Zohran Mamdani to Kristen Welker (Meet the Press, 6/29/25): “Freedom and justice and safety are things that, to have meaning, have to be applied to all people, and that includes Israelis and Palestinians as well.”

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker (6/29/25) showed courage by interviewing Zohran Mamdani, the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary for New York, after he’d been widely attacked by corporate media. But unfortunately, she fell into a trap that has been set repeatedly in recent months to smear Mamdani. She asked him to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” claiming—without offering evidence—that the term “intifada” refers to “violence against Jews.”

I doubt Welker is an Arabic linguist. But as a Palestinian journalist who covered the Intifada and helped introduce the term to Western media, I am appalled by this misrepresentation. Not only is the translation wrong, it’s an insult to the thousands of New York Jews who voted for Mamdani.

For the record, intifada translates to “shake off.” Palestinians used the term to describe their popular resistance against an Israeli occupation of their land that had no end in sight. It emerged amid a steady expansion of illegal settlements, which were systematically turning the occupied territories into a Swiss cheese–like landscape, precisely designed to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

As someone who reported on the Intifada and explained its meaning to international audiences, I can say unequivocally: Intifada was used by Palestinian activists to describe a civil resistance movement rooted in dignity and national self-determination.

Metaphor for liberation

The Arabic-language version of the website of the US Holocaust Museum translated the Warsaw Ghetto “Uprising” as “Intifada”—until blogger Juan Cole (5/1/24) pointed this out. (Creative Commons photo: Phil Kalina.)

Let’s begin with the word’s literal meaning. As noted, in Arabic, intifada simply means “shaking off.” Since many—including Jewish leaders, Christian Zionists and GOP officials—have distorted the peaceful intentions behind the word, I turned to a source that might resonate more clearly with people of faith: the Bible.

In the Arabic version of the Old Testament, the word intifada appears three times, both as a noun and a verb. Looking at its English equivalents in the New International Version (though other translations are similar) offers enlightening context:

• Judges 16:20: “Samson awoke from his sleep and thought, ‘I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.’”
• Isaiah 52:2: “Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.”
• Psalm 109:23: “I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust.”

Each of these examples uses the term intifada—shaking off oppression, captivity or anguish—as a metaphor for liberation, not violence.

While Google Translate and other modern tools often render intifada as “popular uprising,” its literal meaning—“to shake off”—captures the spirit with which Palestinians adopted the term. When they launched the first Intifada in 1987—after 20 years under a foreign military occupation—it was an expression of a desire to wake up, rise and throw off the chains of subjugation. It is not inherently antisemitic, nor does it refer by default to terrorism or violence.

While accompanying international journalists covering the protests, I often discussed this with them. In Jerusalem, I explained to LA Times bureau chief Dan Fisher, the  Washington Post’s Glenn Frankel and the New York Times’ John Kifner what Palestinians meant by the word. I told them that throughout Palestinian patriotic literature and slogans, two distinctions were always made: The Intifada was a protest against the Israeli occupation, not against Jews or the existence of Israel, and that the ultimate goal was to achieve an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Fisher, Frankel and Kifner included these clarifications in their reports, helping the Arabic term intifada enter the global lexicon with its intended meaning.

‘Bringing terror to the streets of America’

To define “intifada,” Fox News (5/23/25) brought on Douglas Murray, who calls Islam an “infection” and declares that “all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.”

But today, as protests against Israel’s devastating war on Gaza mount, the word is being twisted. When Rep. Elise Stefanik grilled the presidents of UPenn, Harvard, and MIT in December 2023 about pro-Palestinian chants invoking “intifada,” she equated the term with “genocide of Jews.”

The university presidents faltered. They should have said clearly: Genocide against Jews—or any people—is abhorrent. But intifada is not synonymous with genocide. To equate a call to end the Israeli military occupation with a call for genocide or violence against Jews is a gross distortion—a bizarre reversal that paints the victims as aggressors.

And yet this distortion persists. [Gillibrand] Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labeled Mamdani antisemitic. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt—who likely doesn’t speak Arabic—claimed on X that intifada is “explicit incitement to violence.” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) added that the word is “well understood to refer to the violent terror attacks.” Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told WNYC public radio (6/26/25), “The global intifada is a statement that means destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.”

Media echoed the politicians’ misrepresentations of intifada. “Many Jews see it as a call to violence against Israeli civilians,” ABC (6/29/25) reported. “Many Jews consider it a call to violence, a nod to deadly attacks on civilians in Israel by Palestinians in uprisings in the 1980s and 2000s,” wrote the New York Times (6/25/25). Of course, “many Jews” do not hear the word that way—but the more important question is, what is the accurate understanding of the word as used by Palestinians?

Fox News (5/23/25) didn’t mince words: “‘Intifada’ Means Bringing Terror to the Streets of America,” it said in a headline, citing notorious Islamophobe Douglas Murray. To the New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (7/1/25), “What Intifada Really Means” is “giving moral comfort to people who deliberately murder innocent Jews.”

Even liberal podcast host Donny Deutsch repeated the same claim while speaking on MSNBC (Morning Joe, 6/30/25):

I’m outraged that we have a candidate for mayor of New York, Mr. Mamdani, that cannot walk back or cannot condemn the words “globalize the intifada” and his nuance of, “Well, it means different things for different people.” Well, let me tell you what it means to a Jew—it means violence.

Brutal suppression of protest

The First Intifada in the Gaza Strip, December 21, 1987 (photo: Efi Sharir).

The first Intifada embraced principles of nonviolent resistance championed by Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. My cousin, Mubarak Awad, who established the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, encouraged boycotts of Israeli products, labor strikes and grassroots economic development in preparation for statehood. He translated, printed and distributed Arabic translations of Gene Sharp’s writings on nonviolence throughout the occupied territories. Mubarak was deported on the eve of the Intifada by then–Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

After Shamir came Yitzhak Rabin, who called publicly to “break the bones” of Palestinian stone throwers. During the first Intifada, Israeli soldiers and settlers responded to the nonfatal protests with extreme violence. In the first phase of the uprising—a little more than a year—332 Palestinians were killed, along with 12 Israelis (Middle East Monitor, 12/8/16).

This brutality did not suppress the protests, but merely escalated the violence: At the end of six years, more than 1,500 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, and 400 Israelis—18 of whom were children—were dead, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.

