30 July 25
Robert Reich | We Are Witnessing the Silencing of American Media
Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "From the Washington Post to CBS, companies are caving to Trump. This is how democracy dies."
Federal agents with US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) ride on an armored vehicle driving slowly down Wilshire Boulevard near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, California, on July 7, 2025. (photo: AFP)
The Trump administration is acting like "dictatorial regimes do," according to the global rights monitor CIVICUS
CIVICUS is an international non-profit organization, based in South Africa, organized around advocacy for civil and human rights. In March, the United States was flagged by the organization for “threats to civic freedoms” that emerged early in the Trump administration, including dramatic cuts to programs benefiting the poor and “executive orders designed to unravel democratic institutions, rule of law, and global cooperation.”
This week, the organization announced that the United States would remain on the watchlist and voiced concerns about the government’s recent use of the military to stifle protests in Los Angeles as well as the use of force against journalists.
“A few months down the line, we find that actually the situation, rather than getting better, has become much worse,” Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary-General of CIVICUS, told Salon. “Once institutions are dismantled, once the constitutional checks and balances are removed, once an official culture of disregarding constitutional norms, people’s fundamental freedoms is put in place, it takes a long, long time to rebuild that.”
Specifically, CIVICUS cites a June 9 incident when law enforcement shot Australian journalist Laurenm Tomasi with a rubber bullet while she was covering protests in Los Angeles. It also cites the detainment of Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara, a legal U.S.resident, who was arrested while covering a “No Kings” protest on June 14 and transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, where he remains.
The Trump administration’s criminalization of pro-Palestinian solidarity also played a key role in the decision to maintain the country’s spot on the watchlist, with CIVICUS specifically referencing the targeting of students like Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysa Ozturk. They also noted the “illegitimate sanctioning” of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as an attempt to “silence international voices at the behest of the Israeli government.”
“The current administration and the cabinet are really behaving, you know, in a way that dictatorial regimes do, and that is really worrying us,” Tiwana said. “The public rollback of established American foreign policy principles on democracy and rights, and the open dalliance with dictators and despots that are actively suppressing the media and civil society, is very worrying, and we feel that it can really send the U.S. backward.”
Tiwana said that though the U.S. had often been imperfect in its advocacy for civil rights and democracy around the world, its absence in this role has given leeway to authoritarian leaders willing to “kill and intimidate their populations to stay in power.”
CIVICUS currently rates the U.S.as maintaining a “narrowed” civic space, which it describes as when the full enjoyment of civil rights is “impeded by occasional harassment, arrest or assault of people deemed critical of those in power.” Other countries in this category include Argentina, Italy, Germany and Romania.
The U.S.has been criticized by other nonprofit organizations for increasing authoritarianism in recent years as well. In 2021, the United States sank in Freedom House’s ratings, with the organization citing racial injustice, the influence of money in politics and partisan polarization.
The United States also fell in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom rankings in 2025. The organization cites the administration’s moves to politicize the Federal Communications Commission and ban the Associated Press from the White House, among other issues. Since the last ranking, other incidents have inspired criticism, like when CBS fired“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert, shortly before the administration approved a merger with Skydance.
Texas state Rep. Jolanda 'Jo' Jones looks through congressional maps during a redistricting hearing at the Texas Capitol in Austin on July 24. (photo: AP)
The shuffling of voters into new districts — in Texas and elsewhere — could play a key role in determining which party controls the U.S. House after next year's midterms. Currently, Republicans have a seven-seat advantage in the chamber, with four vacancies, and the president's party typically loses ground in midterm elections.
Earlier this month, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a Trump ally, added redistricting to the agenda for a special legislative session, citing concerns raised by Trump's Department of Justice that four existing, Democratic-leaning districts are unconstitutional.
But Republicans have also been explicit that they intended to undertake rare mid-decade redistricting for partisan aims, with the Republican Party of Texas saying that the effort is "an essential step to preserving GOP control in Congress" and advancing Trump's agenda.
Trump himself said a "very simple redrawing" would pick up five seats in Texas. Republicans are also eyeing additional pickups in states including Ohio and Missouri.
