The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are the de facto government in northwest Yemen. The group began as a religious movement among the Zaydis, an idiosyncratic branch of Shia Islam, before taking a political-military turn in the 2000s. Since 2014, Ansar Allah has been a powerful faction in the country’s civil war, fighting against the Republic of Yemen, the weak but Saudi-backed internationally recognized government. With the war on hold since a 2022 ceasefire agreement, the Houthis now control the capital city of Sanaa, and govern the majority of Yemen’s population.

Beginning on March 15, the US military began an operation that has killed dozens in Yemen and injured over a hundred, including women and children, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth frankly acknowledged the leveling of a civilian building.

US planning for the operation was revealed in articles by the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg (3/24/25, 3/26/25), which disclosed that the journalist had been inadvertently added to a Signal group chat that top administration officials were using to discuss bombing plans—an inclusion that was not noticed by any of the intended participants. This prompted a furor in establishment papers like the New York Times and Washington Post, centering on the Trump administration’s use of an insecure messaging app to discuss classified matters.

While leading newspapers were not wrong to skewer the Trump administration for the use of a commercial messaging app to communicate confidential information—which, it should be remembered, allows officials to illegally destroy records of their deliberations (New York Times, 3/27/25)—the focus on Washington palace intrigue over the bombing of women and children is a stark reminder of corporate media priorities.

‘It’s now collapsed’

Since news of the Signal leak broke, the Times has published at least three dozen stories and opinion pieces focusing on the scandal. One of those many pieces was an annotated transcript of the Signal chat (3/25/25). Most messages in the chat featured explanatory notes from journalists, some messages with multiple notes. One message from national security adviser Michael Waltz the Times chose not to annotate: “The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”

The “collapsed” building in question was bombed by the United States, killing at least 13 civilians, according to the Yemen Data Project. This is a war crime. While alternative media outlets have been quick to call these strikes out for what they are (e.g., Drop Site, 3/16/25; Truthout, 3/26/25; Democracy Now!, 3/26/25), the Times and the Washington Post chose not to go into questions of international law.

Amidst the dozens of stories on the Signal scandal, the Times published five stories focused on the strikes (3/15/25, 3/16/25, 3/19/25, 3/26/25, 3/27/25). None of these stories entertain the possibility of US strikes violating international law. Only one story (3/16/25) made mention of the phrase “war crime,” which was in a final paragraph quote from Hezbollah, with the group described by the Times as “another armed proxy for Iran in the region.”

The only mentions of children or “civilian” casualties were moderated by innuendo. The unfair convention of citing the “Hamas-run” health ministry—a formulation that deliberately downplays the death and destruction caused by US weaponry—has extended to Yemen, with both the Times (3/16/25, 3/19/25) and the Post (3/15/25) citing the “Houthi-run Health Ministry in Yemen” for casualty figures.

‘No credible reports’

 

The Washington Post seemed similarly unable to bring international law into their reporting. The furthest the Post (3/15/25) was willing to go was relaying that the Houthis “claimed the strikes targeted residential areas and targeted civilians.” In the Post’s March 17 story on the US offensive, the only mention of civilian deaths was US Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich’s claim that “despite Houthi assertions, there had been no credible reports of civilian deaths in the ongoing US strikes.”

Even Ishaan Tharoor (Washington Post, 3/26/25), whose column on the Yemen strikes was both more humane and more geopolitically realistic than anything else published by the Post, chose not to bring in any mention of international law.

The fact is, unnecessarily bombing a civilian building, with civilians inside, is a war crime. A civilian building is any building not immediately being used for military purposes. Even if by some interpretation, a military officer’s girlfriend’s building could be construed as a military target, the attacker is responsible for ensuring that any civilian losses are not excessive compared to military gain (the “proportionality” rule), and ensuring that “all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”

In this case, the “military” nature of the target is dubious at best. Further, the Houthis had not attacked US ships since December, before Trump’s inauguration (Responsible Statecraft, 3/21/25). When the Houthis attempted to respond to the recent airstrikes, a US military officer mocked the Houthis’ “level of incompetence,” claiming their retaliatory missile fire “missed by a hundred miles” (New York Times, 3/19/25). In other words, Houthi missiles are not such an imminent threat that killing over a dozen Yemeni civilians might be “proportional” to the military gain of killing their top missileer.

Finally, “all feasible precautions” were not taken to protect civilian life. Based on Waltz’s message, the military was tracking this officer, and chose to kill him only once he entered a building with civilians inside.

As the Times itself (1/16/23) has reported, “it is considered a war crime to deliberately or recklessly attack civilian populations.” The Washington Post editorial board (7/2/23) agreed, citing “large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure” and “methodical violence against…noncombatants” as violations of international law. But these confident media assertions are in reference to Russia, an official enemy of the United States.

