freedom

SOAS University, of which Hamdi is an alumnus, urge ‘US authorities to ensure full transparency and due process’ in his case.

The London university where British political commentator and journalist Sami Hamdi completed his studies has called for “full transparency and due process” regarding his detention in the United States.

In a statement published on Wednesday, SOAS University of London said it was “deeply concerned” by reports of Hamdi’s detention, adding that “there is no indication that Mr Hamdi has violated any laws”.

“We urge the US authorities to ensure full transparency and due process in Mr Hamdi’s case, and to uphold his fundamental right to freedom of expression and movement.”

Hamdi, 35, was stopped at San Francisco international airport in California on October 26 and detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned Hamdi’s detention as “a blatant affront to free speech”, attributing his arrest to his criticism of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed at least 68,875 Palestinians and wounded 170,679 since October 2023.

Hamdi, who was completing a speaking tour in the US discussing Israel’s war on Gaza, had addressed a CAIR gala in Sacramento, California, the previous evening and was due to speak at another CAIR event in Florida.

He was unaware at the time that his visa had been revoked by US authorities two days before his detention.

Hamdi’s detention has led to a legal battle, with his lawyers filing emergency petitions against his detention, and his wife Soumaya and civil society groups demanding that the United Kingdom government take action.

Soumaya told Al Jazeera that the US government has still not provided any evidence “as to why they feel the need to revoke his visa. And therefore they are treating him as an overstayer”.

She said the incident raises an important question: “Has the United States become a country now where a British citizen travelling on a valid visa can be detained at will? Because that is really scary.”

Soumaya said she believed her husband had been targeted by the US authorities because “he’s become extremely effective at galvanising support for Palestinian rights. Sami has been able to bring people together across the political spectrum, not just within Muslim communities.”

She also said her husband’s arrest should be of concern to “everybody who values the right to freedom of speech, everybody who values the right to receive facts from journalists and for journalists to be able to report on news without being persecuted”.

“If they [US authorities] are able then to treat Sami in this way, it’s only a matter of time before they start to treat US citizens like that too.”

“The US government must release Sami immediately. They’ve made a big mistake, and they need to release him immediately. And Congress must investigate these ICE detentions because they are setting a dangerous precedent for the future ability of US citizens being able to exercise their right to the First Amendment properly. And that’s bad news for everybody,” she said.

Latin America’s political landscape has seen sweeping shifts in recent years. On one hand, a so-called “second Pink Tide” has returned left-of-centre governments to power in key countries – Lula in Brazil, Petro in Colombia, and the broad left in Mexico – inspiring hopes of renewed democracy and social reform. On the other hand, strongman leaders like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele (a populist outsider not usually labelled “leftist”) and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro (an entrenched Chavista) have consolidated control in ways critics call authoritarian. The question looms: are these developments evidence that the region is sliding back toward autocracy, cloaked in progressive rhetoric? Or are they legitimate shifts reflecting popular will and necessary reform? Recent trends in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, and Venezuela, show serious democratic backsliding, populist leadership styles, and the uses (and abuses) of leftist language to consolidate power rather than give it back to the people.

Brazil: Lula’s Left Turn and the Security State

Brazil’s democracy was violently tested in early 2023 when Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace. The crisis – and the swift legal response by institutions – helped vindicate Brazil’s checks and balances. When former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) won the 2022 election, many Brazilians breathed a sigh of relief as they felt and agreed that a second Bolsonaro term would have propelled Brazil further into autocracy, whereas Lula’s coalition blocked that outcome. Polls showed Brazilians rallying to defend democracy after the Jan. 8 insurrection, and Lula himself has repeatedly proclaimed Brazil a “champion of democracy” on the world stage. Under Lula, Brazil has indeed reversed some of Bolsonaro’s more extreme policies, especially on the environment and social welfare, and the Supreme Court remains independent and active.

At the same time, Brazil still grapples with brutal crime and controversial security policies. In October 2025 a massive police raid in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas – involving roughly 2,500 officers – killed at least 119 people (115 suspected traffickers and 4 officers). Human rights groups denounced the operation as a massacre, reporting that many of the victims were killed execution-style. President Lula’s justice minister stated that Lula was horrified by the death toll and had not authorised the raid, which took place without federal approval. Rights investigators noted that in 2024, approximately 700 people were killed in police actions in Rio—nearly two per day, even before this incident. The episode underscored the persistence of militarised and largely unaccountable security practices, rooted in decades of mano dura policing. Lula’s administration, however, has publicly condemned the use of excessive force and pledged to pursue meaningful reforms in public security policy.

In short, Brazil’s picture is mixed. Bolsonarismo (Bolsonaro’s movement) still holds sway in many state capitals, and violence remains high. But Lula’s presidency so far shows more emphasis on rebuilding institutions and fighting inequality than on authoritarian control. Brazil’s democracy has shown resilience: after the coup attempt, support for democracy actually peaked among the public. Lula himself has publicly affirmed free speech and criticised right-wing attacks, reversing some of Bolsonaro’s polarising rhetoric. Thus, we can view Brazil as democratic, albeit fragile. The major ongoing concerns are police brutality and crime – which are treated as security policy issues more than political power grabs by the president.

However, although Lula’s third term has been marked by a renewed emphasis on social justice, labour rights, and environmental protection, it has also been coupled with a discourse that often frames politics as a moral battle between the people and entrenched elites. This populist tone has reinforced his image as a defender of ordinary Brazilians while simultaneously deepening political polarisation and straining institutional checks and balances. His leadership style tends to concentrate moral and political authority around his persona, blending pragmatic governance with an appeal to popular sentiment. Even though Lula continues to operate within democratic frameworks, this personalisation of power highlights the persistent tension between populist mobilisation and institutional restraint in Brazil’s fragile democracy.

Mexico: Welfare Reforms and Power Consolidation

Mexico’s case is more worrisome. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO, 2018–2024), a self-declared leftist populist, implemented a dramatic concentration of power. By 2024 his ruling Morena party controlled the presidency, both houses of Congress, and most state governorships. His government pushed through constitutional amendments that bolstered the executive and weakened independent checks. By the end of his term, his party had achieved full control of the executive branch, both chambers of Congress, and most subnational states, and it overhauled the judiciary and strengthened the military through reforms aimed at executive aggrandisement and weakening checks and balances. In plain terms, AMLO used his majority to rewrite rules in his favour.

AMLO’s populist rhetoric was central to this process. He constantly framed his campaign as a fight against corrupt “elites” and the “old” political order. Slogans like “Por el bien de todos, primero los pobres” (For the good of all, first the poor) became rallying cries.  On the surface, that populist welfare agenda – pensions for seniors, higher minimum wage, social programmes – delivered what could be perceived as real results. Poverty fell sharply: by 2024 over 13.4 million fewer Mexicans lived below the poverty line, a historic 26% drop. These benefits helped AMLO maintain high approval from his base. Yet a closer look reveals a more complex picture. Independent analyses show that much of this reduction is linked to temporary cash transfers and post-pandemic economic recovery rather than structural improvements in wages, education, or healthcare. Inequality and informality remain deeply entrenched, and millions continue to rely on precarious, low-paid work. Moreover, Mexico’s social spending has not been matched by investments in institutional capacity or transparency, raising concerns that short-term welfare gains may mask longer-term fragility. In this sense,  López Obrador’s populist social model contrasted starkly with its narrative of transformation: it has lifted incomes in the immediate term but done little to strengthen the foundations of sustainable, equitable development.

Also the same rhetoric that promised to empower the poor also justified undermining institutions. AMLO’s blend of social policy with authoritarian tactics created a downward trend in freedoms. He openly clashed with autonomous agencies and critical media, called judges “traitors,” and even moved to punish an independent Supreme Court justice. AMLO began implementing his unique brand of populist governance, combining a redistributive fiscal policy with democratic backsliding and power consolidation. In 2024’s Freedom Index, Mexico plummeted from “mostly free” to “low freedom,” reflecting accelerated erosion of press freedom, judicial independence, and checks on the executive.

For example, AMLO mused about revoking autonomy of the election commission (INE) and packed federal courts with loyalists. He oversaw a lawsuit that temporarily replaced the anti-monopoly commissioner (though this was later reversed). Controversial judicial reforms were rammed through Congress with MORENA’s (National Regeneration Movement) supermajority. In the name of fighting corruption, AMLO and his party sidestepped democratic norms. By the time he left office, many prominent dissidents had been labelled enemies of the people, and civil-society watchdogs reported increasing self-censorship under fear of government reprisals.

Legitimate reforms vs. power grabs: Of course, AMLO’s administration did achieve significant social gains. His policies tripled the minimum wage and expanded social pensions for the elderly and students. From the left’s point of view, these are overdue redresses of inequality after decades of neoliberal policy. Nevertheless, one can also say that AMLO pursued these at the expense of Mexico’s democracy.

AMLO’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum has largely extended the populist and centralising model of her predecessor. Her government has expanded the same welfare policies – including pensions for the elderly, youth scholarships, and agricultural subsidies – which continue to secure her strong approval ratings. At the same time, she has pursued a more nationalist economic strategy, favouring the state over private or renewable investment, a move seen by many as ideologically driven rather than economically sound.

Her administration’s approach to governance has reinforced concerns about democratic backsliding. Within months of taking power, her party used its congressional majority to pass a sweeping judicial reform allowing for the election of nearly all judges, a measure widely interpreted as undermining judicial independence. She also oversaw the dismantling of Mexico’s autonomous transparency and regulatory agencies, institutions originally created to prevent executive overreach after decades of one-party rule. Her rhetoric, while measured compared to López Obrador’s, has nonetheless targeted independent electoral and judicial authorities as acting against the popular will. Violence against journalists and judicial pressure on the press have continued under her watch, suggesting a continuity of the authoritarian tendencies embedded in her predecessor’s style of governance. In effect, Sheinbaum has presented herself as the guardian of López Obrador’s so-called “Fourth Transformation”, but her actions increasingly blur the line between social reform and the consolidation of political control.

Meanwhile, MORENA, the ruling party, has evolved into a hegemonic political force that increasingly mirrors the old Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Having consolidated control over the presidency, Congress, and most governorships, MORENA now dominates the national political landscape with little meaningful opposition. Its supermajority has enabled constitutional changes that weaken autonomous regulators and reconfigure the judiciary in its favour. Efforts to overhaul the electoral system – including proposals to curtail proportional representation and cut funding for opposition parties – further tilt the playing field towards one-party dominance. The party’s control of state resources and vast social programmes has also revived the clientelism and political patronage once characteristic of PRI rule. Many regional elites and former PRI figures have joined MORENA’s ranks, expanding its reach through local alliances and personal networks. This combination of electoral dominance, state control, and populist legitimacy has left few institutional counterweights to its power. In practice, Mexico’s political system is sliding back towards the PRI-style arrangement it once fought to overcome: a single dominant party using popular mandates and social welfare to entrench its hold over the state while constraining the mechanisms of democratic accountability.