In Texas, according to Dave Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report, the proposed new map could help Republicans achieve a gerrymander of 30 GOP-won districts, versus eight for Democrats. Currently, Republicans hold 25 of the state's seats. Texas went for Trump by nearly 14 percentage points in 2024.
The proposed congressional map could be changed during the special session. It's unclear if Texas Republican lawmakers will release other maps.
Democrats face limited options to counter
Democrats on Wednesday blasted the Texas plan.
"From the beginning of this broken process, Texas Republicans' only objective has been to follow orders from DC party bosses desperate to try and save House Republicans' teetering majority," Julie Merz, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement.
The party has been plotting ways to fight back.
Texas Democratic state lawmakers are mulling fleeing the state, according to the Texas Tribune, which would deny Republicans a legislative quorum.
And if Texas Republicans enact a new map, House Majority PAC, which is aligned with congressional Democrats, recently announced "a plan to raise upwards of $20 million in order to recruit and support competitive Democratic candidates in districts across Texas."
Most notably, leaders of some Democratic-led states have discussed plans to do their own new gerrymanders — to "fight fire with fire," in the words of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
But there are legal and state constitutional hurdles in places like California and New York that would make the efforts more difficult.
Democrats and their allies would likely fight back in court as well.
"At first look, Texas Republicans appear to have made what is already one of the country's most racially discriminatory maps even worse," the DCCC's Merz added in the statement. "Should this map become law, we anticipate Texas will get sued and the map will get struck down."
Texas' current congressional map is already the subject of ongoing litigation centered on claims of racial discrimination.
Along with Texas, a number of states, including Alabama, North Carolina and Utah, are in the middle of legal fights over congressional maps. Many district lines could look different by the time voters get their midterm ballots next year.
Chris Smalls, then president of Amazon Labor Union in the U.S., takes part in a pro-Palestine march in London on June 8, 2024. (photo: Getty)
“When he reached the Israeli prison, U.S. human rights defender Chris Smalls was physically assaulted by seven uniformed individuals,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition announced Tuesday morning. “They choked him and kicked him in the legs, leaving visible signs of violence on his neck and back. When his lawyer met with him, Chris was surrounded by six members of Israel’s special police unit. This level of force was not used against other abducted activists. We condemn this violence against Chris and demand accountability for the assault and discriminatory treatment he faced.”
“Pretty hard to believe that the particularly heinous and brutal treatment Christian Smalls was subjected to by Israeli authorities was not a function of racism given it was not inflicted on other Handala detainees,” University of New Brunswick professor Nathan Kalman-Lamb wrote on Bluesky. “And the US media dgaf.”
Smalls entered the public eye in 2022 after successfully founding a labor union at a Staten Island Amazon factory, garnering national praise and even a White House invitation from President Biden. Now he remains beaten and battered in IDF custody.
The IDF targeting the one Black man on the aid ship is sadly unsurprising, as is the lack of uproar from U.S. politicians and large media outlets. Yet another U.S. citizen assaulted and detained by the IDF, yet not a peep from either side of the aisle because Smalls is a Black American leftist who was standing up to Israel’s campaign of mass starvation and trying to deliver baby food and flour to suffering Palestinians in Gaza.
“I’m thinking of Chris Smalls. And about how, because he’s Black, no Greta Thunberg, no celebrity, no darling of the liberal class, he might not make it out alive,” author Camonghne Felix wrote on X. “Blackness, when vulnerable and on its knees, is a white supremacist fantasy.”
While smaller unions have spoken up to condemn Smalls’s arrest, Teamsters—which worked with Smalls on the Amazon Labor Union—has yet to make a statement on his violent detainment, failing spectacularly to meet the moment.*
While Smalls and other flotilla members remain in IDF custody, the coalition plans to send another aid ship very soon, yet another direct challenge to the Israeli government.
“We are calling on others around the world, definitely our countries, to live up to their obligation of enforcing international law, of protecting human rights, but also other institutions that are founded to do the same,” said Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American attorney and Handala member who was released from IDF custody due to her Israeli citizenship. “We should not be waiting for Israel to give permission for food or other humanitarian aid to enter … we need to be breaking, challenging and breaking the blockade.”