The strike against the “missile guy” is just one example of the indiscriminate bombing with which the US punishes Yemen. This recent offensive by the United States has destroyed plenty of residences, and airstrikes have hit a Saada cancer hospital twice (Drop Site, 3/16/25; Cradle, 3/26/25).

‘A more aggressive campaign’

Houthi-controlled Yemen sits on one side of the Bab-el-Mandeb, a narrow strait between the Arabian Peninsula and Africa that is a choke point for shipping between Asia and Europe. The Houthis announced in October 2023 that in opposition to the war on Gaza, they would use their strategic position to attack ships “linked to Israel” (Al Jazeera, 12/19/23). The Houthis have succeeded in disrupting Red Sea trade to the point that Israel’s only port on the Red Sea, the Port of Eilat, was forced to declare bankruptcy (Middle East Monitor, 7/19/24). As revealed by the Signal chat leak, the main motivation for the new air campaign on Yemen was to “send a message” and reopen the shipping lanes (New York Times, 3/25/25).

As US bombs fell on Yemen, the New York Times indulged in a variety of foreign policy reporting cliches. A day after the strikes began, the Times (3/16/25) took a survey of what should be done about the supposed threat the Houthis posed in the Middle East:

Some military analysts and former American commanders said on Sunday that a more aggressive campaign against the Houthis, particularly against Houthi leadership, was necessary to degrade the group’s ability to threaten international shipping.

The only voices the Times offered as a counterpoint were spokesmen for Iran’s foreign ministry, Russia’s foreign ministry and Hezbollah. When the only people condemning the air campaign are America’s worst enemies, it’s not hard for the reader to see who they’re supposed to side with.

The fact is, the Houthis have withstood a decade of strikes by Saudi Arabia and the United States with no signs of faltering. Indeed, as Jennifer Kavanagh (Responsible Statecraft, 3/17/25) has pointed out, the Houthis’ “willingness to take on American attacks lend them credibility and win them popular support.” In a story whose subheadline mentions a claim that children were killed, the Times is irresponsible to present the only solution as more bombs, more aggression, more killing.

‘Iranian-backed’

In each of their five stories on the strikes, the New York Times referred to the “Iran-backed” or “Iranian-backed” Houthis, playing into the false notion that the Houthis are little more than Iran’s lapdogs in the Arabian Peninsula. Even the Washington Post, to their credit, was able to find a distinction between an ally of Iran and a proxy (e.g. 3/15/25, 3/27/25).

The Times also had a case of amnesia over the circumstances of Yemen’s protracted civil war and famine. Two stories (3/15/25, 3/27/25) mentioned the Houthi victory over a “Saudi-led coalition,” culminating in a 2022 truce, still holding tenuously. What was left unsaid was the US role in that conflict.

During the Yemeni civil war, the United States provided Saudi Arabia with plenty of firepower and logistical support to prosecute their brutal military intervention. The Department of Defense gave over $50 billion in military aid to Saudi Arabia and the UAE between 2015 and 2021 (Responsible Statecraft, 3/28/23). Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the Saudi blockade and accompanying humanitarian crisis were intact over two years into President Biden’s term of office.

Infamous airstrikes using US-made weapons include a wedding bombing that killed 21, including 11 children, a school bus bombing that killed 40 elementary school-aged boys along with 11 adults, and a market bombing that killed 107 people, including 25 children, just to name a few (CNN, 9/18; Guardian, 8/19/18; Human Rights Watch, 4/7/16). The continuous provision of weapons, training and logistical support amounted to complicity in war crimes (Human Rights Watch, 4/7/22).

Deadly effects

The civil war in Yemen, which began in late 2014, has killed hundreds of thousands. From 2015–22, Saudi-led, US-backed airstrikes killed nearly 9,000 civilians, including over 1,400 children.

More deadly than the bombs and other weapons of war are the indirect effects of the war, namely disease and famine. A 2021 UN report estimated that 60% of the 377,000 deaths in the Yemeni civil war came from indirect causes (France24, 11/23/21). By 2018, Save the Children reported that by a “conservative estimate,” 85,000 children had died from hunger (New York Times, 11/21/18). Today, nearly 40% of the Yemeni population are undernourished, and nearly half of children under five are malnourished.

This ongoing famine started during the war, and has been enforced by a Saudi blockade. While the 2022 truce allowed a trickle of international shipping to Houthi-controlled Yemen, cuts in humanitarian aid have kept Yemenis in precarity (The Nation, 7/27/23).

