional bit of protection: a .38 revolver.</p>
4828.  
4829.  
4830.  
4831. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins:</strong> We were riding along in Ms. Dozier&#8217;s Mercedes Benz. And I asked, I said, &#8220;Did Ms. Johnston have a gun?&#8221; And Ms. Dozier said, &#8220;You&#8217;re damn right she had a gun.” She said, “She had a gun because I gave it to her.&#8221; And I said, &#8220;What kind of gun was it?&#8221; And Ms. Dozier opened her glove compartment and she showed me a .38. And she said, &#8220;She had one just like this. I gave her one just like mine.&#8221;</p>
4832.  
4833.  
4834.  
4835. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Tragically, the measures Johnston had taken to protect herself would ultimately contribute to her death: The burglar bars delayed police just long enough to allow her to retrieve her gun.&nbsp;</p>
4836.  
4837.  
4838.  
4839. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>Ms. Johnston did not actually shoot at the police. Ms. Johnston shot at the eave of the house. She shot up in an effort to scare those who were trying to break in her home, which is a clear indication of what kind of person she was. She was not eager to shoot anyone. She simply wanted to stop who she thought was burglars from breaking down her door and entering into her home.</p>
4840.  
4841.  
4842.  
4843. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The cover-up started almost immediately. The police first claimed they killed Johnston in self-defense.</p>
4844.  
4845.  
4846.  
4847. <p><strong>Alan Dreher: </strong>Once the door was forced, the female inside began shooting at the police officers.</p>
4848.  
4849.  
4850.  
4851. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> That&#8217;s Atlanta PD’s assistant chief at the time, Alan Dreher. The police chief happened to be out of town, so Dreher became the face of the department at press conferences as reporters started asking questions.</p>
4852.  
4853.  
4854.  
4855. <p><strong>Alan Dreher:</strong> Investigator Junior was shot three times. Once in the bulletproof vest in his chest, once to the side of his face, and once in the leg. Investigator Smith received one gunshot wound to his left leg. And Investigator Bond received a gunshot wound to his left arm.</p>
4856.  
4857.  
4858.  
4859. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> It turned out that the cops weren’t hit by Johnston; instead, they were injured by shrapnel from their own bullets. That was probably the biggest fallacy about what happened during the incident.&nbsp;But the planning for the raid — or lack thereof — was riddled with shortcuts, lies, and insufficient oversight. These would turn out to be problems not just unique to this case, but systemic patterns within the Atlanta Police Department, and indeed in too many narcotics divisions around the country.</p>
4860.  
4861.  
4862.  
4863. <p>We&#8217;re going to tell you this story in two ways. First, we’ll give you the story as told by the officers who killed Kathryn Johnston. Then we&#8217;ll tell you what really happened.&nbsp;</p>
4864.  
4865.  
4866.  
4867. <p>So, here&#8217;s the police version of events.&nbsp;</p>
4868.  
4869.  
4870.  
4871. <p>And I should note here that if it weren&#8217;t for informant Alex White&#8217;s refusal to go along with the cover-up, this is the narrative that may well still be accepted as fact today.</p>
4872.  
4873.  
4874.  
4875. <p>At some point on November 21, police claimed, Alex White called one of his APD handlers to report a large supply of cocaine at 933 Neal Street. The officer met up with White and took him to the house, where White then bought some cocaine from a Black man named &#8220;Sam.&#8221;&nbsp;</p>
4876.  
4877.  
4878.  
4879. <p><strong>Alan Dreher: </strong>The narcotics were purchased from a male inside that residence.</p>
4880.  
4881.  
4882.  
4883. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> While he was there, White saw a gun, and he noticed security cameras on the outside of the house, a possible sign of a sophisticated drug operation. The police then obtained a no-knock search warrant and raided the home.&nbsp;</p>
4884.  
4885.  
4886.  
4887. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>District Attorney Paul Howard says no-knock warrants are common, especially in suspected drug cases.</p>
4888.  
4889.  
4890.  
4891. <p><strong>Paul Howard:</strong> Under certain circumstances, policemen are given the opportunity to go into a residence without announcing themselves. And the reason that that happens is because in many places where drugs are found, the drug dealers or the drug possessers would flush or destroy drugs before the police would get a chance to obtain them.</p>
4892.  
4893.  
4894.  
4895. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> As the front door flew open, someone appeared with a gun, fired, and struck three officers. The other officers then opened fire, killing the assailant, who happened to be an elderly Black woman. The police then searched the home and found a substantial supply of marijuana in the basement.&nbsp;</p>
4896.  
4897.  
4898.  
4899. <p><strong>Alan Dreher: </strong>Anytime we get information or a tip that someone is selling drugs out of a residence, we certainly want to make sure we investigate that thoroughly and investigate it.</p>
4900.  
4901.  
4902.  
4903. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Other than the age and gender of the suspect, this narrative sounds like a typical drug raid: The cops got a tip. They investigated. They performed a drug buy using an informant. They raided. The suspect opened fire. The cops fired back.&nbsp;</p>
4904.  
4905.  
4906.  
4907. <p>Drugs and violence go hand in hand, we&#8217;re told. A discerning listener might figure, OK, maybe a detail or two was exaggerated, or got confused in the chaos. But overall, the story makes sense. It matches the narrative we’ve heard hundreds of times, over and over.</p>
4908.  
4909.  
4910.  
4911. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The entire story was fiction.</p></blockquote></figure>
4912.  
4913.  
4914.  
4915. <p>But in reality, there was no call from Alex White. There was no cocaine purchase. There was no one named Sam. There were no surveillance cameras. And the police officers did not fire their weapons in self-defense. There was also no marijuana “found” in the basement.&nbsp;</p>
4916.  
4917.  
4918.  
4919. <p>The entire story was fiction.</p>
4920.  
4921.  
4922.  
4923. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>On the evening that Kathryn Johnston was killed, I was sitting on the couch watching the evening news with my then-girlfriend and her son. I got a call shortly after the news broke from a young man who had been active in the community as a community activist. And this young man named Tony reached out to me and said there&#8217;d been this tragedy that happened in his community, and he thought that it was something that I needed to respond to.&nbsp;</p>
4924.  
4925.  
4926.  
4927. <p>One of the clips that they showed on the news about Ms. Johnston&#8217;s death that evening was of her family members that were on the scene. They&#8217;d gotten there and Ms. Johnston&#8217;s niece, whose name is Sarah Dozier, was irate, cursing and screaming.</p>
4928.  
4929.  
4930.  
4931. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>Sarah Dozier made clear last night that she is holding the Atlanta Police Department responsible for her aunt’s death.&nbsp;</p>
4932.  
4933.  
4934.  
4935. <p><strong>Sarah Dozier: </strong>There are no drugs in that house. And&nbsp;they realize now they done the wrong house. And they killed her. Now they didn’t have to shoot that old lady down like a dog. They didn’t have to do that. It’s one old woman in that house. I’m as mad as hell, and somebody is going to answer to that.&nbsp;</p>
4936.  
4937.  
4938.  
4939. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins:</strong> So I literally went to the scene that night, and when I arrived, I encountered and met the lady that I&#8217;d seen. And after several conversations, I met with other members of the family on the scene that night.</p>
4940.  
4941.  
4942.  
4943. <p>And Ms. Dozier said to me, first thing, I&#8217;ll never forget this, I said, &#8220;Miss, Miss Dozier, let me pray with you.&#8221; And she said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t need no goddamn prayer. I need somebody&#8221; — that is, in her words — &#8220;gonna kick ass and take names.&#8221; And pardon my language, but that&#8217;s exactly what she said to me.</p>
4944.  
4945.  
4946.  
4947. <p>And I’d never heard anybody refuse prayer. And I&#8217;d been preaching my entire adult life — a long time. And I never heard anyone speak that way. But that was Ms. Dozier&#8217;s response. It was certainly understandable, knowing what we now know about what actually happened to Ms. Johnston. Her family had every right to be as angry and as irate as they were.</p>
4948.  
4949.  
4950.  
4951. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>Over the next several years, multiple investigations would uncover what really happened. And we’ll get into the true story of Kathryn Johnston’s killing in a little bit. But first let’s take a step back and take stock of what was going on at the Atlanta Police Department — what the Department of Justice would later describe as a “<a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/April/07_crt_299.html">culture of misconduct</a>.”</p>
4952.  
4953.  
4954.  
4955. <p><strong>Cristina Beamud: </strong>One of the things that if you talk about systemic problems is whether officers in general feel as if they have to follow the rules. And I submit that in Atlanta, at the time of Kathryn Johnston, they were not.</p>
4956.  
4957.  
4958.  
4959. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> That’s Cristina Beamud. In the wake of Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s death, Atlanta created a civilian review board for the police department. Beamud was its first director. Beamud also held similar positions in Boston, Cambridge, Eugene, and Miami. Over the course of her career, she says she&#8217;s seen some familiar patterns.</p>
4960.  
4961.  
4962.  
4963. <p><strong>Cristina Beamud: </strong>Where this type of misconduct reaches this level and creates such a problem, a city needs to look at not only just the actors, but at the systems that created the bad situation that allowed for this to happen. And indeed, that rarely happens.</p>
4964.  
4965.  
4966.  
4967. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>In the aftermath of Johnston&#8217;s death, the FBI conducted an investigation of the Atlanta Police Department. One of the problematic policies they honed in on was quotas.</p>
4968.  
4969.  
4970.  
4971. <p>In Atlanta, there was a quasi-official quota for narcotics cops known as &#8220;9 and 2.&#8221; The FBI’s report described “a rule that required narcotics officers to obtain at least two narcotics search warrants and make nine narcotics related arrests per month. Some officers indicated that their performance appraisals were tied directly to the nine and two requirement.&#8221;</p>
4972.  
4973.  
4974.  
4975. <p>So, if an officer didn&#8217;t meet the quota, they risked being removed from a highly desired position. Some were threatened with a transfer to work at the airport — not a sought-after assignment.</p>
4976.  
4977.  
4978.  
4979. <p>This pressure to produce numbers went straight up the chain of command. Narcotics officers say that supervisors were also held accountable for their subordinates meeting quotas, and were aware that officers were taking shortcuts and lying on affidavits to meet them. APD supervisors themselves disputed those allegations.</p>
4980.  
4981.  
4982.  
4983. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>Quotas in law enforcement are very, very bad. They lead to very dangerous sets of circumstances. And we saw that as a contributing factor to Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s death. The narcotics unit, they got out of control and out of hand, because they were in fact trying to make drug arrests.</p>
4984.  
4985.  
4986.  
4987. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>“Quotas in law enforcement are very, very bad. They lead to very dangerous sets of circumstances.”</p></blockquote></figure>
4988.  
4989.  
4990.  
4991. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The quotas were so critical to job evaluations that supervisors encouraged officers who had met their monthly quotas to give their surplus cases to another officer who may have been running short.&nbsp;</p>
4992.  
4993.  
4994.  
4995. <p>The problem is, the officer on the receiving end of the handoff then swore to a court that they had conducted an investigation that they hadn&#8217;t done, that they had witnessed a drug buy they had never seen, that they had worked with an informant to whom they&#8217;d never spoken. And that, of course, is illegal.</p>
4996.  
4997.  
4998.  
4999. <p>There was a very predictable reason why the department was so obsessed with numbers. And it&#8217;s not just an Atlanta thing. It&#8217;s money.</p>
5000.  
5001.  
5002.  
5003. <p>There were — and still are — a lot of federal dollars tied specifically to drug policing. Grants and funding are generally contingent on raw arrest and seizure numbers. Not on crime rates, addiction rates, or other criteria. The most well known of these are called Byrne grants. Since the late ’80s, a portion of these federal grants go to police departments specifically for fighting the drug war. Whether or not you get funding heavily depends on how many arrests and drug seizures you make.</p>
5004.  
5005.  
5006.  
5007. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p> Grants and funding are generally contingent on raw arrest and seizure numbers. Not on crime rates, addiction rates, or other criteria.</p></blockquote></figure>
5008.  
5009.  
5010.  
5011. <p>There&#8217;s another program called High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. To qualify for this grant, you have to arrest a lot of people on drug charges. Once the federal government classifies you as a high–intensity drug trafficking area, you get more funding. It&#8217;s a self-perpetuating cycle. And even if you accept that drug prohibition is a legitimate function of government, this just isn&#8217;t a successful way to stop people from using drugs.</p>
5012.  