The same pattern recurred in the second Intifada: Only after the initial protests were met with massively disproportionate force did Palestinians, led by Hamas, turn to suicide bombing as a desperation tactic (Al Jazeera, 9/28/20). To treat the response to the brutal suppression of protest as though it represented the essential nature of intifada is intellectually lazy and politically cynical.

Zohran Mamdani never used the words “global intifada.” But he refused to denounce calls for the world to wake up and speak out against atrocities in Gaza. His victory in the Democratic primary—supported in part by Jewish New Yorkers—shows he is neither antisemitic nor willing to renounce an Arabic word that has been hijacked and misused by people who would rather Palestinians remain silent and submissive under occupation.

Research assistance: Shirlynn Chan

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Daoud Kuttab.

The journalists could be jailed for up to three years for violating the law on gatherings and demonstrations. In the indictment, reviewed by CPJ, prosecutors argue that the journalists were participating in an illegal meeting as protesters. Photographs in which their press credentials and cameras were not visible were submitted as evidence to support this charge.

“This trial has been invented as a scare tactic to intimidate and deter all journalists in Turkey from reporting from the field. Experienced journalists should not be forced to explain in court why they were photographing Turkey’s biggest protests in a decade, in its biggest city,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should drop the charges against the five photojournalists who already suffer enough in trying to capture images of historic events while repeatedly being beaten, tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets.”

On March 24, Istanbul police raided the homes of Agence France-Presse’s Yasin Akgül, local NOW Haber TV channel’s Ali Onur Tosun, and freelancers Bülent Kılıç, Zeynep Kuray, and Hayri Tunç, as well as two photographers employed by local municipalities, Kuruluş Arı and Gökhan Kam.

All seven were arrested and then released on March 27, pending their April 18 trial.

Unrest broke out on March 19 following the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is seen as a potential challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

CPJ’s email to Istanbul’s chief prosecutor requesting comment did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The journalists could be jailed for up to three years for violating the law on gatherings and demonstrations. In the indictment, reviewed by CPJ, prosecutors argue that the journalists were participating in an illegal meeting as protesters. Photographs in which their press credentials and cameras were not visible were submitted as evidence to support this charge.

“This trial has been invented as a scare tactic to intimidate and deter all journalists in Turkey from reporting from the field. Experienced journalists should not be forced to explain in court why they were photographing Turkey’s biggest protests in a decade, in its biggest city,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should drop the charges against the five photojournalists who already suffer enough in trying to capture images of historic events while repeatedly being beaten, tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets.”

On March 24, Istanbul police raided the homes of Agence France-Presse’s Yasin Akgül, local NOW Haber TV channel’s Ali Onur Tosun, and freelancers Bülent Kılıç, Zeynep Kuray, and Hayri Tunç, as well as two photographers employed by local municipalities, Kuruluş Arı and Gökhan Kam.

All seven were arrested and then released on March 27, pending their April 18 trial.

Unrest broke out on March 19 following the detention of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is seen as a potential challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

CPJ’s email to Istanbul’s chief prosecutor requesting comment did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Treks to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, which spans 2,088 acres near the border with Mexico, revealed an understory alive with even more birdsong, from the wo-woo-ooo of white-tipped doves to the CHA-CHA-LAC-A that gives that tropical chicken its common name. The preserve is one of the last remnants of the Tamaulipan thorn forest, a dense mosaic of at least 1,200 plants, from poky shrubs to trees like mesquite, acacia, hackberry, ebony, and brasil. They once covered more than 1 million acres on both sides of the Rio Grande, where ocelots, jaguars, and jaguarundis prowled amid 519 known varieties of birds and 316 kinds of butterflies. But the rich, alluvial soil that allowed such wonders to thrive drew developers, who arrived with the completion of a railroad in 1904. Before long, they began clearing land, building canals, and selling plots in the “Magic Valley” to farmers, including Dale’s great-great grandfather. His own father drove one of the bulldozers that cleared some of the last coastal tracts in the 1950s. 

Today, less than 10 percent of the forest that once blanketed the region still stands. Learning what had been lost inspired Dale to try bringing some of it back. He was just 15 when, in a bid to attract more avians, he began planting several hundred native seedlings beside his house to create a 2-acre thorn forest — a term he prefers over the more common thornscrub, which sounds to him like something “to get rid of.” He collected seeds from around the neighborhood and sought advice from the state wildlife agency, which began replanting thorn forest tracts in the 1950s to create habitat for game birds, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which joined the cause after it listed ocelots as endangered in 1982. (The agency has since restored 16,000 acres.) The project kept dirt under his nails for the better part of a decade. “I’d go out and turn the lights on and do it in the middle of the night,” he said. “When I’m into something, that’s pretty much it.”

Two decades later, he’s still into it. He is a director at American Forests, which has toiled for 150 years to restore ecosystems nationwide. The nonprofit started working in the Rio Grande Valley in 1997 and took over the federal restoration effort last year. It also leads the Thornforest Conservation Partnership, a coalition of agencies and organizations hoping to restore at least 81,444 acres, the amount needed for the ocelot population to rebound. Although conservation remains the core mission, everyone involved understands, and promotes, the thorn forest’s ability to boost community resilience to the ravages of a warming world.

Climate change will only bring more bouts of extreme weather to Texas, and the Valley — one of the state’s poorest regions, but quickly urbanizing — is ill-equipped to deal with it. Dale, now 45, believes urban thorn forests, which can mature in just 10 years, provide climate benefits that will blossom for decades: providing shade, preserving water, reducing erosion, and soaking up stormwater. To prove it, American Forests is launching its first “community forest” in the flood-prone neighborhood of San Carlos, an effort it hopes to soon replicate across the Valley.

“People need more tools in the tool kit to actually mitigate climate change impact,” Dale said. “It’s us saying, ‘This is going to be a tool.’ It’s been in front of us this whole time.”

Despite its name, the Rio Grande Valley is a 43,000-square-mile delta that stretches across four counties in southernmost Texas, and it already grapples with climatic challenges. Each summer brings a growing number of triple-digit days. Sea level rise and beach erosion claim a bit more coastline every year. Chronic drought slowly depletes the river, an essential source of irrigation and drinking water for nearly 1.4 million people. Flooding, long a problem, worsens as stormwater infrastructure lags behind frenzied development. Three bouts of catastrophic rain between 2018 and 2020 caused more than $1.3 billion in damage, with one storm dumping 15 inches in six hours and destroying some 1,200 homes. Floods pose a particular threat to low-income communities, called colonias, that dot unincorporated areas and lack adequate drainage and sewage systems. 