Colombia: Peace Agenda and Institutional Pushback

Colombia’s new president, Gustavo Petro (in office since August 2022), is the country’s first-ever leftist head of state. He campaigned on ending historical violence and inequality, reaching a definitive peace with guerrilla groups, and “transforming” Colombian society. To that end, Petro has pursued ambitious reforms – agrarian, labor, climate, and constitutional – some of which have hit roadblocks in Congress and the courts.

One flashpoint has been his call for a constitutional rewrite. Petro announced he would ask voters (via the 2026 legislative elections ballot) whether to convene a national constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. He argues that traditional institutions (Congress and the courts) repeatedly blocked key reforms – for instance, an environmental tax and a gender law were struck down as unconstitutional – and that only a direct mandate could implement his agenda. In his own words, he has framed the move as carrying out “the people’s mandate for peace and justice”, implicitly casting political opposition as elitist roadblocks. Arguably, under Colombia’s 1991 Constitution, a referendum on reform first requires legislation from Congress; the president alone cannot unilaterally change the constitution. Indeed, Petro’s coalition lost its majority in the Senate after the 2024 elections, and even has a minority in the House. That means he cannot force through a referendum law on his own.

Petro’s gambit is a stress test of Colombia’s institutions. Although Petro is popular with part of the electorate, and the checks and balances in the country have been holding– Congress and the Constitutional Court can still block overreach. Petro’s approval ratings hover around 37%, giving savvy opponents incentive to organise rallies or boycotts if he tries an end-run around Congress. Moreover, Colombia’s Constitutional Court has so far signalled it will strictly enforce procedural requirements before any reform, and it would likely strike down any effort to allow immediate presidential reelection (which the constitution currently bans). In fact, observers have flagged concern that Petro might push to permit his own re-election, raising alarm among civil society and international partners.

Thus far Petro has not succeeded in weakening institutions as Bolsonaro did in Brazil or Maduro in Venezuela. To the contrary, Colombia’s court and electoral tribunal have acted independently, even prosecuting members of Petro’s coalition for campaign irregularities. The country’s strong judicial branch remains a bulwark. That said, the tone of politics has become extremely polarised and personal. After a recent assassination of a presidential candidate (son of former President Uribe), the campaign trail saw shrill accusations: Petro’s supporters often label their opponents “far-right extremists,” while his critics call him a “communist” or worse. This combustible rhetoric – on all sides – could jeopardise stability.

Colombia today embodies both promise and peril. Petro has introduced progressive initiatives (such as a new climate ministry and child allowances) that appeal to many, but he also openly questions the role of old elites and considers dramatic institutional change. His proposals have not yet realised an authoritarian shift, but they have tested the separation of powers. The situation is dynamic: if Petro tries to override constraints, Colombia’s existing democratic guardrails (courts, Congress, watchdogs) will likely react strongly. The key question will be whether Colombia can channel legitimate popular demands through its institutions without them buckling under pressure.

El Salvador: The Bukele Model of “Punitive Populism”

El Salvador stands apart. President Nayib Bukele (in power since 2019, re-elected 2024) defies easy ideological labelling– he was not from the traditional leftist bloc – but his governance style has strong authoritarian features. His rise was fuelled by a promise to crush the country’s notorious gangs, and indeed El Salvador’s homicide rate plummeted under his rule. Bukele has remade a nation that was once the world’s murder capital. According to  figures, over 81,000 alleged gang members have been jailed since 2022 – about one in 57 Salvadorans – and Bukele enjoys sky-high approval ratings (around 90%) from citizens tired of crime. These results have been touted as proof that his “iron fist” strategy of mass arrests and harsh prison sentences (the world’s largest incarceration rate) has worked. In this sense, Bukele’s firm grip on security is seen by many supporters as a legitimate reform: a state that delivers safety, even at the cost of civil liberties.

However, the democratic trade-offs have been extreme. Since 2022, Bukele has ruled largely by decree under a perpetual state of emergency, suspending key constitutional rights (due process, privacy, freedom of assembly). Criminal suspects – including minors – are arrested en masse without warrants and often held in overcrowded prisons. The president has openly interfered in the judiciary: his pro-government legislators dismissed all members of the Supreme Court and Attorney General’s office in 2021–22, replacing them with loyalists. This allowed Bukele to evade the constitutional prohibition on immediate presidential re-election and secure a second term in 2024. Even ordinary political opposition has been effectively pulverised, party leaders disqualified, judges threatened, and dissenters harassed or driven into exile.

Human-rights groups accuse Bukele’s security forces of torture and disappearances of innocent people swept up in the dragnet. A 2024 Latinobarómetro survey found that 61% of Salvadorans fear negative consequences for speaking out against the regime – despite the fact that Bukele’s formal approval remains high. Many critics now call him a “social-media-savvy strongman” or “millennial caudillo”, suggesting he leads by personal charisma and social-media influence.

On the other hand, his defenders argue Bukele has simply done what past governments could not: restore order and invest in infrastructure (like child-care and tech initiatives) that were ignored for years. Indeed, El Salvador under Bukele has attracted foreign investment (notably in Bitcoin ventures) and even hosted international events like Miss Universe, as if to signal normalcy. But  Bukele has built his legitimacy on the back of extraordinary measures that sideline democracy. Bukele’s popularity may export a brand of ‘punitive populism’ that leads other heads of state to restrict constitutional rights, and when (not if) public opinion turns, the country may find itself with no peaceful outlet for change. In other words, El Salvador’s example shows how quickly a welfare-and-security-oriented leader can morph into an authoritarian ruler once key institutions are neutered.

Venezuela: Consolidated Authoritarianism

Venezuela is the clearest example of democracy overtaken by authoritarianism. Over the past quarter-century, Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro have steadily dismantled democratic institutions, replacing them with a one-party state. Today Venezuela is widely recognised as a full electoral dictatorship, not an anomaly but a case study in how leftist populism can yield outright autocracy. The 2024 presidential election was the latest illustration: overwhelming evidence suggests the opposition actually won by a landslide, yet the regime hid the true vote counts, declared Maduro the winner with a suspicious 51% share, and reinstalled him for a third term. Venezuela’s leaders purposefully steered Venezuela toward authoritarianism. It is now a fully consolidated electoral dictatorship

Since then, Maduro’s government has stamped out virtually all resistance. Leading opposition figures have been harassed, jailed, or exiled. Opposition candidate María Corina Machado – who reportedly won twice as many votes as Maduro was banned by the Supreme Court from even running. New laws passed in late 2024 further chill dissent: for example, the “Simón Bolívar” sanctions law criminalises criticism of the state, and an “Anti-NGO” law gives authorities broad power to shut down civil-society groups if they receive foreign funds. All justice in Venezuela is now rubber-stamped by Maduro’s hand-picked judges.

Any pretense of pluralism has vanished. State media and pro-government mobs drown out or beat up remaining critics. Despite dire economic collapse and mass exodus (millions of Venezuelans have fled hunger and repression), Maduro governs with an iron grip. In short, Venezuela today is an example of ideological rhetoric (Chavismo, Bolivarian Revolution) entirely subsumed by power. It also serves as a caution: the veneer of elections and redistributive slogans can sometimes hide total dictatorship. (In Venezuela’s case, the “leftist” regime never even bothered to disguise its authoritarian turn.)

Legitimacy, Rhetoric, and Checks

Throughout these cases, a common theme emerges: populist rhetoric vs institutional reality. Leftist or progressive leaders often claim to champion the poor and marginalised – a message that resonates in societies scarred by inequality. Yet in practice, that rhetoric sometimes becomes a justification for concentrating power. AMLO spoke of a “fourth transformation” of Mexico to overcome the “old regime,” and applied that mission to reshape institutions. Petro invokes “the will of the people” to override what he calls elite obstruction. Lula’s Brazil has been less about overthrowing elites and more about undoing his predecessor’s policies. And Bukele promises safety so absolute that he deems dissent a luxury Salvadorans cannot afford.

Of course, leftist governments do enact genuine reforms. The region has seen expansions of social programmes, pensions, healthcare, and education in many countries. In a sense, voters rewarded candidates like Lula, Petro, and AMLO precisely because they promised change and delivered temporary benefits (scholarships, pensions, workers’ pay raises, etc.). But even well-meaning reforms can backfire if the manner of governing ignores constitutional limits.

Where was the line crossed from policy to autocracy? The answer varies. In Venezuela, it was crossed long ago. In El Salvador, it was in 2020 when the Supreme Court was neutered. In Mexico and Colombia, it might yet be crossed if current trends continue. Notably, independent institutions have played the decisive role. Brazil’s judiciary and congress checked Bolsonaro and remain intact under Lula; Colombia’s still-revolutionary courts have so far blocked Petro’s more radical ideas;  under Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s courts remain constrained by the constitutional limits that formally prevent presidential re-election, yet her administration’s actions have significantly weakened judicial independence. By politicising judicial appointments and curbing the autonomy of oversight bodies, her government has consolidated influence over the very institutions meant to act as checks on executive authority. In practice, Mexico’s judiciary is now more vulnerable to political pressure than at any time since the end of PRI dominance, reflecting a growing concentration of power within the presidency and the ruling party. In contrast, Venezuela’s courts have no independence at all, and El Salvador’s were replaced wholesale.

This suggests that Latin America has not uniformly fallen back into classic authoritarianism under “leftist” governments. Instead, populist leaders of varying ideologies have tested democratic boundaries, and outcomes differ by country. Where institutions remained strong, they provided a buffer. Where institutions were undermined, democracy withered.

The Future of Democracy in Latin America

So what does the future hold? After a brief blip of improvement, democracy metrics in Latin America appear to be declining again. In 2023, a composite index actually rose slightly, driven by gains in Colombia (Free status by Freedom House) and Brazil. But by 2024 the region was “re-autocratising”, with rule-of-law slipping in Mexico and Peru, and older warning signs re-emerging across the continent.

Key factors will influence the coming years. On one hand, many Latin Americans remain hungry for security, equity, and an end to corruption – needs that populist leaders address. If such leaders deliver results (as Bukele did on crime), public tolerance for illiberal methods may persist. On the other hand, the region has a relatively robust civil society, and voters in countries like Brazil and Colombia have shown willingness to hold leaders accountable.

Balance is crucial. In well-functioning democracies, major changes do not require emergency decrees or friendly courts; they require compromise and open debate. The examples of Mexico and El Salvador show how quickly democratic norms can erode when populist leaders wield their mandate without restraint.

Ultimately, Latin America’s record is not hopeless, but neither is it fully reassuring. The early 2020s have demonstrated that both left-wing and right-wing populisms can strain democracy. Are we returning to authoritarianism under a leftist facade? – has no single answer. In countries like Venezuela, the answer is emphatically yes. In others, it is a warning under construction: Mexico and El Salvador caution us, Colombia is at a crossroads, and Brazil’s experience suggests that institutions can still provide meaningful checks on executive power, but their resilience is not guaranteed. The recent police raid in Rio de Janeiro, serves as a stark test for Lula’s commitment to reforming Brazil’s militarised public-security apparatus. How his government responds to this and similar incidents will be a critical measure of whether Brazil’s democratic institutions can withstand pressure from both public opinion and entrenched security structures, or whether longstanding legacies of unchecked police power will continue to erode accountability.