5013.  
5014.  
5015. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>I think that anytime resources are tied to arrest, it leads to an environment where corruption is more likely and perhaps even probable and not just possible. I don&#8217;t think we should ever tie arrests and resources, particularly from the federal government.</p>
5016.  
5017.  
5018.  
5019. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> If you watch a lot of police movies and TV shows, you&#8217;re probably familiar with the pattern in which police bust small-time drug offenders, then flip them to move up the supply chain. But the sort of investigation that brings down a major drug distributor takes a lot more time, and typically results in fewer arrests.</p>
5020.  
5021.  
5022.  
5023. <p>The perverse thing about these grants is that because they&#8217;re tied to raw arrest numbers, officers are incentivized to go after low-level offenders. Because there are more of them. And they need the numbers.</p>
5024.  
5025.  
5026.  
5027. <p>And that’s exactly what Kathryn Johnston’s case shows was happening in Atlanta.&nbsp;</p>
5028.  
5029.  
5030.  
5031. <p>Coming up: The real story behind what happened.</p>
5032.  
5033.  
5034.  
5035.  
5036.  
5037.  
5038.  
5039. <p><strong>Break</strong></p>
5040.  
5041.  
5042.  
5043. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> So let&#8217;s get back to November 21, 2006. Here&#8217;s the true story of what happened to Kathryn Johnston. At around 2 p.m., three APD narcotics officers were looking to make some busts in Northwest Atlanta. They decided to check out an apartment complex known for drug activity. Two of them — Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler — searched some vacant apartments. They found nothing. But a third officer named Jason Smith went into a grove of trees behind the apartments, where drug dealers occasionally hid their stashes. He found several bags of pot.</p>
5044.  
5045.  
5046.  
5047. <p>Later that afternoon, an informant called Detective Smith to tell him someone was selling crack in front of a neighborhood store about a mile away. Three officers drove to the site and saw a known drug dealer named Fabian Sheats standing outside.&nbsp;</p>
5048.  
5049.  
5050.  
5051. <p>Detective Smith slipped around back and planted one of the baggies of pot he&#8217;d just found. Meanwhile, Detective Tesler grabbed Sheats by the throat and slammed his head into a fence. The officers then detained Sheats and told him that, given his record, they&#8217;d make sure he’d go to prison for a long time unless he could tell them where they could find some drugs.</p>
5052.  
5053.  
5054.  
5055. <p>To get the officers off his back, Sheats played along. He led them to 933 Neal Street. It was a distinctive house due to the disability ramp installed in front.</p>
5056.  
5057.  
5058.  
5059. <p>Normally, the next step in a narcotics investigation would be for the officers to have an informant attempt to purchase drugs from the house. This could then be used as justification to obtain a warrant.&nbsp;</p>
5060.  
5061.  
5062.  
5063. <p>So at around 5 p.m., they called Alex White to see if he could make a controlled drug buy. These officers had used White frequently in the past. White told them he was available, but he didn&#8217;t have transportation. The officers were impatient. They were afraid that if they waited too long, someone might move the stash of cocaine — a stash Sheats had said was substantial. So instead, they fabricated the drug buy in their sworn affidavit.</p>
5064.  
5065.  
5066.  
5067. <p>Here’s APD Assistant Chief Alan Dreher reciting the “official” details shortly after the raid.</p>
5068.  
5069.  
5070.  
5071. <p><strong>Alan</strong> <strong>Dreher: </strong>Late yesterday afternoon, we made an undercover purchase of narcotics from 933 Neal Street. As a result of that narcotic purchase, members of the narcotics team obtained a search warrant for that same address.</p>
5072.  
5073.  
5074.  
5075. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>This was all false. There was no “purchase of narcotics.” They had obtained the warrant under false pretenses.</p>
5076.  
5077.  
5078.  
5079. <p>Because drug crimes are consensual crimes — which is to say that all parties participate in the crime voluntarily — there&#8217;s typically no victim to report them to police, the way there is with a rape or a robbery.&nbsp;</p>
5080.  
5081.  
5082.  
5083. <p>This means that law enforcement officers have to generate leads. And the most common way they generate leads is by working with informants. Informants are often addicts or involved in the drug trade themselves. Or they&#8217;re people who agree to work with police to get leniency on their own criminal charges.&nbsp;</p>
5084.  
5085.  
5086.  
5087. <p>As you might expect, such people aren&#8217;t always the most reliable sources of information. So the information police do get is often dirty. In this case, the unreliable informant was Fabian Sheats, the drug dealer who police say provided them with Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s address.</p>
5088.  
5089.  
5090.  
5091. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>An investigative source tells Channel 2 that police officers told a magistrate judge that a man named Sam sold drugs from Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s house to their informant, a man later identified as Fabian Sheats. But Sheats later claimed he was pressured after the fact to go along with the officer&#8217;s story.</p>
5092.  
5093.  
5094.  
5095. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>Some time between 5 and 6:30 p.m. on the day Kathryn Johnston was killed, Detective Jason Smith called a magistrate to let her know he had just filed an electronic affidavit to request a no-knock search warrant. A search warrant affidavit is a sworn statement. Everything an officer asserts in it is considered to be under oath. Yet just about everything in Smith&#8217;s affidavit was false.</p>
5096.  
5097.  
5098.  
5099. <p>Smith claimed to have contacted a registered informant, patted him down, then sent him to 933 Neal Street, where the informant bought $50 worth of crack cocaine from a Black man named Sam. Smith claimed the informant told him there were security cameras in front of the house, which justified a no-knock raid.&nbsp;</p>
5100.  
5101.  
5102.  
5103. <p>It was all a lie. There was no drug buy. The police never had an informant purchase crack, and there was no Black man named Sam.&nbsp;</p>
5104.  
5105.  
5106.  
5107. <p>Even the most basic and perfunctory surveillance, which most police departments are required to do, would have revealed that there were no security cameras either. According to court records obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the magistrate signed the warrant four minutes after she received it.</p>
5108.  
5109.  
5110.  
5111. <p><strong>Cristina Beamud: </strong>Not only was the acquisition of the search warrant flawed and the police officers lacking discipline, it was the response to the situation that showed the police lack of discipline.</p>
5112.  
5113.  
5114.  
5115. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>At 6:30 p.m., the raid team met in the parking lot outside of a fire station. Smith briefed eight other officers. Dusk had settled into darkness.&nbsp;</p>
5116.  
5117.  
5118.  
5119. <p>A conscientious officer might have picked up on subtle clues suggesting that this was not the site of a major drug operation — for example, the disability ramp.</p>
5120.  
5121.  
5122.  
5123. <p>Instead, Smith advised the officers to avoid walking up the ramp so the noise of their feet treading on the hollow structure wouldn&#8217;t alert anyone inside. As the officers prepared to force entry, they had difficulty getting through the burglar bars on Johnston&#8217;s door.&nbsp;</p>
5124.  
5125.  
5126.  
5127. <p>This gave Johnston time to hear them, retrieve her revolver, and fire off the warning shot just as the door opened. The officers returned fire with 39 bullets.&nbsp;</p>
5128.  
5129.  
5130.  
5131. <p>At some point, the officers had to realize that they made a huge mistake — that this elderly woman was not some major drug distributor. At some point, they had to realize that they&#8217;d just taken an innocent life. And at that point, they had a decision to make.</p>
5132.  
5133.  
5134.  
5135. <p>Do they call an ambulance for her? Do they cop to their mistake and deal with the consequences? Or do they try to cover it all up?</p>
5136.  
5137.  
5138.  
5139. <p>And so as Johnston lay bleeding in her living room, the officers did not call an ambulance to save her. Instead, Officer Smith retrieved three of the remaining bags of marijuana he&#8217;d found in the woods earlier that day, and he planted them in Kathryn Johnston’s basement.&nbsp;</p>
5140.  
5141.  
5142.  
5143. <p>A couple of hours later that evening, Rev. Markel Hutchins walked up to the crowd of angry family and neighbors gathered in front of the house, alongside TV cameras and news vans.&nbsp;</p>
5144.  
5145.  
5146.  
5147. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>Ms. Dozier said to me, “I need somebody that&#8217;s going to do something to bring the killers of my aunt to justice.” And she said, &#8220;If you want to do something for my family, you go over there and talk to that media.&#8221; She said, &#8220;They&#8217;ve made me look like a fool, and I&#8217;ll never speak to them again. My family will never speak to them again. Go over there and talk to them.&#8221; So I addressed the media that night.</p>
5148.  
5149.  
5150.  
5151. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins (speaking to the media): </strong>There should have been better investigative work done on the front side so that we didn&#8217;t have this kind of tragedy on the back side.</p>
5152.  
5153.  
5154.  
5155. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>Rev. Markel Hutchins says he&#8217;s heard from people in the community that there was drug activity in the neighborhood, but not at Johnston&#8217;s home.</p>
5156.  
5157.  
5158.  
5159. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>That was the first time that I ever met a member of the Johnston family. And that&#8217;s how I became involved in the case.</p>
5160.  
5161.  
5162.  
5163. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Meanwhile, the narcotics officers went about their cover-up. At various times, Officers Smith, Junnier, and Tesler called Alex White and asked if he&#8217;d be willing to lie for them. Junnier offered White $150 to just leave town.</p>
5164.  
5165.  
5166.  
5167. <p>Detective Tesler drafted a report about the nonexistent drug buy from Johnston&#8217;s home. But he and his narcotics team had yet to work out the details, so he left portions of the report blank. That should have been an early red flag that something was wrong.&nbsp;</p>
5168.  
5169.  
5170.  
5171. <p>Instead, their police lieutenant helped them draft a new report. Then, they destroyed the first draft.&nbsp;</p>
5172.  
5173.  
5174.  
5175. <p>In the meantime, White was learning about Johnston’s death on TV.&nbsp;</p>
5176.  
5177.  
5178.  
5179. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>Officers got a judge to sign a search warrant, and a narcotics team went to the home. The chief says as they arrived at the door, they screamed “Police.”<strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
5180.  
5181.  
5182.  
5183. <p><strong>Alan Dreher: </strong>They managed to force the door open, and once the door was opened, they were fired upon by the elderly female inside, by Ms. Johnston.</p>
5184.  
5185.  
5186.  
5187. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> White started having second thoughts. Since White was also an informant for the ATF, he called his handler at that agency to seek some advice. They met in person to discuss the situation. The ATF agent was alarmed. He told White that the situation was serious, and not to take any calls from Junnier, Tesler, or Smith.&nbsp;</p>
5188.  
5189.  
5190.  
5191. <p>But White was afraid of the Atlanta Police Department, and of Detective Junnier in particular. White would later tell the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/magazine/alex-white-professional-snitch.html">New York Times Magazine</a> that Junnier had threatened him. White said Junnier once showed him a picture of a Jamaican drug dealer who had been decapitated. It felt like an unsubtle warning not to cross the detective. Junnier, through his lawyer, denied all claims by White; the Atlanta Police Department would not comment.</p>
5192.  
5193.  
5194.  
5195. <p>White knew the officers were desperate. He feared that if he ignored them, they&#8217;d come looking for him. So when they called again, he answered his phone and played along. They sent a car to pick him up. This is the car that White would eventually flee, sparking that foot chase through downtown, and the frantic call to 911 we heard at the top of the show.</p>
5196.  
5197.  
5198.  
5199. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>You said undercover, undercover cops had picked you up?&nbsp;</p>
5200.  
5201.  
5202.  
5203. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>Yeah, yeah, yeah. They came and picked me up to ask me about the killing yesterday. But they tried to play it off. So ATF told me, don&#8217;t get in the car with them. By that time, man, I was already in the car with &#8217;em. And then when I tried to talk to &#8217;em in code to tell them where I was, they had me by the tail, they hurry up and pulled up. So we coming out north side, I I jumped out the car real quick. You know what I&#8217;m saying?</p>
5204.  
5205.  
5206.  
5207. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>OK. All right. I&#8217;m gonna have someone out there for to help you. OK.</p>
5208.  
5209.  
5210.  
5211. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>’Cause there&#8217;s a lot of dirty shit going on.&nbsp;</p>
5212.  
5213.  
5214.  
5215. <p><strong>Operator: </strong>I understand, but stay at the KFC, OK?</p>
5216.  
