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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show with Yale historian and author Timothy Snyder, author of numerous books, including On Freedom and, before that, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Professor Snyder published On Tyranny in February of 2017, just a month after Donald Trump took office. The first lesson in the book is “Do Not Obey in Advance.” Snyder wrote, quote, “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then they offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Snyder’s warning was widely cited after ABC News settled a defamation suit filed by President-elect Trump, instead of taking the case to court. As part of the deal, ABC will donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library.

Meanwhile, three prominent tech billionaires — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman of OpenAI — have reportedly agreed for their companies to donate a million dollars each to Trump’s inaugural fund. Zuckerberg, who once banned Trump from Facebook, recently dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. On Wednesday, Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, dined with Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who’s being described by some as the shadow president. I mean, in this looming government shutdown, it was Elon Musk who first tweeted on his social media platforms X threatening any Republican congressmember who voted for, at that time, the bill, and then Trump did his warnings. People then started referring to President Musk and Vice President Trump.

Well, Timothy Snyder, welcome back to Democracy Now! Let’s start with the ABC settlement, George Stephanopoulos saying that President Trump had been found liable in a civil trial of rape, because the judge in the case said that Trump had been found liable for sexual assault, which in common parlance, the judge said, was rape. Many felt ABC had a very strong leg to stand on. They were about to do discovery, and suddenly ABC settled. Your response?

TIMOTHY SNYDER: Yeah. If I could, I first want to — I want to make a segue from your last segment, because there is a direct connection between healthcare and the ability of normal people not to obey in advance. One of the reasons why we have the absence of healthcare in this country that we do is to make people afraid and anxious and worried all of the time. And that is a kind of social wellspring for authoritarianism. It’s harder to do the things you need to do politically if you’re being dogged all the time by unnecessary fears and costs and when you’re sick when you don’t have to be.

Anyway, as far as the big wealthy media companies are concerned, I think ABC saw the chance to do what everybody else was doing, in a rapid way, and sacrificed itself to make this statement, that, “Yes, we’re not going to say these kinds of things.” Because the problem of giving up here isn’t just the individual case; it’s the precedent you set. You’re saying, “We’re going to be extremely careful not to say the kinds of things which might offend or which might be critical to this person who is now going to be the head of state.”

AMY GOODMAN: And as soon as that settlement happened, President-elect Trump sued The Des Moines Register for a poll that came out right before the election that he didn’t like the results of.

TIMOTHY SNYDER: Yeah, I mean, there, we’re moving squarely into totalitarian territory, because when Trump sues The Des Moines Register for essentially printing what he considers to have been bad news for him, the underline all of that is the idea that Trump never could have been behind in any poll. Trump never could have won any election. Our great hero Trump is always going to win at everything. So, it’s setting a line — right? — which borrows from his deep lie that he didn’t win the election — that he won the election in 2020. So, he is trying to set, I mean, what is, in effect, a kind of Stalinist line for the American media: Everyone has to only print how Trump wins everything all the time, or you might get sued.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can jump from that to what we’re seeing now with the billionaire Cabinet? What, you know, Elon Musk, now it looks like, spent about a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected. And people might say, “Wow! That’s a lot. He took a great risk there.” But he has made far more than that since the election of President Trump. If you can talk about what it means — I think, in Biden’s Cabinet, they’re worth something like $110 million; in this Cabinet, well over, what, $500 billion?

TIMOTHY SNYDER: Oh, yeah. So, I mean, it’s a small jump to make, because the way that censorship is going to work in the Musk-Trump regime is probably not going to be direct state censorship. It’s going to be hundreds of frivolous lawsuits which are meant to keep us all quiet. And who’s going to fund those frivolous lawsuits? Not Trump. He doesn’t have the money. It’s going to be Musk who’s funding these frivolous lawsuits to keep us all quiet and to keep us towards the line that, of course, he and Trump never do anything wrong, always win and so on. What we’re looking at is a qualitative change. Of course, there’s too much money in every cabinet, but we’re now leaping orders of magnitude up, right?

So, for example, when these — if a centibillionaire gives a million dollars to Trump’s inauguration, that might sound like a lot, but that’s the same as the median American family giving $2. It’s meaningless for the centibillionaire to give that amount of money. Likewise, it was meaningless even for Musk to spend a quarter of a billion on Trump’s campaign. The guy is worth something like $400 billion now. That meant nothing to him, and the return to investment was absolutely enormous.

So, we’re shifting from a democracy, which had some pretty heavy oligarchical streaks running through it, toward something like an oligarchy, in which I think it’s fair to say that it’s not Trump who’s the most important person. It’s Musk. Trump has debts. Musk has money. Trump has debts specifically to Musk for getting him elected. And I think the burden of proof is actually on Trump to show that he has any room for maneuver in this system. And it’s going to be interesting to see how congressional Republicans react, because what this particular oligarch wants is to break the federal government. And whatever their views might be, not — many of them don’t actually want the United States of America to cease to exist so that oligarchs can pick up the pieces.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about MSNBC. You had the regular Trump critics Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for a few years now really criticizing Trump, and then, after he won, going down to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with him.

TIMOTHY SNYDER: Yeah. I mean, I think the essential thing is not whether you criticize Trump or whether you don’t criticize him. I don’t think it’s all about Trump. I think the essential thing is: Do you have — are you seeking after truth? Are you doing investigative stories? Are you saying the things you’re truly convinced of, based on the results of your investigations and the facts?

I think it doesn’t make sense to court somebody like Trump, just psychologically, because he’s into humiliation both directions. He wants to humiliate you, and then he wants himself to be humiliated by the guys he regards as bigger men, people like Musk and by Putin. So, for him, it’s all a humiliation chain, and you’re just telling him which side of the humiliation chain you want to be on. So, I think, politically, it’s not really very effective.

But I think the most important thing for the press is to do the job of the press and not to think of everything in terms of paying obeisance or not paying obeisance. The press needs to be itself.

AMY GOODMAN: The significance — I mean, you have Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. He stops the endorsement of Kamala Harris of his editorial board. Same thing at the Los Angeles Times with Patrick Soon-Shiong doing the same there, intervening and now being quite involved with the editorial process. You have the million-dollar donations to the inaugural committee of President Trump, the inauguration, with million-dollar contributions each coming from, what, Zuckerberg, from Bezos and more.

TIMOTHY SNYDER: I mean, again, with those million-dollar contributions, it’s kind of funny, because since Trump, as a fake rich person, he thinks that’s a lot of money, right? But for them, it’s literally nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: I think it’s a lot of money.

TIMOTHY SNYDER: Yeah, exactly. For us, it’s a lot of money, right? So, for Americans, this is the problem with oligarchy. It’s the problem with huge wealth inequality. The math is staggering. We can’t really grasp it, right? A million dollars would be absolutely life-changing for 99.9% of Americans. But for these people, it’s literally the equivalent for the median American family of $2. It means nothing to them. It’s just symbolic. It’s just symbolic obeisance to Trump.

But I want to jump back to the L.A. Times and The Washington Post. There is a problem when the people who have the most money set the example of yielding to power first. It’s a problem. They shouldn’t do it. It is obeying in advance. It’s textbook anticipatory obedience. It’s absolutely 180 degrees not what they should have done.

That said, in the regime that’s coming, not obeying in advance means that little people, little organizations, little groups, municipalities, judges, NGOs, we have to all not obey in advance. We can’t take our lead from these people. Not obeying in advance is always going to be tense, because other people —

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.

TIMOTHY SNYDER: — are going to obey in advance: very powerful people. So we have to not behave the way the powerful are behaving.