For the future of the region, the lesson is that rhetoric alone cannot safeguard democracy. Even popular leaders must respect independent judiciaries, free press, and electoral integrity. If those pillars are allowed to crumble, Latin America’s democratic gains will fade. The coming years will test whether each country’s citizens insist on true democratic practice or allow the allure of strong leadership to override constitutional limits.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday posthumously awarded America’s highest civilian honor to Charlie Kirk, the slain activist who inspired a generation of young conservatives and helped push the nation’s politics further to the right.

The ceremony coincided with what would have been Kirk’s 32nd birthday. It came just over a month after the Turning Point USA founder was fatally shot while speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University.

In a sign of Kirk’s close ties to the administration, he was the first recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Trump’s second term. The president also spoke at at Kirk’s funeral in September, calling him a “great American hero” and “martyr” for freedom, while Vice President JD Vance accompanied his body home to Arizona on Air Force Two along with Kirk’s widow, Erika.

“We’re here to honor and remember a fearless warrior for liberty, beloved leader who galvanized the next generation like nobody I’ve ever seen before, and an American patriot of the deepest conviction, the finest quality and the highest caliber,” Trump said Tuesday afternoon.

Of Kirk’s killing, Trump said: “He was assassinated in the prime of his life for boldly speaking the truth, for living his faith and relentless fighting for a better and stronger America.”

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established by President Kennedy in 1963 for individuals making exceptional contributions to the country’s security or national interests or to world peace, or being responsible for significant cultural endeavors or public and private initiatives.

Tuesday’s event followed Trump returning to the U.S. in the predawn hours after a whirlwind trip to Israel and Egypt to celebrate a ceasefire agreement in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza that his administration was instrumental in brokering.

Trump joked that he almost requested to move the ceremony because of the trip.

“I raced back halfway around the globe,” Trump said. “I was going to call Erika and say, ‘Erika, could you maybe move it to Friday? And I didn’t have the courage to call. But you know why I didn’t call? Because I heard today was Charlie’s birthday.”

Argentine President Javier Milei, who had been visiting with the president at the White House earlier, stayed to attend the ceremony.

Trump has awarded a string of presidential medals going back to his first term, including to golf legend Tiger Woods, ex-football coach Lou Holtz and conservative economist Arthur Laffer, as well as to New York Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Mariano Rivera and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, the latter of which came during the 2020 State of the Union. He awarded posthumous medals to Babe Ruth and Elvis.

This term, Trump has also announced his intentions to award the medals to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and a close former advisor, and to Ben Carson, who served as Trump’s first-term secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012. Trump has praised Kirk as one of the key reasons he was reelected.

But Kirk’s politics were also often divisive. He sharply criticized gay and transgender rights while inflaming racial tensions. Kirk also repeated Trump’s false claims that former Vice President Kamala Harris was responsible for policies that encouraged immigrants to come to the U.S. illegally and called George Floyd, a Black man whose killing by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national debate over racial injustice, a “scumbag.”

Trump wrote in a social media post hours before the event that he was moving the ceremony from the White House’s East Room to the Rose Garden to accommodate a crowd he said would be “so big and enthusiastic.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Bettina Aptheker was a 20-year-old sophomore at UC Berkeley when she climbed on top of a police car, barefoot so she wouldn’t damage it, and helped start the Free Speech Movement.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand,” she told a crowd gathered in Sproul Plaza on that October Thursday in 1964, quoting abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

She was blinded by the lights of the television cameras, but the students roared back approval, and “their energy just sort of went through my whole body,” she told me.

Berkeley, as Aptheker describes it, was still caught in the tail end of the McCarthyism of the 1950s, when the 1st Amendment was almost felled by fear of government reprisals. Days earlier, administrators had passed rules that cracked down on political speech on campus.

Aptheker and other students had planned a peaceful protest, only to have police roll up and arrest a graduate student named Jack Weinberg, a lanky guy with floppy hair and a mustache who had spent the summer working for the civil rights movement.

Well-versed in those non-violent methods that were finally winning a bit of equality for Black Americans, hundreds of students sat down around the cruiser, remaining there more than 30 hours — while hecklers threw eggs and cigarette butts and police massed at the periphery — before the protesters successfully negotiated with the university to restore free speech on campus.

History was made, and the Free Speech Movement born through the most American of traits — courage, passion and the invincibility of youth.

“You can’t imagine something like that happening today,” Aptheker said of their success. “It was a different time period, but it feels very similar to the kind of repression that’s going on now.”

Under the standards President Trump is pushing on the University of Southern California and eight other institutions, Aptheker would likely be arrested, using “lawful force if necessary,” as his 10-page “compact for academic excellence” requires. And the protest of the students would crushed by policies that would demand “civility” over freedom.

If you somehow missed his latest attack on higher education, the Trump administration sent this compact to USC and eight other institutions Thursday, asking them to acquiesce to a list of demands in return for the carrot of front-of-the-line access to federal grants and benefits.

While voluntary, the agreement threatens strongman-style, that institutions of higher education are “free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution elects to forgo federal benefits.”

That’s the stick, the loss of federal funding. UCLA, Berkeley and California’s other public universities can tell you what it feels like to get thumped with it.

“It’s intended to roll back any of the gains we’ve made,” Aptheker said of Trump’s policies. “No university should make any kind of deal with him.”

The greatest problem with this nefarious pact is that much of it sounds on the surface to be reasonable, if not desirable. My favorite part: A demand that the sky-high tuition of signatory universities be frozen for five years.

USC tuition currently comes in at close to $70,000 a year without housing. What normal parent thinks that sounds doable?

Even the parts about protests sound, on the surface, no big deal.

“Truth-seeking is a core function of institutions of higher education. Fulfilling this mission requires maintaining a vibrant marketplace of ideas where different views can be explored, debated, and challenged,” the document reads. “Signatories acknowledge that the freedom to debate requires conditions of civility.”

Civility like taking your shoes off before climbing on a police car, right?

As with all things Trump, though, the devil isn’t even in the details. It’s right there in black and white. The agreement requires civility, Trump style. That includes abolishing anything that could “delay or disrupt class instruction,” which is pretty much every protest, with or without footwear.

Any university that signs on also would be agreeing to “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

So no more talking bad about far-right ideas, folks. That’s belittling to our racists, misogynists, Christian nationalists and conservative snowflakes of all persuasions. Take, for example, the increasingly popular conservative idea that slavery was actually good for Black people, or at least not that bad.

Florida famously adopted educational standards in 2023 that argue slavery helped Black people learn useful skills. In another especially egregious example from the conservative educational nonprofit PragerU, a video for kids about Christoper Columbus has the explorer arguing, “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”

And of course, Trump is busy purging the Smithsonian of any hints that slavery was a stain on our history.

Would it be violating Trump’s civility standards for a Black history professor to belittle such ideas as unserious and bonkers? What about debates in a feminism class that discuss Charlie Kirk’s comment that a good reason for women to go to college is to find a husband?

Or what about an environmental science class that teaches accurately that climate change denial is unscientific, and that it was at best anti-intellectual when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently referred to efforts to save the planet as “crap”? Would that be uncivil and belittling to conservatives?

Belittle is a tiny word with big reach. I worry that entire academic departments could be felled by it, and certainly professors of certain persuasions.

Aptheker, now 81, went on to become just the sort of professor Trump would likely loathe, teaching about freedom and inclusivity at UC Santa Cruz for decades. It was there that I first heard her lecture. I was a mixed-race kid who had been the target of more than one racial slur growing up, but I had never heard my personal experiences put into the larger context of being a person of color or a woman.

Listening to Aptheker and professors like her, I learned not only how to see my life within the broader fabric of society, but learned how collective action has improved conditions for the most vulnerable among us, decade after decade.

It is ultimately this knowledge that Trump wants to crush — that while power concedes nothing without a demand, collective demands work because they are a power of their own.

Even more than silencing students or smashing protests, Trump’s compact seeks to purge this truth, and those who hold it, from the system. Signing this so-called deal isn’t just a betrayal of students, it’s a betrayal of the mission of every university worth its tuition, and a betrayal of the values that uphold our democracy.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has rightfully threatened to withhold state funding from any California university that signs, writing on social media that the Golden State “will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom.”

Of course, some universities will sign it willingly. University of Texas called it an “honor” to be asked. There will always be those who collaborate in their own demise.

But authoritarians live with the constant fear that people like Aptheker will teach a new generation their hard-won lessons, will open their minds to bold ideas and will question old realities that are not as unbreakable as they might appear. Universities, far from assuaging that constant fear, should fight to make it a reality.

Anything less belittles the very point of a university education.

United States television host Jimmy Kimmel’s live show was pulled off the air by Disney-owned ABC after he made comments about conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last week in what has been deemed by right-wingers in the US a political assassination.

But critics claim Kimmel’s removal is a violation of his free speech rights, which are enshrined under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

On Thursday, hundreds of Kimmel fans gathered on the streets in Burbank, New York and Hollywood, protesting the removal of his show.

Here is a closer look at what happened and what the US Constitution says about free speech rights.

What happened to Jimmy Kimmel?

Conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in front of a crowd of about 3,000 people on September 10 while he was speaking at a university event in Utah.

After a 33-hour manhunt, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was arrested on suspicion of killing Kirk. Robinson has since been charged with aggravated murder.

Some right-wing figures, affiliated with US President Donald Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) wing, have described Robinson as “left-wing”.

On Monday, Kimmel said on his show: “The MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Kimmel continued, criticising the response by Trump – who described Kirk as being “like a son” – to his death. “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish,” Kimmel said.

Following a backlash, broadcasters Nexstar and Sinclair said they would pull Kimmel’s late-night show from their affiliated stations.

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), also said he had a strong case for taking legal action against Kimmel, Disney and ABC.

Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, criticised Carr’s response in an interview with CNN. “This administration is increasingly using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression,” Gomez said.

The FCC has the authority to grant licences to broadcasters, including ABC and its affiliated stations.

Democratic critics have said that pulling his show off the air is an infringement of Kimmel’s right to free speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

What does the First Amendment say?

The First Amendment protects free speech from government interference. It states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In 1963, the US Supreme Court issued a key ruling that the government cannot create a “system of informal censorship” by putting pressure on private companies.

This was issued after a Rhode Island agency had threatened to prosecute book and magazine distributors for selling publications it considered objectionable.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that, in such situations, plaintiffs must demonstrate that the government’s actions exceeded allowable persuasion and directly caused them harm.

Was the removal of Kimmel’s show unconstitutional?

Experts say Kimmel’s show being pulled is unconstitutional since it infringes the free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Ronnie London, a general counsel with free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told PolitiFact that Carr’s actions are “a classic case of unconstitutional jawboning”, which means improperly using government threats to pursue policy goals.