“And our governments not only have not been doing anything about it … the U.S. government did not make contact with any of the seven American citizens on board, but the [others], like France, Spain, Italy, contacted their citizens on board and told them that they are ready to provide consular services when Israel kidnaps us, which we found to be completely obnoxious,” she added. “They were legitimizing Israeli piracy on the high seas. And that is unacceptable to us. And that is the kind of impunity that our governments, all governments, really, have been allowing Israel to just violate international law.”
Andry Blanco Bonilla, center, was reunited with his family in Venezuela on Tuesday after four months of incarceration in El Salvador's megaprison. (photo: Courtesy Blanco Bonilla family)
The men said there were many moments of anguish and terror and that they feared for their lives.
The men were held for four months in the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, a Salvadoran megaprison known for its harsh conditions and reported abuse. The allegations included beatings that left bruises and cuts, psychological abuse and the denial of necessities such as food or bathroom access.
The Trump administration sent about 250 Venezuelan men to CECOT in March and has accused them of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Many of the men and some of their families and attorneys have denied the claim. The men were released and flown to Venezuela on July 18 as part of a prisoner swap with the United States.
Andry Hernandez Romero, a 32-year-old gay asylum-seeker from Venezuela, told NBC News that one day during his imprisonment he was taken to solitary confinement, where prison staff “made me kneel, perform oral sex on one person, while the others groped me and touched my private parts” and “stroked me with their batons.”
He said he could not identify the guards because their faces were covered and the room did not have a lightbulb, with only a small amount of light coming in through a hole in the ceiling.
Hernandez said the incident left him devastated.
“I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to do absolutely anything,” Hernandez said. “The only thing I did was stay laying down, look at the toilet, remember my family, asking myself a million questions.”
Another detainee who spoke to NBC News, Jerce Reyes, said Hernandez told him after they were released that he was sexually abused by CECOT staff. Hernandez also said on Venezuelan state media that he was sexually abused while in CECOT.
“He told us that when we arrived in Venezuela, that he suffered abuse at the hands of guards there in El Salvador,” said Reyes, referring to Hernandez’s account of sexual abuse.
Hernandez said he was unaware of any formal system at CECOT through which he could report the alleged abuse and that if detainees tried to complain to superiors at the prison, they would often be subjected to beatings by guards.
The Salvadoran government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hernandez’s sexual assault allegations and claims from other Venezuelan men that they were physically and psychologically abused in the prison. The government has previously said it observes safety and order standards, and the director of CECOT told CNN that “the whole operation is based on strict respect for human rights.” In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred NBC News to the Salvadoran government for comment because the Venezuelan men were “not U.S. citizens or under U.S. jurisdiction.”
When asked whether the U.S. government would continue to send people to CECOT, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, “whether it is CECOT, Alligator Alcatraz, Guantanamo Bay or another detention facility, these dangerous criminals will not be allowed to terrorize U.S. citizens.”
The statement said that President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “are using every tool available to get criminal illegal aliens off our streets and out of our country. Our message is clear: Criminals are not welcome in the United States.”
‘You will not be leaving here’
Hernandez and others said they were repeatedly beaten by prison officials.
“Our daily bread there as Venezuelans were beatings, threats. For whatever circumstance,” Hernandez said. “If you answer an official, they hit you. ... If you talk, they hit you.”
“Every time they went to hit a large group outside, they would put us in the required position so we couldn’t see. And to hear the moans, to hear how they were hitting the people was also very heavy.”
Another detainee, Andry Blanco Bonilla, 40, said he and the other Venezuelans faced verbal, psychological and physical abuse from the day they entered CECOT.
“There were so many moments of anguish and terror,” he said in Spanish. “I feared for my life.”
Blanco Bonilla said that when they first arrived at CECOT, the men were shackled so tightly at the ankles that walking “would give us cuts and bruises.” He said the guards denied them food and access to bathrooms or showers as punishment.