AMY GOODMAN: Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, author of numerous books, including On Freedom and On Tyranny. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

AMY GOODMAN: But explain what it means to appeal.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, what do you do first.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: So, first of all, the first thing you should do if you get a claims denial is call your carrier and make sure that your provider submitted the right code.

AMY GOODMAN: And when you say “provider,” you mean your doctor?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Yes, your doctor. But it could be your hospital. It could be a doctor. It could be, you know, the pharmacist. I mean, so, that’s why we say “provider.” It’s sort of a euphemism for all these characters in your healthcare ecosystem. So, the first thing you should do is call the insurance company and understand why they’re denying the claim, and then, you know, circle back with your provider to make sure the right codes — if they say it’s a coding issue or they didn’t do a prior approval step or something like that, figure out what the problem is.

If you’re getting denied based on a thing called medical necessity, then you have a real chance in the appeal process to win. People on their own in New York state, thanks to Kevin and a bunch of us, we now know if people go to the state’s external review process, on their own, they win about 45% of the time. So, already, you have —

AMY GOODMAN: What is the state’s external review process?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Who do you call?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: So, after you exhaust, go through all the appeals at your insurance carrier, if you have a medical necessity denial or an experimental investigation treatment denial — so, if you have a denial that’s not based on whether it’s actually something that’s covered by your insurance — so, some people might ask your insurance company to pay for vitamins, and vitamins aren’t covered, for example, in that plan, so then you have no real basis for your appeal. You just have to do whatever the carrier does. But most people who are denied really are denied based on medical necessity. Then, you have the right to go through the state’s — first, the internal plan appeal process, which has very strict time limits, so make sure you understand those time limits. And then, if you lose there, in almost every plan in America now, you have the right to go to an external appeal agent.

And that agent in our state, it’s, you know, a contractor or three contractors for the state of New York. Those people have independent doctors that look at the healthcare plan’s decision. If you do that, you have a 50/50 chance of winning. If you come to us, you have an 87% chance of winning. So, having an expert really pushes you along the sort of external appeal win chance.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is peer to peer? This is now — this not only affects patients like Kevin. You have doctors spending much of their time, who wanted just to help patients, negotiating, what, prior approval, negotiating denials. The doctor then has to talk to an external doctor and say, “This is why we think that he shouldn’t need a new lung”?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: It’s rarely a conversation. What the doctors have to do is even worse. They have to write like little dossiers in support. So, there’s no conversation. So, it would be — would that it was that easy. Sometimes the doctors get to talk to a nurse at United, but rarely it’s to another doctor. Often it’s nurses. Sometimes it’s AI, we understand now, more and more.

AMY GOODMAN: Artificial intelligence?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Is making some of these initial denials, is what we’re being told, although, you know, there’s other — some states are trying to make that illegal. It’s very bad, because the way we regulate insurance is we don’t. We basically let willy-nilly state do regulation. They do their best, but if we had a real understanding, a real transparency about these denials and the nature of these denials, I think we would all know a lot more, and maybe improve the system for everybody.

AMY GOODMAN: Do people answer the phone if you call up with a denial?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Eventually. I mean, wait times are not unheard of with any customer servicing.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course — and this is when you’re getting sicker and sicker.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re fighting the insurance company and fighting cancer.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Yeah. And there’s a thing called — in that case, there’s a thing, a proven phenomena, called financial toxicity. And so, as you’re dealing with medical debt or as you’re dealing with an insurance claim, it actually exacerbates your physical condition. This has now been documented. And so, for cancer survivors, there’s a very important study in The Journal of the American Medical Association. They’re saying cancer survivors, as a result of the compounding financial toxicity, lose about one year of life and, you know, many more days in morbidity. So, it’s quite upsetting. And this is only happening in the United States, by the way. We don’t have this financial toxicity issue in any of the other, you know, OECD countries. So it’s a uniquely American phenomena.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re one of the founders of New York Health Care for All?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: That goes to the issue of Medicare for All, of universal healthcare. That’s the phenomenon that is — what we experience, they’re not experiencing in those countries, because they have basic healthcare.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about what that would mean. And the other issue you raised is the issue of medical debt, something else we just have here in this country.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Right. Because we have this whole free market system for healthcare, which is — you know, it’s a free market health system, so you have the carriers, who have their financial interest, insurance plans, and then you have providers and hospitals, who have all their financial interests. Those entities are — and the pharmacy — Big Pharma has its own financial interests. All of those entities are in sort of this nuclear arms race. Everybody has an incentive to charge more, right? Health plan makes more money because they just charge all of us more on premiums.

So, they have — we all thought that the health plans would negotiate better hospital prices with the hospitals. What we’ve seen in a place like New York, the health plans are required, basically, to have all the hospitals, all the fancy hospitals, in their networks. So there’s no price controls happening. There’s no real — economics 101, the microeconomics we all might have learned in college or graduate school or whatever, it doesn’t work in healthcare, because it’s an urgent, visceral — you have to have it. No one has bargaining power in this system. And so, all the big financial interests just have an interest in making more money.

So, I think what happens in other countries is, for example, even in Switzerland, which has private health insurance, the government sets the reimbursement rates for the providers, for the drugs. And so, the insurance companies are administering, private insurance is administering, but they’re not administering the reimbursement rates. New York state used to set hospital reimbursement rates, and we got rid of that in favor of a free market system, which — and what’s happened, our healthcare prices have gone up, and now we have the second most expensive healthcare in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re one of the leaders on tackling medical debt. What is happening in the country around that, state by state?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Well, what’s amazing is that people are really fighting back. So, here in New York state, we did an inventory of all the hospital lawsuits against patients, showed that about 13,000 hospitals were — 13,000 patients were being sued by hospitals every year. We then went on this campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the sickest patients are being sued by hospitals saying, “You’ve got to give us money.”

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Even though often they have a large charity disbursement that the patients didn’t know about —

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — that if there’s a person who can’t afford, they get the money from the state.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Especially in a place like New York, where every one of our hospitals is a nonprofit charity. So, I work for a charity, and we never sue our patients — I mean, our clients. So I’m not sure why hospitals think that — a nonprofit charitable entity thinks it’s OK to sue their patients. Whole other story.

But we just — from the people fighting, which is what is really starting to happen throughout the country, like what we did in New York is really spreading like wildfire, even in places like North Carolina that aren’t known for their progessive policies necessarily. We started fighting back. We changed the statute of limitations. Hospitals now only have, and medical providers only have three years, instead of six years, to sue people. They used to be able to charge 9% interest; now it’s 2%. We no longer allow them to be able to report medical debt to the credit reporting agencies, so the debt collectors can’t, like, hound you and terrify you into it, especially since we know from medical — if you have medical debt, you’re more likely to be a better credit risk than a bad one. So, why would it ever be on your credit report? It’s just crazy. No longer can they take — get this: They used to take liens on people’s homes, primary residences. They used to be able to take — garnish wages of working people. Gone. No longer allowed to do that. And then, finally, we made a total ban on suing anybody below 400% of the federal poverty level, which really saves —

AMY GOODMAN: How many states have this, though? This is New York.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: This is New York. But we’re seeing other states do that. Maryland has something very similar. The unions, in partnership with the people, have done a great job in their campaign in Maryland. We see some movement in Maine, Massachusetts, Illinois. Colorado has done a lot of work around this area, too. So, it’s —

AMY GOODMAN: What would Medicare for All look like? How would that change the landscape for people, the health of the nation?