“The FCC has long held that ‘the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views,’” the FCC says on its website.

“Rather than suppress speech, communications law and policy seek to encourage responsive ‘counter-speech’ from others. Following this principle ensures that the most diverse and opposing opinions will be expressed, even though some views or expressions may be highly offensive.”

How have people reacted to Kimmel’s removal?

Many Democrats, politicians, Hollywood stars and fellow talk-show hosts have stressed the importance of protecting free speech rights.

Former US President Barack Obama shared a series of articles and commentary on X on Friday, saying: “This commentary offers a clear, powerful statement of why freedom of speech is at the heart of democracy and must be defended, whether the speaker is Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel, MAGA supporters or MAGA opponents.”

This commentary offers a clear, powerful statement of why freedom of speech is at the heart of democracy and must be defended, whether the speaker is Charlie Kirk or Jimmy Kimmel, MAGA supporters or MAGA opponents.

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 19, 2025

In another post, Obama wrote: “This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent – and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.”

Former late-night host David Letterman said during an event in New York on Thursday: “I feel bad about this, because we all see where this is going, correct? It’s managed media. It’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.”

Ken Martin, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement: “The state under Donald Trump has amassed a chilling record of restricting speech, extorting private companies, and dropping the full weight of the government censorship hammer on First Amendment rights.”

Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff posted on X on Thursday: “This administration is responsible for the most blatant attacks on the free press in American history. What will be left of the First Amendment?”

By contrast, the suspension of Kimmel’s show has drawn celebration from the political right.

“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC,” Trump continued, referring to late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

Conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly wrote on X on Thursday: “I’m not sure who needs to hear this but Jimmy Kimmel got on the air and falsely stated as a fact that Charlie Kirk’s killer was MAGA, smearing an entire movement and Trump in particular with a vile disgusting lie.”

A coordinated online doxxing campaign has emerged in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killing, targeting academics, teachers, government employees and others who have posted critical remarks about him.

At least 15 people have been fired or suspended from their jobs after discussing the killing online, according to a Reuters tally on Saturday based on interviews, public statements and local press reports. The total includes journalists, academic workers and teachers.

On Friday, a junior Nasdaq employee was fired over her posts related to Kirk.

Others have been subjected to torrents of online abuse or seen their offices flooded with calls demanding they be fired, part of a surge in right-wing rage that has followed the killing.

Chaya Raichik, who runs the right-wing “Libs of TikTok” account and is known for her anti-immigrant activism, is at the forefront of the campaign. She has shared names, photos and workplace details of individuals who expressed little sympathy for Kirk’s death.

In one case, Raichik targeted a lecturer at California State University, Monterey Bay, who reportedly wrote in an Instagram story: “I cannot muster much sympathy, truly. People are going to argue ‘He has a family, he has a wife and kids.’ What about all the kids, the many broken families from the over 258 school shootings 2020–present?”

Raichik reposted the lecturer’s photo, accusing him of mocking Kirk’s assassination.

The lecturer has not commented, but several teachers across the United States – including in California, Florida, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas – have been suspended or dismissed over similar online remarks. Union leaders condemned Kirk’s killing, but also warned against punishing educators for free speech.

Raichik has also targeted members of the military. One Coast Guard employee is under investigation after posting a meme saying he did not care about Kirk’s death. A former Twitter worker was also singled out for criticising the New York Yankees for holding a moment of silence for Kirk.

A newly registered site, “Expose Charlie’s Murderers,” has 41 names of people it alleges were “supporting political violence online” and claims to be working on a backlog of more than 20,000 submissions.

A Reuters review of the screenshots and comments posted to the site shows that some of those featured joked about or celebrated Kirk’s death. One was quoted as saying, “He got what he deserved”, and others were quoted providing variations on “karma’s a bitch.” Others, however, were critical of the far-right figure while explicitly denouncing violence.

Some institutions have already taken disciplinary action. Middle Tennessee State University dismissed an assistant dean after she wrote: “Looks like ol’Charlie spoke his fate into existence. Hate begets hate. ZERO sympathy.” The comment referred to Kirk’s 2023 defence of gun violence, in which he argued: “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment … That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

Even quoting that remark has been enough for some to be targeted.

Republican response

Some Republicans want to go further still and have proposed deporting Kirk’s critics from the US, suing them into penury or banning them from social media for life.

“Prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death,” said conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a prominent ally of Trump and one of several far-right figures who are organising digital campaigns on X to ferret out and publicly shame Kirk’s critics.

The wave of firings and suspensions has raised concerns over free expression, while far-right activists celebrate what they see as a campaign of accountability.

US lawmaker Clay Higgins said in a post on X that anyone who “ran their mouth with their smart**s hatred celebrating the heinous murder of that beautiful young man” needed to be “banned from ALL PLATFORMS FOREVER.”

The US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on the same site that he had been disgusted to “see some on social media praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action.”

Republicans’ anger at those disrespecting Kirk’s legacy contrasts with the mockery some of the same figures – including Kirk – directed at past victims of political violence.

For example, when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was clubbed over the head by a hammer-wielding conspiracy theorist during a break-in at their San Francisco home shortly before the 2022 midterm elections, Higgins posted a photo making fun of the attack. He later deleted the post.

Loomer falsely suggested that Paul Pelosi and his assailant were lovers, calling the brutal assault on the octogenarian a “booty call gone wrong.”

Speaking to a television audience a few days after the attack, a grinning Kirk called for the intruder to be sprung from jail.

“If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out,” he said.

“Sound of Freedom” distributor Angel Studios made its stock market debut Thursday as the company looks to expand its streaming service and eventually penetrate international markets.

The Provo, Utah-based firm is trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ANGX. Shares of the company rose 8% to $13.

Angel Studios’ launch on the public market is the latest step in the company’s unconventional journey into the entertainment business.

Founded by brothers Neal, Daniel, Jeffrey and Jordan Harmon, the company began as VidAngel, a service that allowed viewers to sanitize Hollywood movies by erasing sex, violence and swear words. But in 2016, VidAngel was sued for copyright infringement by Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros., who said the company’s business model — which involved purchasing thousands of DVDs and Blu-ray discs and allowing users to stream them online — was essentially piracy.

VidAngel eventually settled the case, and the Harmon brothers sold off the filtering business. The company rebranded as Angel Studios and kept its content production and crowdfunding operation.

Today, the firm operates a streaming service and releases movies theatrically, including 2023’s massively popular “Sound of Freedom,” which grossed $250 million worldwide, and the animated film “The King of Kings,” which came out in May and tells the story of Jesus. The studio focuses on what it calls “values-based storytelling,” and its slate is determined through the vote of its 1.5 million Angel Guild members, who also get free movie tickets and other perks.

“It’s really a combination of the values of a broader audience,” said Jordan Harmon, president. “If you look at movies like ‘The Sound of Music,’ or ‘Casablanca’ or ‘12 Angry Men,’ all those were broad, incredible stories that touched the lives of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. Those are the type of stories that we think fall right into this values-driven, light-amplifying mission.”

Though considered small for Hollywood, Angel Studios moved to become a publicly traded company because its nearly 70,000 investors required it to, said company Chief Executive Neal Harmon. The company merged with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) called Southport Acquisition Corp. to go public. A SPAC is essentially a shell company that exists solely to buy a private company and take it public without the scrutiny of a traditional IPO.

“We’re turning the way that this industry works on its head,” he said. “And because we are not doing the traditional Hollywood gatekeeper thing, we also needed to access capital in an untraditional way.”

The path is far from the potato farm in Idaho where the brothers grew up, and where the nearest neighbor was a quarter-mile away. Working together on the farm — and sharing a bedroom for years — helped foster the communication and bond between the brothers, said Jeff Harmon, chief content officer.

“If you look in Hollywood, the best partnerships have all been brothers,” he said, ticking off several successful movie business sibling partnerships including the Disneys, Warners and Nolans. “When they actually work together really well, it becomes unstoppable.”

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials Sunday removed a peace vigil that had stood outside the White House for more than four decades after President Trump ordered it to be taken down as part of the clearing of homeless encampments in the nation’s capital.

Philipos Melaku-Bello, a volunteer who has manned the vigil for years, told the Associated Press that the U.S. Park Police removed it early Sunday morning. He said officials justified the removal by mislabeling the memorial as a shelter.

“The difference between an encampment and a vigil is that an encampment is where homeless people live,” Melaku-Bello said. “As you can see, I don’t have a bed. I have signs and it is covered by the 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”

The White House confirmed the removal, telling the AP in a statement that the vigil was a “hazard to those visiting the White House and the surrounding areas.”

Taking down the vigil is the latest in a series of actions the Trump administration has ordered as part of its federal takeover of policing in the city, which began last month. The White House has defended the intervention as needed to fulfill Trump’s executive order on the “beautification” of D.C.

Melaku-Bello said he’s in touch with attorneys about what he sees as a civil rights violation. “They’re choosing to call a place that is not an encampment an encampment just to fit what is in Trump’s agenda of removing the encampments,” he said.

The vigil was started in 1981 by activist William Thomas to promote nuclear disarmament and an end to global conflicts. It is believed to be the longest continuous antiwar protest in U.S. history. When Thomas died in 2009, fellow protesters including Melaku-Bello manned the tiny tent and the banner — which read, “Live by the bomb, die by the bomb” — around the clock to avoid it being dismantled by authorities.

The small but persistent act of protest was brought to Trump’s attention during an event at the While House on Friday.

Brian Glenn, a correspondent for the far-right network Real America’s Voice, told Trump the blue tent was an “eyesore” for those who come to the White House.

“Just out front of the White House is a blue tent that originally was put there to be an anti-nuclear tent for nuclear arms,” Glenn said. “It’s kind of morphed into more of an anti-American, sometimes anti-Trump at many times.”

Trump, who said he was not aware of it, told his staff: “Take it down. Take it down today, right now.”

Melaku-Bello said that Glenn spread misinformation when he told the president that the tent had rats and “could be a national security risk” because people could hide weapons in there.

“No weapons were found,” he told AP. “He said that it was rat-infested. Not a single rat came out as they took down the cinder blocks.”

Monsivais and Amiri write for the Associated Press and reported from Washington and New York, respectively. AP writer Will Weissert in New York contributed to this report.

The Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has shared new insights with TWZ into its proposal to replace the U.S. Navy’s T-45 Goshawk jet trainers. The company announced yesterday that it was putting forward its twin-engine Freedom jet, the only clean-sheet design currently known to be in the running, to meet the Navy’s future Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) needs.

Our Jamie Hunter had a chance to talk in depth about the Freedom jet with Ray “Fitz” Fitzgerald, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Technology at SNC, and Derek Hess, Vice President of Strategy at SNC, at the Tailhook Association’s main annual symposium, which kicked off yesterday.

As part of its rollout yesterday, SNC had already highlighted the Freedom jet’s 16,000-hour airframe life and ability to perform 35,000 touch-and-goes and/or Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) landings in that time, which we will come back to later on. The company also says Freedom has a 40-percent lower lifecycle cost than the existing T-45, as well as the ability to fly 30- to 40-percent longer sorties. In terms of performance, SNC says the jet is “representative” of 4th and 5th generation types, being able to pull down to -3 and up to +8 Gs, and reach an angle of attack up to 27 degrees.