5217.  
5218.  
5219. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Once he concluded the 911 operator couldn&#8217;t help him, White hung up, and he called his handler at the ATF. They sent a car to pick White up and take him to the local ATF office. The agent then called Atlanta PD&#8217;s internal affairs, who sent an officer for an interview.</p>
5220.  
5221.  
5222.  
5223. <p>While Alex White was scrambling to stay safe, Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s neighbors were talking to the media. They were angry at how she&#8217;d been portrayed on the news. They told reporters the notion that Johnston was some sort of drug dealer was just preposterous.</p>
5224.  
5225.  
5226.  
5227. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>Residents say the police side of all this just isn&#8217;t adding up.</p>
5228.  
5229.  
5230.  
5231. <p><strong>Neighbor: </strong>Why would she just start firing if they said they were the police? Something&#8217;s not making sense in that gap right there.</p>
5232.  
5233.  
5234.  
5235. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>Yet for the first few days, APD officials attempted to maintain some neutrality. Here’s Dreher again, the assistant chief who was acting as department spokesperson while the police chief was on vacation.</p>
5236.  
5237.  
5238.  
5239. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>Was Johnston present when the undercover purchase was made?&nbsp;</p>
5240.  
5241.  
5242.  
5243. <p><strong>Alan Dreher: </strong>That&#8217;s still under investigation at this time.&nbsp;</p>
5244.  
5245.  
5246.  
5247. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>Do you have any reason to suspect that Ms. Johnston might have somehow been involved in any suspected drug dealings at that residence?&nbsp;</p>
5248.  
5249.  
5250.  
5251. <p><strong>Alan Dreher: </strong>That&#8217;s still under investigation.&nbsp;</p>
5252.  
5253.  
5254.  
5255. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard spoke at the same press conference.</p>
5256.  
5257.  
5258.  
5259. <p><strong>Paul Howard: </strong>Now, I&#8217;m not trying to insinuate that Ms. Johnston was involved. But the police have assured me that they had made a drug purchase from this very residence on this day.</p>
5260.  
5261.  
5262.  
5263. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Meanwhile, Alex White was getting anxious. He had hoped that after interviewing him, APD’s internal affairs department would give him some protection. He was scared of retaliation. Instead, they just sent him home.</p>
5264.  
5265.  
5266.  
5267. <p>White, certain that he was a marked man, left an urgent voicemail for his ATF handler and on the hotline for the local office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No one called back; it was the night before Thanksgiving.</p>
5268.  
5269.  
5270.  
5271. <p>The next morning, two APD officers drove by to pick up White and pay him the $150. But still, he had his doubts. Over Thanksgiving dinner, White expressed his fears to his family. His uncle suggested he do something drastic: Go on TV and tell the entire story. If it was all out in the open, White wouldn&#8217;t need to rely on police officers to protect him from other police officers. Everyone would be watching.&nbsp;</p>
5272.  
5273.  
5274.  
5275. <p>Although he was scared of outing himself as a snitch, White decided it was safer to come clean. So after dinner, he called the local Fox affiliate and told them his story. They sent a taxi to take him to the studio. And then he spilled it all out on the air. They pixelated his face and referred to him as &#8220;the man who claims to be the informant.&#8221;</p>
5276.  
5277.  
5278.  
5279. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>They say he bought drugs at the house. No way, says the man who claims to be the informant.&nbsp;</p>
5280.  
5281.  
5282.  
5283. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>I never went to that house. I&#8217;m telling them, I never went to that house.&nbsp;</p>
5284.  
5285.  
5286.  
5287. <p><strong>News reporter: </strong>When police burst through Johnston&#8217;s door, she opened fire and was shot and killed. The police informant says he then got a call from officers.</p>
5288.  
5289.  
5290.  
5291. <p><strong>Alex White: </strong>They called me immediately after the shooting and asked me, I mean, to tell me: This is what you need to do. You need to cover our ass.</p>
5292.  
5293.  
5294.  
5295. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> At some point, local news outlets began reporting on White by name. Meanwhile, not long after the Fox interview, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington returned from his planned vacation and resumed his role as the public face of the department.</p>
5296.  
5297.  
5298.  
5299. <p><strong>Richard</strong> <strong>Pennington (at press conference): </strong>They did find drugs in the house. And it wasn&#8217;t a large quantity, but they did find some drugs.&nbsp;</p>
5300.  
5301.  
5302.  
5303. <p><strong>Reporter: </strong>What kind?&nbsp;</p>
5304.  
5305.  
5306.  
5307. <p><strong>Richard Pennington:</strong> It was marijuana.&nbsp;</p>
5308.  
5309.  
5310.  
5311. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Pennington largely reiterated the same cover story. But his concession that police hadn&#8217;t found a large amount of marijuana was the first official acknowledgment of growing discrepancies between the raiding officers&#8217; account and what actually happened.</p>
5312.  
5313.  
5314.  
5315. <p><strong>Richard Pennington (at press conference): </strong>We don&#8217;t have anything to hide. We don&#8217;t have anything to cover up. The investigation will be transparent.</p>
5316.  
5317.  
5318.  
5319. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>By this point, the FBI had opened an investigation. So behind the scenes, a race was on. The FBI needed to collect evidence and interview witnesses before the narcotics officers could destroy the former and corrupt the latter.&nbsp;</p>
5320.  
5321.  
5322.  
5323. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>The FBI needed to collect evidence and interview witnesses before the narcotics officers could destroy the former and corrupt the latter.</p></blockquote></figure>
5324.  
5325.  
5326.  
5327. <p>Meanwhile, officers Tesler, Junnier, and Smith met up to hash out a narrative that would be consistent with what they thought investigators knew. At one point, Detective Smith even printed out scripts for each of them to memorize and recite when they were interviewed by internal affairs.</p>
5328.  
5329.  
5330.  
5331. <p>So simultaneously, APD officials were making the case to the public that the raid was legitimate and justified. The narcotics detectives were scheming to cover their tracks. And FBI investigators were chasing down incriminating evidence.&nbsp;</p>
5332.  
5333.  
5334.  
5335. <p><strong>News anchor: </strong>In Atlanta, the police shooting death of a 92-year-old woman in her home is now a federal case. The FBI now looking into the raid and what led police to make it.</p>
5336.  
5337.  
5338.  
5339. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Alex White’s appearance on TV made national news. It had planted a seed, and the media were now digging not only into this incident, but the police department’s overall track record.</p>
5340.  
5341.  
5342.  
5343. <p>By early December, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other outlets began publishing stories about other botched raids. And as it turns out, 20 months before killing Kathryn Johnston, the same narcotics unit raided a house next door to Johnston&#8217;s. That too was a no-knock raid.&nbsp;</p>
5344.  
5345.  
5346.  
5347. <p>It was also a raid for which the police claimed to have used an informant,&nbsp;but the officer who obtained the warrant never witnessed or supervised the drug buy. And in that case too, the police found no drugs and made no arrests. Days later, another woman told the local Fox affiliate that she had also been wrongly raided by Atlanta drug cops.&nbsp;</p>
5348.  
5349.  
5350.  
5351. <p>At a town meeting held at a church just down the road from Johnston&#8217;s home, more residents told more stories about more mistaken raids.</p>
5352.  
5353.  
5354.  
5355. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>All that the police department had to do was rely on, as they did, rely on a fabricated word from a fictitious confidential informant and present that to a judge, and the judge would just sign the no-knock warrant. And they were kicking in people&#8217;s doors and violating people&#8217;s rights. It was Kathryn Johnston that made the news because of her tragic death. But there were dozens of families that came to me in the aftermath of Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s death to say that the police had done the same thing to them.</p>
5356.  
5357.  
5358.  
5359. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The Journal-Constitution reported that many of APD&#8217;s no-knock raids had produced no suspect, no drugs, and no guns. The paper also found more examples of police making untruthful statements on affidavits for search warrants.&nbsp;</p>
5360.  
5361.  
5362.  
5363. <p>One attorney and former police officer told the paper that judges in the city never questioned officers&#8217; claims that informants were credible. They never even asked them to verify that an informant existed.</p>
5364.  
5365.  
5366.  
5367. <p>When police request a no-knock warrant, they are supposed to show specific evidence that the suspect is dangerous or may destroy their drug supply. But <a href="https://www.law.com/dailyreportonline/almID/1202552577514/">The Associated Press found</a> that the city&#8217;s narcotics cops often provided only &#8220;cursory&#8221; information, and that judges signed those warrants anyway.&nbsp;</p>
5368.  
5369.  
5370.  
5371. <p>In some cases, officers merely included boilerplate language about their own experience and training, and offered no evidence at all about why a particular suspect required a no-knock entry.</p>
5372.  
5373.  
5374.  
5375. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>We knew that this was not just an isolated incident. We knew that these police officers were doing this in that community to people that were not only undeserving, but were totally not connected to any kinds of crime.</p>
5376.  
5377.  
5378.  
5379. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>It&#8217;s worth taking a moment here to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court&#8217;s role in all of this, which is pretty significant. In 1995, a decade before the Kathryn Johnston raid, the court ruled that under the Fourth Amendment, police officers are required to knock and announce themselves before forcing entry into a private home.&nbsp;</p>
5380.  
5381.  
5382.  
5383. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>Hudson v. Michigan left officers with little incentive to conduct a search in a constitutional way.</p></blockquote></figure>
5384.  
5385.  
5386.  
5387. <p>But in June of 2006 — six months before Kathryn Johnston&#8217;s death — there was a case called Hudson v. Michigan.&nbsp;A 5-4 majority ruled that even if police violate the knock-and-announce rule — which of course means they&#8217;ve violated a suspect&#8217;s Fourth Amendment rights — they could still use evidence found during that illegal search. This left officers with little incentive to conduct a search in a constitutional way.</p>
5388.  
5389.  
5390.  
5391. <p>In early January 2007, about six weeks after the Johnston raid, officer Gregg Junnier retired. It was the first indication that the pact between officers Junnier, Smith, and Tesler may have started to crack. Indeed, Junnier would eventually start cooperating with federal investigators.</p>
5392.  
5393.  
5394.  
5395. <p>Then, in April …</p>
5396.  
5397.  
5398.  
5399. <p><strong>News Reporter: </strong>Two of those officers, Gregg Junnier and Jason Smith, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and lying on Thursday. A third officer is awaiting trial.</p>
5400.  
5401.  
5402.  
5403. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>Officer Junnier was sentenced to six years in prison, Smith to 10 years. Tesler opted to go to trial on the state charges. He pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, although that conviction was later overturned on appeal. He then pleaded guilty on a federal civil rights charge and received a five-year sentence. It would take another three-and-a-half years before the full FBI report was unsealed. But when it dropped, it was damning.</p>
5404.  
5405.  
5406.  
5407. <p>FBI investigators found widespread corruption among Atlanta narcotics officers. Among the findings:</p>
5408.  
5409.  
5410.  
5411. <ul class="wp-block-list">
5412. <li>Drug detectives routinely lied on search warrant affidavits. They described drug buys that never happened, and lied about conducting surveillance.</li>
5413.  
5414.  
5415.  
5416. <li>Narcotics officers routinely under-reported the quantity of drugs seized from suspects, then used the &#8220;extra&#8221; to plant on other suspects in order to obtain leverage. They also paid informants less than what they reported, and used the extra money for other purposes.</li>
5417.  
5418.  
5419.  
5420. <li>Officers often conducted violent, highly volatile no-knock raids based solely on a tip from a single informant, as they did with Kathryn Johnston. </li>
5421.  
5422.  
5423.  
5424. <li>Judges routinely approved no-knock warrant applications without the required evidence.</li>
5425. </ul>
5426.  
5427.  
5428.  
5429. <p>APD often conducted what they called &#8220;thunder runs,&#8221; in which they&#8217;d go to a high-crime area, jump out of their vehicles, and randomly search anyone around. Finally, the report found that Junnier and other officers were basically running a protection racket — while on duty. They were collecting payments from local businesses to keep drug dealers away. This too isn&#8217;t uncommon among narcotics officers. When police are permitted to break the very laws they&#8217;re enforcing, their respect for the law in general can wear down over time.&nbsp;</p>
5430.  
5431.  
5432.  
5433. <p>Again, here’s Cristina Beamud.&nbsp;</p>
5434.  