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Well, first of all, right now we spend more, around 16% of our GDP, on healthcare. If we had a Medicare for All system, that would probably — even in the most expensive other industrialized country, it’s around 10%, 12%. So we would save billions, trillions probably, if we had Medicare for All. And so, all of that could go into paychecks and making people’s lives better, right? So we would have the money instead of giving it to these big industries.

The second thing that would happen is that we wouldn’t have people with a thing called deductibles and coinsurance, so in a way to deter utilization. The industry tries to vilify patients, like we’re just desperate to overconsume healthcare. That’s actually not true. We have the lowest average length of stays in hospitals compared to any OECD country. So it’s not about patient utilization. It’s truly about the prices. And there was a famous Princeton economist, Uwe Reinhardt, who died. He had said, “It’s the prices, stupid.” And it really — and that was a famous article. But it’s still true these 20 years later. So, it’s very sad.

If we had Medicare for All, we wouldn’t be paying as much, and we would probably have much better health outcomes, because people — it wouldn’t be irrational if Kevin gets his treatment or not. People would — you know, we’d have a higher life expectancy. We’d have better health outcomes. We could monitor quality, enforce quality around the system. It would just be so much easier for patients. Patients wouldn’t have medical debt. You know, providers wouldn’t be spending time with the insurance company on paperwork. They could be actually providing healthcare to us.

AMY GOODMAN: And the discussion is going in the other direction with the new administration, not just not Medicare for All, but privatizing Medicare and Social Security.

ELISABETH BENJAMIN: Right, which means that there’s more cost sharing for patients — right? — deductibles, coinsurance, higher copays. And it’d be one thing if we had — all of those things were structured in a way to incentivize people getting care. So, for example, what that means is if someone has diabetes and needs insulin, we all want them to have insulin. If they don’t take their insulin — they shouldn’t be rationing their insulin. If they don’t take their insulin, they’re going to lose a foot. That’s super expensive for all of us, right? But instead, we put copays and deductibles on insulin. So, what’s amazing is, really smart states, like New York last year under Governor Hochul and the superintendent of financial services, said, “We’re going have zero copays for insulin. Like, why? Why would you ever charge people for insulin, period?” That should just — the insurance company should want to have that person using their insulin. We should be doing that for a range of medications to really be improving healthcare for people, instead of for profit.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you both for being with us. Elisabeth Benjamin is vice president at the Community Service Society of New York and co-founder of Health Care for All New York campaign. And I want to thank Kevin Dwyer, who has cystic fibrosis, was denied lifesaving medicine by UnitedHealthcare for nine months, until the Community Service Society, The Today Show, lawyers all got involved, so that he could have the same healthcare that his sister had from the same insurance company. Astounding story.

Coming up, “Don’t Obey in Advance.” Yale historian Timothy Snyder on everything from Trump’s billionaire Cabinet to ABC News’ multimillion-dollar settlement with Trump. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “We’ll Inherit the Earth” by The Replacements. Guitarist “Slim” Dunlap passed away Wednesday at the age of 73. And as we come to the end of the year, we’ve been playing a lot of the music of musicians who have passed in this past year.

AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of Amazon workers organizing with the Teamsters union have launched the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history. In the midst of peak holiday shopping season, drivers and workers at seven facilities in New York, Georgia, Illinois and California went on strike Thursday to pressure Amazon to come to the negotiating table as workers demand better benefits, higher wages and safer working conditions.

The strike comes days after the Senate Labor Committee, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, published a report that found Amazon systematically ignores and rejects recommended worker safety measures and deliberately misrepresents workplace injury data.

This is a video from the Teamsters with workers explaining why they’re joining the strike.

AMAZON WORKER 1: I believe a strike is definitely going to make Amazon realize that we’re not playing. We’re serious.

AMAZON WORKER 2: DBK4 has started a revolution, and I believe that Amazon will wilter under the pressure and cave in and pay us.

AMAZON WORKER 1: Amazon is not respecting us. We’ve been trying to get Amazon to recognize us as Teamsters, and they’re not coming to the table.

AMAZON WORKER 3: And that’s why now we are ready to strike and to actually show them what exactly we are fighting for.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday night, just before the strike began, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos dined with President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago. Bezos also committed to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund through Amazon.

As workers continue to join picket lines at hundreds of Amazon fulfillment centers across the country, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel claimed in a statement most of the workers on strike are, quote, “almost entirely outsiders, not Amazon employees or partners, and the suggestion otherwise is just another lie from the Teamsters,” unquote.

The $2 trillion company employs more than one-and-a-half million people. The Teamsters represent about 10,000 workers. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement, quote, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” unquote.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Ron Sewell is with us, an Amazon associate at an Amazon facility in East Point, Georgia. He’s joining us from Fort Worth, Texas. And here in New York, we’re joined by Connor Spence, the president of the only Amazon local, ALU–IBT Local 1, at the Staten Island Amazon warehouse, the first Amazon facility to unionize.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Connor, let’s begin with you. Explain this strike and respond to Amazon saying these are all outsiders who are striking.

CONNOR SPENCE: Yeah, so, for more than two years at our facility, JFK and Staten Island, Amazon has been refusing to come to the table and negotiate a strong union contract with the workers. This is obviously in violation of federal law. Now, across the country, they have the same obligation with bargaining units, over 20 of them across 10 states. We are all joined together as part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters national Amazon Division, and we’re engaging in a coordinated action to try to put the pressure on Amazon to stop breaking the law, come to the table. This is an unfair labor practice strike over their refusal to bargain.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk more about the significance of this largest strike against Amazon in history?

CONNOR SPENCE: Well, in the U.S., there hasn’t been large coordinated action like this. And actually, I do want to comment on the point Amazon is trying to make that this is somehow just an outsider action. You can go to any one of these picket lines where the workers have walked off the job, and see that’s not the case. Last time I was on the show, I talked about how Amazon has 150% turnover in their warehouses nationwide. Something like this, organized on this scale, has to be internal, has to be worker to worker. It has to come from the inside. The idea that this could be done by outsiders is just ridiculous on Amazon’s part. It’s really a narrative I think they want to push so that other workers who are not yet organizing don’t see this and become inspired that they can also fight to change their conditions.

AMY GOODMAN: At the Amazon picket line in Queens here in New York Thursday, police arrested, then released Teamsters organizer Anthony Rosario, as well as Jogernsyn Cardenas, one of the striking Amazon workers. NYPD agents also threatened the crowd with mass arrests. Journalist Luis Feliz Leon of Labor Notes captured the moment of Cardenas’s arrest. New York police officers swarmed Cardenas and blocked him in the cab of his van.

STRIKING WORKER: I already know, we’re good. We good. You’re going to get out. We good. You good. Yo, you good. You good. Here unite! Here unite!

POLICE OFFICER: Step back!

STRIKING WORKERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!

POLICE OFFICER: Step back!

STRIKING WORKERS: Let him go!

POLICE OFFICER: Step back!

STRIKING WORKERS: Let him go! Let him go! Let him go!

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can describe the scene and the scene around the country, Connor?

CONNOR SPENCE: I would say there’s a lot of energy, a lot of activity. I mean, I don’t think it’s like — I think it’s very significant to point out to people that it’s the dead of winter. We’re nearing the holidays. People would rather walk off the job than spend another day in the warehouse under those conditions. And I think you can really — when you go to these picket lines, you can feel that energy. The workers are — they’re tired. They feel exploited. They feel abused. And the only thing stopping more workers from taking action is just the time it takes to organize in these conditions. And it’s going to keep building, and you can sense that when you’re on the line.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to also bring in Ron Sewell, Amazon associate working in East Point, Georgia, also an Amazon learning ambassador, helps train new hires and other associates, punished by Amazon for organizing on safety issues. He filed an unfair labor practice against Amazon, and Amazon settled. He’s usually in Georgia but now in Fort Worth, Texas. Talk about the issues that you face and other workers face.