“The advantages that we’re bringing to the table is that it’s a clean sheet design, which means that we are tailoring this exactly to the Navy’s needs. So, we talk about, train like you fight, zero compromises,” Fitzgerald said. “Every aircraft in the world has its compromises, but the Navy is special.”

“So, the three things that we’re trying to get across as a value proposition for the Navy, number one is over the entire life cycle of the of the aircraft, the entire life of the aircraft, is a significant cost savings,” he explained. “This plane was designed around two engines. These two engines have 20 million hours of flight time on them, well sustained out there in the world.”

The Freedom jet is designed around a pair of Williams FJ44-4M turbofan engines. FJ44 variants are in widespread use globally, especially on business jets, such as members of the popular Cessna Citation family. Having two engines also offers an additional margin of safety over single-engine types. The Navy’s existing T-45 jet trainer is notably a single-engine aircraft.

The “number two value proposition is that we are the only competitor right now, and this is very important, that can do field carrier landing practice, FCLP-to-touchdown,” he added. “Very important for the Navy. You have to train like you fight. And every time you land on an aircraft carrier, you’re flying it into the deck. You’re not flaring or pulling throttles back. FCLP-to-touchdown is critical.”

FCLP landings, which are part of the Navy’s current curriculum for training naval aviators, are conducted at bases on land, but are structured to mimic as closely as possible the experience of touching down on a real carrier. In March, the Navy publicly released new requirements for the UJTS effort, which axed the need for its future jet trainers to be capable of performing FCLP training. Years ago now, the service had already announced that it was eliminating the requirement for the jets to be able to actually land on or take off from carriers, as T-45s do now. If the Navy does not reverse course, these controversial changes are set to fundamentally alter how the service trains new naval aviators. They may not see a carrier until they reach the Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) in charge of the aircraft type they have been assigned to fly.

SNC’s Fitzgerald also took the time to point out here that the 16,000-hour airframe life SNC says the Freedom jet will offer is double the Navy’s current stated requirements for UJTS.

“The third point in the value [proposition] is the fact that when we designed this, and [if] we are selected by the Navy, we are handing the Navy the entire digital package for this aircraft,” he continued. “We want to have the ability to compete in the future for future changes, but the Navy will have the data. They can do upgrades, modifications, whatever. They’re going to own it [the data rights] on onset.”

Fitzgerald claimed that this is the first time in the history of U.S. defense contracting where an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has offered this level of data rights, and described it as an “absolute game-changer.”

The core elements of SNC’s proposal are reflected in the basic design of the Freedom jet.

“I think it is a natural tendency to go, ‘how do you replace the T-45?’ That’s not the question we had ourselves,” Hess, the Vice President of Strategy at SNC, said. “We pride ourselves on delivering, solving tough problems for our customers, in this case, the U.S. Navy. So what we designed this aircraft around is better quality training for UJTS at a lower lifecycle cost than they’re currently paying.”

“The landing gear is a dead giveaway that this was always envisioned for the naval training mission,” he continued. For “FCLPs, using this trailing link landing gear is a huge design cycle.”

A trailing link or trailing arm landing gear is specifically designed to help smooth the impact of landing and/or operating from rougher fields.

One of “the other things that we did was put a cockpit in this that is a thoroughly modern cockpit that can display things like an F-35 or an F-18,” Hess continued. “And then we gave it an eight G capable platform and a 27 degree high AOA [angle of attack] maneuvering capability. And we did that because we just avoided the supersonic and transonic region.”

“If you try and do something that gets up into that transonic region, you compromise on what your wing is, and therefore you can’t get the performance,” he explained. “And so that’s why you need a giant engine that pushes you through the drag rise of what a normal, typical fighter wing is. This is a much higher aspect wing, and we get the G onset rate, the sustained turn rates, and maneuvers that you need to train young men and women to become naval fighter pilots.”

“So all of the modeling that we have done in the MBSE [model-based systems engineering] and fluid dynamics world has been borne out by our wind tunnel testing and all those kinds of things. And we’re always a degree or two conservative,” Hess also said. “For example, this is a 32-degree angle of attack capability that we tame down to 27 degrees to make sure that it has level one handling qualities. The other thing is, this aircraft, this wing, builds all the lift through conventional means. Where you have other aircraft that have large chines on them, and that is what you need when you get into the transonic region, because your wing can’t produce that lift, so you do vortex lift over those large chines, and that’s, frankly, where you end up with problems in handling qualities, is because you can’t control the shedding of the vortices and things of that nature.”

“And it becomes a watershed there, right? So when you start with the chines, that the drag coefficient on that becomes huge, which means you need a bigger motor to dig that out, which means higher fuel – you know, just boom, boom, boom. It just bespoke,” Fitzgerald also interjected. “We started with the motor, went with the wing, went with the training capability up front, and really thought this through.”

In addition to its core shaping, Freedom’s wing will feature leading-edge slats and flaperons, as well.

Hess and Fitzgerald were responding here to a specific question about the use of digital modeling in the Freedom’s design. While digital engineering has proven to be useful across the aerospace industry, there has been growing skepticism about the full extent of the benefits it offers in recent years. Boeing’s T-7A Redhawk jet trainer for the U.S. Air Force had been a notable poster child for digital engineering and design tools, but developmental troubles with that aircraft have added to a growing view that the technologies are not as revolutionary as many had hoped. A navalized version of the T-7 is also a contender to replace the Navy’s T-45s.

“I really think it is important to say you don’t need a fighter to learn how to fly a fighter,” Hess added. “You need something that gives you all the tools to practice everything you want to and then move the graduates who are more prepared to get into those gray jets after graduating in this airplane.”

“You can complete a lot more training in this jet at a much lower cost per hour,” Fitzgerald, the SNC Senior Vice President of Strategy and Technology, further noted. “And then as you step into the fleet, you’re not having to burn the very exquisite, expensive aircraft to do very mundane training tasks.”

It is important to reiterate here that SNC’s proposal, overall, stands in contrast with the Navy’s currently stated requirements, especially when it comes to the matter of FCLP capability. The requirements changes, which have notably come on the back of Navy investments in virtualized training and automated carrier landing capabilities like Magic Carpet, have significantly opened the field offerings based on existing land-based jet trainer designs. In addition to Boeing’s navalized T-7, Lockheed Martin and Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) have been offering the TF-50N, while Textron and Leonardo are pitching what is now branded as the Beechcraft M-346N. Both of those aircraft are based on in-production designs with significant global user bases already.

“You want … your – I call it your lizard brain – to be trained to do the things you are going to do when things go south on you, because the way a [former Air Force pilot] like me lands an airplane is 180 degrees different than a carrier guy,” Hess said in talking about why SNC has made FCLP capability a focus of its proposal. “I touch down, go to idle. He touches down, slams down, goes to MIL [maximum non-afterburner thrust], and is ready to take off again.”

“This is why FCLPs are so important,” Fitzgerlad, a former naval aviator himself, added. “On that dark, stormy night, and everything’s just going bad, you rely on muscle memory, right? So when you think about muscle memory, as a carrier aviator, you’re on speed, so you’re on the right AOA, so the hook and the gear are the right AOA to trap, and everything hits at the same time. If I’m at a slow AOA, it means my nose is up, which means the hook grabs first and slams you down. You can break a jet like that. If I’m at a fast AOA, the nose is lower, hook is up, you skip across, and you go flying again, which is not good either.”

“So every single time we’re doing an FCLP, as soon as you fly into the deck, you crash into that deck, he [the Air Force pilot] goes idle, and [says] ‘I want a nice flare, soft thing.’ We [naval aviators] fly it into the deck, and as soon as we touch it, it’s full power, 180 out,” he continued. “So that muscle memory, I mean, it’s what will save lives.”

SNC’s Hess also argued that if the Navy’s future jet trainers do not allow for FCLP landings, it will put additional more onus on FRSs and operational units to do that training. That, in turn, could take time away from other priorities and increase wear and tear on the Navy’s fighter fleets.

In addition, while SNC is a firmly established name when it comes to the special mission aircraft conversion and modification business, especially for U.S. government customers, Freedom is its only foray to date into actually building an aircraft from scratch. The jet first emerged from a partnership with Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI, and also abbreviated TUSAS in Turkish), but SNC has been working on it independently for some years now.

“The Navy hasn’t really put out hard requirements yet. We’re expecting a draft RFP [request for proposals] soon, this fall, with a hard RFP by winter. That’s the latest we’ve heard from the Navy,” Fitzgerald said. “I think they’re still trying to figure out what their hard requirements are, which is why we’re here, trying to say, ‘Hey, make sure the aperture is open enough so that we can compete,’ because that’s what we want to do. That’s all we’re asking for is a shot at the table.”

Altogether, the Navy’s forthcoming UJTS competition is shaping up to be hotly contested, as well as an important watershed moment for how the service trains new naval aviators going forward.

Contact the author: [email protected]

The Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has rolled out a new pitch for a successor to the Navy’s T-45 Goshawk jet trainers. Interestingly, SNC’s proposal focuses heavily on the ability of its clean-sheet twin-engined Freedom jet design to meet certain carrier training requirements that the Navy has axed from its T-45 replacement plans.

SNC made a formal announcement about putting the Freedom jet forward for the Navy’s forthcoming Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) competition today, around the Tailhook Association’s main annual symposium, at which TWZ is in attendance. SNC has been working on the Freedom design in cooperation with Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI, and also abbreviated TUSAS in Turkish) for years now. Freedom was previously presented as a contender for the U.S. Force’s T-X trainer requirements, a competition Boeing won with what became the T-7A Redhawk. SNC has also teased the aircraft as a possible T-45 replacement in the past. TAI is not mentioned in the current pitch to the Navy.

The Navy currently has just under 200 T-45Cs in service, which are used to train future Navy and Marine aviators. The original T-45A variant, a carrier-based derivative of the British Aerospace (subsequently BAE Systems) Hawk jet trainer, began entering Navy service in 1991. The C model fleet includes a mixture of new-production and upgraded A-model jets with new avionics and glass cockpits. Other upgrades have been added to the jets over the years, as well. A proposed land-based T-45B was never produced.

“SNC’s Freedom Family of Training Systems” is “the only training aircraft capable of carrier touch-and-go and Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) to touchdown with a 16,000 hour airframe life,” a product card handed out at the Tailhook Association symposium declares. “Freedom delivers uncompromising training performance and significant lifecycle cost savings for the U.S. Navy training enterprise.”

Beyond the airframe life, SNC also asserts that Freedom offers a 40 percent lower lifecycle cost than the existing T-45, as well as the ability to perform 35,000 touch-and-goes and/or FCLP landings in that time – something we will come back to. The company also says the jet can fly 30 to 40 percent longer sorties and offers performance “representative” of 4th and 5th generation types, including the ability to pull down to -3 and up to +8 Gs, and reach an angle of attack up to 27 degrees.