Blanco Bonilla, who had gone to the U.S. to seek asylum, said he would never forget the words of a prison official who told the detainees, “Welcome to CECOT. Welcome to hell.”
“You will not be leaving here. Your days are over,” the official said, according to Blanco Bonilla.
The detainees would suffer beatings as the guards saw fit, he said.
“They tried to avoid hitting our faces. They kicked us in the back or ribs,” he said. “When they made us get on our knees, they would step on our toes with their boots. They hit us with batons, they hit us on the head.”
After a beating, Blanco Bonilla said he would be brought by guards to a prison doctor, who would say to him, “You hit yourself. How did you hit yourself?”
When he tried to tell the doctor that he was beaten by prison staff, a guard would hit him with a baton in the back, Blanco Bonilla said. The doctor would then ask him again, “How did you hit yourself?”
“I realized that if I didn’t tell them what they wanted, they would keep hitting me,” he said, adding that the doctor would then make a false report about the incident.
‘We are only migrants’
Reyes, 36, said one of hardest moments for him was when a prison official “encouraged us to commit suicide” and told him “this is how your whole nightmare ends.”
“I did think about committing suicide at some point. But I thought about my two daughters, I thought about my family,” he said about his two children, ages 3 and 6.
Reyes said there were days when “we woke up and all said to ourselves, ‘We aren’t getting out of here.’” He said he witnessed and experienced physical aggression from CECOT guards.
Reyes said he was thankful that he and other men were able to share copies of the Bible inside and motivate each other.
The detainees who spoke to NBC News said they had no contact with the outside world or access to U.S. officials during the four months they were held in CECOT.
Reyes did recall seeing Noem walk by when she toured CECOT in March, shortly after he and the others were sent there. She went past several cells that Salvadoran officials assured her held hardened criminals and gang members.
Reyes says he wasn’t told Noem was coming but remembers that day as the only day the detainees had gotten something cold to drink.
He said he and others pressed their faces to the bars and saw her. “We began screaming, ‘Freedom, freedom, freedom. We are not criminals. We are only migrants,’” Reyes said.
The men were sent to CECOT after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March, declaring the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua an invading force. Immigration officials have since used that act to deport hundreds of people without immigration hearings, alleging that they were gang members.
The men who spoke to NBC News, as well as the families of former detainees and their attorneys, have strongly denied any ties to gangs and said they were unfairly targeted because of tattoos that may be popular in Venezuela and are unrelated to Tren de Aragua. They have also said some migrants were denied due process and a chance to defend themselves from the accusations against them. Experts have said tattoos are not closely connected with affiliation to Tren de Aragua. An official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement previously said the administration did not solely rely on tattoos to identify the men sent to CECOT as gang members.
A New York Times investigation, which relied on interviews with prosecutors and law enforcement officials as well as court documents and media reports in multiple countries, found that most of the men sent to CECOT did not have criminal records in the United States or in the region. It found at least 32 of the more than 200 men faced serious criminal accusations or convictions in the United States or abroad. Very few of them appeared to have any documented evidence connecting them to Tren de Aragua.
The men said their strong faith in God, love for their families and a belief that one day they would get justice helped them keep going during their most desperate moments.
“Reuniting again with my parents and children was a moment of such happiness,” Blanco Bonilla said.
While the men resume life back in Venezuela, the question of whether they would ever return to the U.S. remains. During a status hearing Thursday tied to the government’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, the Department of Justice said it would bring any of the men back for immigration or habeas proceedings if a “lawful order” were issued.
“Venezuela has made assurances they’ll allow us to do that,” DOJ attorney Tiberius Davis told the court.
Now that they are back home with their families, the men have said they are demanding justice from Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
On Thursday, former detainee Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel filed a complaint, reviewed by NBC News, against the Department of Homeland Security under the Federal Tort Claims Act, claiming he was removed from the United States unlawfully and without due process. The complaint was filed on behalf Rengel by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Democracy Defenders Fund, which describes itself as a nonpartisan group that defends democratic institutions and opposes autocrats.
LULAC told NBC News that it also planned to file a lawsuit and expected more lawsuits to come after that.