RONALD SEWELL: Thank you for having me.

Yes, the issues that we face there is the common safety issues, such as clean water, cool air in the South, overheating building, people passing out. And no — when I say no response from management to even speak with us or talk with us, and therefore that’s why we are in strong support of the New York picketers, and we’re doing the same thing here in the location East Point.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the dangers that workers face, the level of injury on the job? Talk about what Senator Sanders talked about in the Senate.

RONALD SEWELL: Well, the dangers in the job, what Senator Sanders talked about, is real. We have employees — just recently, last week, I had to assist an employee who passed out, that was working the early morning. And he was trying to get to a place where he can sit down, either in the break room or in the restroom. But before he even reached that area, he passed out on the floor in front of me, hitting his head, hitting his face.

So, the danger is real. It’s not something that we’re making up. We have an older population, as well as a younger population. And that’s something health-wise, safe-wise, that we submitted a request to OSHA, and we got a visit by them, and they went through the whole facility.

AMY GOODMAN: Has ATL6 in Atlanta, in East Point, unionized?

RONALD SEWELL: No, we have not unionized, but we do have the full support of the Teamsters and what have you. And we are fighting for our individual rights. And we will continue doing that and continue supporting the Teamsters and all others in getting Amazon to come, at least management, talk with us, listen to our demands, listen to our concerns.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can explain who’s unionized and who hasn’t, Connor? And explain your position. You’re the only president of a local Amazon Teamsters unit.

CONNOR SPENCE: So, in 2022, we were the first warehouse to win an actual NLRB election. Since then, many other warehouses across the country have gone through the NLRB process, not quite the same way we did. Instead, they signed a majority of their co-workers on union cards, demonstrated that majority to the company. The company, under a newer NLRB ruling, had about two weeks to contest that majority, file elections with the NLRB. They refused to do so. So, in doing so, it was a tacit recognition that those majorities exist, and therefore, that has happened at over 20 bargaining units across the country. And that number continues to grow as the movement expands and we organize more workers.

AMY GOODMAN: The Teamsters President O’Brien spoke, controversially, at the Republican convention. Do you think unions will do better under Trump?

CONNOR SPENCE: I mean, I think it remains to be seen. I’m very much a fan of the current NLRB general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo. But I think that, ultimately, what we’ve learned, even in the past four years under Biden, is that the NLRB is not the main instrument of change here. It’s building worker power. And we have to do that under any administration, under any NLRB.

AMY GOODMAN: And are you calling for people not to use Amazon, to boycott Amazon?

CONNOR SPENCE: I think a better thing for me to say is, if you choose to shop on Amazon this holiday, a good thing to do would be to meet with your driver, have a conversation with them when they drop off your package, ask them about their working conditions. If there are things they would want to change, tell them that you’ve seen Amazon workers organizing on TV, that they should consider joining the Teamsters, and they have the full support of you and the community if they choose to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Connor Spence is president of Amazon Labor Union-IBT Local 1. And I want to thank Ron Sewell for joining us, Amazon associate working in the ATL6 facility in East Point, Georgia, talking to us from Texas.

Coming up, as Luigi Mangione is brought to New York and charged in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare Brian Thompson, we’ll look at the growing anger directed at the health insurance industry. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Kalasnjikov,” opening song to the film Underground and a favorite of Steven Englander, the visionary director of ABC No Rio, who died last Friday at age 63 from a rare lung disease he battled for years while securing a new site for the legendary New York City DIY art and community space. He lived long enough to see the groundbreaking in July.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We end today’s show looking at Donald Trump’s renewed war on the press, which he’s often called “the enemy of the people.” And in one recent rally, he talked about how someone could shoot through the press. On Monday, the president-elect sued The Des Moines Register — parent company is Gannett — and the pollster Ann Selzer for publishing a poll just before the election that showed Trump trailing Harris in Iowa. While Trump ended up easily winning the state, he’s now accusing the paper of committing, quote, “brazen election interference,” unquote. Trump laid out his plans to target The Des Moines Register and other news outlets during a news conference Monday at Mar-a-Lago.

PRESIDENT–ELECT DONALD TRUMP: And I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department or somebody else. But I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump’s lawsuit against The Des Moines Register came just days after ABC News, which is owned by Disney, settled a defamation suit filed by Trump. The network agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library and pay a million dollars in legal fees to Trump’s lawyer. Trump sued the network after ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos said Trump was found liable for rape in a 2023 civil case in Manhattan brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. ABC has been widely criticized for agreeing to settle instead of going to court to fight what many believed to be a winnable case. The prominent attorney Marc Elias responded to the settlement by writing, “Knee bent. Ring kissed. Another legacy news outlet chooses obedience,” unquote.

The New York Times is reporting Trump and his allies are threatening to file more defamation lawsuits in an attempt to crack down on unfavorable media coverage. Trump has also picked Kash Patel to head the FBI. Patel has a record of threatening to go after journalists.

We’re joined now by Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation. His latest piece is headlined “Trump’s Attack on the Free Press Is Just Getting Started.”

Chris, start off with The Des Moines Register suit and then move on to ABC. What’s happening here?

CHRIS LEHMANN: Well, what’s happening is a very clear pattern in Trump’s public life. It actually well antedates his rise to political power. He made a practice of frequently going after journalists for defamation. He famously sued one of his biographers, who wrote in this biography that Trump did not qualify as a billionaire. And in his subsequent deposition, Trump basically said he was a billionaire because he felt like a billionaire. This is a long-standing pattern of just intimidation of the press. And Trump was very open as a private businessperson that that was his aim. He wanted to exert a chilling effect on people doing critical reporting from him.

Now, of course, he has the awesome power of the federal government behind him, or prospectively behind him, and ABC disgracefully capitulated right away. And The Des Moines Register suit is a clear augur of what’s lying ahead. At the Mar-a-Lago conference you mentioned, Trump also threatened to sue Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize — Pulitzer Peace Prize committee for these, you know, alleged offenses against, basically, Trump’s bottomless vanity. So, by capitulating, you know, sort of preemptively the way ABC has, this news organization has set the stage for a torrent of similar suits like this. You know, Trump will, and his henchmen, like Kash Patel — also, Pete Hegseth has threatened a defamation suit against the person alleging sexual assault against him. You know, this will be a prime MO of the second Trump administration. And it’s very worrisome that even before Trump takes office, ABC is, without cause, giving in. It sends a very distressing signal.

In point of fact, what George Stephanopoulos said on the air was just a paraphrase of what the judge in Trump’s — in the E. Jean Carroll case said. He said that even though Trump’s conduct on the case did not rise to the strict definition of rape under New York law, any commonsense understanding of rape suggests that Trump did, in fact, commit that act. So — 

AMY GOODMAN: The judge said that.

CHRIS LEHMANN: The judge in the case. So, there is not — this was not George Stephanopoulos just randomly popping off on the air. It was a documented claim.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chris, I wanted to ask you — in The Des Moines Register lawsuit, Trump is alleging consumer fraud by The Des Moines Register as a weapon? Could you talk about that, particularly, and also the impact on these media companies, many of which tend to want to settle just to get rid of a lawsuit?