“With a focus on efficient aero performance, low lifecycle cost, FCLPs to touchdown and UNS-ownership of Digital Technical Data Package (DPP) rights, Freedom stands ready to elevate naval aviation training standards by allowing the Navy to train the way you fight – zero compromise,” it adds.

“Its innovative design and robust reliability … eliminate the need for unplanned Service Life Extension Programs (SLEP),” according to a separate press release put out today. “Further, Freedom’s US Navy-owned digital design and modular open system architecture ensures that NAVAIR controls future upgrades for the life of the UJTS program including the capability for seamless third-party system integration.”

Of particular note here are the numerous references to touch-and-go and FCLP landings. The Navy’s current naval aviation training cycle utilizing the T-45 involves FCLP landings, which are conducted at airfields on land, but are structured in a way that “simulates, as near as practicable, the conditions encountered during carrier landing operations,” according to the service. This is then followed by touch-and-goes on an actual aircraft carrier, and then actual carrier landings and catapult departures.

In 2020, the Navy publicly disclosed that it was looking to axe requirements for the future UJTS aircraft to be capable of performing actual carrier landings and takeoffs. By 2023, the Navy had moved forward with that decision, but with FCLP and touch-and-go landings still part of the syllabus. Last year, it then emerged that the Navy was also looking to eliminate the FCLP requirement, cited as a key cost and schedule driver for UJTS, something that was confirmed when new requirements were publicly released in March. In the future, naval aviators may not see a carrier until they reach the Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) in charge of the aircraft type they have been assigned to fly.

Carrier-capable aircraft have to be designed in fundamentally different ways from their land-based counterparts, especially when it comes to the landing gear, which is typically heavily reinforced. Carrier landings are substantially harder on aircraft, overall, given the need to get down quickly in a very confined landing space that can be moving independently, coupled with the stress of catching an arrestor wire. Launch via catapult imparts additional stresses on airframes that land-based aircraft do not experience. Sustained operations at sea also require additional hardening against corrosion from saltwater exposure. All of this, in turn, can also make aircraft designed to operate from carriers more complex and expensive than similarly capable types that only need to fly from bases ashore.

Eliminating various carrier landing requirements immediately opens up a host of additional options for a new jet trainer, which could also be lower cost and lower risk. At the same time, there has already been criticism and concern for years now about the potential downstream impacts from cutting live training events from the naval aviator pipeline that cannot be fully recreated in any sort of virtualized environment.

SNC’s proposal taps into this entire debate and is presented as offering a hedge against the Navy changing course again in the future.

“It is clear to SNC that since early 2020, the Navy has been considering compromising its long-standing and important requirement to train with FCLP-to-landing,” the company told Aviation Week. “It is important to the Freedom Team that the U.S. Navy has an option to continue its essential FCLP training and avoid the unnecessary risk and cost associated with foregoing that requirement in the [Chief of Naval Air Training] syllabus.”

“As a clean-sheet design focused on the UJTS mission, the design features for FCLP-to-touchdown are minimal and affordable,” SNC further noted. “SNC believes FCLP-to-touchdown should be, at a minimum, a scored objective in the UJTS competition.”

Beyond the specifics of the Freedom design, it is certainly interesting to see a company openly buck a customer’s stated requirements. It does look set to make SNC’s proposal for UJTS distinct from the other competitors, which include a navalized version of the T-7 from Boeing, the TF-50N from Lockheed Martin and Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), and the M-346N offered by Textron and Leonardo. The TF-50N is based on KAI’s T-50, a losing entrant in the Air Force’s T-X competition, but an increasingly popular type worldwide (including in its FA-50 light combat jet form). In July, Textron and Leonardo also unveiled a new pitch to the Navy involving the M-346N, but rebranded as a Beechcraft product. Beechcraft is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Textron.

Boeing’s T-7, the Lockheed/KAI TF-50N, and the Textron/Leonardo M-346N “are not designed to take that type of beating [from FCLP landings and other carrier training], and would require re-engineering to the point where some industry officials have said UJTS would become an engineering and manufacturing development program,” Aviation Week noted in a report last year.

It is worth noting here that the Navy had previously wanted to phase out the T-45 by 2018 and that the current UJTS plan has itself been delayed. The goal had been to kick off a formal competition last year and pick a winner in 2026. The UJTS contract award date is now projected to come sometime in 2027.

“SNC has worked to support the Navy for more than 40 years and the Freedom Trainer program represents the culmination of our decades of experience and unwavering commitment to safety and superiority for the U.S. Navy,” Jon Piatt, executive vice president of SNC, said in a statement today. “We are proud to leverage our deep expertise and innovative spirit to deliver a training solution that not only meets the Navy’s current needs but also anticipates future demands. This is a testament to our dedication to providing cutting-edge technology and superior performance for our nation’s sons and daughters who will train as naval aviators for generations.”

It remains to be seen what the Navy will pick as the successor to its T-45. With SNC’s Freedom in the running, there is a potential that the winner of the UJTS competition will still have at least some capacity to perform FCLP landings, whether the Navy requires pilots in training to perform them or not.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Several groups of professors in the United States are suing the Trump administration over its policy of arresting, detaining, cancelling visas, and deporting students who participate in pro-Palestinian advocacy.

The crackdown on free speech is creating a chilling effect across US academia, argues Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which is one of the organisations that brought the lawsuit.

Jaffer tells host Steve Clemons that the issue is much wider than the rights of non-citizens in the country. The government’s actions have the effect of “stifling a political viewpoint that the government doesn’t like”.

July 21 (UPI) — The following account was presented by Jihyang Kim at a recent forum of the North Korean Young Leaders’ Assembly held at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C. The assembly is an annual event gathering young North Korean escapees to engage with the U.S. executive and congressional branches, think tanks and NGOs.

My name is Jihyang Kim. I escaped from North Korea in the spring of 2012, when I was 19 years old. Today, I stand before you not only as a Fulbright scholar pursuing my master’s degree in the United States, but also as a survivor — and a witness — of the brutal realities of life under a communist regime. I want to share with you how the ideology of communism stripped me and millions of others of our basic rights, dignity, and dreams.

1: North Korea – A life determined by the state

Growing up under North Korea’s totalitarian rule, I was taught that the state came before the individual, that loyalty to the regime was more important than personal dreams and that questioning the system was dangerous.

As a young girl, I dreamed of becoming a novelist. I was fascinated by literature and wanted to study Japanese to read detective novels in their original language. Despite being the top student in my class, I couldn’t apply for the language school because my family couldn’t afford the required bribe. In North Korea, merit is meaningless without political loyalty or financial backing.

This was my first clear experience of how the system worked — not for the people, but against them. The promise of equality under communism was a lie. Instead, I saw corruption, oppression and injustice. That cognitive dissonance planted the seed of rebellion in me. I began to question the system I had been raised to worship.

The second turning point came in 2009, when the North Korean regime implemented a disastrous currency reform. Overnight, our savings became worthless. I still remember seeing the old bills scattered in the market like trash. Inflation soared and food vanished. My family starved. I lie on the cold floor, too weak to move, and decided to risk everything for a chance at life. I realized if I stayed, I would die, anyway, not with dignity, but in silence.

2: China – Escaping the regime, entering another cage

Crossing the border into China did not mean freedom. It meant becoming stateless — an invisible person with no rights, no protection and no home. I was no longer hungry, but I was no longer human, either. The Chinese government does not recognize North Korean defectors as refugees, so we are hunted like criminals, deported if caught. I became one of the many North Korean women sold into forced marriages, treated as property and silenced through violence.

At 19, I watched university students — my peers– walk past me in the streets. I didn’t envy their clothes or phones. I envied their freedom to dream. I heard villagers joke about “buying” North Korean brides and brag about beating them if they tried to escape. I lived in fear, not only for myself, but for my baby. I became a mother in China, but I could not offer my son legal protection, education or safety. I was a mother in name, but powerless in reality.

3: Still trapped in the system’s shadows

Today, I’m grateful. I am studying in the United States, supported by countless people who believe in me. But I have not forgotten the millions still trapped under the same system that nearly destroyed me. North Korea’s regime continues to control every aspect of its citizens’ lives: movement, thoughts, speech, even love.

In China, over 10,000 North Korean women remain trapped in forced relationships, their human rights violated daily (North Korea Human Rights Information Center, 2023). In 2017, South Korean news media reported that 20% of these women are forced into online sexual exploitation. Worse still, around 10,000 children born to these undocumented women have no legal identity. They cannot go to school, receive medical care or even prove their existence. These are not isolated tragedies. These are the long shadows cast by communist authoritarianism.

4: Why this matters

People often ask me why I risked my life to escape. My answer is simple: because I wanted to live with dignity. Under communism, I was denied that right. The ideology promised equality, but delivered only fear, hunger and silence. It punished ambition, crushed individuality and destroyed families.

What I experienced is not just a personal story — it is a warning. Communism, when weaponized by dictatorship, erases the human spirit. It uses beautiful words like “justice” and “equality” to hide systems of control and cruelty.

I am no longer a voiceless girl hiding in a dark room. I am here to speak for those who still cannot. I am here to tell you that the victims of communism are not just numbers in a textbook. They are children who starve, women who are sold and dreamers who are silenced.

I survived. And now, I speak — not because I am brave, but because silence is complicity.

Thank you.

Jihyang Kim, a North Korean escapee and Fulbright scholar, was born in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province. She escaped from North Korea in 2012, driven by the famine and skyrocketing inflation that followed the country’s disastrous currency reform. After fleeing to China, where she lived as a non-person and suffered exploitation for several years, she managed to reach South Korea in 2016. Despite only having an elementary education, Jihyang excelled academically in South Korea, earning numerous awards. In college, she championed social integration between South Koreans and North Korean escapees. Jihyang is passionate about education, which she believes is the foundation for personal and community transformation. She is preparing for the opportunity to empower North Korean youth with high-quality, democratic education after reunification.

A new Freedom Flotilla ship, the Handala, has departed from Italy for an attempt to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza and deliver essential aid. The last vessel to make the journey, the Madleen, was seized by Israeli forces in international waters in June.

The trail hugs every curve of the cliffside. On my left, the Mediterranean Sea swirls beside craggy rocks, while flowering plants unfurl on my right. A quarter of France’s coast is lined with similar sentiers des douaniers (customs officers’ paths), which were once used to patrol the sea. The difference on this trail is that I’m wearing nothing but my backpack.

Off the coast of the southern French resort town of Hyères, Île du Levant is home to the only naturist community of its kind, the Domaine Naturiste d’Héliopolis. For 93 years, this rustic Eden has lured free-spirited lovers of nature and authenticity, as unabashedly naked as Adam and Eve before they ate the forbidden fruit. On every visit, I’ve found that when people shed their clothes, they shed their pretence. Unlike traditional naturist retreats where nudity is de rigueur, Héliopolis is peppered with clothing-optional spots. This makes it the ideal place for travellers to dip their toes into the naturist way of life.