Since the Yemeni civil war began, not enough attention has been paid to the compounding crises in the region: the civil war itself, the accompanying famine and the Biden administration’s own ill-advised bombing campaign. As juicy as one more Trump administration blunder might be, newsrooms should not lose track of the fact that this military offensive, just beginning, is already stained by violations of international law.

 

 

Janine Jackson interviewed Mondoweiss‘s Michael Arria about Gaza “Power & Pushback” for the March 28, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

 

Janine Jackson: Listeners may have heard about the violent attack by Israeli settlers on Hamdan Ballal, who had recently won an Academy Award for the documentary No Other Land. He has since been released from Israeli detention, but that doesn’t erase or obscure the fact that he was assaulted, arrested and spirited away in an overt attack on free expression and truth telling.

As his co-director told AP: “We came back from the Oscars, and every day…there is an attack on us. This might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like punishment.”

Listeners may not have heard of all the non-Oscar-winning people who have been swept off the street and disappeared for voicing any concern about the Palestinian people, who are victims of what the majority of the world outside these borders are calling genocide.

Into the current context comes “Power and Pushback,” a new feature at Mondoweiss written by our guest. Michael Arria is Mondoweiss‘s US correspondent, and author of the book Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Michael Arria.

Michael Arria: Thank you for having me.

JJ: Mondoweiss has been reporting, calling attention to, critiquing the occupation, ethnic cleansing, genocide of Palestinians, and the US role there, and US news media’s distorted narrative for some time now, and yet there are still so many fronts to this fight. There is still so much that calls for resistance that you saw a place for a new intervention, this new focused feature. Tell us what you’re trying to do with “Power and Pushback.”

MA: I think the idea behind “Power and Pushback” is we’re in a situation, as you described, where there’s so much happening, and this can often be a challenge, I think, for any media, let alone independent media, to keep up with. We have a very small staff; obviously we don’t have the capacity that mainstream outlets do. And with so much happening on the domestic front, especially over the last few weeks, but really dating back to the immediate aftermath of October 7, when we saw the student protests begin, I think there was a need to develop another place to catch stuff before it fell through the cracks, so to speak.

So the idea behind “Power and Pushback” is to put a focus on repression that we’ve seen throughout the United States targeting the US Palestine movement, but also to talk about some of these local fights and local battles that not just students, but people in their communities or in their workplaces, are waging on behalf of Palestine.

And the idea is to really center that and focus on that, and just put a spotlight on these fights, and show people that they’re not alone, that people are fighting. There’s victories throughout certain states.

We didn’t want it to be just, like, this is the suppression report, and this is all terrible things that are being done. We wanted it to have both elements, which is the idea behind the title. We want to cover the power centers; we want to cover lawmakers pushing draconian policies, and pro-Israel groups moving to target Palestine protesters. And we wanted to cover, obviously, these terrible unconstitutional moves by the Trump administration. But we also wanted to show the resistance that’s developing domestically against those policies, and the people who are pushing for that.

JJ: It seems so important on many levels. First of all, if folks think there’s just no pushback or resistance happening, that shapes their understanding of what’s going on. But also, one person speaking out is easier to suppress, and they need to be backed and supported by a community, and by other people. So it’s not just, “Here’s a cool story about somebody resisting this.” It seems to me to give meaningful support to the individuals who are putting themselves on the line.

MA: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And I think something we should keep in mind—one of the objectives of these kind of moves that we’ve seen in recent weeks from the Trump administration is to obviously crack down on dissent. And part of that is to make people fearful about fighting back, for fear that they might be scooped up by ICE if they’re not a citizen, or their student organization might be suspended from the given college or university.

Really, throughout American history, whenever we’ve seen these kinds of campaigns, they purposely have this chilling effect on the population, and that’s kind of the idea. So as you say, we’re kind of also developing the newsletter with this in mind to show people that it’s not just one person or two people, it’s thousands of people that oppose these policies, and are trying to fight back in the face of this, despite these attempts by lawmakers and pro-Israel groups to really chill the environment, and make people skeptical about standing up and voicing support for Gaza.

JJ: Particularly at a time when, it used to be, “Well, write your congressperson, if you’re upset about something.” And we see the frustration with that avenue. And lots of folks will say, “Well, go out in the street; protest.” And so then you have to ask, OK, what’s the follow-up to that when people do protest and they are harmed for that? You can’t simply say, “We all ought to be out in the street,” and then not care about what happens to people who go out in the street, is my feeling.

MA: Absolutely true, and to your point, I think this time around with Trump, we have seen a slightly different approach from the liberal establishment. I think they’ve been much more willing to go along with his plans, and much more complicit. We see the anger towards politicians like Chuck Schumer for approving the Trump budget.

But I think that focusing on the liberal establishment and their reaction tends to get people maybe to look at the situation the wrong way. I think there actually has been a lot of protest. The numbers indicate there’s been consistent protest.