San Carlos, in northern Hidalgo County, is home to 3,000 residents, 21 percent of whom live in poverty. Eight years ago, a community center and park opened, providing a much-needed gathering place for locals. While driving by the facility, which sits in front of a drainage basin, Dale had a thought: Why not also plant a small thorn forest — a shady place that would provide respite from the sun and promote environmental literacy while managing storm runoff?

Although the community lies beyond the acreage American Forests has eyed for restoration, Dale mentioned the idea to Ellie Torres, a county commissioner who represents the area. She deemed it “a no-brainer.” Since her election in 2018, Torres has worked to expand stormwater infrastructure. “We have to look for other creative ways [to address flooding] besides digging trenches and extending drainage systems,” she said.

A thorn forest’s flood-fighting power lies in its roots, which loosen the soil so “it acts more like a sponge,” said Bradley Christoffersen, an ecologist at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Urban trees can reduce runoff by as much as 26 percent because their canopies intercept rainfall and their roots help absorb it, saving cities millions annually in stormwater mitigation and environmental impact costs. This effect varies from place to place, so American Forests hopes to enlist researchers to study the community forest’s impact in San Carlos, where Torres joined more than 100 volunteers on a sunny morning in December 2022. By afternoon, they’d nestled 800 ebony, crucillo, and other seedlings into tilled earth. “We need that vegetation,” she said. 

That sentiment has grown as cities across the Valley embrace green infrastructure. Although many swales and basins remain verdant with Bermuda grass, which is easier to maintain, there’s a growing push to use native vegetation for runoff control. Brownsville, the region’s largest city, is planting a “pocket prairie” of thorn forest species like brasil, colima, and Tamaulipan fiddlewood inside one drainage area. McAllen, about an hour to the west, has enlisted the help of a local thorn forest refuge to add six miniature woodlands to school playgrounds, libraries, and other urban locations. The biggest challenge to greater adoption of this approach is “a lack of plant distributors that carry the really cool native thornscrub species,” said Brownsville City Forester Hunter Lohse. “We’re trying to get plant suppliers to move away from the high-maintenance tropical plants they’ve been selling for 50 years.” 

American Forests doesn’t have that problem. Two dedicated employees roam public lands hauling buckets, stepladders, and telescopic tree pruners to collect seeds, some of which weigh less than a small feather. They typically gather more than 100 pounds of them each year, and stash them in refrigerators or freezers at Marinoff Nursery, a government-owned, 15,000-square-foot facility in Alamo that the nonprofit runs. 

That may sound like a lot of seed, but it’s only sufficient to raise about 150,000 seedlings. Another 50,000 plants provided by contract growers allow them to reforest some 200 acres. At that rate, without additional funding and an expansion of its operations, it could take four centuries to achieve its goal of restoring nearly 82,000 acres throughout the Rio Grande Valley. “These fields are probably one generation, maximum, from turning into housing,” Dale said.

Funding is a serious challenge, though. In 2024, American Forests began a $10 million contract with the Fish & Wildlife Service to reforest 800 acres (including 200 the agency’s job solicitation noted was lost to the construction of a section of border wall). That comes to $12,500 an acre, suggesting it could take more than $1 billion to restore just what the ocelots need.

Despite this, Dale says any restoration, no matter how small, is “worth the investment.” The nursery is currently growing 4,000 seedlings for four more community plots, each an acre or two in size. Small, yes, but they could mark the start of something much larger. “We have a vision to expand these efforts in the future,” Torres said. 

For now, nursery workers just have to keep the plants alive. During a visit on a sunny afternoon in February, 130,000 seedlings, representing 37 species, peeked out from black milk crates, ready for transplant. All of them are naturally drought-resistant and raised with an eye toward the lives they’ll lead. “We don’t baby them or coddle them,” senior reforestation manager Murisol Kuri said. “We want to make sure they are acclimated enough so when we plant they can withstand the heat and lack of water.” 

Despite this, on average, 20 percent of plants die, partly due to drought. It underscores the complexity of American Forest’s undertaking: While thorn forest restoration can help mitigate climate change, it only works if the plants can stand up to the weather. The organization expects that in the future, species that require at least 20 inches of annual rainfall could perish (some, like the Montezuma cypress and cedar elm, are already dying). That doesn’t necessarily doom an ecosystem, but it does create opportunities for guinea grass and other nonnative fauna to push out endemic plants. Removing them is a hassle, so it is best to avoid letting them take root. “If you don’t do this right, it can blow up in your face,” Dale said. 

Hoping to evade this fate with its restored thorn forests, American Forests has created a playbook of “climate-informed” planting. The six tips include shielding seedlings inside polycarbonate tubes, which ward against strong winds and hungry critters while mimicking the cooler conditions beneath tree canopies. They look a bit weird — a recent project at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge features about 20,000 white cylinders lined up like tombstones — but seedling survival rates shot up as much as 90 percent once American Forests adopted the technique a decade ago.

Another strategy seems abundantly obvious: Select species that can endure future droughts. “If we’re not [doing that], we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot,” Dale said. Christoffersen, the University of Texas ecologist, and his students have surveyed restoration sites dating to the 1980s to see which plants thrived. The winners? Trees like Texas ebony and mesquite that have thorns to protect them from munching animals and long roots to tap moisture deep within the earth. Guayacan and snake eye, two species abundant in surviving patches of the original Tamaulipan thorn forest, didn’t fare nearly as well when planted on degraded agricultural lands and would require careful management, as would wild lime and saffron plum. 

Altering the thorn forest’s composition by picking and choosing the heartiest plants would decrease overall diversity, but increase the odds of it reaching maturity and bringing its conservation and climate benefits to the region. A 40-acre planting at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast reveals how quickly this can happen. Five years ago, a tractor wove through the site cultivating sorghum, which gave way to 40,000 seedlings. Today, the biggest trees stand 10 feet tall, with thorns high enough to snag clothing.