5435.  
5436.  
5437. <p><strong>Cristina Beamud: </strong>Once people begin to think that the rules are different for them, that they are different from the rest of the police department, they lose sight of all the other values that the police department imposes on the rest of the employees. They feel different. They feel protected, they feel safer bending rules or breaking rules, or in the case of what happened in Atlanta, of committing very serious crimes.</p>
5438.  
5439.  
5440.  
5441. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Unlike far too many similar incidents, the shooting of Kathryn Johnston did result in some accountability. The three officers most responsible for her death were sent to prison. Her family eventually received about $5 million from the city of Atlanta. And to his credit, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington would eventually disband the entire narcotics division and rebuild it from scratch.&nbsp;</p>
5442.  
5443.  
5444.  
5445. <p><strong>News Reporter: </strong>Lt. William Trivelpiece is in charge of 30 new members of the narcotics unit, who are now considered the city’s best trained detectives in town.</p>
5446.  
5447.  
5448.  
5449. <p><strong>William Trivelpiece: </strong>They’re working side by side with the officers. Almost in the capacity of a training, they&#8217;re showing them this is how we do it; this is how it’s done right.</p>
5450.  
5451.  
5452.  
5453. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> But relative to the gravity of the FBI’s findings, the overall impact on the police department was pretty mild. The supervisor of the narcotics unit was sentenced to 18 months in prison for faking a burglary to cover up yet another illegal raid. Two other officers who were part of covering up the Johnston raid were eventually fired in 2010. But no one else involved in the raid, or previous botched raids, or the cover-up got more than a slap on the wrist.</p>
5454.  
5455.  
5456.  
5457. <p>The Kathryn Johnston raid made national news. So did the subsequent investigations. There were congressional hearings launched because of her death. Activists demanded substantive change and politicians promised reform. But ultimately things largely remained the same.</p>
5458.  
5459.  
5460.  
5461. <p>One law proposed by a Georgia legislator would have banned most no-knock raids in the state. But it was so watered down with amendments that, by the time it passed, it likely wouldn’t have prevented another death like Johnston&#8217;s — the very reason it was introduced in the first place.</p>
5462.  
5463.  
5464.  
5465. <p>One of the main reforms to emerge locally was the establishment of a civilian review board in Atlanta. Beamud was the first director of that board and says she faced resistance the moment she started the job. The first pushback came from the police union, which told officers to ignore the board&#8217;s efforts to question them.</p>
5466.  
5467.  
5468.  
5469. <p><strong>Cristina Beamud: </strong>They instructed their members not to testify in either in interviews that were conducted by investigators in the office or to the board members. The city would&#8217;ve had the power to compel them; however, they chose not to.</p>
5470.  
5471.  
5472.  
5473. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Beamud grew so frustrated with the lack of cooperation that she resigned in 2011.</p>
5474.  
5475.  
5476.  
5477. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“I feel as if I’m just writing letters to myself.”</p></blockquote></figure>
5478.  
5479.  
5480.  
5481. <p><strong>Cristina Beamud: </strong>We spent an extraordinary amount of time investigating these cases, writing up the reports, submitting it to the board, and writing a report, based on the board&#8217;s recommendations to the chief of police. The responses were rarely thoughtful or really addressed the issues. So I found myself in a position, I remember saying something like, &#8220;I feel as if I&#8217;m just writing letters to myself, that there&#8217;s really no follow-up in terms of change or a real desire to want to address the concerns that were expressed by citizen representatives of their community.&#8221;</p>
5482.  
5483.  
5484.  
5485. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> The national attention to Johnston&#8217;s death didn&#8217;t bring much change outside of Georgia, either. The federal grants that gave rise to Atlanta’s drug arrest quotas have continued.&nbsp;</p>
5486.  
5487.  
5488.  
5489. <p>In 2010, the Department of Justice audited Atlanta’s use of the $9 million in Byrne grants it had received the previous five years and. It was brutal. The audit found the city had badly mismanaged the grants, made little effort to oversee how they were used, and had no way to monitor whether the grants were actually improving public safety.&nbsp;</p>
5490.  
5491.  
5492.  
5493. <p>Yet the city would receive over $2 million more over the next two years. In 2010, the Obama administration gave the Byrne grant program a massive $2.25 billion infusion as part of its economic stimulus package.&nbsp;</p>
5494.  
5495.  
5496.  
5497. <p><strong>Barack</strong> <strong>Obama: </strong>It invests in what works for our cities by funding programs like the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, and the COPS program, which boosts public safety and bring down crime.</p>
5498.  
5499.  
5500.  
5501. <p><strong>Radley Balko: </strong>Like many before hers, Johnston&#8217;s death could have prompted some contemplation and reconsideration of no-knock raids and the shortcuts police take to obtain warrants for them.</p>
5502.  
5503.  
5504.  
5505. <p>Instead, the raids continued in Georgia and across the country, with little oversight and little skepticism from the judiciary.&nbsp;</p>
5506.  
5507.  
5508.  
5509. <p><strong>News Collage:&nbsp;</strong></p>
5510.  
5511.  
5512.  
5513. <p>“A no-knock warrant.”&nbsp;</p>
5514.  
5515.  
5516.  
5517. <p>“During a no-knock warrant raid.”&nbsp;</p>
5518.  
5519.  
5520.  
5521. <p>“A no-knock raid.”&nbsp;</p>
5522.  
5523.  
5524.  
5525. <p>&#8220;During a no-knock police raid.”&nbsp;</p>
5526.  
5527.  
5528.  
5529. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> And then there was the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville in 2020. The language police used to obtain the no-knock warrant in her case was nearly identical to language they&#8217;d used in the warrant for their main suspect. A Justice Department investigation would later find that Louisville police routinely conducted illegal no-knock raids.</p>
5530.  
5531.  
5532.  
5533. <p><strong>News Anchor: </strong>Today, Louisville&#8217;s mayor signed Breonna’s Law after the Metro Council unanimously banned the use of no-knock warrants.&nbsp;</p>
5534.  
5535.  
5536.  
5537. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong>&nbsp;But there&#8217;s at least some room for hope here. The anger over Breonna Taylor’s death, along with the protests after George Floyd&#8217;s, prompted the sort of response that many had hoped for after Kathryn Johnston. In some parts of the country, we have seen some real reform.&nbsp;</p>
5538.  
5539.  
5540.  
5541. <p>Dozens of cities, towns, counties, and even the entire state of Virginia have now either banned or restricted no-knock raids, unless police can show that someone&#8217;s life is in imminent danger.</p>
5542.  
5543.  
5544.  
5545. <p>But that&#8217;s still decidedly a minority policy. The vast majority of Americans still live in a jurisdiction where police can kick down the door to your home without warning, as you&#8217;re sleeping, and storm your house with guns, all based on little more than a tip from an informant that you&#8217;re in possession of illegal drugs.</p>
5546.  
5547.  
5548.  
5549. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"><blockquote><p>The vast majority of Americans still live in a jurisdiction where police can kick down the door to your home without warning, as you’re sleeping, and storm your house with guns, all based on little more than a tip from an informant that you’re in possession of illegal drugs.</p></blockquote></figure>
5550.  
5551.  
5552.  
5553. <p>We have one more important note about this story. I reached out to Alex White to ask if he&#8217;d do an interview for this podcast. He’s the informant that went to the press about the Atlanta police. White initially agreed to an interview, but he also asked that we pay him.</p>
5554.  
5555.  
5556.  
5557. <p>That&#8217;s a reasonable and understandable request. In a text message, White told me that he has a lot more to share. He pointed out that he has testified before Congress and his story made the cover of the New York Times magazine. Yet, as he put it, he is &#8220;still stuck in the Atlanta ghetto.&#8221;</p>
5558.  
5559.  
5560.  
5561. <p>Seventeen years after what was a risky and heroic act of truth-telling, White has largely been abandoned by law enforcement, and still lives in a rough part of Atlanta.&nbsp;</p>
5562.  
5563.  
5564.  
5565. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>Had it not been for Alex White, the officers that killed Kathryn Johnston may very well have gotten away with their crime.</p>
5566.  
5567.  
5568.  
5569. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Here&#8217;s Markel Hutchins again.</p>
5570.  
5571.  
5572.  
5573. <p><strong>Markel Hutchins: </strong>While Alex White was a change agent, not much has changed for him. And that&#8217;s one of the tragedies of all of this. The city of Atlanta is different. The police department benefited, the family benefited, the community benefited, but Alex White is still in a lot of ways stuck in the same place that he was before Kathryn Johnson&#8217;s death. He sees that everybody from mayors to movie-makers benefited from his courage, but he has not.</p>
5574.  
5575.  
5576.  
5577. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> White&#8217;s frustration is entirely understandable. But there&#8217;s also a bright-line rule in journalism: You don&#8217;t pay sources. It just isn&#8217;t done. So unfortunately, we couldn&#8217;t interview White for this episode. But it&#8217;s important to emphasize that if it weren&#8217;t for Alex White, the official version of the Kathryn Johnston story would be much different. The truth likely would have never been known.</p>
5578.  
5579.  
5580.  
5581. <p>Next time on Collateral Damage.&nbsp;</p>
5582.  
5583.  
5584.  
5585. <p><strong>Neill Franklin: </strong>So when someone comes breaking into their home in the middle of the night, they&#8217;re not going to think that it is the police, they&#8217;re going to think that they&#8217;re getting robbed.</p>
5586.  
5587.  
5588.  
5589. <p><strong>Ryan Frederick:</strong> They made me out to be like the devil, like psychotic like just ready to take on the world and shoot everybody cowboy wild wild West.</p>
5590.  
5591.  
5592.  
5593. <p><strong>Neill Franklin: </strong>That&#8217;s dangerous for them. It&#8217;s dangerous for the police.</p>
5594.  
5595.  
5596.  
5597. <p><strong>Radley Balko:</strong> Collateral Damage is a production of The Intercept.&nbsp;</p>
5598.  
5599.  
5600.  
5601. <p>It was reported and written by me, Radley Balko.</p>
5602.  
5603.  
5604.  
5605. <p>Additional writing by Andrew Stelzer, who also served as producer and editor.</p>
5606.  
5607.  
5608.  
5609. <p>Laura Flynn is our showrunner.</p>
5610.  
5611.  
5612.  
5613. <p>Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief.</p>
5614.  
5615.  
5616.  
5617. <p>The executive producers are me and Sumi Aggarwal.</p>
5618.  
5619.  
5620.  
5621. <p>We had editing support from Maryam Saleh.&nbsp;</p>
5622.  
5623.  
5624.  
5625. <p>Truc Nguyen mixed our show.&nbsp;</p>
5626.  
5627.  
5628.  
5629. <p>Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and David Bralow.&nbsp;</p>
5630.  
5631.  
5632.  
5633. <p>Fact-checking by Kadal Jesuthasan.</p>
5634.  
5635.  
5636.  
5637. <p>Art direction by Fei Liu.</p>
5638.  
5639.  
5640.  
5641. <p>Illustrations by Tara Anand.</p>
5642.  
5643.  
5644.  
5645. <p>Copy editing by Nara Shin.</p>
5646.  
5647.  
5648.  
5649. <p>Social and video media by Chelsey B. Coombs.</p>
5650.  
5651.  
5652.  
5653. <p>Special thanks to Peter Beck for research assistance.&nbsp;</p>
5654.  
5655.  
5656.  
5657. <p>This series was made possible by a grant from the Vital Projects Fund.&nbsp;</p>
5658.  
5659.  
5660.  
5661. <p>Thank you for listening.<br></p>
5662. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-episode-one-dirty-business/">Episode One: Dirty Business</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
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5665.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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5669. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
5670. </media:content>
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5672. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
5673. </media:content>
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5675.            </item>
5676.        
5677.            <item>
5678.                <title><![CDATA[Jon Chait Thinks Kamala Harris Went Too Far Left. He's Just Falling for Trump's Demagoguery.]]></title>
5679.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/jonathan-chait-centrist-democratic-party-harris-trump/</link>
5680.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/jonathan-chait-centrist-democratic-party-harris-trump/#respond</comments>
5681.                <pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2025 21:18:38 +0000</pubDate>
5682.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Eoin Higgins]]></dc:creator>
5683.                                 <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
5684. <category><![CDATA[Voices]]></category>
5685.  