And there’s also been a lot of attempts to challenge the Trump administration legally. So Just Security runs the tracker. This is just in my head, I just wrote a piece where I referenced it, but I think there’s 146 current lawsuits or legal challenges attempting to stop the Trump administration, when it comes to many issues across the country. But more than a few of those lawsuits are connected to our issue, the issue of Israel/Palestine and student protest.

So like you say, people want to do something that they feel goes beyond just sending a letter, just calling and leaving a message for their congressperson. Especially because, it’s worth pointing out, what we’ve seen for the last three weeks has really been a culmination of a push that we’ve seen for years, in terms of stifling pro-Palestine sentiment, and in terms of stifling criticism of Israel. And that’s really been a bipartisan project. Even though Trump is amplifying it now and increasing it and has taken it to these draconian levels, we’ve really seen both sides of the aisle embrace some of these policies that he is currently amplifying.

JJ: Absolutely.

I was, along with many, struck by the statement of Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb to students, after they’d been told to scrub their social media, to essentially thought-cleanse evidence of concern for Palestinians, or protest against US actions. And this is in the context of the ICE arrest and whisking away of Mahmoud Khalil. And Cobb said, “Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times.” He’s speaking to future journalists. What is the lesson there? What else might he have said?

MA: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. He said that in response to another professor making a comment, basically telling students not to post about the Middle East conflict on their social media page. I think we’re really at an interesting and scary time when we look at universities and colleges in this country, just the overall state of higher education. I think that, just like I was talking about before, how the stifling of pro-Palestine sentiment is not a new issue. It’s really been a culmination of something that’s been happening for years.

We can say the same things about our university system, right? Over the last 40 years, 50 years maybe even, we’ve seen this real push to neoliberal policies across higher education, to move to a donor model, as opposed to a model where these schools are set up and live up to the grandiose words of their mission statements, this idea that they’re these places that kids can go and learn about freedom of speech and have the freedom of inquiry, and learn about how society works and how the world works.

After October 7, we saw some big-time pro-Israel donors threaten to take away money to schools, or actually do it. I think the schools are really between a rock and a hard place, because they don’t want to see their endowments threatened. And in recent decades, we’ve seen that that is the important thing. An institution like Columbia, as a private university, they’re not really beholden to the First Amendment, technically, in the way that other places throughout the country are.

And, first of all, we should say the Trump administration first canceled about $400 million worth of contracts and grants to the school, for what it said was their inability to crack down on antisemitism. I mean, we know that they’re referring to the fact that there were pro-Palestine protests on campus. It had very little to do with antisemitism. We know that they’re being targeted because they were the first school to erect a Gaza encampment last spring, which kicked off a wave of protests throughout the United States, obviously across college campuses. We know why they’re being targeted.

But I think the very scary thing here is they withheld that money, and then they sent Columbia a letter detailing things that Columbia could do in order for them to revisit that issue, essentially implying that maybe you could get the $400 million if you did the following things. And those things include instituting a mask ban, suspending a number of students who were connected to an occupation of Hamilton Hall on campus last spring. They wanted new protocol in terms of disciplinary actions. They wanted someone to oversee the Middle East Studies Department, among other things.

And almost immediately, Columbia complied to all these demands. They’ve said publicly that they were actually thinking about doing some of this stuff before Trump had asked them. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

But that’s a huge part of this story. We’ve seen the universities in this country really cower and just respond to the Trump administration, and do pretty much everything they’ve asked for in this regard. And shortly before Mahmoud Khalil was detained on March 8 by plainclothes ICE agents, despite the fact he’s a permanent resident with a Green Card, Columbia had actually changed their protocol when it came to its status as a sanctuary campus.

Sanctuary campus is essentially the same as a sanctuary state. They had previously said that they wouldn’t comply or assist ICE if they were on campus. And days before Khalil was detained by ICE agents, they sent an email out to faculty and students and staff saying, “We’ve modified these policies. There are some situations where we’re going to let ICE on campus without a warrant in certain circumstances.”

So that’s a huge part of the story here. I just think that the university’s going along and being complicit in this entire ordeal. And we’ve seen a lot of resistance from faculty and Columbia students, and students across the country, who are really protesting not just these policies that we’ve seen from Trump and lawmakers, but also the complicity of their schools.

JJ: Gosh, there’s so much to say and to respond to. But along with, in particular, the Columbia protest, you see the erasure of Jewish people, of antisemitism being used as a cover to punish and penalize a community that is composed, in large part, by Jewish people who are protesting the actions of the state of Israel. And Trump, of course, being Trump, just says, “If Chuck Schumer opposes my policy, he’s a Palestinian.” He’s in his own world, but we are seeing other institutions essentially say, “Jewish people, you’re not Jewish if you are critical of Israel.” That seems like another shadow horror that is happening, and that media are playing a role in.