Dale named some of the 40 or so species now thriving in the south Texas sun: eupatorium, yucca, purple sage, colima, vasey’s adelia, load bush, catclaw acacias. The plants feed and shelter a staggering array of orioles, green jays, and other birds, whose whistles, caws, and tweets filled the air. “I’ve already heard 15 species since we walked in,” Dale said. He puckered his lips and, with the expertise born of a life spent birding, made a distinctive pish sound to draw them out. The brush was too thick to see them stir, but Dale seemed pleased as he surveyed it. “It’s gone from being this very homogenous use of land … to life again.” 

An hour to the west, visitors to San Carlos’ community forest might struggle to imagine that transformation. The ebony, crucillo, and other species planted two and a half years ago still look scrappy, and a seesaw pattern of droughts and winter freezes helped claim more than 40 percent of the seedlings. Still, the humble thorn forest has garnered a lot of interest from young visitors. “I’ve been in the [community center] working with children and they ask, ‘What is that over there?’” said Mylen Arias, the director of community resilience at American Forests.

This little patch of the past does more than preserve the region’s biological history or defend it from a warming world. It’s an attempt to reverse what naturalist Robert Pyle calls an “extinction of experience.” Most people have never even heard of a thorn forest, let alone witnessed its wild beauty at Santa Ana. Dale and those working alongside him to revive what’s been lost want others to know the value this ecosystem holds beyond saving ocelots or mitigating climate change. His grandfather was a preacher, and that influence is evident as he speaks of the “almost transcendental” feeling he gets simply being in nature. “I’ve talked to people, and it’s like, ‘Do you know how this is going to enrich your life?’” 

He often shows people photos of the backyard thorn forest he started 30 years ago, hoping to convey what’s possible with just a bit of effort. Days after planting the first Turk’s cap and scarlet sage, hummingbirds fluttered in to sip their nectar. Within a few years, the canopies of Texas ebony and mesquite trees unfurled, providing shade and nesting locations for birds, including the white-tipped doves and chachalacas he’d hoped to see. It wasn’t easy to let go of it when his mother sold the house last year. “But you created it all,” she told Dale. “Mom,” he said, “I can do this somewhere else. That’s the point.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Rio Grande Valley was once covered in forest. One man is trying to bring it back. on Apr 7, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Laura Mallonee.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

ProPublica launched its coverage of this year’s presidential race back in 2022. No, we didn’t send a reporter to Iowa to check out how people were feeling about Donald Trump or try to figure out Nikki Haley’s prospects in New Hampshire. We’ve long believed that sort of story is best left to the nation’s cadre of capable political reporters.

Instead, we turned our attention to Afghanistan, taking a close look at the chaotic final days of the war. Working with Alive in Afghanistan and their journalists in Kabul, we explored the extent to which the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal contributed to the deaths of 13 U.S. servicemen in a suicide bombing. Headlined “Hell at Abbey Gate: Chaos, Confusion and Death in the Final Days of the War in Afghanistan,” the story found the typical mix of policy missteps and on-the-ground miscalculations that contribute to such tragedies. We concluded that the Biden administration had underestimated how quickly the Afghan Army would collapse and failed to plan for events that, in retrospect, appeared probable if not inevitable.

“The shadow of the Afghanistan withdrawal looms large over the administration of President Joe Biden as it navigates the growing conflict in Ukraine,” we wrote. “The widely publicized chaos of the evacuation caused an immediate drop in Biden’s approval ratings, and Republican groups have signaled they intend to make it a wedge issue in future elections.’’

Things didn’t turn out as we anticipated. While Haley, Trump and other Republicans did attack the Biden administration’s handling of Afghanistan, other issues turned out to play a much larger role in the 2024 campaign.

As an organization that specializes in investigative reporting, our role in the political process is a bit hard to define. We say in our mission statement that our goal is to expose “abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust” in the belief that our stories will spur “reform.’’ We're a nonprofit that doesn't engage in advocacy for either party. When it comes to politics, we focus on the process of elections, the substance of issues and the behind-the-scenes forces that stand to benefit from particular outcomes.

Back in 2011, we spent considerable time digging into the intricacies of gerrymandering. We documented how, in state after state, majority parties tilted electoral maps in their favor. The attractions of gerrymandering, we learned, were bipartisan. The Democratic supermajority in California was just as likely to jigger the maps as the Republicans in North Carolina and Florida.

In the winter of 2016, our reporter Alec MacGillis set out to see what was happening to the Republican Party in Ohio. What he found were the beginnings of a profound split, in which an alienated, politically homeless electorate was quite willing to vote for Trump.

“The stresses that created these Trump voters had been building for decades in places like Dayton,’’ he wrote. “For the most part, the political establishment ignored, dismissed or overlooked these forces, until suddenly they blew apart nearly everyone’s blueprint for the presidential campaign.’’

MacGillis’ work proved prescient. Rereading it for this column, I was struck again by how important it is to subject the conventional wisdom to the stresses of on-the-ground reporting.

Our efforts to contribute to voters’ understanding of what many see as the most consequential election in modern American history have been even broader.

One key question we and many others tried to address is the likely policies of a second Trump administration. Trump had been clear about his plans in 2016, announcing his intentions to build a wall on the southwest border, ban Muslim immigrants and raise tariffs.

In 2024, the wish list for a Republican administration was assembled under the banner of Project 2025, written by an assortment of former officials, most of whom had worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign or in his first term. The document they produced was covered in detail by various outlets.

Working with our partners at the nonprofit Documented, we obtained 14 hours of training videos that shed further light on what Project 2025 intends to accomplish. There is advice on how to avoid embarrassing disclosures through the Freedom of Information Act along with reams of strategies for vanquishing the bureaucrats in the “Deep State.’’ One video that caught our eye was a senior official in the first Trump administration who said an early task of the next Trump presidency would be to “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.’’

In a separate collaboration with Documented, we uncovered a speech in which another top Trump ally said the plan was to put career civil servants “in trauma.’’ Such extreme steps were necessary, he said, because the United States was in the midst of a “Marxist takeover’’ and faced a crisis comparable to 1776 and 1860.

Another key function of journalism in elections is to write about the issues voters care about. We’ve dispatched journalists to scrutinize two pivotal issues in this year’s campaign: immigration and abortion.

As Trump steamrollered his opponents in the 2024 primaries, it quickly became clear that immigration was going to be a major flash point for voters. The numbers of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border were way up from their pandemic lows, and the Biden administration had been slow to react. Democratic mayors like New York’s Eric Adams were publicly criticizing Biden as thousands of migrants from countries like Venezuela were showing up in cities looking for shelter.