5686.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
5687.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>A year ago, Chait said centrists were winning. When Harris lost, though, he blamed the left's trans rights agenda.</p>
5688. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/jonathan-chait-centrist-democratic-party-harris-trump/">Jon Chait Thinks Kamala Harris Went Too Far Left. He&#8217;s Just Falling for Trump&#8217;s Demagoguery.</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
5689. ]]></description>
5690.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
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5696.    alt="NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 02:  (L-R): Jonathan Chait, columnist at New York Magazine, and Nancy Gibbs, editor at TIME speak onstage at the American Magazine Media Conference at Grand Hyatt New York on February 2, 2016 in New York City.  (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Time Inc)"
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5700.  />
5701.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
5702.      <span class="photo__caption">Jonathan Chait, then a columnist at New York Magazine, speaks onstage at the American Magazine Media Conference on Feb. 2, 2016, in New York City. </span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Time Inc</span>    </figcaption>
5703.    </figure>
5704.  
5705.  
5706.  
5707. <p><span class="has-underline">It was almost</span> exactly a year ago that Jonathan Chait claimed that Kamala Harris’s <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/kamala-harris-trump-polls-close-tied-progressive-liberal-moderate.html">moderate turn was a winning strategy</a>.&nbsp;</p>
5708.  
5709.  
5710.  
5711. <p>“The centrism is working,” Chait wrote at New York Magazine. Her success in the polls compared to President Joe Biden, he added, should be “attributed to the cleverness and unsentimental courtship of the center her campaign has followed.”</p>
5712.  
5713.  
5714.  
5715. <p>Fast forward a year.&nbsp;</p>
5716.  
5717.  
5718.  
5719. <!-- BLOCK(pullquote)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PULLQUOTE%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22pull%22%3A%22right%22%7D) --><blockquote class="stylized pull-right" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="right"><!-- CONTENT(pullquote)[0] -->For Chait, the problem with the Democratic Party in the last ten years is that it&#8217;s been run by the far left.<!-- END-CONTENT(pullquote)[0] --></blockquote><!-- END-BLOCK(pullquote)[0] -->
5720.  
5721.  
5722.  
5723. <p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/democratic-party-strategy-progressives/684453/">Chait now says</a> that it was progressives who controlled Harris’s campaign — and lost the election. The leftward tilt doomed her. </p>
5724.  
5725.  
5726.  
5727. <p>For Chait, the problem with the Democratic Party in the last 10 years is that it&#8217;s been run by the far left, and now, finally, that the centrist moderates he&#8217;s a part of are reclaiming power. Mystifyingly, he seems to think they’re finally winning.&nbsp;</p>
5728.  
5729.  
5730.  
5731. <p>&#8220;After almost a decade of nearly unchallenged supremacy, the progressive movement’s hold on the party is no longer certain,&#8221; Chait wrote this week at <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/democratic-party-strategy-progressives/684453/">The Atlantic</a>.&nbsp;</p>
5732.  
5733.  
5734.  
5735. <p>Is the progressive dominance of the Democratic Party in the room with us right now?&nbsp;</p>
5736.  
5737.  
5738.  
5739.  
5740.  
5741.  
5742.  
5743. <p>The last 10 years have been a near nonstop assault on the Democratic Party’s left from an establishment that wants to crush it at all costs. One of the prime attackers has been one Jonathan Chait.</p>
5744.  
5745.  
5746.  
5747. <p>His assertion today, however, is striking in its detachment from reality. And it relies on making an appeal to the Democratic Party that’s rooted not in a return to centrist politics, but in an embrace of Trump’s demagogic narrative.</p>
5748.  
5749.  
5750.  
5751. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-centrists-weren-t-winning"><strong>Centrists Weren’t Winning?</strong></h2>
5752.  
5753.  
5754.  
5755. <p>Over the past decade, Democrats have submitted three nominees to voters for the White House. Two of them, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, explicitly ran against the insurgent left-wing campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.</p>
5756.  
5757.  
5758.  
5759. <!-- BLOCK(pullquote)[2](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PULLQUOTE%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22pull%22%3A%22left%22%7D) --><blockquote class="stylized pull-left" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="left"><!-- CONTENT(pullquote)[2] -->Harris focused more on finding opportunities to appear onstage with Liz Cheney than on appealing to progressives.<!-- END-CONTENT(pullquote)[2] --></blockquote><!-- END-BLOCK(pullquote)[2] -->
5760.  
5761.  
5762.  
5763. <p>Since then they’ve stayed the moderate course. Clinton continues to advocate for a continuation of the center-right politics that worked for her husband over 30 years ago. Chait’s ally in aggressive centrism Matt Yglesias was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/01/11/matt-yglesias-slow-boring-in-bidens-washington/">one of the most read</a> pundits among the Biden transition team.</p>
5764.  
5765.  
5766.  
5767. <p>The third Democratic presidential candidate in the last decade, Harris, was picked as Biden’s vice president and ran an abbreviated general election campaign after the incumbent dropped out. On the trail, she focused more on finding opportunities to appear onstage with Liz Cheney than on appealing to progressives.&nbsp;</p>
5768.  
5769.  
5770.  
5771. <p>Perhaps she should have pivoted to the left instead of embracing the centrism that Chait once celebrated. In 2020, Biden won after an explosion in liberal activism, from Black Lives Matter protests to advocating for civil rights — often referred to with the derogatory catchall “woke” by Chait and others in the centrism cohort, though they seldom if ever acknowledge the usefulness of motivating the base to come out for elections.</p>
5772.  
5773.  
5774.  
5775. <p>Four years later, registered Democrats <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democratic-nonvoters-policy-preferences/">sat out</a> the 2024 election at a 2:1 margin over Republicans, researchers <a href="https://x.com/JakeMGrumbach/status/1910383624828182748">found in April</a>.&nbsp;</p>
5776.  
5777.  
5778.  
5779.  
5780.  
5781.  
5782. <p>The case in point here is the Gaza war. The <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/08/22/no-palestinian-americans-will-speak-at-convention-dnc-decides/">Democratic National Committee refused</a> to even allow a Palestinian-American Democratic state lawmaker to speak at the convention — a sign that the presidential hopeful wouldn’t break from the continuing, morally repugnant Biden policy on the war in Gaza.&nbsp;</p>
5783.  
5784.  
5785.  
5786. <p>The stance on Gaza was one of the things that alienated Harris’s base and drove away enthusiastic young Democrats that had served as the foundations for successful Democratic ground games, young Democrats who were against unconditional support for Israel’s war.</p>
5787.  
5788.  
5789.  
5790. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-convenient-excuse"><strong>A Convenient Excuse</strong></h2>
5791.  
5792.  
5793.  
5794. <p>In an election as close as the 2024 race, it’s hard to pinpoint just one cause for the outcome.&nbsp;</p>
5795.  
5796.  
5797.  
5798. <p>The pivotal moment, to Chait, was an ad cut by the Trump campaign using an <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/aclu-questionnaire-2019-highlights-harris-202028430.html">answer Harris gave in 2019</a> to a question from the American Civil Liberties Union on the rights of trans incarcerated people, an example of what the pundit called an “edgy, leftist policy commitment in a campaign that consisted of little else.” </p>
5799.  
5800.  
5801.  
5802. <p>By citing the answer on trans prisoners, Chait is not talking about a tack to the center; he is instead making an appeal for the party to move right — the far right.</p>
5803.  
5804.  
5805.  
5806.  
5807.  
5808.  
5809.  
5810. <p>The idea that Harris’s position on trans rights was even a left-wing stance is a Trump campaign talking point, one hammered home by Fox News pundits day in and day out. It ignored that Harris was simply repeating <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/16/kamala-harris-fox-news-interview-biden-immigration-trump/75700764007/">established legal practice</a> for the rights of those prisoners, policy that was in place at the time under the Trump administration. Chait bought it all hook, line, and sinker: making a case not for centrism, but for anti-trans demagoguery.</p>
5811.  
5812.  
5813.  
5814. <p>Choosing the position that Harris took on trans rights in prisons in 2020 as the defining issue of the campaign conveniently lets the party off the hook for having nothing of substance to offer an angry electorate. As evidence, Chait <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/us/politics/trump-win-election-harris.html">refers to an unconvincing data point</a> from an analysis by Future Forward, the Harris team’s polling firm, as evidence it shifted voter preference by 2.7 percentage points in Trump’s favor.&nbsp;</p>
5815.  
5816.  
5817.  
5818.  
5819.  
5820.  
5821. <p>In reality, as in Gaza, Harris didn’t take any positions on trans rights for incarcerated people that hadn’t been in place for successive presidents. Her stand that all prisoners are entitled to care deemed to be medically necessary — including care for transition — was the policy of the Biden administration and, before that, the Trump administration too.&nbsp;</p>
5822.  
5823.  
5824.  
5825. <p>In 2024, Harris continued to affirm this policy but, instead of jumping headlong into a fight over an era-defining, life-and-death civil rights issue, she softened her rhetoric. In other words, she tacked to the center.</p>
5826.  
5827.  
5828.  
5829. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-could-she-have-done"><strong>What Could She Have Done?</strong></h2>
5830.  
5831.  
5832.  
5833. <p>Though soft-pedaling trans rights at a time when trans teens are attemping suicide at increasing rates was moral cowardice, it may be true that it wasn’t a winning electoral strategy.&nbsp;</p>
5834.  
5835.  
5836.  
5837. <p>So what could Harris have done? Almost nothing that Chait would have approved of.</p>
5838.  
5839.  
5840.  
5841. <p>Americans were unusually united in their <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/03/most-americans-continue-to-rate-the-us-economy-negatively-as-partisan-gap-widens/">dour view</a> of the economy, but rather than turn away from consolidating wealth that had left the working class scrambling to keep up, Harris catered to billionaires. She ran a campaign that seemed not like it was for the left of the party, but for its well-heeled donor classes. She had long since eschewed the economic populism of the Sanders-style Democrat.&nbsp;</p>
5842.  
5843.  
5844.  
5845. <p>And this is exactly where Chait is too: The only mentions of an economic message are swipes at Sanders and progressives for championing economic justice. Inflation goes unmentioned.</p>
5846.  
5847.  
5848.  
5849. <!-- BLOCK(pullquote)[6](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PULLQUOTE%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22pull%22%3A%22right%22%7D) --><blockquote class="stylized pull-right" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="right"><!-- CONTENT(pullquote)[6] -->For Chait, though, Palestine might as well not exist at all.<!-- END-CONTENT(pullquote)[6] --></blockquote><!-- END-BLOCK(pullquote)[6] -->
5850.  
5851.  
5852.  
5853. <p>And what would Chait have thought about a pivot away from Biden on Gaza to excite her base? <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/692948/u.s.-back-israel-military-action-gaza-new-low.aspx">Under a quarter</a> of Democrats expressed support for Israel’s war in October 2024, but Harris refused to break with the president.</p>
5854.  
5855.  
5856.  
5857. <p>For Chait, though, Palestine might as well not exist at all.</p>
5858.  
5859.  
5860.  
5861. <p>What Chait is doing now is a typical strategy for moderates interested in avoiding blame for their ideology in another losing effort on the national stage. Rather than look inward, they fixate on an easy target to punch down at and place blame on a marginalized community to scapegoat the loss.&nbsp;</p>
5862.  
5863.  
5864.  
5865. <p>The DNC’s 2024 autopsy is expected to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/us/politics/democrats-2024-autopsy-harris-biden.html">more of the same</a>, focusing on groups aligned with the party rather than any decisions made by the Biden or Harris campaigns or the Biden White House.&nbsp;</p>
5866.  
5867.  
5868.  
5869. <p>Centrists can try to rewrite history, but they’ve been winning the battle over the Democratic Party for years. If that’s translating into losses at the ballot box, maybe it’s time to actually try something new.</p>
5870. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/jonathan-chait-centrist-democratic-party-harris-trump/">Jon Chait Thinks Kamala Harris Went Too Far Left. He&#8217;s Just Falling for Trump&#8217;s Demagoguery.</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
5871. ]]></content:encoded>
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5873.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
5874.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-507989106-e1759871117184.jpg?fit=2725%2C1360' width='2725' height='1360' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500462</post-id>
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5876. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-507989106_563dbd.jpg?fit=3000%2C1996" medium="image">
5877. <media:title type="html">NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 02:  (L-R): Jonathan Chait, columnist at New York Magazine, and Nancy Gibbs, editor at TIME speak onstage at the American Magazine Media Conference at Grand Hyatt New York on February 2, 2016 in New York City.  (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Time Inc)</media:title>
5878. </media:content>
5879. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
5880. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
5881. </media:content>
5882. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
5883. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
5884. </media:content>
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5887. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2223240466-e1751489429545.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
5888.            </item>
5889.        