MA: It’s a very dark irony. I mean, not only have there been vast protests by Jewish activists and Jewish students; we saw Trump Tower occupied in the wake of Khalil’s arrest. The fact that the Trump administration is citing antisemitism as their reason for detaining these people, essentially…

I think when Khalil was first detained, there was maybe a belief that the Trump administration was going to rely on some War on Terror policy, or maybe something from Bill Clinton’s anti-terrorism law from 1995. But what we saw is that they’re actually relying on an immigration bill from 1952, which was introduced at the height of the Red Scare.

And that bill was introduced and wielded as a way to target, actually, survivors of the Holocaust, Jewish refugees in the United States, who conservative lawmakers had targeted because they accused them of being Soviet agents. So the irony here is that we see this law that was used to target Jewish people in the United States now used allegedly to protect them.

And it is another dark irony, I think, that it’s coming from this administration of all administrations. As you said, Trump casually will criticize Chuck Schumer by claiming he’s not Jewish, calling him a “Palestinian.” Trump has repeatedly criticized Jewish people more broadly for not voting for him, questioning whether Jewish voters are even Jewish, because he did all this stuff for Israel. Inherent there is the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, which in itself I think is antisemitic.

But it goes without saying that you don’t have to travel very far down Trumpland to start seeing examples of people that have been accused of antisemitism in his administration. We’re dealing with multiple people, either directly in his administration or in that broader world, who have literally given Nazi salutes in recent weeks.

So there is a real, like I said, irony to this whole situation that’s very disturbing, where you have this administration, which has a clearly anti-immigrant, bigoted, history of antisemitism in many areas, and they are detaining people for defending Gaza, for fighting against genocide; and claiming that they’re doing it because they’re antisemitic, and that antisemitism somehow threatens American foreign policy interests. So we’re really in a dark, upside-down time, I think, and it’s very terrifying.

JJ: Looking at what we know about media, we know that years from now, they will tell us, “Remember when we were all out in the streets protesting Israeli genocide in Gaza.” We know that they will say that “Martin Luther King would’ve said….” The powers that be, including in corporate news media, will co-opt the actions of today. Columbia University will have a photo montage about the protesters, and how they allowed protests to happen.

I mean, we know how history can be rewritten in real time by news media. It’s so frustrating to look at it today, and know the way that these folks are going to try to claim ownership of protest later.

That’s not a question, it’s just a rant. We can see it. We can see the way that they will talk about, “Oh, the Civil Rights Movement. That was good protest. This is bad protest,” when in real time, they hated the Civil Rights Movement.

MA: It’s very true. And these images and videos people probably have seen yesterday, a tremendously disturbing video coming out of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk, who’s a 30-year-old Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts, was detained, much like Khalil, snatched up on the street by undercover ICE agents wearing masks, where the police took her phone away from her. And it’s not hyperbole to say these people are being disappeared in broad daylight.

And to your point, I think people love to look back on history and convince themselves they would’ve been on the right side. They like to watch movies about historical time periods, and think that they would’ve been siding with the right side. But I think the way that people are reacting to this now, if they are supporting it or ignoring it, I think it’s pretty clear what side of history they would’ve been on if they had lived through something like the Holocaust, or like the Civil Rights Movement.

And also to your point, there is no kind of accountability for the media whatsoever, where—this is just an aside—but in the last couple of days we’ve seen this big controversy over the Signal chat, obviously, where the bombing of Yemen was revealed to a reporter.

That reporter is Jeffrey Goldberg, a former IDF soldier who has contacts throughout prominent politicians in the United States. But he’s also somebody who helped push a fabricated story about Iraq’s alleged connection to Al Qaeda, which, over 20 years ago, helped pave the way for the Iraq War. And the media is just filled with reporters like that, who have faced no accountability, or have actually moved up in their careers, and have more power now than they did 20, 23 years ago.

So it just speaks to your point, what will things look like a couple of decades from now? I think all the people who are maybe ignoring this or cheering it on, or not responding to it in any serious way, will probably not have to face any type of consequences. And to your point, they’ll also be controlling the narrative in terms of how this period gets remembered.

JJ: You can always fail upward in news media.

I’ll just ask you, finally, for any thoughts about “Power & Pushback,” what you hope folks will take from it, what you hope to uplift, any final thoughts on this intervention that you’re spearheading?

MA: I would encourage people, if they’re interested in this subject, to go on our site where they can subscribe to “Power & Pushback.” We’re really hoping, beyond this being a way to highlight the fights that I’m talking about, that it also opens up a dialogue, that people feel if they’re working in their community in terms of something, or they see something where free speech is being stifled, that they can reach out to us, and we can potentially shine a light on it and cover it.