We assembled a team of ProPublica journalists to dig deeper. Mica Rosenberg, our newly hired immigration reporter, and data reporter Jeff Ernsthausen began with the central question: What changed in the past decade to make the issue such an important part of the American political conversation? They found new patterns in the masses of data collected by federal agencies. The mix of migrants traveling to the southwest border had radically changed, from mostly single Mexican adults in decades past to an increasing number of families and children from Central America starting around 2014. And more recently, new migrants have been coming from a much broader array of countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, China and West African nations. We found that the changing face of immigration to America had been set in motion by the policies of both Presidents Trump and Biden.

Our data analysis showed that the number of migrants crossing the southwest border into the United States was not vastly higher than in other periods of history. But the new migrants were more visible than their predecessors, as many applied for asylum or entered through other legal pathways instead of trying to escape arrest at the border. They have moved to new cities and towns that, in some cases, lacked the infrastructure to deal with their needs for schools, housing, driver’s licenses and medical care. The strains were real, and their impact was vastly magnified by social media and television.

One of those communities affected by the new migrants was the tiny town of Whitewater, Wisconsin. Hundreds of Nicaraguans had moved to Whitewater, and many of them were driving without licenses or much experience behind the wheel. The police chief had written a letter to President Biden asking for help. He said he didn’t need much — just a few hundred thousand dollars to hire a couple of police officers, preferably some who could speak Spanish. The White House did not respond to the chief’s request for close to two months, and when it did it told the chief about a program unavailable to Whitewater. Meanwhile, Trump turned Whitewater into yet another flashpoint in his argument that Democrats are ignoring an “invasion.’’

Our reporters Melissa Sanchez and Maryam Jameel had spent years exploring the role of immigrants in Wisconsin’s dairy industry. Their story, “What Happened in Whitewater,’’ added more nuanced context. Yes, the chief’s initial plea for help went unheeded. But he eventually did get some funding to hire more officers, and Whitewater is on its way to integrating its new residents.

We’ve done a myriad of other reporting that figures in the election. Our reporting on the women who died trying to obtain medical care in states with abortion bans began long before the 2024 campaign turned white hot. We had no idea one of those stories would end up as the centerpiece of a political ad aired by the Harris-Walz campaign.

A final thought on politics and ProPublica. No one knows what’s going to happen on Nov. 5. Like most American newsrooms, we’re planning for multiple outcomes, from a clear victory by either candidate to a grinding conflict in the courts and, possibly, in state legislatures and the Congress. Whatever happens, we’ll be there, trying to figure out what’s really happening.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Stephen Engelberg.

She was hired by Agence France-Presse in April 1989 and almost immediately began photographing the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in China’s history. One month later, the Tiananmen Square crackdown began as the 29-year-old was still learning the new role. 

In an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Eric Kayne originally in French and translated to English, Henriette recalls the experience of covering the student demonstrations.

RFA: What drew you to Tiananmen Square during the student democracy demonstrations in 1989? What was your initial impression of the atmosphere and the people involved?

Henriette: I was a photographer for Agence France-Presse at the time, so it was just my job that brought me to Tiananmen Square. My first impression was disbelief at what was happening before my eyes.

RFA: Can you describe your experience of photographing the events at Tiananmen Square? What challenges did you face as a photographer during such tumultuous times?

Henriette: It was a very joyful and very exhilarating moment. I was a beginner photographer so I had to learn quickly because the movement just kept growing and growing every day. The challenge was a  physical challenge. I had to hold on, because I was the only one taking photos for AFP. I was exhausted because it never stopped.

RFA: Were there any particular moments or scenes that left a lasting impact on you? Could you share the story behind one of your most memorable photographs from that time?

Henriette: Every day was different. Perhaps the most incredible moment was when Zhao Ziyang came out of the Great Hall of the People to visit the students and try to talk with them. In a country like China, it was surreal.

RFA: How do you believe your photographs from Tiananmen Square contributed to the broader narrative of the democracy demonstrations? Do you feel they helped to amplify the voices of the protesters?

Henriette: At the time, my photos were widely used in magazines and newspapers. So yes, I think that without knowing it, I contributed to making the movement known.

RFA: Looking back, how do you feel about the role of photography in shaping historical memory, especially regarding events like the Tiananmen Square protests?

Henriette: Honestly, my only experience was with the events in Tiananmen Square. I was only 29 years old and I was just starting out in photography. I took my job at AFP in April 1989. I didn’t have enough experience in press photography to say whether it has the power to influence the course of history. But look at the photo of the man in front of the tanks (which I did not take) – it’s an image forever anchored in our minds. Therefore, yes, I think that photography can mark collective memory in its own way.

RFA: In what ways do you think the events you witnessed and captured at Tiananmen Square have influenced your approach to photography and storytelling throughout your career?

Henriette: It probably did influence my approach without me knowing it, but as I said, I was just starting my career as a photographer. I only did a few years of photojournalism, and of course being a photojournalist in China was a wonderful school for me. But since then I have evolved. I moved on to magazine photography and then to the more artistic photography that I still practice today.

RFA: Given the censorship and suppression of information surrounding the Tiananmen Square massacre, do you think it’s important for photographers and journalists to continue documenting and shedding light on such events?

Henriette: Of course, otherwise these events would be erased from history. In Chinese history books, there is no mention of Tiananmen.

RFA: Reflecting on your experiences at Tiananmen Square, what message or lessons would you like to convey to future generations about the power of photography in bearing witness to history?

Henriette: I would like to tell them not to take too many unnecessary risks. The “Tank Man” photo, which traveled all over the world, was taken from the balcony of the Beijing Hotel the day after the crackdown in the square. Every photo you take must carry a message. You have to find it. I think that a good photographer is the one who will think about that.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Eric Kayne for RFA.

We speak with veteran journalist Peter Maass about the Israeli war on Gaza and his new opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them.” Maass, who was a senior editor at The Intercept until earlier this year, has spent decades covering wars, including the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s that killed about 100,000 people over nearly four years. He says many of the same war crimes he reported then are part of Israel’s current assault, including sniper attacks on civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on bread lines and besieging whole populations by preventing food and other aid from entering. “What seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia,” says Maass.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Following a year-long investigation into the Moon administration’s handling of the incident involving the killing of Lee Dae-jun by North Korea’s military near the inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea on Sept. 22, 2020, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) concluded that the Moon government acted negligently.