5890.            <item>
5891.                <title><![CDATA[Prominent Palestinian Protester in Brussels Dies in Custody]]></title>
5892.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/mahmoud-farajalah-palestinian-protester-brussels-death/</link>
5893.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/mahmoud-farajalah-palestinian-protester-brussels-death/#respond</comments>
5894.                <pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:37:09 +0000</pubDate>
5895.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Arthur Neslen]]></dc:creator>
5896.                                 <category><![CDATA[Justice]]></category>
5897. <category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
5898.  
5899.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
5900.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>The death followed months in immigration detention — and human rights groups’ condemnation of Belgium’s crackdown on protests.</p>
5901. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/mahmoud-farajalah-palestinian-protester-brussels-death/">Prominent Palestinian Protester in Brussels Dies in Custody</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
5902. ]]></description>
5903.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
5904. <p><span class="has-underline">Mahmoud Farajalah,</span> a 26-year-old Palestinian living in Brussels, died after taking his life in a detention center near the Zaventem airport, sparking angry protests and a hunger strike among other detainees.</p>
5905.  
5906.  
5907.  
5908. <p>A prominent face on the daily Palestinian solidarity demonstrations outside the Bourse, a major city square, Farajalah had been arrested three months ago for lacking legal immigration status after a failed attempt to get asylum, activists and a fellow detainee said.</p>
5909.  
5910.  
5911.  
5912. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“He was such an incredible person, the kindest and the most thoughtful person who I ever met in that center.”</p></blockquote></figure>
5913.  
5914.  
5915.  
5916. <p>Farajalah’s mother had recently died in Gaza, but he had been denied permission to leave the detention facility to mourn her, according four sources with knowledge of the situation, including Anas Hamam, a Moroccan detainee who had met Farajalah in the “127 Bis” detention center but was transferred to another facility a month ago.</p>
5917.  
5918.  
5919.  
5920. <p>Hamam told The Intercept by phone, &#8220;He was such an incredible person, the kindest and the most thoughtful person who I ever met in that center.”</p>
5921.  
5922.  
5923.  
5924. <p>According to Hamam, Farajah was reeling from another asylum rejection when he learned of his mother’s death.</p>
5925.  
5926.  
5927.  
5928. <p>“His brother told him over the phone that his mother had died — apparently in an airstrike,” Hamam said. “He thought that his father had also died as his brother wouldn’t pass the phone to his father. His psychological state was very affected by that.”</p>
5929.  
5930.  
5931.  
5932.  
5933.  
5934.  
5935.  
5936. <p>Eight detainees in Belgium’s migration detention camps have now begun hunger strikes, including five in “127 Bis,” one in Vottem, and one in Merksplatz, according to Hamam. </p>
5937.  
5938.  
5939.  
5940. <p>Many Palestinians are thought to have been held in Belgium’s detention camps, according to activists. At least three were arrested by plainclothes police officers after Bourse demonstrations, according to Hamam.</p>
5941.  
5942.  
5943.  
5944. <p>Last week, Amnesty International <a href="https://www.hln.be/brussel/amnesty-international-wil-onderzoek-naar-politieoptreden-tijdens-brusselse-protesten-tegen-geweld-in-gaza~ac2f1f0b/">called for an investigation</a> into Belgium’s harsh crackdowns on the protesters. Riot police had used tear gas and water cannons on demonstrators in Brussels against Israel’s interdiction of an <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/26/podcast-gaza-aid-sumud-flotilla-attacked-israel-drones/">aid flotilla to Gaza </a>last week.</p>
5945.  
5946.  
5947.  
5948. <p>Belgium’s migration and asylum service confirmed Farajalah’s death, but spokesperson Dominique Ernould declined any further comment citing confidentiality and the privacy of the family.</p>
5949.  
5950.  
5951.  
5952. <p>“The situation is calm in the center,” Ernould said. “The necessary support is being provided to the center&#8217;s residents and staff members.”</p>
5953.  
5954.  
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5956.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="https://theintercept.com/collections/israel-palestine/">
5957.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
5958.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=5760 5760w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=3600 3600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
5959.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
5960.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
5961.            Read our complete coverage          </p>
5962.        
5963.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Israel’s War on Gaza</h2>
5964.      </div>
5965.    </a>
5966.  </aside>
5967. <!-- END-BLOCK(promote-post)[1] -->
5968.  
5969.  
5970.  
5971. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-asylum-denied"><strong>Asylum Denied</strong></h2>
5972.  
5973.  
5974.  
5975. <p>Two sources, including Hamam and a pro-Palestine activist who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said that Farajalah had recently had an asylum claim turned down. He was arrested on the way to a second immigration hearing, Hamam said.<br><br>Farajalah got news about his mother the day after his latest asylum rejection.</p>
5976.  
5977.  
5978.  
5979.  <div class="promote-related-post">
5980.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
5981.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/03/31/germany-gaza-protesters-deport/"
5982.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
5983.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: germany-gaza-protesters-deport"
5984.      data-ga-track-label="germany-gaza-protesters-deport"
5985.          >
5986.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/crop_GettyImages-2161318765-e1743461626961.jpg-e1743516933711.webp?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
5987.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
5988.        Related      </h2>
5989.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters</h3>
5990.    </span>
5991.    </a>
5992.  </div>
5993.  
5994.  
5995.  
5996. <p>Hamam says he helped Farajalah draft a letter to the detention center’s director asking for a short period of release so he could mourn. The request was turned down and Hamam was moved to another detention center, keeping in touch with Farajalah through Instagram messages.  </p>
5997.  
5998.  
5999.  
6000. <p>“He didn’t have papers,” the activist said. “Belgium denied him access to international protection.”</p>
6001.  
6002.  
6003.  
6004. <p>As word of Farajalah’s death spread, Palestine solidarity organizers called for a protest of &#8220;<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DPgdXqODFeS/">fire, rage, noise</a>&#8221; outside the detention center on Saturday.</p>
6005.  
6006.  
6007.  
6008. <p>“He had lost his mother,” organizers wrote on an Instagram post. “He had asked to be released so he could mourn. He had written. He had pleaded. The administration ignored him. The system crushed him. Silence killed him.”</p>
6009.  
6010.  
6011.  
6012.  
6013.  
6014.  
6015.  
6016. <p>A group calling itself “Getting the Voice Out” sent The Intercept a statement saying that other detainees in the facility were outraged by the death. &nbsp;</p>
6017.  
6018.  
6019.  
6020. <p>“They are starting a hunger strike at the center and have made a flag with his name on it,” the statement said. “They tell us, ‘Today it&#8217;s Mahmoud, tomorrow it&#8217;s someone else. Security is laughing at us. We have to do something.’”</p>
6021.  
6022.  
6023.  
6024. <p>Activists and a former detainee at “127 Bis” said people held there were routinely denied phone calls and internet access, among other charges.</p>
6025.  
6026.  
6027.  
6028. <p>Ernould, the migration authority spokesperson, denied claims by activists and Palestinian detainees — one of whom has talked to The Intercept — of mistreatment in the detention camps.</p>
6029.  
6030.  
6031.  
6032. <p>“Residents in closed centers are not mistreated,” she said. “They receive all the necessary care: medical and psychological. Residents have the option of receiving phone calls or making phone calls to their loved ones and families outside the facility.”</p>
6033.  
6034.  
6035.  
6036. <p><em>The </em><a href="https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/"><em>National Suicide Prevention Lifeline</em></a><em> offers 24-hour support for those experiencing difficulties or those close to them, by </em><a href="https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat/"><em>chat</em></a><em> or by telephone at 988.</em></p>
6037.  
6038.  
6039.  
6040. <p><strong>Correction: October 7, 2025, 4:23 p.m. ET</strong><br><em>This story has been updated to remove an errant reference to Farajalah’s arrest after a protest. He was arrested on his way to an immigration hearing.</em></p>
6041. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/mahmoud-farajalah-palestinian-protester-brussels-death/">Prominent Palestinian Protester in Brussels Dies in Custody</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
6042. ]]></content:encoded>
6043.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/mahmoud-farajalah-palestinian-protester-brussels-death/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
6044.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
6045.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2233582916-e1759851018739.jpg?fit=6240%2C3120' width='6240' height='3120' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500437</post-id>
6046. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" />
6047. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
6048. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
6049. </media:content>
6050. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
6051. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
6052. </media:content>
6053. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
6054. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?fit=300%2C150" medium="image">
6055. <media:title type="html">DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)</media:title>
6056. </media:content>
6057. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/crop_GettyImages-2161318765-e1743461626961.jpg-e1743516933711.webp?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
6058.            </item>
6059.        
6060.            <item>
6061.                <title><![CDATA[The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act]]></title>
6062.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/</link>
6063.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/#respond</comments>
6064.                <pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
6065.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Natasha Lennard]]></dc:creator>
6066.                                 <category><![CDATA[Justice]]></category>
6067. <category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
6068. <category><![CDATA[Voices]]></category>
6069.  
6070.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
6071.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>An authoritarian’s dream, the Insurrection Act is ripe for abuse — and Trump’s Cabinet is already setting up his justification to use it.</p>
6072. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/">The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
6073. ]]></description>
6074.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
6075. <figure class="wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default">
6076.    <img decoding="async"
6077.    src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?fit=4000%2C2667"
6078.    srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=4000 4000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?w=3600 3600w"
6079.    sizes="auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)"
6080.    alt="US President Donald Trump, left, and Doug Burgum, US secretary of the interior, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025. Trump reversed a Biden administration decision blocking the construction of the Ambler Road project in Alaska, in a move he said would open up critical energy and mining projects. Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images"
6081.    width="4000"
6082.    height="2667"
6083.    loading="lazy"
6084.  />
6085.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
6086.      <span class="photo__caption">Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Oct. 6, 2025.</span>&nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Photo: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images</span>    </figcaption>
6087.    </figure>
6088.  
6089.  
6090.  
6091. <p><span class="has-underline">President Donald Trump</span> teased a dangerous escalation on Monday afternoon, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000010442336/trump-threatens-to-use-insurrection-act-to-deploy-national-guard.html">threatening</a> to invoke the Insurrection Act to send military forces to U.S. cities, should pesky judges and state leaders continue to thwart his ambitions to assault and occupy blue states.</p>
6092.  
6093.  
6094.  
6095. <p>“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “If I had to enact it, I’d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”</p>
6096.  
6097.  
6098.  
6099. <!-- BLOCK(pullquote)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PULLQUOTE%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22pull%22%3A%22right%22%7D) --><blockquote class="stylized pull-right" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="right"><!-- CONTENT(pullquote)[0] -->His comments make clear the shape of Trump&#8217;s authoritarian plans to dispatch the military to American cities.<!-- END-CONTENT(pullquote)[0] --></blockquote><!-- END-BLOCK(pullquote)[0] -->
6100.  
6101.  
6102.  
6103. <p>Trump noted that he did not see an immediate need to invoke the federal law. His comments, though, make clear the shape of his authoritarian plans to dispatch the military to liberal American cities after a federal judge <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/05/national-guard-oregon-california-rurling-00594606">blocked </a>him from sending troops to Portland, Oregon.</p>
6104.  
6105.  
6106.  
6107. <p>Like so many of the Trump regime’s power grabs, the threat is both shocking and predictable.</p>
6108.  
6109.  
6110.  
6111.  
6112.  
6113.  
6114.  
6115. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-he-badly-wants-to-use-it"><strong>He Badly Wants to Use It</strong></h2>
6116.  
6117.  
6118.  
6119. <p>Trump’s interest in the Insurrection Act is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-floats-invoking-insurrection-act-rcna236030">hardly new</a>. He toyed with invoking the law in his first term.</p>
6120.  
6121.  
6122.  