Sometimes this stuff doesn’t happen where it’s a lot of news cameras. Sometimes it’s not a thousand people. Sometimes it’s just as simple as somebody being told they can’t wear a certain pin to work, or their website faces some sort of crackdown, or their student group at a small college is suddenly suspended. So we really are focused on covering this big-picture Trump stuff, and this big-picture higher education stuff. But we really hope that it also becomes a forum for these smaller-scale battles, because I think these are really going to add up.

And polling shows us that things have really shifted, Israel’s brand has really diminished over the past decade, particularly among progressives and Democratic voters, even if party leaders and Democratic lawmakers haven’t caught up to that. So I think, in some capacity, the momentum is on the side of the people who are protesting on behalf of Palestine, even though when you look at the media, it seems to be the opposite.

I think that a lot of these draconian measures are obviously a response to those successes. We’ve seen this crackdown on the BDS movement. We’ve seen this push to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which equates some criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

So I really think, insofar as Trump represents a backlash politics, and he does in many capacities, it’s also a backlash to the advances the Palestine movement in the United States has made over the last few years.

So like I said, in addition to covering the repression and suppression, we really want it to be a place that takes a close look at that progress, and looks at this in a wider way, where people can turn and you can talk to us about that.

So that’s what we’re hoping. I encourage people to check out our site where they can read about this stuff pretty consistently, but also sign up for our newsletter so they can get that information.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Michael Arria. He is US correspondent at Mondoweiss—that’s Mondoweiss.net—and author of their new feature “Power and Pushback.” Michael Arria, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

MA: Thank you so much for having me.

 

In a move that threatens to constrain online communication, congressional Democrats are partnering with their Republican counterparts to repeal a niche but crucial internet law.

According to tech trade publication the Information (3/21/25), Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.) has allied with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) to reintroduce a bill that would repeal Section 230, a provision of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Section 230 dictates that when unlawful speech occurs online, the only party responsible is the speaker, not the hosting website or app or any party that shared the content in question.

Section 230 grants platforms the ability to moderate without shouldering legal liability, a power that has historically had the effect of encouraging judicious content management (Techdirt, 6/23/20). Additionally, it indemnifies ordinary internet users against most civil suits for actions like forwarding email, sharing photos or videos, or hosting online reviews.

Dissolving the provision would reassign legal responsibility to websites and third parties, empowering a Trump-helmed federal government to force online platforms to stifle, or promote, certain speech. While the ostensible purpose of the repeal, according to Durbin, is to “protect kids online,” it’s far more likely to give the Trump White House carte blanche to advance its ultra-reactionary political agenda.

More power for MAGA

The effort to repeal Section 230 isn’t the first of its kind. Lawmakers, namely Republicans Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and former Florida senator and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have been making attempts to restrict or remove 230 for years, sometimes with explicitly censorial aims. But with a White House so hostile to dissent as to target and abduct anti-genocide activists (FAIR.org, 3/28/25; Zeteo, 3/29/25), abusing immigration law and violating constitutional rights in the process, the timing of the latest bill—complete with Democratic backing—is particularly alarming.

To imagine what could become of a Section 230 repeal under the Trump administration, consider an example from July 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic remained severe enough to be classified as a public-health emergency. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)—now a co-sponsor of Durbin and Graham’s 2025 bill—introduced an amendment to 230 that would authorize the Health & Human Services Secretary to designate certain online content as “health misinformation.” The label would require websites to remove the content in question.

News sources heralded the bill as a way to stem the “proliferation of falsehoods about vaccines, fake cures and other harmful health-related claims on their sites” (NPR, 7/22/21) and to “fight bogus medical claims online” (Politico, 7/22/21). While potentially true at the time, Klobuchar’s bill would now, by most indications, have the opposite effect. As Mike Masnick of Techdirt (3/21/25) explained:

Today’s Health & Human Services secretary is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who believes the solution to measles is to have more children die of measles. Under Klobuchar’s proposal, he would literally have the power to declare pro-vaccine information as “misinformation” and force it off the internet.

‘Save the Children’

Since Klobuchar’s bill, Congress has drafted multiple pieces of bipartisan child “safety” legislation resembling Durbin and Graham’s bill, offering another glimpse into the perils of a Trump-era repeal.

Consider 2023’s Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which the New York Times (2/17/22) welcomed as “sweeping legislation” that would “require online platforms to refrain from promoting harmful behavior.” KOSA enjoys robust bipartisan support, with three dozen Republican co-sponsors and nearly as many Democrats, as well as an endorsement from Joe Biden.