The BAI found that there was no action taken prior to Lee’s death and that the administration subsequently covered up the incident, hastily concluding that Lee had attempted to defect to the North, after North Korea murdered the official and burned his body.

All the relevant agencies, such as the presidential National Security Office (NSO), the Coast Guard, the unification and defense ministries, and the country’s spy agency National Intelligence Service (NIS), virtually sat idle and did not take any action even before Lee’s death, the BAI revealed. 

BAI findings

The fisheries official disappeared at 1:58 a.m. on Sept. 21, 2020, approximately 2.2 km (1.4 miles) south of Soyeonpyeong Island in Ongjin County, Incheon. More than 37 hours later, at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 22, he was located by a North Korean vessel near Kuwolbong, Kangryong County in the North’s South Hwanghae Province, which is 27 km away from his initial disappearance point. The South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) were informed about finding Lee at 4:43 p.m., and they subsequently reported this to the NSO at 5:18 p.m.

However, the NSO, the de facto national crisis management control tower, did not share the report with the unification ministry and other agencies, let alone hold an initial situation assessment meeting.

Suh Hoon, then chief of the NSO, left work early, and a senior NSO official responsible for managing the national crisis also left work at 7:30 p.m., even though the situation was not over, said the BAI. 

The Coast Guard was informed by the NSO around 6 p.m, but they did not pursue further details or seek essential collaboration from the defense ministry. Simultaneously, a high-ranking official in the unification ministry was alerted about the situation by the NIS. However, this official did not relay the information to either the minister or the vice minister.

The defense ministry received a report from the JCS but did not evaluate whether to communicate with North Korea or consider potential military actions. Additionally, the ministry did not make any recommendations to the NSO.

‘Covered up, distorted facts’

Following the shooting and burning of Lee, the involved organizations manipulated and erased data to cover up the facts and intentionally emphasized his potential defection to the North, according to the BAI.

During a meeting with key ministers at 1 a.m. on Sept. 23, the NSO provided instructions on securing the details about the burning of Lee’s body. At 2:30 a.m., the defense ministry instructed the JCS to erase the confidential information related to the incident.

The unification ministry incorrectly informed parliament and the media that it only learned of the incident on the morning of Sept. 23, despite having been informed by the NIS on the afternoon of Sept. 22.

Furthermore, the Moon administration repeatedly announced to the public that Lee had chosen to defect to North Korea of his own accord.

“Not only was [the former government’s announcement] untrue, but it also unfairly disclosed the personal details of the victim, Mr. Lee,” said the BAI in the statement. 

The audit agency announced in October last year the interim conclusions of its investigation and called for the prosecution to investigate 20 individuals, including the former defense minister, former National Security Adviser Suh Hoon, and the former NIS chief Park Jie-won, with court trials currently in progress. 

In the final findings, the BAI recommended disciplinary actions or warnings for 13 individuals involved in illegal and unfair conduct, suggesting their personnel records be marked in a way that could disadvantage their future reemployment in government roles. It also advised relevant public agencies to be vigilant. Among the 13 are former Defense Minister Suh Wook and former Coast Guard Commissioner Gen. Kim Hong-hee.

Edited by Mike Firn. 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.

We look at the largely forgotten 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police in Chicago shot at and gassed a peaceful gathering of striking steelworkers and their supporters, killing 10 people, most of them shot in the back. It was a time like today, when unions were growing stronger. The workers were on strike against Republic Steel, and the police attacked them with weapons supplied by the company. The tragic story is told in a new PBS documentary. “The mass media, right up to The New York Times, was supporting the police story that they had no choice but to open fire on this mob,” says Greg Mitchell, who directed the new PBS documentary, Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried, and edited a companion book that is the first oral history on the tragedy. The film was produced by Lyn Goldfarb.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The New York Times‘ Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2/12/23) describes Sen. Bernie Sanders as “wearing his trademark scowl” when she uses his becoming chair of the Senate health committee as an opportunity to ask him about running for president rather than about healthcare.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the new chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions—and the New York Times has something to say about it. In a piece by veteran reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2/12/23) headlined, “Bernie Sanders Has a New Role. It Could Be His Final Act in Washington,” the paper demonstrates once again (FAIR.org, 2/24/16, 10/1/19, 1/30/20) how the lens through which corporate media view progressive politicians colors their coverage.

Stolberg kicks things off by noting that Sanders has “made no secret of his disdain for billionaires,” and now “has the power to summon them to testify before Congress—and he has a few corporate executives in his sight.” On the list: Amazon founder (and owner of the Washington Post) Jeff Bezos and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Writes Stolberg:

He views them as union busters whose companies have resorted to “really vicious and illegal” tactics to keep workers from organizing. He has already demanded that Mr. Schultz testify at a hearing in March.

We might point out here that these “views” aren’t just Sanders’ opinion. Less than two weeks before Stolberg’s piece appeared, a judge ruled that Amazon violated labor law trying to stop unionization efforts in Staten Island warehouses. (Stolberg might also see her colleague David Streitfeld’s lengthy investigation published in the Times—3/16/21—headlined, “How Amazon Crushes Unions.”) The National Labor Relations Board had filed 19 formal complaints against Starbucks as of last August—as Stolberg herself acknowledges two-thirds of the way into the article—and just ruled against the company in a union-busting case in Philly.

‘Angry letter’

Bernie Sanders (seen here smiling in a TMZ photo—8/7/22) was once described by the New York Times (6/10/16) as “unkempt and impatient, often angry.”

But another passage caught our eye:

Mr. Sanders is clearly operating on two tracks. Last week, in a move that might surprise critics who view him as unbending, he partnered with a Republican, Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, to call on rail companies to offer seven days of paid sick leave to their workers—a provision that the Senate defeated last year when it passed legislation to avert a rail strike.

But he also sent a curt letter to Mr. Schultz, giving him until Tuesday to respond confirming his attendance at the hearing. That followed an earlier, angry letter in which Mr. Sanders urged the Starbucks chief to “immediately halt your aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign.” A Starbucks spokesman said the company was considering the request for Mr. Schultz to testify and was working to “offer clarifying information” about its labor practices.