Social media platform says the Indian government ordered it last week to block 2,355 accounts, including two Reuters handles.

X says it is “deeply concerned about ongoing press censorship in India” after New Delhi ordered the social media platform to block more than 2,300 accounts, including two Reuters news agency handles.

X restored the Reuters News account in India on Sunday, a day after it said it was asked by the Indian government to suspend it, citing a legal demand.

Many other blocked accounts were also restored, with New Delhi denying its role in the takedown.

In a post on Tuesday, X, promoted by billionaire Elon Musk, said the Indian government on July 3 ordered it to block 2,355 accounts in India under Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act.

“Non-compliance risked criminal liability. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology demanded immediate action – within one hour – without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice,” X said.

“After public outcry, the government requested X to unblock @Reuters and @ReutersWorld.”

On July 3, 2025, the Indian government ordered X to block 2,355 accounts in India, including international news outlets like @Reuters and @ReutersWorld, under Section 69A of the IT Act. Non-compliance risked criminal liability. The Ministry of Electronics and Information…

— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) July 8, 2025

According to a post on X post by the ANI news agency, Reuters’ partner in India, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said the government did not issue “any fresh blocking order” on July 3 and had “no intention to block any prominent international news channels”, including Reuters and Reuters World.

“The moment Reuters and Reuters World were blocked on X platform in India, immediately the government wrote to X to unblock them,” the post said. “The government continuously engaged and vigorously pursued with X from the late night of July 5, 2025.”

The spokesperson said X had “unnecessarily exploited technicalities involved around the process and didn’t unblock” the accounts.

India’s IT law, passed in 2000, allows designated government officials to demand the takedown of content from social media platforms they deem to violate local laws, including on the grounds of national security or if a post threatens public order.

X, formerly known as Twitter, has long been at odds with India’s government over content-removal requests. In March, the company sued the federal government over a new government website the company says expands takedown powers to “countless” government officials. The case is continuing.

India, the world’s biggest democracy, regularly ranks among the top five countries for the number of requests made by a government to remove social media content.

Rights groups say freedom of expression and free press is under threat in India since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.

New Delhi has regularly imposed blanket internet shutdowns during periods of unrest.

In April, the government launched a sweeping crackdown on social media, banning more than a dozen Pakistani YouTube channels for allegedly spreading “provocative” content following an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. Many of those have been restored.

New Delhi has also imposed intermittent internet outages in the northeastern state of Manipur since 2023 in the wake of ethnic violence.

The government has justified internet and social media bans as ways to curb disinformation in a country where hundreds of millions have access to some of the cheapest mobile internet rates in the world.

In its post on Tuesday, X said it was exploring all legal options available over censorship, but added that it was “restricted by Indian law in its ability to bring legal challenges”.

“We urge affected users to pursue legal remedies through the courts,” it said.

Charlie English begins “The CIA Book Club” by describing a 1970s technical manual: a dull cover, as uninviting as anything. A book that practically begs you to put it back on the shelf and move on.

Which was exactly the point. Secreted inside the technobabble dust jacket was a Polish-language copy of George Orwell’s “1984,” the boring cover a deliberate misdirection to deter prying eyes. The false front is a bit of skullduggery that harks back to a world where conspiracy to escape detection was a part of everyday life. A world where literature could be revolutionary, “a reservoir of freedom.”

English, formerly a journalist for the Guardian, specializes in writing about how art and literature are used to fight extremism: “The Storied City,” published in the U.K. as “The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu,” spotlights librarians who heroically saved priceless manuscripts of West African history from al Qaeda; “The Gallery of Miracles and Madness” traces the “insane” artists who influenced the early 20th century Modernism movement and Hitler’s attempts to stamp out their art — and them. His new book takes us through five decades of Poles fighting Soviet domination and Communist propaganda with a potent weapon: literature.

Even from the vantage point of the 21st century, when we know what became of the USSR, English’s book reads like a thriller. There are CIA suits, secret police, faceless bureaucrats and backstabbing traitors lurking in these pages. We face tensions between paramilitary cowboys and prudent intellectuals, between paper-pushing accountants and survivors saving a culture. While reading, I worried about figures like Helena Łuczywo, who edited and published an underground newspaper, and Mirosław Chojecki, who smuggled books and printing supplies into Poland. As with the best spy novels, we know the good guy is going to win while reading “The CIA Book Club,” but how English gets us there is exciting.

His best chapters follow the protests in the Gdańsk shipyards that led to the Solidarity trade union. A better future shimmers on the page when Lech Wałęsa climbs over a fence as an unemployed electrician, taps someone on the shoulder and becomes “the face of the Polish revolution.” (Ten years later, he became president of Poland, too.) In the violent crackdown that followed the momentary blossoming of freedom after Gdańsk, we feel the heartbreak and fear of the people. We hope again when fighters like Łuczywo begin printing a scant newsletter whose “main job was just to exist” and remind people they weren’t alone.

The book is gripping, but it doesn’t quite deliver on its subtitled promise to “win the Cold War with forbidden literature.” The story English has researched and put together focuses almost entirely on Poland’s fight for freedom from the USSR. Of course, the CIA’s funding of smuggling illicit literature into the Eastern Bloc is an important story, and a nearly forgotten one. As English mentions in the epilogue, while “the book program’s latter-day budget stood at around $2 million to $4 million annually, [the Afghan operation] by 1987 was running at a cost of $700 million a year, taking up 80 percent of the overseas budget of the clandestine service.” Apparently, an operation costing nearly 200 times the other deserves nearly 200 times the credit as well. The result is that the power of inexpensive books was swept under the rug in favor of expensive shows of force.

Still, the impressive power of the book club might have been better elucidated if details about its impact in other Eastern Bloc countries were brought into the story. The focus on Poland obscures what was happening in the USSR. English focused on Poland because the country had a long history of underground revolutionary culture; when the USSR turned independent Poland into a client state known as the People’s Republic of Poland, the Poles already knew how to go underground to fight back. The lifestyle doublespeak people used to survive under successive dictatorships in Eastern Europe came a little more easily to Poles, who had practiced it before. When the CIA offered funding, they were ready. Still, it would have been nice to see how “1984” inspired people in Ukraine or Moldova or Kyrgyzstan. If books are an answer to dictatorships — and as strong as “an organization packed with spooks and paramilitaries who fought in warzones” — it would be inspiring to see more of that. Hopefully a sequel is in the planning stages.

What this book does incredibly well is document an oral history of Polish resistance that has, until now, only been told in bits and pieces. There is archival research in here, but it is in the nature of dictatorships to destroy evidence of their crimes. Fortunately, English talked to many of the people who were there, publishing underground newspapers and smuggling in illicit literature. What information has been declassified — and much of it hasn’t been — bolsters the memories of survivors.

One of the most interesting details of “Book Club” is not that books inspired a nation but which books did. Philosophical tracts and political satires were smuggled in, of course; Poland received its share of “Animal Farm” and “1984” and “Brave New World.” But just as important to the Poles living under Soviet dictatorship were art books, fashion magazines, religious texts, lighthearted novels and regular newspapers. More influential than anti-Communist diatribes were the reminders that there was a world outside Soviet propaganda; each book read was a bid to avoid brainwashing, to not become a tool of the state.

This literary history is a prescient one. As book bans increase around the United States and peaceful protests are met with state violence here in Los Angeles, a tale of when stories saved the day is inherently hopeful. This book is a reminder that words are powerful and that stories matter. Sometimes the most rebellious thing one can do is read a book.

Castellanos Clark, a writer and historian in Los Angeles, is the author of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.”

Grigory Skvortsov, who denies wrongdoing in sharing details of the bunkers, will serve his sentence in a maximum-security prison.

A Russian court has found a photographer guilty of treason and jailed him for 16 years for allegedly sharing information about Soviet-era underground bunkers with an American journalist.

The court in the western city of Perm sentenced Grigory Skvortsov on Thursday after a closed-door trial, without giving more details on the charges. Skvortsov, who was arrested by Russian authorities in 2023, has denied any wrongdoing.

The court said Skvortsov would serve his sentence in a maximum-security corrective prison camp.

It also published a photograph of him in a glass courtroom cage dressed in black as he listened to the verdict being read out.

In a December 2024 interview with Pervy Otdel, a group of exiled Russian lawyers, Skvortsov said he had passed on information that was either publicly available online or available to buy from the Russian author of a book about Soviet-era underground facilities for use in the event of a nuclear war.

Skvortsov did not name the US journalist he was working with in the interview with Pervy Otdel.

Since its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022, Russia has radically expanded its definition of what constitutes state secrets and has jailed academics, scientists and journalists it deems to have contravened the new rules.

Skvortsov, who specialises in architecture photography, has also spoken out publicly against Moscow’s military offensive on Ukraine. He has alleged that Federal Security Service (FSB) officers beat him during his arrest in November 2023 and said they tried to force him under duress to admit guilt to treason.

An online support group for Skvortsov said on Telegram after the verdict that “a miracle had not happened” and the photographer’s only hope of getting out of jail was to be exchanged as part of a prisoner swap between Russia and the West.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning rights organisation Memorial has listed Skvortsov as among those subjected to criminal prosecution that is likely “politically motivated and marked by serious legal violations”.

Earlier this year, a Russian court sentenced four journalists to five and a half years in prison each after convicting them of “extremism” linked to their alleged work with an organisation founded by the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

WASHINGTON — An undocumented man from Guatemala who has leukemia postponed chemotherapy because he was afraid to go to the hospital.

A Mexican grandmother packed most of her belongings into boxes, in case she is deported.

A Pentecostal church in East Los Angeles has lost nearly half of its in-person membership.

Across California and the U.S., immigrants are responding to the Trump administration’s unrelenting enforcement raids by going into lockdown. Activities that were once a regular or even mundane part of life — taking kids to school, buying groceries, driving — have become daunting as immigrants who lack legal authorization grapple with how to avoid arrest and deportation.

To stay safe, some immigrants have swapped in-person activities with digital approximations. Others are simply shutting themselves away from society.

“It’s a harmful form of racial profiling combined with the suspension of constitutional rights and due process. That’s why many families are staying at home,” said Victor Narro, a professor and project director for the UCLA Labor Center.

Pastor Carlos Rincon said that about 400 people used to attend his church every week. Now, half as many attend and viewership of live-streamed services on Facebook and YouTube has increased.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Pastor Carlos Rincon, who leads a Pentecostal church in East Los Angeles, said that about 400 people used to attend his church every week, people with roots in Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras. Now, half as many attend and viewership of live-streamed services on Facebook and YouTube has increased. Some prayer groups meet on Zoom.

In January, the Trump administration said immigration agents were free to make arrests in sensitive locations once considered off limits, such as hospitals, schools and churches.

At Rincon’s church — which he asked not be named for concern about retaliation — fear has colored life in ways large and small.

A congregant in his late 20s who has leukemia postponed his chemotherapy, afraid he could be caught and deported to Guatemala. After he decided to reschedule the upcoming treatment, church leaders agreed they will take turns staying with him at the hospital.