Though KOSA doesn’t expressly call for the removal of 230, it would effectively create a carve-out that could easily be weaponized. MAGA-boosting Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.), a lead sponsor, insinuated in 2023 that KOSA could be used to “protect” children “from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence” on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram (Techdirt, 9/6/23). In other words, lawmakers could invoke KOSA to throttle or eliminate content related to trans advocacy, should they deem it “harmful” to children.

KOSA has drawn criticism from more than 90 organizations, including the ACLU and numerous LGBTQ groups, who fear that the bill masquerades as a child-safeguarding initiative while facilitating far-right censorship (CounterSpin, 6/9/23). This comes as little surprise, considering the decades-long history of “Save the Children” rhetoric as an anti-LGBTQ bludgeon, as well as the fact that these campaigns have been shown to harm children rather than protect them.

Some outlets have rightfully included the bill’s opponents in their reportage (AP, 7/31/24), even if only to characterize it as “divisive” and “controversial” (NBC News, 7/31/24). Others, however, have expressed more confidence in the legislation. The New York Times (2/1/24), for instance, described KOSA as a means to “safeguard the internet’s youngest users.” Neither Blackburn’s publicly-broadcast intentions nor the protests against the bill seemed to capture the paper’s attention.

Instead, the Times went on to cite the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), a 2018 law that amended Section 230, in part to allow victims of sex trafficking to sue websites and online platforms, as a regulatory success. What the Times didn’t note is that, according to the ACLU, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which is included in SESTA, “hasn’t meaningfully addressed sex trafficking,” and could be interpreted by courts as justification to “censor more online speech—especially materials about sex, youth health, LGBTQ identity and other important concerns.”

False anti-corporate appeals

Protecting kids isn’t the only promise made by 230 repeal proponents. In a statement made earlier this year, Durbin vowed to “make the tech industry legally accountable for the damage they cause.” It’s a popular refrain for government officials. The Senate Judiciary Democrats pledged to “remove Big Tech’s legal immunity,” and Trump himself has called 230 a “liability shielding gift from the US to ‘Big Tech’”—a point echoed by one of his many acolytes, Josh Hawley.

And in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (5/12/24) headlined “Sunset of Section 230 Would Force Big Tech’s Hand,” former Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, and New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Democrat, argued:

We must act because Big Tech is profiting from children, developing algorithms that push harmful content on to our kids’ feeds and refusing to strengthen their platforms’ protections against predators, drug dealers, sex traffickers, extortioners and cyberbullies.

These soft anti-corporate appeals might resonate with an audience who believes Big Tech wields too much power and influence. But there’s no guarantee that dismantling Section 230 would rein in Big Tech.

In fact, Section 230 actually confers an advantage upon the largest tech companies—which at least one of them has recognized. In 2021, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg proposed reforms to 230 that would increase and intensify legal requirements for content moderation (NBC News, 3/24/21). The apparent logic: monopolistic giants like Facebook and Google can more easily fund expensive content-moderation systems and legal battles than can smaller platforms, lending the major players far more long-term viability.

But regardless of Meta’s machinations, the fundamental problem would remain: Democrats have embraced the MAGA vision for online governance, creating the conditions not for a safer internet, but a more dangerous one.

 

The journalism world has been reeling from news that a BBC correspondent was deported from Turkey, after he was “covering the antigovernment protests in the country” and was “detained and labeled ‘a threat to public order’” (New York Times, 3/27/25). Turkey has an abysmal reputation for press freedom (CPJ, 2/13/24; European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, 10/5/23), placing 158th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders index, so as distressing as this news is, it’s in character for a country many think of as illiberal and authoritarian (Guardian, 6/9/13; HRW, 1/29/15). Journalists have been arrested in the latest unrest in Turkey (AP, 3/24/25).

Meanwhile, a Turkish citizen is going through a similar kind of hell for expressing political ideas a government dislikes. Except in her case, the government doing the repression isn’t Turkey, it’s the United States. In chilling video footage (New York Times, 3/26/25) obtained by several news outlets, Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University outside of Boston, can be seen being abducted by plainclothes agents.

‘Relishes the killing of Americans’

Her crime was reportedly being part of recent student protests against the genocide in Gaza. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson (AP, 3/26/25) declared:

DHS and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans…. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.

The group StopAntisemitism bragged about the arrest on X (3/26/25), saying Ozturk led “pro-Hamas, violent antisemitic and anti-American events” during her time at Tufts, which has led her to deportation proceedings. The group snarkily added, “Shalom, Rumeysa.” (“Shalom” can mean peace, hello or goodbye in Hebrew.)