6123. <p>He was itching to use it to send in the military to crush the 2020 George Floyd uprisings but<a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/05/06/mark-esper-trump-george-floyd-protests/"> faced opposition at the time</a> from then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper. No such problem for the president with loyalist goon Pete Hegseth in the so-called secretary of war position.</p>
6124.  
6125.  
6126.  
6127. <p>And Trump allies <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/08/02/trump-indictment-justice-department-jeffrey-clark/">called on the president</a> to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/06/04/stewart-rhodes-oath-keepers-prison-sentence-pardon/">invoke the law</a> to illegally hold onto power after the 2020 election. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to use the Insurrection Act to suppress unrest and dissent.</p>
6128.  
6129.  
6130. <!-- BLOCK(promote-post)[2](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PROMOTE_POST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22slug%22%3A%22chilling-dissent%22%2C%22crop%22%3A%22promo%22%7D) -->  <aside class="promote-banner">
6131.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="https://theintercept.com/collections/chilling-dissent/">
6132.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
6133.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?w=1000 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
6134.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
6135.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
6136.            Read our complete coverage          </p>
6137.        
6138.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Chilling Dissent</h2>
6139.      </div>
6140.    </a>
6141.  </aside>
6142. <!-- END-BLOCK(promote-post)[2] -->
6143.  
6144.  
6145.  
6146. <p>In his second term, Trump’s aides and advisers have been clearly setting up a justification for invoking the law — softening up MAGA adherents to accept yet another shockingly dictatorial move from the president.</p>
6147.  
6148.  
6149.  
6150. <p>It’s no accident, after all, that members of Trump’s Cabinet have repeatedly used the term “insurrection” and “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/us/trump-los-angeles-protestors-insurrectionists.html">insurrectionists</a>” to describe the protesters standing up to U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Gestapo-style operations. And Stephen Miller, the ghoulish architect of Trump’s deportation machine, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/mollyjongfast.bsky.social/post/3m2jhefk47k2u">described</a> the Oregon judge’s ruling as “legal insurrection.”</p>
6151.  
6152.  
6153.  
6154. <p>Like an incantation, they call the notion of insurrection into being to justify the Insurrection Act’s invocation when no such justification exists in material reality.</p>
6155.  
6156.  
6157.  
6158. <p>&#8220;The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them,&#8221; JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, where Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/08/trump-chicago-ice-dhs-apocalypse-now/">storm troopers</a> already <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/04/united-police-state-of-america/">wreaking havoc</a> in Chicago, said on Monday. &#8220;Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.&#8221;</p>
6159.  
6160.  
6161.  
6162. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ripe-for-abuse"><strong>Ripe for Abuse</strong></h2>
6163.  
6164.  
6165.  
6166. <p>Then there is the law itself, which could not be better tailored for abuse by exactly the kind of brazen authoritarian like Trump. Legal <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/28/1241141939/insurrection-act">experts</a> have long warned that the two-century-old statute is dangerously broad and in desperate need of updating for the exact reasons it’s such an appealing tool for Trump.</p>
6167.  
6168.  
6169.  
6170. <p>First, the law gives extraordinary discretion to the president alone to declare a domestic “insurrection” is underway and deploy U.S. military forces against the American people. And it’s one of the few key exceptions to the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/06/09/la-ice-protests-national-guard-marines-trump/">Posse Comitatus Act</a> barring federal military forces from<a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/22/military-troops-deployed-border-ice/"> engaging in civilian law enforcement operations</a>.</p>
6171.  
6172.  
6173.  
6174.  <div class="promote-related-post">
6175.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
6176.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/11/trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops/"
6177.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
6178.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops"
6179.      data-ga-track-label="trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops"
6180.          >
6181.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AP25223626271595-e1755014116535.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
6182.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
6183.        Related      </h2>
6184.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Trump’s Trial Run for a Police State</h3>
6185.    </span>
6186.    </a>
6187.  </div>
6188.  
6189.  
6190.  
6191. <p>If there is “a reason” we have an Insurrection Act, as Trump said on Monday, then it is a historic one, with little bearing on current conditions. With its roots in the 1792 Militia Act and first enacted in 1807, the Insurrection Act “has not been meaningfully updated in over 150 years, is dangerously overbroad and ripe for abuse,” <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/insurrection-act-explained">wrote</a> Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice.</p>
6192.  
6193.  
6194.  
6195. <p>The language of the law is vague — a gift to a president with dictatorial aims. It grants the federal executive power to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”</p>
6196.  
6197.  
6198.  
6199. <p>“Nothing in the text of the Insurrection Act defines ‘insurrection,’ ‘rebellion,’ ‘domestic violence,’ or any of the other key terms used in setting forth the prerequisites for deployment,” noted Nunn. “Absent statutory guidance, the Supreme Court decided early on that this question is for the president alone to decide.”</p>
6200.  
6201.  
6202.  
6203.  
6204.  
6205.  
6206.  
6207. <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-create-the-pretext"><strong>“Create the Pretext”</strong></h2>
6208.  
6209.  
6210.  
6211. <p>Concern that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act to take control of Democratic-led cities is by no means far-fetched. Our cities are already occupied by a federal army of thugs — ICE — directed to kidnap and cage our neighbors atop regular police violence. And Trump has already federalized and deployed National Guard troops in Los Angeles and Washington, overreaches that are already facing their own legal <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/blue-states-fight-back-trumps-national-guard-moves-politics-desk-rcna236038">challenges</a>.</p>
6212.  
6213.  
6214.  
6215. <p>Things can, of course, get much worse. Invoking the Insurrection Act would not, however, be a flip switch moving us from a functional democracy into fascism; rather, it would be an expansion of already existent fascist action, and another tool that the president can use to continue to crackdown on dissent.</p>
6216.  
6217.  
6218.  
6219. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>It’s tempting to urge protesters to avoid giving Trump a pretext for escalation. That would be a grave mistake.</p></blockquote></figure>
6220.  
6221.  
6222.  
6223. <p>In the face of such a threat, it is tempting to urge protesters to be placid, to avoid giving the Trump administration pretext for further escalation. That would be a grave mistake.</p>
6224.  
6225.  
6226.  
6227. <p>Even Pritzker’s statement recognized that it is the president’s regime that will “create the pretext,” regardless of how peaceful the protesters are.</p>
6228.  
6229.  
6230.  
6231. <p>In the Trumpist imagination — committed to the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/19/trump-charlie-kirk-george-soros-antifa/">lie and/or delusion </a>of a well-funded network of criminal leftists — no real pretext is required for a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/04/united-police-state-of-america/">further collapsing</a> of the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/11/trump-washington-dc-federalization-national-guard-troops/">police and military state</a>.</p>
6232.  
6233.  
6234.  
6235. <p>By ruling that the administration’s notion of a grave threat to federal agents was unmoored from reality, Immergut, the federal judge, was saying that Trump cannot ignore facts on the ground.</p>
6236.  
6237.  
6238.  
6239. <p>Trump’s flirtations with the Insurrection Act on Monday, though, made clear that he wholly intends to do so.</p>
6240. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/">The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
6241. ]]></content:encoded>
6242.                                <wfw:commentRss>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
6243.                <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
6244.                <media:content url='https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155-e1759809729441.jpg?fit=4000%2C2000' width='4000' height='2000' /><post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">500412</post-id>
6245. <media:thumbnail url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?fit=4000%2C2667" />
6246. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2239223155_cc08f7.jpg?fit=4000%2C2667" medium="image">
6247. <media:title type="html">US President Donald Trump, left, and Doug Burgum, US secretary of the interior, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025. Trump reversed a Biden administration decision blocking the construction of the Ambler Road project in Alaska, in a move he said would open up critical energy and mining projects. Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images</media:title>
6248. </media:content>
6249. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/GettyImages-2214564753-e1760186836820.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
6250. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
6251. </media:content>
6252. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/IMG_6526-1-e1760277666996.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image">
6253. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
6254. </media:content>
6255. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2_1GettyImages-2224699487.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
6256. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/collection_21_AP25080472815958.jpg.webp?fit=300%2C150" medium="image" />
6257. <media:content url="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AP25223626271595-e1755014116535.jpg?w=440&#038;h=440&#038;crop=1" medium="image" />
6258.            </item>
6259.        
6260.            <item>
6261.                <title><![CDATA[Mothers in Gaza Give Life to the Next Generation of Palestinians Despite Genocide]]></title>
6262.                <link>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/06/mothers-pregnant-gaza/</link>
6263.                <comments>https://theintercept.com/2025/10/06/mothers-pregnant-gaza/#respond</comments>
6264.                <pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2025 14:07:49 +0000</pubDate>
6265.                                    <dc:creator><![CDATA[Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi]]></dc:creator>
6266.                                 <category><![CDATA[Justice]]></category>
6267. <category><![CDATA[Voices]]></category>
6268.  
6269.                <guid isPermaLink="false"></guid>
6270.                                    <description><![CDATA[<p>As the Israeli government enters the third year of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, mothers keep bringing new Palestinians into the world.</p>
6271. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/06/mothers-pregnant-gaza/">Mothers in Gaza Give Life to the Next Generation of Palestinians Despite Genocide</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
6272. ]]></description>
6273.                                        <content:encoded><![CDATA[
6274. <figure class="wp-block-ft-photo is-style-default">
6275.    <img decoding="async"
6276.    src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?fit=2000%2C1200"
6277.    srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?w=2000 2000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/MothersinGaza_MK.jpg?w=1000 1000w"
6278.    sizes="auto, (min-width: 1300px) 650px, (min-width: 800px) 64vw, (min-width: 500px) calc(100vw - 5rem), calc(100vw - 3rem)"
6279.    alt=""
6280.    width="2000"
6281.    height="1200"
6282.    loading="lazy"
6283.  />
6284.      <figcaption class="photo__figcaption">
6285.      &nbsp;<span class="photo__credit">Illustration: Mala Kumar</span>    </figcaption>
6286.    </figure>
6287.  
6288.  
6289.  
6290. <p><span class="has-underline">The first bombs</span> of the current genocide fell during Tasneem’s final weeks of pregnancy. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, she was 25 years old, seven months pregnant, and eagerly awaiting her second child.</p>
6291.  
6292.  
6293.  
6294. <p>In Gaza, Tasneem had already lived her whole young life under Israeli surveillance, confinement, and violence. But as the bombs rained down on October 7 —&nbsp;in what Israel claimed was <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/10/09/israel-hamas-war-crimes-palestinians/">retaliation</a> for the nearly 1,200 Israelis killed that day, but has since become a two-year-long genocide, killing at least 66,000 Palestinians&nbsp; — it was clear her child’s generation would be born into a new level of horror.</p>
6295.  
6296.  
6297.  
6298. <p>There were no calm nurses by the time Tasneem went into labor with her son, Ezz Aldin. The hospital was overcrowded with no steady electricity. Tasneem labored for hours in the barely functioning hospital, and when she gave birth, there was no food to help her recover. Diapers were nearly impossible to find. Weakened and hungry, she breastfed her son. It was December 25, 2023.</p>
6299.  
6300.  
6301.  
6302.  <div class="promote-related-post">
6303.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
6304.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/09/24/gaza-city-diary-palestinian-displacement/"
6305.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
6306.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: gaza-city-diary-palestinian-displacement"
6307.      data-ga-track-label="gaza-city-diary-palestinian-displacement"
6308.          >
6309.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/huda2_b4d171-e1758729786480.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
6310.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
6311.        Related      </h2>
6312.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">Israel Just Bombed the Building Next Door. Will We Be Next?</h3>
6313.    </span>
6314.    </a>
6315.  </div>
6316.  
6317.  
6318.  
6319. <p>Bombs are still falling on Gaza, despite a pending peace deal. As the Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, moves into its third year of trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza, many Palestinian women still push to bring the next generation into the world. They give birth not in hospitals with clean beds and available staff, but in overcrowded, collapsing clinics, under drones and bombs, amid the deadliest genocide Gaza has seen in decades.&nbsp;</p>
6320.  
6321.  
6322.  
6323. <p>This is the story of my sisters, and of other Palestinian women who brought children into a world that was falling apart.</p>
6324.  
6325.  
6326.  
6327.  
6328.  
6329.  
6330.  