Pastor Carlos Rincon says he has had to cancel a music class for children due to the raids. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The Trump administration has said immigration agents are free to make arrests in locations once considered off limits such as hospitals, schools and churches. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

A half-day program to provide resources for landscapers and a music class for children were canceled this month after many said they were too afraid to attend. Rincon restarted the music class last week for those who could attend.

On Wednesday, after neighbors told him that immigration agents had been lurking around the area, he warned families against attending a regularly scheduled in-person church service.

Five miles away at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Father Ricardo Gonzalez said church attendance is down at least 30%. The church doesn’t live-stream Mass, though he’s considering it.

Gonzalez said parishioners expect him to have answers, but as an immigrant green card holder himself, he too doesn’t know how to react if immigration agents show up at the church.

“If I get arrested, am I going to be thrown from the country?” he said. “Who is going to help me out?”

Pastor Carlos Rincon and his wife, Amparo, sing and pray during a livestream service at their church.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

For weeks, agents have been arresting those who show up at courthouses for their immigration proceedings.

Volunteers at USC, UCLA, UC Irvine and UC Law San Francisco responded by establishing a free hotline to help people file motions to move their appointments online. The service was the idea of Olu Orange, a lawyer and USC political science and international relations professor who runs the Agents of Change Civil Rights Advocacy Initiative.

Since the hotline (888-462-5211) went live June 15, volunteers have responded to nearly 4,000 calls and helped more than 300 people fill out the form to move their hearings online.

On Friday, Orange answered a call from a girl who sounded about 12 years old, whose parent had been picked up by immigration agents.

“She saw this number on social media and she called and she said, ‘What can I do?’” Orange said. He gave her the number for CHIRLA, a local immigrant rights nonprofit.

Luz Gallegos, executive director of TODEC Legal Center in the Inland Empire, said the pandemic prepared some rural and elderly residents for the current reality because it taught people to use technology — “to go virtual.” Now they have WiFi access and know how to use Zoom.

Some, though, also fear staying digitally connected.

Gallegos said many people who call TODEC’s hotline say they are changing phone companies because they are afraid of being tracked by immigration agents. Others say they’re swapping cellphones for pagers.

A woman identified only as Doña Chela at her home Tuesday. She has packed up her possessions planning to return to her hometown in Michoacan, Mexico, for the first time in more than 25 years. But her brother said it wasn’t safe.

(Julie Leopo / For The Times)

Many of the immigrants served by TODEC now leave their homes only for work, Gallegos said. They have groceries delivered or run to the store when they think border agents are least likely to be on patrol. Before schools let out for the summer, some parents switched their children to online classes.

Some Inland Empire farmworkers now won’t grab their own mail from community mailboxes, Gallegos said, so TODEC has mobilized volunteers to drop off mail, give people rides and help with interpretation needs.

One person helped by the nonprofit is Doña Chela, an undocumented 66-year-old woman who asked to be identified by her nickname.

Many months ago, Doña Chela packed up her possessions after making plans to return to her hometown in Michoacan, Mexico, for the first time since she arrived in the U.S. in 1999. But in April, her brother called to say it wasn’t safe there, that cartel groups had taken over the neighborhood and were extorting residents.

Her husband, a U.S. citizen, has dementia. She thought of moving instead to a border town such as Mexicali, where she and her husband could still be near their three adult U.S.-born daughters.

Doña Chela stands by the packed luggage in her home. (Julie Leopo / For The Times)

Doña Chela waters her home garden. “If it wasn’t for this garden I would not know what to do with myself,” she said in Spanish. (Julie Leopo / For The Times)

But then her husband’s condition began to decline, and now starting over feels too difficult. Even so, she has chosen to keep her clothes, pots and pans, and jewelry packed away — just in case.

Doña Chela doesn’t leave her home except for emergencies. Her daughters bring her groceries because she has stopped driving. She no longer goes to church or makes big batches of tamales for community reunions. She barely sleeps, thinking that agents could burst through her door any time.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said, crying. “I will wait here until they kick me out.”

Her only distraction from constant anxiety is the lush garden she tends to daily, with mangoes, nopales, limes and a variety of herbs.

Gallegos, of TODEC, said the situation faced by Doña Chela and so many others bring to mind a song by Los Tigres del Norte — “La Jaula de Oro.” The golden cage.

“Our community is in a golden cage,” she said. “I hope it’s not too late when this country realizes they need our immigrant workforce to sustain our economy.”

St. John’s Community Health, one of the largest nonprofit community healthcare providers in Los Angeles County that caters to low-income and working-class residents, launched a home visitation program after it surveyed patients and found many canceling appointments “solely due to fear of being apprehended by ICE.”

The clinic, which serves L.A., the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley, said that since the immigration raids began, more than a third of all patients didn’t show up or canceled their appointments.

Some of those who canceled signed up for telehealth or home visits performed by a small team of medical staff, according to Jim Mangia, the clinic’s chief executive. The clinic is adding another home visitation team to double the amount of visits they perform.

Community coalitions are stepping in to help immigrants who can’t afford to hide. OC Rapid Response Network, for instance, raised enough funds through payment app Venmo to send 14 street vendors home.

Robb Smith stands by the food he delivered after he unloaded his truck at a food drop site on Monday in Paramount.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

Robb Smith, who runs Alley Cat Deliveries, said he has seen requests for grocery deliveries grow by about 25%.

He doesn’t ask his customers if they’re immigrants in hiding, but there are signs that people are afraid to leave their house. One woman, who said she was making an inquiry for a friend, asked him if he saw any ICE officers when he was picking up items at Costco.

1

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1. Tito Rodriguez helps unload Robb Smith’s truck of drieg goods and groceries at a drop site on Monday in Paramount. 2. Robb Smith, left, unloads his truck with the help of Tito Rodriguez at the drop site on Monday in Paramount. 3. Robb Smith carries a box of groceries down a driveway Monday in Long Beach. He founded and runs Alley Cat Deliveries. (Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

Glen Curado, the founder and chief executive of World Harvest Food Bank in Los Angeles, said there has been a significant drop in people coming in to pick up groceries in person. Up to 100 families visit the food bank on a weekday, down from the usual high of 150, he said.

The food bank has a program, called Cart With A Heart, in which people can donate $50 toward fresh produce, protein and other staples to feed two families for a week. The donors can then take those groceries to people sheltering in place.

“It’s almost like a war scene,” Curado said. “You hide here. I’ll go out and I’ll get it for you, and I’ll bring it back — that mentality.”

Castillo reported from Washington and Wong from San Francisco. Times staff writer Melissa Gomez in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

For years we’ve read stories about antidemocratic countries abroad — supreme leaders acting with impunity, masked agents rounding up residents, troops in the streets, crackdowns on peaceful protests, intimidation and arrests of opposition figures, show-of-force military parades and political assassinations.

For a time this month, I was abroad. And the antidemocratic country I was reading about was my own.

Tuning out the news on vacation proved impossible. Every day brought another must-read outrage, reflecting the punitive policies and hateful climate that wannabe strongman Donald Trump has fostered in the United States.

From the vantage of an ocean away, even as a visitor in a developing country with problems of its own, I read about events back home with the clarity of the proverbial 38,000-feet view: The news added up to a picture of a proud nation slipping into the authoritarian ways modeled by the kleptocratic dictators that President Trump so admires.

For perspective, I reread President Reagan’s farewell address: Trump has taken America far from the shining “city upon a hill” that Reagan, yesteryear’s Republican icon, evoked. And far from our self-image as a land of immigrants and a bastion of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Reagan’s city on a hill was “teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.” If there had to be walls, he said, “the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

That was then.

As I flew off for my break, the U.S. news was dominated by the tawdry breakup of Trump and “first buddy” Elon Musk. But then that sophomoric saga was overshadowed by more serious stuff — starting with military-style raids throughout Los Angeles by thuggish agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, rounding up migrants, including children, for detention and deportation.

It’s a drama that continues from big-city L.A. to small-town Great Barrington, Mass., in heartland hotels, meatpacking plants and restaurants. Descriptions of the shock troops have become too familiar: Many wear face masks and no badges to identify themselves. They often don’t wear recognizable uniforms. They have no warrants but lots of guns. And migrants are disappearing into their unmarked vehicles. To where, families aren’t told; when they find out, it’s often too late to help their loved ones assert their due process rights.

On Day 2 of my vacation, Trump took the all but unprecedented step of federalizing the California National Guard to act against protesters in L.A., over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass and despite police assurances that local law enforcement could handle even the most confrontational of demonstrators. Next came the Marines.

That only seemed to exacerbate the unrest, as drama king Trump, who governs as if he were still scripting a reality TV show, surely intended. With Los Angeles as a testing ground, he may be seeking a pretext to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act so he can freely deploy the military nationally against any who oppose him. He toyed with the idea during his first presidency. Back then he was constrained by responsible advisors; now he has surrounded himself with sycophants.

Meanwhile, he’s as unnervingly erratic on his deportation policy as on tariffs. First Trump posted that he’d lighten up on farm, restaurant and hotel raids because those industries complained that they were losing “very good, long time workers.” But days later, he ordered ICE to expand its efforts in L.A. and other big cities where Democrats, he lied, “use Illegal Aliens” to cheat in elections and steal jobs from citizens.

Amid the mayhem, the commander in chief traveled to Fort Bragg, N.C., and disgracefully crossed the line that, since the founding, has kept the military out of politics. He goaded the young troops he addressed — reportedly vetted for their political leanings — to cross it too. He started by boasting about reversing former President Joe Biden’s deletion of Confederate traitors’ names from military bases, and throughout encouraged boos against Biden, Newsom, Bass and Democrats generally, and applause for himself. He wore a MAGA cap. Such merch was on sale.

Days later, he got the military parade he’d long wanted. Or maybe not: It was more historical than martial; instead of goose-stepping through the capital, the troops ambled, smiled and made hand hearts. And it was sparsely attended. The nationwide “No Kings” counterprotests were not.

The toll that Trump’s overreach has taken on America’s reputation, especially in just a few weeks in June, has been heavy. Five Democratic politicians detained or arrested. An uncountable number of workers — not criminals, and many here legally — removed and sometimes disappeared from their families, jobs, communities and even the country. Armed military facing down peaceful protesters and protecting ICE and FBI agents as they snatch people off the street without due process.

On Tuesday, California Sen. Alex Padilla — who five days earlier had been wrestled to the floor and handcuffed by federal agents for interrupting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as she claimed Trump’s actions were liberating L.A. from socialists — delivered an emotional speech in the Senate. In U.S. history, he said, “we’ve had tumult. But we’ve never had a tyrant as a commander in chief.”

Until now.

Reagan ended his farewell with a sentiment that was inarguable 36 years ago: America, he said, “is still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom.” No longer. Even many citizens live in fear for their freedoms; I’ve heard from them. And I’ve felt it myself — no more so than when I was out of the country, looking back from afar.

@Jackiekcalmes @jackiecalmes.bsky.social @jkcalmes