To the Times, this is a lesson in contrasts in which Sanders can sometimes be flexible and pragmatic, but at others “unbending” and “angry.” But the truth is that the “two tracks” here are actually following exactly the same script: calling on corporate bosses to treat their workers fairly, and if they don’t, asking them to come in for questioning.

Sanders issued his warning to Schultz last March when Schultz took over as interim CEO, writing, “Please respect the Constitution of the United States and do not illegally hamper the efforts of your employees to unionize.” Nearly a year later, with no progress, he’s calling Schultz in to testify.

In the case of the rail companies, local news station WAVY (2/11/23) reported that “Sanders promises if he doesn’t see change, he will question railway executives under oath in a Senate hearing.” Sound familiar?

The only difference between the two—and what really matters to the Times—is that in one case, a Republican joined him, which by corporate media’s definition makes it a flexible and pragmatic action, whereas in the other, no Republicans on the committee signed the letter. No bipartisanship? No pragmatism. It’s a golden rule for political reporters that encourages compromise for the sake of compromise, no matter what the public actually wants.

And it elevates empty rhetoric over more serious action. Asking big companies to be nice to workers is framed in a positive light, but trying to back it up with any more serious action gets you called out as “curt,” “angry” and “unbending.”

(We’ll let you decide for yourself if this standard-looking letter from the committee, giving Schultz a week to respond and a month to prepare testimony, is “curt.” It’s not clear what Stolberg was looking for to make it more polite; apologies for taking up a very important man’s time?)

The number of negative words used to describe Sanders in this one article is remarkable. In addition to “unbending,” “curt” and “angry,” he’s “combative,” full of “disdain,” a former “left-wing socialist curiosity” who “rants,” makes demands, has a “trademark scowl” and can almost never be seen smiling in the Capitol.

‘Ever combative’

Bernie Sanders “already has,” Stolberg writes, “provide[d] a wonderful target for Republicans to shoot at.”

Bernie Sanders “already has,” Stolberg writes, “provide[d] a wonderful target for Republicans to shoot at.”The end of the piece perfectly illustrates the eternal disconnect between Sanders and reporters like Stolberg:

With the recent retirement of Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat who served for 48 years, Mr. Sanders is finally the senior senator from Vermont. Asked how he felt, he said, “Pretty good.” Then, ever combative, he shot back, “How do you feel?”

“How do you feel?” Them’s fightin’ words!

Stolberg continued:

He said people who wonder about whether he will run again—and by people, he meant reporters—should “keep wondering.”

Why? “Because I’ve just told you, and this is very serious,” he said, wearing his trademark scowl. “If you think about my record, I take this job seriously. The purpose of elections is to elect people to do work, not to keep talking about elections.”

Just as they prioritize compromise over meaningful political action, political reporters consistently prioritize the horserace over substantive issues, all to the detriment of democracy. But those reporters cling to the fiction that they’re strictly observers—and anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is dismissed under a steady stream of pejorative adjectives.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

The post You’d Scowl, Too, if Media Covered You Like Bernie Sanders appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

An immigration officer at the Hong Kong International Airport repeatedly asked Kiseki about her February 2022 photo exhibition featuring the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations before denying her entry to Hong Kong, according to a thread about the incident that Kiseki’s tweeted on January 5. She was planning to spend the New Year holidays in Hong Kong but had to fly back to Japan the next day, she wrote on Twitter.

Japanese citizens do not need a visa to enter the city and can stay up to 90 days under Hong Kong’s immigration rules.

Kiseki is an award-winning photographer whose work on Hong Kong protests was regularly published by Japanese media outlets. She has also published a photo book and held an exhibition in Japan featuring her Hong Kong protest photos, according to her website. 

CPJ reached out to Kiseki via messaging app, but she declined to comment. The Hong Kong immigration department did not immediately respond to CPJ’s email requesting comment.

CPJ has documented the steady erosion of press freedom in the former British colony. China was the world’s second-worst jailer of journalists in 2022, according to CPJ’s annual prison census.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

All large car parks in France will be covered by solar panels under new legislation approved as part of president Emmanuel Macron’s renewable energy drive.

Legislation approved by the French Senate this week requires existing and new car parks with space for at least 80 vehicles to be covered by solar panels.

The owners of car parks with between 80 and 400 spaces have five years to comply with the measures, while operators of those with more than 400 will have just three years. At least half of the area of the larger sites must be covered by solar panels.

The French government believes the measure could generate up to 11 gigawatts of power.

Politicians had originally applied the bill to car parks larger than 27,000 square feet before deciding to opt for car parking spaces.

French politicians are also examining proposals to build large solar farms on empty land by motorways and railways as well as on farmland.

Former United Kingdom prime minister Liz Truss considered blocking solar farms being built on agricultural land.

The sight of parked cars under the shade of solar panels is not unfamiliar in France. Renewables Infrastructure Group, one of the UK’s largest specialist green energy investors, has invested in a large solar car park in Borgo on Corsica.

Macron has thrown his weight behind nuclear energy over the past year and in September announced plans to boost France’s renewable energy industry. He visited the country’s first offshore windfarm off the port of Saint-Nazaire off the west coast and hopes to speed up the build times of windfarms and solar parks.

The move comes as European nations examine their domestic energy supplies in the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Technical problems and maintenance on the powerhouse French nuclear fleet has exacerbated the problem while the national operator EDF was forced to cut its output in the summer when French rivers became too warm.

The government has also launched a communication campaign, “Every gesture counts,” encouraging individuals and industry to cut their energy usage, and the Eiffel Tower lights are being turned off more than an hour earlier.

The French government plans to spend €45 billion ($53.3 billion) shielding households and businesses from energy price shocks.

Separately on Wednesday, ScottishPower announced it would increase its five-year investment target by £400 million ($473.6 million) to £10.4bn ($12.3 billion) by 2025. The UK solar and wind farm developer hopes to generate 1,000 jobs in the next 12 months.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline France to require all large parking lots to be covered by solar panels on Nov 14, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alex Lawson.

We continue to remember the life and legacy of writer and activist Barbara Ehrenreich, who died on September 1 at the age of 81, as we speak with her friend and colleague Alissa Quart, executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which Ehrenreich founded and which continues to support journalists who cover and embody the struggles of everyday people. “She understood that on a basic level people just needed higher wages and more money, basically, and to make this into a moral or personal vendetta against the poor was an obscenity,” says Quart. Ehrenreich was the author of more than 20 books, including her best-known, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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When a Texas law enforcement official last week laid out how police waited in the halls of Robb Elementary School while children trapped with the gunman pleaded for help, my mind went back to 23 years ago.