Ozturk is now part of a growing list of foreign students who have been abducted by secret police and are facing deportation for participating in pro-Palestine speech, which the government is labeling support of Hamas, which is designated by the US as a terrorist group (FAIR.org, 3/19/25). As I recently said on the Santita Jackson Show (3/27/25), reporting these things as “arrests” by federal agents—rather than abductions by secret police—understates the authoritarian moment Americans are witnessing. (DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar treated “supporting Hamas” as synonymous with “pro-Palestinian activity” in an interview with NPR—3/13/25.)

‘Fundamentally at odds with our values’

Ozturk, however, might be the first of the bunch to be targeted specifically for engaging in journalism deemed offensive by the state. Many of the reports of her arrest (e.g., New York Times, 3/26/25; CNN, 3/27/25; Forbes, 3/27/25) cite that she co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily (3/26/24) calling on the university administration to accept Tufts Community Union Senate resolutions “demanding that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” and “disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.” The op-ed also “affirm[s] the equal dignity and humanity of all people.”

If this is truly a part of the government’s rationale for targeting Ozturk, then we as the American press have to assume that the US law enforcement regime will consider any article in a newspaper that advocates for Palestinian rights or harshly criticizes Israel as some kind of suspicious or unacceptable speech.

Said Seth Stern, director of advocacy of Freedom of the Press Foundation (3/26/25):

If reports that Ozturk’s arrest was over an op-ed are accurate, it is absolutely appalling. No one would have ever believed, even during President Donald Trump’s first term, that masked federal agents would abduct students from American universities for criticizing US allies in student newspapers. Anyone with any regard whatsoever for the Constitution should recognize how fundamentally at odds this is with our values and should be deeply repulsed as an American, regardless of political leanings. Canary Mission is aptly named—it may serve as the canary in the coal mine for the First Amendment.

The Canary Mission named by Stern is a pro-Israel group that operates as a doxxing operation against pro-Palestine campus activists (The Nation, 12/22/23). The FPF said of Ozturk, “The sole ‘offense’ that Canary Mission flagged was an op-ed Ozturk cowrote criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza.”

A crime against journalism

Of course, the government has now used its authority to strip a lawful resident of her visa, putting her in the opaque gulag system of the US immigration system. That has a terrible chilling effect on any legal resident in the US who might make a living putting pen to paper. Their next article could get them shipped home at a moment’s notice without legal recourse.

That is inhumane treatment of the rights of legal residents, but it is also a crime against journalism. How will this motivation be used against writers who are citizens, natural-born and otherwise? Will outlets that publish pieces like the one in Tufts Daily be harassed in other ways? (One should not assume that when Trump at the Justice Department accused major news outlets of “illegal” reporting that he meant it as a figure of speech—CNN, 3/14/25.)

FAIR (11/14/24, 12/16/24, 2/26/25) has been among the many groups who have warned that a second Trump administration could see a severe attack against the free press and free speech generally. Ozturk’s arrest is a warning that the Trump administration takes all levels of speech and journalism seriously, and will do whatever they can to terrorize the public into keeping quiet.

 

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This week on CounterSpin: Israel has abandoned the ceasefire agreement and restarted its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, a war that has destroyed the region and killed tens of thousands of human beings. The ceasefire, as Gaza-based writer Hassan Abo Qamar among others reminds, still allowed Israel to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of “food, water, medical care, education and freedom of movement.” But it wasn’t enough and, as Belén Fernández writes for FAIR.org, Israel’s US-endorsed resumption of all-out genocide killed at least 404 Palestinians right off the bat, but was reported in, for instance, the New York Times as “Israel Tries to Pressure Hamas to Free More Hostages.”

We know that elite media will tell us someday that the whole world was horrified by the genocide of Palestinians, and that journalists decried it. But someday is not today. We need reporters who aren’t not afraid they will be targeted, but who may be afraid and are nevertheless bearing witness. Reporters like Hossam Shabat, 23-year-old Palestinian correspondent for Al Jazeera and Drop Site News, targeted and killed March 24, and not even the first Israeli journalist assassination for the day: Hours earlier, Palestine Today reporter Mohammad Mansour was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in southern Gaza.

The genocide of Palestinians is a human rights emergency, and also a journalism emergency. US reporters who don’t treat it as such are showing their allegiance to something other than journalism. A key part of their disservice is their ignoring, obscuring, marginalizing, demeaning and endangering the many people who are standing up and speaking out. Pretending protest isn’t happening is aiding and abetting the work of the silencers; it’s telling lies about who we are and what we can do. We build action by telling the stories powerful media don’t want told.

We’ll talk about that with reporter Michael Arria, US correspondent for Mondoweiss and the force behind their new feature called “Power & Pushback.”

 

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of transphobia, and remembers FAIR board member Robert McChesney.