CHRIS LEHMANN: Right, right. Yeah, the fraud charge is — you know, as far as I know, has no legal basis. You can’t just say, because a pollster got something wrong, there is some deliberate intent to mislead. It’s a plainly frivolous suit. But that is the point. This is a show of power on the part of an administration that, we know from his prior turn in office, takes every opportunity to demonize, harass and intimidate the free press. So, you know, this, The Des Moines Register suit, is very much like the Trump biography suit I mentioned earlier. It’s just his vanity was affronted by poll findings that, you know, turned out to be wrong. You know, I don’t know what he can assert the damage has been, if he won Iowa by 15 points after this poll was released. It is just a plain effort to harass and intimidate.

To its credit, the _Register_’s parent company, unlike Disney, which owns ABC, indicates it will be putting up a robust defense. And, you know, in a sane court system, they will prevail. But, you know, all of this takes resources and money. And as you mentioned, Juan, you know, big companies don’t want to be bothered with the hassle of going to court, even though these companies also have libel insurance precisely for cases like this, and they don’t actually tend to suffer in terms of the bottom line.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is extremely serious, when you look at the amount that ABC settled for. They were —

CHRIS LEHMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — just about to go to depositions — right? — of George Stephanopoulos — 

CHRIS LEHMANN: Right, to discovery, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — and Trump, to discovery.

CHRIS LEHMANN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, ABC called that off. Fifteen million dollars plus another million for lawyers’ fees, any smaller news organization couldn’t possibly deal with something like this. And then — 

CHRIS LEHMANN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you have these news divisions that are not, you know, profitable. They only profit democracy, but —

CHRIS LEHMANN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — so-called, you know, financially profitable. From these multinational or these very large corporations that own lots of other things, like Bezos with The Washington Post —

CHRIS LEHMANN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — and they care more about that other stuff, they don’t want to be seen unfavorably by Trump, so they settle on the news issue. This is so extremely disturbing.

CHRIS LEHMANN: Yeah, and this is what happens when you have large corporations who are not — they don’t have journalistic values. They don’t have journalistic priorities. You know, as you said, the news operations are loss leaders for these figures, and Jeff Bezos has billions of dollars in government contracts. The publisher of the L.A. Times, it’s the same story. He has extensive pharmaceutical holdings that come under federal regulation, so he, too, is preemptively knuckling under to the Trump administration. He’s killed editorials critical of Trump. He’s installed this absurd new feature for readers of the paper to track bias. And he’s insisted that anything critical of Trump run alongside, in the op-ed section, something that’s the opposite point of view. This is more than just callow bothsidesism. This is just craven corporate misconduct. And it is —

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Patrick Soon-Shiong who owns the Los Angeles Times.

CHRIS LEHMANN: Yes. Thank you. Yes. So, yeah, this is what happens —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Chris, I wanted to — 

CHRIS LEHMANN: Oh, go ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Chris, I wanted to ask you — we only have about a minute left. I wanted to ask you about the potential — what Trump could do with the FCC, especially in terms of broadcasters. Are there any concerns in that area?

CHRIS LEHMANN: Oh, absolutely. Cameron Barr, his nominee to head the FCC, is a very vocal critic of, you know, what in MAGA-land is considered mainstream media censorship. He has gone on and on about how Big Tech, in particular, you know, during COVID and at other times, have allegedly suppressed MAGA causes and talking points. So, yeah, there’s a very real and immediate danger. You know, the call will be coming from inside the White House soon, when Trump’s FCC starts implementing policy.

And is is all of a piece. It’s really important to underline that. You know, what we’re going to see, I think, is what happened in Hungary under Orbán’s rise to power. Trump and JD Vance are both ardent admirers of Viktor Orbán. And Orbán basically used his version of Elon Musk to buy out the national press and turn it into a party propaganda arm.

And, you know, that is a very real and present danger with Trump coming back into power and feeling this kind of impunity and this drive to avenge the people he sees as his enemies. It’s crucial that the press hold the line and follow the example of The Des Moines Register and not the example of ABC News.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Chris Lehmann, for being with us, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation. We’ll link to your piece, “Trump’s Attack on the Free Press Is Just Getting Started.”

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! is produced with Mike Burke, Anjali Kamat, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Hana Elias. Our executive director, Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira, Denis Moynihan. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

The Biden administration is coming under criticism this week for failing to independently investigate the killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old American activist shot to death by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in September. The recent University of Washington, “U Dub,” graduate was fatally shot in the head after taking part in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita. Witnesses say she was shot by an Israeli sniper after the demonstration had already dispersed.

On Monday, members of her family met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken but left the meeting saying they had little hope the U.S. will hold Israel accountable. Her family also held a vigil outside the White House on Monday night and a press conference on Tuesday outside the Capitol, where speakers included Democratic Congressmember Pramila Jayapal of Washington state.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: Outside reporting, including an in-depth investigation by The Washington Post, directly challenges the Israeli government’s account of what happened and how Ayşenur was killed. This investigation found that Ayşenur was shot more than 30 minutes after the confrontation that the IDF claimed to be responding to had already ended. And she was killed from more than 200 yards away, horrifically shot in the head. That is not a, quote, “mistake,” as the IDF has claimed. That is not accidental. …

I am absolutely appalled with the lack of movement on this case, the lack of attention from the State Department, the U.S. State Department, for the well-being and the safety of our own U.S. citizens. Nothing that I have heard from the State Department gives me any assurance at all that the killing of a United States citizen by the IDF is being treated with the urgency that it deserves. And this is all particularly galling when the U.S. continues to provide unfettered aid to Israel — bullets, bombs, weapons — violating our own domestic Leahy Laws and international humanitarian law.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Democratic Congressmember Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, represents Seattle, where Ayşenur also grew up and went to college. Pramila Jayapal was speaking Tuesday at a news conference calling for a U.S. probe into Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi’s death, shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.

We’re joined now by Ayşenur’s sister, Ozden Bennett, and her husband, Hamid Ali.

We thank you so much, both, for joining us, and our deepest condolences on the death of your wife and your sister. Ozden, if you could start off by talking about your meeting with Blinken? Both of you weigh in. Why did he agree to meet with you? Your sister is an American citizen. And what he promised?

OZDEN BENNETT: My sister’s killing happened over three months ago, so we waited a long time to meet with Secretary Blinken. And unfortunately, we didn’t get a lot out of that meeting on Monday with him. He stuck to a lot of his talking points, which was that they will review the rules of engagement and conduct within the Israeli military because of their escalations and actions, and, essentially, kept deferring to the Israeli investigation. Anytime that we countered the comments that he was making, he would just circle back and repeat the same things. And — 

AMY GOODMAN: Hamid, let me ask you: Has President Biden called you on the death of your wife? Or, Ozden, on the death of your sister?

HAMID ALI: No, no, President Biden has not reached out to us directly.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Monday that Blinken told you that, quote, that “Israel has told us in recent days they’re finalizing their investigation into the matter.” Have you received any communication from the Israeli government at all?

HAMID ALI: No, we haven’t received any communication from the Israeli government. I mean, we received three pictures with some captions from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem via — or, from the Israeli government via the embassy in Jerusalem. But that’s about it. There’s been no other communication.

OZDEN BENNETT: And when we asked Blinken for what they — what communication or documents or anything they’ve received from Israel themselves, the answer was “nothing at this time.”

AMY GOODMAN: Hamid, can you tell us about your wife? The university — went to University of Washington, graduated. And then, what happened on that fateful day?

HAMID ALI: Yes. As I understand it and as I’ve been told by eyewitnesses and as I’ve read in The Washington Post investigation, she attended a weekly demonstration in Beita against an illegal Israeli settlement. She was there as an international observer. She was not part of the protest in the same way that — she was nonparticipating necessarily. She was there to document and as a protective presence and to bear witness, really, of their right to protest against that illegal settlement.