6331. <p><span class="has-underline">Doaa wasn’t pregnant</span> when the first bombs dropped. Like everyone else, she was trying to survive. When her home was bombed on January 14, 2024, the windows shattered, the walls cracked, and the air was filled with smoke and dust. Though she wasn’t physically harmed, the emotional toll was enormous. A few weeks later, amid her family’s displacement — from a small flat, to a tent, to a tiny apartment — she found out she was pregnant. Living with a child growing inside her, under constant fear of sudden death, the sounds of nearby strikes would jolt her awake at night.</p>
6332.  
6333.  
6334.  
6335. <p>When her labor began — on October 28, 2024, just over a year into the genocide — she was rushed to an already overwhelmed hospital. She clung to the thin mattress through waves of pain, until her son Hossam was born: small, fragile, but alive. No special food awaited her. No clothes. No comfort. Still, she held him close, nursing him through hunger and fear.</p>
6336.  
6337.  
6338.  
6339.  <div class="promote-related-post">
6340.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
6341.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/08/08/intercept-briefing-podcast-gaza-aid-food/"
6342.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
6343.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: intercept-briefing-podcast-gaza-aid-food"
6344.      data-ga-track-label="intercept-briefing-podcast-gaza-aid-food"
6345.          >
6346.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GazaFamine_banner.jpg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
6347.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
6348.        Related      </h2>
6349.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">“A Purely Manmade Famine”: How Israel Is Starving Gaza</h3>
6350.    </span>
6351.    </a>
6352.  </div>
6353.  
6354.  
6355.  
6356. <p>The World Health Organization reports that 10 percent of Gaza&#8217;s population and up to 20 percent of pregnant women suffer moderate to severe malnutrition. Over 5,100 children were admitted to malnutrition programs in July alone, including 800 in critical condition. According to Médecins Sans Frontières, 25 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are malnourished. Mothers face shortages of nutritious food essential for recovery and breastfeeding, as iron-rich foods, fresh fruit, and vegetables are nearly impossible to find.</p>
6357.  
6358.  
6359.  
6360. <p>“What have these children done to deserve being born in these conditions of genocide and famine? Why can the world not see them?” asked my friend’s aunt, who gave birth on October 6, 2024. A single pack of diapers cost $600 at the time. Today, it’s 400 shekels, or about $120 — still impossibly out of reach. Most have to make do with a plastic bag tied up with string.</p>
6361.  
6362.  
6363.  
6364. <p>Her baby, Layan, had to drink formula. Many babies born in Gaza under the genocide do. Their mothers — starving, dehydrated, terrified — can’t make breast milk. When formula is available, it’s at inflated prices: 200 shekels per can. Most of the time, it simply isn’t there.</p>
6365.  
6366.  
6367.  
6368. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>“What have these children done to deserve being born in these conditions of genocide and famine?”</p></blockquote></figure>
6369.  
6370.  
6371.  
6372. <p>Layan is now a year old. From the age of nine months, children are supposed to start eating soft food: mashed rice, boiled zucchini, fruit, grapes, melon, yogurt. But there’s nothing. Nothing to feed him. Nothing to grow on.</p>
6373.  
6374.  
6375.  
6376. <p>Dana was born in a tent by the sea, to a mother suffering from severe malnutrition. The family had been forced to leave their home in Khan Younis, and Dana’s mother had gone days without proper food.</p>
6377.  
6378.  
6379.  
6380. <p>“They told her mother she might give birth to a child with disabilities because of her lack of vitamins,” said Aya, Dana’s cousin.</p>
6381.  
6382.  
6383.  
6384. <p>The pregnancy was grueling. “I could barely get out of bed; there was hardly any food,” Dana’s mother recalled. Every day was a struggle against fatigue, hunger, and uncertainty. Her body weak, her mind anxious, she carried on, driven by hope for her baby. And against all odds, Dana arrived healthy — a small miracle in a world that seemed to offer none.</p>
6385.  
6386.  
6387.  
6388. <p>But the tents where displaced Palestinians reside are not fit places for children. Flies, mosquitoes, rats; the insects bite, sting, infect. A mosquito bite on a baby’s cheek swells for a week. Medical care is nearly impossible to find.</p>
6389.  
6390.  
6391.  
6392. <p>And the sewage system? A two-meter-deep pit in the ground, uncovered. There have been cases of children falling in.</p>
6393.  
6394.  
6395.  
6396. <p>In the heat, small bodies burn with fever. Skin diseases — itching, peeling, red blotches that blister — spread quickly. There are no creams. No medicine. Their immune systems are too weak to fight anything off.</p>
6397.  
6398.  
6399.  
6400. <p>“We had nothing but each other,” Dana’s mother said. Relatives, neighbors, and small acts of kindness became their lifeline, helping them prepare for the birth and supporting them through the first fragile days.</p>
6401.  
6402.  
6403.  
6404. <p>Now, Dana is thriving. But some babies don’t survive the winter. The tents freeze, and so do they.<br><br><!-- BLOCK(promote-post)[1](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22PROMOTE_POST%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%22slug%22%3A%22israel-palestine%22%2C%22crop%22%3A%22promo%22%7D) -->  <aside class="promote-banner">
6405.    <a class="promote-banner__link" href="https://theintercept.com/collections/israel-palestine/">
6406.              <span class="promote-banner__image">
6407.          <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="150" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?fit=300%2C150" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)" srcset="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=5760 5760w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=300 300w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=768 768w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2048 2048w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=540 540w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=1000 1000w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=2400 2400w, https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/GettyImages-1768403880-2.jpg?w=3600 3600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />        </span>
6408.            <div class="promote-banner__text">
6409.                  <p class="promote-banner__eyebrow">
6410.            Read our complete coverage          </p>
6411.        
6412.        <h2 class="promote-banner__title">Israel’s War on Gaza</h2>
6413.      </div>
6414.    </a>
6415.  </aside>
6416. <!-- END-BLOCK(promote-post)[1] --></p>
6417.  
6418.  
6419.  
6420. <p><span class="has-underline">As Noor rushed</span> to the hospital in labor, her family’s car jolted violently from a nearby explosion. Her husband’s voice cracked as he called for calm, but the fear was thick in the air. The ambulance had been delayed, so they drove themselves through streets scattered with debris and silence broken only by distant blasts. Upon arriving, the hospital was overwhelmed — hallways packed with patients, no beds available.&nbsp;</p>
6421.  
6422.  
6423.  
6424. <p>Nurses found a corner in a busy corridor where Noor could lie down. The lights flickered, and the generator’s low drone filled the room. There was no privacy, no quiet. Doctors worked quickly, hands steady despite their exhaustion. Noor’s contractions came one after another. Sweat dripped down her face. Finally, a girl was born: her cries faint but still a signal of life. Noor held her daughter close without food, clean clothes, or diapers. The room smelled of fear and hope tangled together, as a new life began amid ruin.</p>
6425.  
6426.  
6427.  
6428. <p>Since the genocide began, official reports estimate that over 3,000 babies have been born in Gaza’s collapsing hospitals. Many arrive too soon, or with health complications caused by malnutrition and inadequate medical care. Many others suffer from disabilities linked to poor prenatal conditions and genocide-related trauma. In the first month of the genocide, United Nations agencies <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/03-11-2023-women-and-newborns-bearing-the-brunt-of-the-conflict-in-gaza-un-agencies-warn">reported</a> that there were about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, with more than 180 giving birth every day, and 15 percent of them likely to face complications that require medical care.</p>
6429.  
6430.  
6431.  
6432.  <div class="promote-related-post">
6433.    <a      class="promo-related-post__link"
6434.            href="https://theintercept.com/2025/07/26/gaza-starvation-hunger-diary/"
6435.      data-ga-track="in_article-body"
6436.      data-ga-track-action="related post embed: gaza-starvation-hunger-diary"
6437.      data-ga-track-label="gaza-starvation-hunger-diary"
6438.          >
6439.              <img decoding="async" width="440" height="440" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2226013337-e1753493548272.jpeg?w=440&amp;h=440&amp;crop=1" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" loading="lazy" />            <span class="promo-related-post__text">
6440.      <h2 class="promote-related-post__eyebrow">
6441.        Related      </h2>
6442.      <h3 class="promote-related-post__title">“Food Has Become a Memory”: My Hunger Diary in Gaza</h3>
6443.    </span>
6444.    </a>
6445.  </div>
6446.  
6447.  
6448.  
6449. <p>Neonatal mortality has risen sharply: Miscarriage rates have tripled and stillbirths surged beyond prewar levels. For the first half of 2025, the <a href="https://arabstates.unfpa.org/en/news/unfpa-warns-catastrophic-birth-outcomes-gaza-amid-starvation-psychological-trauma-and">U.N. Population Fund reported</a> that among 17,000 births, 20 newborns died within 24 hours, and 33 percent of babies — 5,560 infants — were premature, underweight, or required NICU care. These figures are not just statistics; they are a record of lives that began in crisis.</p>
6450.  
6451.  
6452.  
6453. <p>Birth in Gaza often means sharing incubators, giving birth without anesthesia during power outages, and risking infection because water and sanitation systems are destroyed.</p>
6454.  
6455.  
6456.  
6457. <p>And clothes? Even before the genocide, baby clothes were expensive. Now they’re nearly impossible to find. If you’re lucky, you might come across a scrap of fabric shaped like clothing — but it’s rough, stiff, and anything but comfortable on a newborn’s skin.</p>
6458.  
6459.  
6460.  
6461.  
6462.  
6463.  
6464.  
6465. <p><span class="has-underline">Tasneem had hoped,</span> in those early days, that a ceasefire might come before her son arrived. In her final weeks of pregnancy, she held onto the idea that she would give birth in normal conditions — at home surrounded by family, rather than rubble. But the days passed, the bombing grew heavier, and that hope was crushed.</p>
6466.  
6467.  
6468.  
6469. <p>With the support of her family, Dana is growing strong. “She is healthy and happy, thanks to our care and attention,” her mother says. The early hardships have left their mark; subtle signs in her development that remind the family of the struggle before her birth. But the family remains steadfast&nbsp;and says they make sure Dana has milk, diapers, and everything she needs.</p>
6470.  
6471.  
6472.  
6473. <p>None of these mothers had what they needed. What they did have was determination: stubborn, unbreakable, quietly defiant. Each of them carried a life inside them while the world fell apart around them. Each gave birth with explosions in the background, fear in their lungs, and courage in their hands.</p>
6474.  
6475.  
6476.  
6477. <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right"><blockquote><p>To be pregnant in Gaza today is to give life with death knocking at the door.</p></blockquote></figure>
6478.  
6479.  
6480.  
6481. <p>To be pregnant in Gaza today is to give life with death knocking at the door. It is to feel your baby kick while warplanes circle overhead. It is to count the seconds between explosions and pray the next one doesn’t find you. It is to bring life into a world that feels like it’s ending — and to do it anyway.</p>
6482.  
6483.  
6484.  
6485. <p>In Gaza, where the Israeli government is explicitly seeking to eliminate the existence of Palestinian people, the birth of every child is&nbsp;an act of resistance. These women, sustaining life amid bombs and shortages, rewrite the meaning of courage and resilience. Their strength is not demonstrated in grand speeches or headlines, but in the small moments: steady hands breastfeeding a&nbsp;hungry baby, a newborn’s fragile cry cutting through the sound&nbsp;of bombardment, a family’s silent promise to protect life. They carry the future in their arms, embodying the determination of a people who refuse to disappear.&nbsp;</p>
6486.  
6487.  
6488.  
6489. <p>Despite the violence, the hunger, and the fear, life continues — because in Gaza, to live is to resist.</p>
6490.  
6491.  
6492.  
6493. <p><strong>Correction: October 8, 2025</strong><br><em>An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Tasneem was awaiting the birth of her third child. She was pregnant with her second child.</em></p>
6494. <p>The post <a href="https://theintercept.com/2025/10/06/mothers-pregnant-gaza/">Mothers in Gaza Give Life to the Next Generation of Palestinians Despite Genocide</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theintercept.com">The Intercept</a>.</p>
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6503. <media:title type="html">President Donald Trump speaks with Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al Thani as he departs the Al Udeid Air Base for Abu Dhabi on May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar.</media:title>
6504. </media:content>
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6506. <media:title type="html">A framed wedding photograph of Tahina Corcoran and her husband Joe Corcoran sits on a dresser in Tahina’s bedroom at her home in Indiana.</media:title>
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6511. <media:title type="html">DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA - NOVEMBER 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)</media:title>
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