Rengel alleged that he suffered physical, verbal and psychological abuse in CECOT and that the U.S. government could have and should have secured his release, according to the complaint.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the complaint.
“We were mistreated, our rights were violated, crimes against humanity were committed,” Blanco Bonilla said.
Hernandez said he and others are still working through the psychological effects of their time in CECOT. “All 252 [of the men] are doing poorly, mentally.”
“Even though we are free, even though we are now with our families, happy and content,” he said, “there is still a big mental block, a block that particularly I have not been able to find a way to deal with.”
But despite their ongoing struggles, Hernandez said the shared experience has created a lasting sense of community among the men.
“We entered [CECOT] as 252 strangers, 252 Venezuelans, but 252 brothers came out,” Hernandez said. “We all supported each other; we were all there in the constant fight.”
President Donald Trump answers questions during a press conference at the White House on June 27, 2025. (photo: Getty)
Specifically, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, is proposing to reverse the “endangerment finding” that is the predicate for rules requiring polluting industries to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions. To hear Zeldin tell it, he is exposing some elaborate, bureaucratic ruse to bilk taxpayers. In fact, the endangerment finding is a simple affirmation that greenhouse gas pollution is causing climate change and therefore endangering people. And, of course, it sits atop a mountain of scientific evidence.
As a lawyer who has been working on climate change for the last 20 years, it’s hard to overstate how much it changed everything when the EPA finally recognized the scientific consensus and took meaningful action to tackle greenhouse gas pollution from cars at last.
A quick history: By the 1990s, the terrifying inaction of the U.S. government was driving an ambitious push to compel the EPA to act. In 1999, a group of environmental organizations petitioned the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles. The EPA denied the petition primarily on grounds that greenhouse gases were not pollutants within the scope of the Clean Air Act. The petitioners took the EPA to court, and in 2007, the case made its way up to the Supreme Court. In the landmark decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, the court ruled that greenhouse gases are indeed pollutants that the EPA has the authority to regulate and the obligation to regulate if, in the EPA’s judgment, they endanger human health and welfare.
Once the EPA was required to make that judgment, it had to face up to the climate science that was by then incontrovertible. In 2009, the EPA found that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and to endanger the public welfare of current and future generations.” Based on this finding, the EPA began setting standards for tailpipes, power plants, and oil and gas fields — the big three when it comes to greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S.
It is a point of pride at Earthjustice, where I am privileged to work, that we were part of the legal team that litigated Mass v. EPA, along with several subsequent cases concerning the EPA’s authority to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. Over time, the Supreme Court had several opportunities to backtrack, but it never did. Instead, the court repeatedly affirmed the decision that our national clean air statute is capacious enough to address the biggest pollution threat ever.
At this advanced stage of the climate crisis, there is every reason not to revisit well-settled law, much less question the scientific consensus about climate change that we can all witness for ourselves. But unconscionably, that is exactly what Zeldin and the Trump administration are trying to do.
It has not even been a month since flash floods took the lives of 135 people including 37 children in the Texas Hill Country. In June, nearly 130 million people were under advisories for dangerously extreme heat. Midwest tornadoes in March: 47 people dead. January: Apocalyptic wildfires that Los Angeles is still reeling from. In the first half of this year alone, there were 15 climate disasters in the U.S. that each caused over a billion dollars in damage — and those are just the losses that can be monetized. And, yes, we know that climate change played a role in these disasters.
How is it possible that the Environmental Protection Agency is telling us that we aren’t endangered now? To observe the pain that millions of Americans are suffering and officially shrug it off — well, it’s an epic level of gaslighting.
Alongside the cruelty, there is also a cold calculus. If the EPA is able to revoke the endangerment finding for cars and trucks, we expect that it will try to move quickly to rescind all of the other regulations that are premised on the finding. Tuesday’s’s move is the next step in the Trump administration’s intentionally lawless strategy to do as much damage as possible as quickly as possible.
Have no fear that any of this will go unchallenged. Smart lawyers are preparing to go to court, and the lawsuits will hit as soon as this decision is final. In the meantime, you don’t have to be a lawyer to know how wrong this is.
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