She was standing under an olive tree. She had just helped an older woman, who was also there as an international observer, who had just sprained her ankle. And the last conversation that they had was that they felt safe in that position underneath that olive tree. And then that’s when she was shot.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ozden, could you tell us — your sister was drawn to advocating for human rights around the world. Could you talk about her growing up and her decision to get involved in these kinds of activities?

OZDEN BENNETT: Growing up, even from a young age, she was just always very drawn to helping her community, helping people in need, taking mentorship positions, volunteering where she could. And starting in high school, she became really politically engaged in the Seattle community. Around Trump’s election, for example, she was really moved by Bernie Sanders and his messaging. She was really moved against what Trump was messaging at the time and trying to implement. And she really rallied protests at that time in Seattle. And through the years, she has volunteered abroad in Myanmar to help relief efforts there.

She related to what’s happened in Gaza since October 7th, had raised over $40,000 working with the community at large, putting together a fundraiser, an art fundraiser, to help give aid to children in Gaza. She was a huge part of the student leadership that led the encampment movement on the campus of University of Washington. She was at the negotiations table trying to push the president and the administration on campus to divest from certain companies that were harming Palestinians.

And even after all that, she felt like what she had done wasn’t enough, and she felt moved to do what she could. And she felt like, in her words, the least she could do was to go there and bear witness as an international observer and document the injustices that she was seeing and, hopefully, be — have the Israeli military think twice before using lethal action, which, unfortunately, is what killed her that day.

AMY GOODMAN: Hamid Ali, you wrote an op-ed in The Hill newspaper in Washington that was headlined “Why isn’t Israel being held accountable for killing my wife and other innocents?” If you can answer that question right now and what exactly Blinken said he is waiting for, if he’s talking about an Israeli military investigation? I wanted to go back to what the State Department originally said, Matt Miller saying, “Israel has told us in recent days they’re finalizing their investigation.” You’re meeting with all sorts of congressmembers, right? Jim McGovern, Pramila Jayapal, Senators Jeff Merkley, Chris Van Hollen — Chris Van Hollen, who has called for the release of the investigation of the well-known journalist, also an American, the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed, what, May 11th, 2022, by an Israeli sniper as she was covering the Israeli raids into the Jenin refugee camp. What would it look like if the U.S. held Israel accountable for the death of your wife?

HAMID ALI: Well, simply, to begin, accountability starts with an investigation by the U.S. of the killing of one of its own citizens by an ally. I think that’s where it starts. Accountability — I mean, nothing will bring my wife back. But at the very least, we can hold those who were responsible — for example, the soldier who fired that bullet, the unit commander who gave the order, and anyone else responsible for that action being taken — face some sort of punishment, because I think the answer to the question of why my wife is not getting justice is because Israel enjoys this level of impunity throughout its existence, that no other country, no other state in the world enjoys. And it seems to be unconditional at this point. I mean, I don’t know what else needs to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: And are you calling for something to happen before Trump takes office? Are you concerned about what will happen next?

HAMID ALI: I think it should happen as soon as possible. We’ve been saying this since September. I don’t think the election has anything to do with it. I don’t think Trump coming into office changes anything. I think — I hope any administration would take seriously the killing of one of its citizens. So, 30 days are left in this administration. That’s a long time, I think, for someone to just simply make a statement, namely President Biden or Secretary Blinken, to just say, “Hey, I think we need an investigation into the killing of Ayşenur,” because there’s still a lot of time, and I don’t want to take ownership off of the administration for what’s happened here.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Hamid, I wanted to ask you — she was also a dual citizen. She was a citizen of the U.S. and Turkey. And Turkey has opened its own investigation into the killing. Have you heard anything from the Turkish government?

HAMID ALI: The Turkish investigation is ongoing, as far as I know. I don’t know as many of the details there. But I think it just speaks to the stark contrast into these two governments of which she was a citizen, my wife was a citizen. One government has taken no pause, no hesitation to begin seeking justice for one of its citizens, and the other government, the U.S., has been dragging its feet, basically not doing anything and letting the military and the government responsible for killing her take the lead and investigate themselves, which we’ve seen historically has never proven any accountability, has never brought forward any accountability, especially, like you said, in the current administration even with Shireen Abu Akleh, that you mentioned earlier.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you both for being with us. And again, our deepest condolences. Hamid Ali is the husband of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old American Turkish citizen who was shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in September. We’ll link to your article in The Hill. And we want to thank Ozden Bennett, the sister of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. They have both just returned from a meeting with the secretary of state, Tony Blinken.

Coming up, we look at Donald Trump’s war on the press, as he sues The Des Moines Register and ABC News settles a lawsuit that Donald Trump brought against them for over $15 million. It’s not clear why. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Five Palestinian families have sued the U.S. State Department for violating U.S. federal law by continuing to fund Israeli military units despite their role in gross human rights abuses in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The lawsuit cites the Leahy Law, named after former Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. The lawsuit says, quote, “The State Department’s calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation … since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023,” unquote.

The lawsuit is supported by DAWN, the D.C.-based nonprofit that campaigns for democracy and human rights in the Arab world. This is a short clip from a video they produced about the lawsuit.

NARRATOR: For almost 30 years, the Leahy Law has prohibited the United States from funding foreign security forces that violate human rights. Yet for decades the United States has consistently ignored persistent and widespread abuses by the security forces of one country — Israel — and refused to block aid to any of its military units. Now DAWN is taking action. We are filing a lawsuit against the State Department to force it to finally enforce the Leahy Law and end military aid to abusive units of the Israeli Defense Forces. This lawsuit isn’t just about ending the Israeli exception from enforcing U.S. laws, but preserving the broader principles of accountability, human rights and the rule of law. We hope our lawsuit will force a long-overdue reckoning for Israeli impunity, but also crack down on U.S. foreign policies arming abusive regimes around the globe — in violation of our nation’s own laws and principles. This lawsuit also reflects the immense human cost of America’s failure to enforce its own laws, continuing to provide Israel with over $20 billion in weapons to terrorize Palestinians in Gaza, where it has killed over 45,000 people, the vast majority women and children.

AMY GOODMAN: That video from the D.C.-based nonprofit DAWN, that campaigns for democracy and human rights in the Arab world.

We’re joined now by two guests. Charles Blaha is senior adviser to DAWN. He retired from the State Department last year after over 30 years of service. From 2016 until his retirement, he served as director of the Office of Security and Human Rights, which is responsible for implementing the Leahy Law worldwide. He’s joining us from Washington, D.C. And from Philadelphia, we’re joined by the Palestinian American writer Ahmed Moor, born in Gaza. Moore is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Charles Blaha. You worked for the State Department, the agency that you are now suing, for over 30 years. Can you explain more fully the Leahy Law and what you’re charging in this lawsuit?

CHARLES BLAHA: Sure. And thanks for having me.

The Leahy Law, as you said, prohibits United States assistance to security force units that have committed gross violations of human rights. It’s actually very surgical, and it prohibits U.S. assistance to the specific units that have committed the violations.

The State Department has for years, in its own human rights reports, including the 2023 reports for Israel and for Gaza and the West Bank, set forth gross violations of human rights by Israeli security forces, things like torture, extrajudicial killings, like the killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi that you mentioned at the top. It deprived people of their liberty without due process, rape under color of law, enforced disappearances. These are allegations and credible reports set forth in the State Department’s own human rights reports, and they go back years.