April 20, 1999. I remember it all too clearly. Two teenagers methodically murdered 12 classmates and a teacher inside Columbine High School in Colorado, and even though police swarmed to the scene quickly, they stayed outside, waiting. Those within hung a sign in a window to alert officers below: “1 bleeding to death.” The SWAT team ignored it. When officers finally searched the building, they found the body of Dave Sanders, a teacher shot hours before.

Patrick Ireland also was waiting for help as he dragged himself 50 feet across broken glass in the school library after being shot three times, including twice in the head. The then-17-year-old propelled himself out a second-story window, captured on live television by news crews in helicopters. He became known as the “boy in the window.”

Law enforcement response to mass shootings was supposedly overhauled after Columbine to no longer wait before storming a building. Society, too, supposedly turned introspective, drawing a line of demarcation. Lots of talk of never again. Back then it was my solace — as a reporter, a mother, a human. The image of terrified children with their arms raised was surely part of never again.

But in the more than two decades since that promise has turned into an American myth.

In a journalism career that has taken me from Colorado to Texas to Washington, D.C., I have covered seven of these shootings, some in the chaos of the moment, some in their aftermath.

Columbine. Platte Canyon High School. Virginia Tech. Deer Creek Middle School. Aurora movie theater. Arapahoe High School. Santa Fe High School.

I have written thousands of words about them over the years, searching for ways to convey the massive damage to a public who thinks it could never happen in their community. None of my words ever came close.

I carry with me the anguished faces and voices, a kind of personal shrapnel that can never be dislodged. I suspect every reporter on this duty does.

I think of the carful of teenage boys who circled the parking lot of Gateway High School in Aurora, Colorado, five times throughout the day July 20, 2012. They hung from open car windows shouting to anyone who would listen: “Where’s A.J.?” “Has anyone heard from A.J.?”

They had been chasing social media rumors all day to find their friend in the hours after a gunman sprayed bullets into a packed movie theater. They knew A.J. had gone there to see the midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

They called hospital after hospital and continued to return to the high school, now set up as a gathering place for the family members of the missing. The last time I saw them it was starting to get dark, 20 hours after the shooting. The hope I saw earlier had been replaced with dread.

Alexander Jonathan Boik, 18, an aspiring artist, was among the 12 people who died in the massacre.

I think of Reagan Weber, the seventh grader who lived just a few blocks away from me. She was shot and wounded Feb. 23, 2010, when a man opened fire on students at Deer Creek Middle School in Jefferson County, Colorado. All three of my kids went to Deer Creek, not that year but the year before and after.

I sat with Reagan’s father, Craig Weber, in their living room the day after the Aurora theater shooting. He quietly talked about how worried he was about her, watching closely for signs of reignited trauma. He spoke of feeling helpless. Earlier that day, Reagan’s older sister texted “I love you” to her as word spread across Denver of the massacre. By coincidence, Reagan was in a midmorning showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.” Reagan texted back, “I’m terrified.”

I think, too, of Whitney Riley matter-of-factly rattling off the questions she asked herself after hearing the first gunshots at Arapahoe High School on Dec. 13, 2013. Riley, along with six other students and two teachers, had crammed into a tiny sprinkler supply room, no bigger than a closet. She wondered if she should confront the gunman? Should she run, and if she did, would she stop to help the wounded even if it meant sacrificing her own life?

I watched Whitney’s father stiffen as his 15-year-old daughter talked about how this had simply become part of her adolescence. It was Whitney’s second school shooting in three years. She had been at Deer Creek.

I think of Andrew Goddard sitting in a darkened hospital room at the bedside of his son, Colin, who had been shot four times in a Virginia Tech classroom. Andrew described how blood seeped out of bullet holes in Colin’s shattered body and spread across the sheets and pillowcases. The face of the shooter seemed to glare down from the television above his son’s bed. Goddard said he made a silent pact with the universe in that moment that if Colin were allowed to survive, he would do everything he could to make sure no other parent had to feel what he was feeling.

I also remember the Aurora movie theater 911 calls, played in a courtroom. In the background of those frantic calls was an odd thumping boom like the bass of a rap song turned up too high. I remember the collective gasp as everyone, including me, realized the sound was the rhythmic blasts of semiautomatic weaponry picking off people inside the theater.

The language and way mass shootings are reported has evolved in my time of writing about them. Mostly gone is the “thoughts and prayers” cliché. In the Aurora aftermath, parents of the victims started the “No Notoriety” campaign, chiding the news media to stop writing more about the gunman (and they are almost always male) than the victims, elevating murderers to the celebrity status they craved. That has stuck.

Now there is a new discussion making the rounds of newsrooms. Have we sanitized the carnage? Last week, Vanity Fair posed the question of whether it is time to post images of what gunfire actually does to bodies. I understand the impulse to shake the nation’s conscience, and maybe that is what we now need. But the reality of those pictures would be horrifying. In the hours after the Columbine shootings, parents still waiting for word about their children were asked to bring dental records to help identify the dead.

When my editor first suggested I write this piece, I was hesitant. Anything I have felt pales to the lifelong grief of the survivors, witnesses and families of the slain. And other reporters have covered more and seen worse. Some say our part of this now familiar dance is ghoulish. I cannot disagree. But I think, too, it is crucial.

Two decades in, though, I am no longer naïve. I no longer believe in never again.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jenny Deam.

Russia’s all-out assault on the truth intensified this week, with the country’s leading independent radio station, Echo of Moscow, silenced, and the website of TV Rain, an independent streaming television channel, blocked for reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the authorities ban broadcasters from even calling a war.

Meanwhile, Russian television continued to downplay or ignore the bombardment of major Ukrainian cities by their military, and officials warned the Russian public not to believe any of the visceral evidence of death and destruction that reaches them through social networks that are increasingly hard to access.

A screenshot of a tweet by a Russian diplomat sharing a baseless conspiracy theory about a woman injured during the Russian offensive in Ukraine.

A screenshot of a conspiratorial Facebook post that inspired a viral TikTok video.

A screenshot of a Russian blogger’s post on Telegram, which made the false claim that news reports on an attack in Ukraine last week were using an old image of a gas explosion in Russia.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Robert Mackey.