Despite all that, the State Department has never once held any Israeli unit ineligible for assistance under the Leahy Law. The lawsuit, which is by the plaintiffs, is designed to try to compel the State Department to obey the law. So, in three words, what this lawsuit is about is the State Department must “obey the law.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Charles Blaha, what has happened to these reports once the department — once they’ve been issued to the higher-ups in the State Department?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, that’s a good question, because usually the determinations about whether a unit is eligible or not are not made at the higher levels of the State Department. They’re made by experts. They’re made by action officers who are versed in the Leahy Law, who know the security forces — the security forces in question, and who know the facts in question. And these are legal determinations.

And one of the problems with the way the Leahy Law is applied, or really not applied to Israel, is that these determinations have been made at the political level. And they have, as I said, resulted in not one single Israeli security force unit ever being found ineligible for assistance.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how is U.S. military assistance delivered to Israel? In what form and where? And is this a standard practice, the way it’s delivered?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, Israel is a special case, and we give massive security assistance to Israel. And part of that is a lump sum of over $3 billion annually that goes into an account. And where it goes after that is controlled by Israel. We don’t know all the places it goes. We don’t know the units it goes to.

And that’s a problem, because the Leahy Law requires vetting units. In that situation where we can’t trace the units to which the assistance is going, the law requires the State Department to give the countries in question — and Israel is one of those, there are a few others — to give the countries in question a list, a list of ineligible units. The State Department has never done that. That has been the law since 2019. And in five years — five years — the State Department has never given Israel a list of ineligible units. It’s given lists to the other countries that this law applies to, but not to Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Blaha, you often hear commentators on television, or, I should say, U.S. government officials, saying, “Don’t be so concerned about this amount of money, $3 billion, because it’s really going mainly to U.S. military, you know, to the weapons manufacturers.” You hear that not only around Israel, but other countries that get U.S. military aid. Can you explain what actually happens? And is Israel a separate case, where you don’t know where the money goes, but in other cases, we insist that the money stays with U.S. weapons manufacturers?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, part of the money does go to U.S. weapons manufacturers. Part of it actually goes to their competitors in Israel. But the problem from the Leahy Law is, regardless of where that money goes, this is U.S. taxpayer money that’s going to weapons that are being used in gross violations of human rights, being used by units that commit gross violations of human rights. That’s the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: And Blinken’s role, your former — well, I don’t know if you worked under him, but the secretary of state? When did you retire exactly?

CHARLES BLAHA: I retired in August 2023, so before the — before October 7th. And when I retired, I was frustrated at the slowness of the implementation of the law. It wasn’t the reason I retired. I retired because I had been in the State Department for 32 years and it was time to retire. But I was frustrated. But I became more and more frustrated as I saw mounting evidence of gross violations of human rights by Israeli security force units and nothing being done about them.

AMY GOODMAN: And did you have conversations with Blinken about it specifically?

CHARLES BLAHA: No, I was an office director, so I was not what they call up on the seventh floor, up in the highest levels of the State Department. I was in office director, but an office director with really good knowledge of the Leahy Law and how it is applied.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring into the conversation Ahmed Moor, is a Palestinian American writer, advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Welcome to Democracy Now! Could you talk about your involvement in the lawsuit? You were born in Gaza and still have family there?

AHMED MOOR: Yes, that’s right. So, I was born in Gaza, moved to the United States as a child, still have most of my extended family in Gaza. And as you can imagine, conditions there have been unlivable for over a year, 14 months now. And so, my direct participation in the lawsuit goes to my increasing inability and increasing likelihood — inability to speak with family members in Gaza and increasing likelihood that they’re going to be subjected to further inhumane conditions and harm. My family has experienced direct loss through the genocide. Most recently, my cousin’s 19-year-old son was killed by an Israeli sniper in Rafah. And so, the urgency surrounding this lawsuit goes to the fact that the conditions are getting worse. The danger that people are exposed to continues even as we speak.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed, you wrote a piece recently in The Guardian, “The Palestine-Israel nightmare won’t end until we accept these basic truths.” Lay out your argument.

AHMED MOOR: So, I mean, basically, anybody who’s been — you don’t need to be a sophisticated geopolitical analyst to take a look at a map and realize that there’s never going to be a Palestinian state. The pronouncements that emerged in 1993, the White House Lawn, the famous handshake between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister at the time, did generate a lot of hope. You know, I lived as a child in the West Bank, and people were ready, I’d say, to accept a future of two states, with everything that that entailed, with all of the losses that they had experienced personally through the Nakba. At that time, Israel was less than 50 years old. People were ready to move on and accommodate themselves to the reality, because Israel exists.

But over the course of the past 30 years, the acceleration of the settlement project has basically rendered a Palestinian state unrealizeable. And you really only need to take a look at how the settlements are arrayed across Jerusalem and the West Bank to realize that there’s no contiguous Palestinian state possible in that land. And so, people like me accommodated themselves to the idea of one binational state, equal rights for everybody. And it’s the framework that we live under here in the United States, and it’s workable in lots of different places. And we said, “Well, why not Palestine-Israel?”

That no longer seems likely or workable. You speak with people in Palestine, and they’re deeply traumatized, and it’s unreasonable to ask them, to say, “Well, you know, can you have a shared future in this land with Israelis?” So, I think the consensus that’s emerging is that we need some kind of separation, even though two states is unworkable. And it’s not clear where that goes.

In the article, though, I highlight a few conditions that need to be met before we can arrive at a negotiated conclusion or outcome to this horrible nightmare that we’ve all been living for so long. The first is recognition that Hamas is an ordinary political party, in the sense that it’s native to the Palestinian struggle. Hamas was founded long after the establishment of the state of Israel, and it rose in direct opposition to the conditions of the occupation in Gaza. Before Hamas, the chief organization, that was described as the terrorist and obstacle to peace, was the Palestine Liberation Organization. And, of course, the PLO accommodated themselves to Israel, and that was the commencement of the Oslo process. So we know that this outright description of people as hard-liners or as being fundamentally incompatible with the idea of negotiation and discussion just isn’t true. The second element of the argument — so, I guess the first one is Hamas is not going away. It’s an indigenous party in Palestine. It’s employed terrorist tactics, but that doesn’t mean that the party itself is going away or that Palestinian society is going to move away from Hamas just because the United States and Israel demand that it does.

The second part of the argument is that the Palestinians have a right to say that Zionism — have the right to say that Zionism is Jewish supremacy in Palestine, and that in order for us to have an equitable conversation about what a future looks like, we need to move past Jewish supremacy in Palestine. We need a basic framework for negotiation and discussion which moves past the idea that certain people have rights that accrue to them based on an identity which is immovable, an identity that you’re born with. And that’s basically the argument.

So, once we meet these — once we can set a framework, basically, for negotiation and discussion, we can begin to talk about resolving the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Where we go from there, I’m not sure. I don’t think anybody really knows at this stage.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I’d like to bring Charles Blaha back into the conversation. Charles, what differentiates this lawsuit from previous ones — excuse me — against the U.S. government for providing military assistance to Israel, especially in view of the fact that Israel — with every war, Israel gobbles up more territory, creates more settlements and becomes more and more of a rogue state?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, what makes this particular lawsuit by the plaintiffs different are two things. One, it’s being brought under the Administrative Procedures Act. And the contention under that act is that the special process that the State Department uses to Leahy-vet Israeli units — it’s called the Israeli Leahy Vetting Forum — that that process is arbitrary and capricious and does not advance the intent of the Leahy Law. In fact, it seems designed to frustrate it.

And the second thing about this lawsuit is that given the Supreme Court’s recent ruling overruling the Chevron case, which says that courts have to give deference to agencies’ interpretations of laws, that no longer exists. That’s been overruled. And as our lawyer laid forth in the complaint, now the courts can look more closely at how an agency — at how an agency or department implements — or, in the case of Israel, fails to implement — the law.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but, Ahmed Moor, I wanted to ask why you’ joined this lawsuit. And given that so many of your family are still in Gaza, those that have survived, their response?

AHMED MOOR: The conditions are dire. I’m writing an essay now about child amputees, and I spoke with a child and her mother, double amputee in Gaza. The conditions of basic life are not being met. Gaza is unlivable. Never mind things like potable water or taking a shower in the morning, think about defecating in the open, being a woman or a girl who can’t — who’s menstruating. The basic conditions of life in Gaza aren’t being met. And the fact that they aren’t being met is a matter of policy, policy that our government is supporting.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Moor, Palestinian American writer, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the State Department. And Charles Blaha, former State Department official, served as director of the office responsible for implementing the Leahy Law.

Coming up, we speak with the sister and husband of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the American human rights activist who just recently graduated from University of Washington in Seattle. She was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank this year. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Rumours of War” by Tony Tuff. The longtime conscious roots reggae singer passed away at the age of 69 in April.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The official death toll in Gaza has topped 45,000. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting a different battle inside Israeli courts. The first sitting Israeli prime minister to face criminal charges, he’s finally taking the stand at his long-running corruption trial. The case has gone on for years. He’s charged with fraud, breach of trust, accepting bribes in three separate cases.

We turn now to an extraordinary new documentary that offers an in-depth look into the charges against Netanyahu, featuring leaked footage of police interrogations of Netanyahu himself, his wife Sara and those accused of bribing him. This is the trailer to The Bibi Files.

INTERROGATOR: [translated] Our first question for you is whether you or any of your family members have received any gifts or favors from wealthy businessmen in the last decade.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] This is preposterous and insane. You’re trying to incriminate the prime minister on nonsense.

RAVIV DRUCKER: In this case, the facts are really simple. The prime minister and his wife are getting gifts.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] It’s a total lie!

RAVIV DRUCKER: And on the other side, Netanyahu did favors.

BENEFACTOR: [translated] We must find a way to reward him.

INTERROGATOR: [translated] What do you need to reward the prime minister for?

NIMROD NOVIK: Government officials are not allowed to take gifts. This is corruption.

RAVIV DRUCKER: The police, they investigated everybody.

BENEFACTOR: [translated] If this comes out, I’m dead.

INTERROGATOR: What did you get?

SARA NETANYAHU: Champagne and cigars. [translated] Necklaces, rings.

NIR HEFETZ: Sara Netanyahu is very important. Both of them never surrendered, never compromised.

SARA NETANYAHU: [translated] My husband is the strongest prime minister we’ve ever had.

NIR HEFETZ: They start to believe that they are untouchable.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Without shame! Saying things that didn’t happen!

AMI AYALON: After the catastrophe of the 7th of October, the war became another instrument to stay in power.

NIMROD NOVIK: When people serve for too long, it gets into their head.

RAVIV DRUCKER: The indictment made him dependent on the extreme right in Israel. He is now captive to their whims.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] This is nonsense.

RAVIV DRUCKER: Put all Israel in turmoil.

NIMROD NOVIK: Netanyahu is the architect of chaos.

AMI AYALON: He survived in a state of war. He survived in a state of instability. He’s not a crackpot. He tried to kill the system. Nobody is above the law.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Do you remember that line from The Godfather? [in English] “Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.”

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for The Bibi Files, leaked secret footage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new documentary The Bibi Files is directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Alex Gibney. The Bibi Files cannot be legally distributed in Israel due to privacy laws.

For more, we’re joined by filmmaker Alex Gibney. In 2008, he won an Oscar for his film Taxi to the Dark Side about an Afghan man who was tortured in prison at Bagram.

Thanks so much for being with us again, Alex. I went to see this film the other night at the theater. This is powerful. Explain why in this trailer we can’t see Netanyahu’s face in these deposition tapes. And how did you get these deposition tapes, when he, his wife, his son Yair and others are being questioned by police?

ALEX GIBNEY: OK, I’ll answer the — hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi.

ALEX GIBNEY: I’ll answer the questions in reverse. I was leaked these tapes. They’re interrogation videotapes done by the police that were a precursor to the indictment of Netanyahu on corruption charges. And in the tapes, you can see Netanyahu, his wife Sara, his son Yair and many of the people who attempted to bribe Netanyahu. They were — I thought they were explosive and very important. This, by the way, was before 10/7 or the war on Gaza. This when there was a big crisis over the judicial reform attempts by Netanyahu, which, of course, were done in part so he could elude any consequence from, you know, impending bribery charges.

But the key thing to understand about distribution in Israel is, when I got these leaked tapes, I made a promise to the source that I would not distribute the film in Israel, because the source could go to prison. There are privacy laws that make it mandatory that if you are photographed as part of an official proceeding — i.e. a police interrogation — you can’t cause those videotapes to be released, so — unless you get the permission of Netanyahu and Sara, etc., which wasn’t going to happen. So, anyway, that is the occasion of why these things can’t be — this film can’t be released and why we had to, you know, black-bar the trailer in order so that the trailer wouldn’t be freely visible — I couldn’t cause the trailer to be freely visible in Israel. Though I should say that it’s being widely pirated there.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Netanyahu is going after you?

ALEX GIBNEY: Netanyahu, as soon as it was announced that we were going to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, he went to an Israeli court and tried to stop the screening in Toronto. Now, how that was going to happen, I don’t know. But in any event, it was denied. But he certainly tried to stop us. And I understand the Netanyahu administration, through a number of mechanisms, are trying very hard to go after a guy named Raviv Drucker, who’s one of the producers of the film and is a longtime Israeli journalist who has an expertise in this kind of corruption, has been the bane of a number of prime ministers, but particularly Netanyahu.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to another clip from The Bibi Files. It begins with Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet.

AMI AYALON: And after the catastrophe of the 7th of October, the war became another instrument to stay in power. He survived in a state of war. He survived in a state of instability. He survived when we fight each other. He survived when our enemies fight each other.

GILI SCHWARTZ: A forever war is beneficial to Netanyahu. This makes people feel like they are always in danger, like they always need him. There is always some huge threat. I think that that helps him remain prime minister.

AMY GOODMAN: That last voice, the young Israeli woman, Gili Schwartz, is from Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than a hundred people were killed on October 7th last year. Alex, if you can elaborate on what they are saying? I mean, as we speak, Netanyahu is in court in Israel right now. What this means? They say he wants to wage wider war because, otherwise, he’s no longer going to be protected by the prime ministership, by being prime minister.

ALEX GIBNEY: That’s right. I mean, I think, strictly speaking, this is a film about corruption. And it starts with petty corruption, being bribed with gifts and cigars, champagne, jewelry. But then, the ultimate corruption is how he’s tried to elude a reckoning for his misdeeds, and in so doing, he wraps himself in the mantle of prime minister and then wages endless war. Now, I can’t think of really anything more corrupt than somebody who is administering the killing of women and children in order to be able to stay in power. But that is what they are alleging, and that is what the film is about.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to another clip from The Bibi Files. This one begins with Prime Minister Netanyahu addressing the U.S. Congress this past July.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Together, we shall defend our common civilization. Together, we shall secure a brilliant future for both our nations.

NIMROD NOVIK: Well, I would say that, tragically, the Americans don’t know how to call him out. There was no plan for ending the war of Gaza, bringing the hostages home and changing dynamics in the region. And things only got worse. Netanyahu is the architect of chaos. And as we speak, when all eyes are on the front in Gaza and the front in Lebanon, he is implementing his plan in the West Bank with the extreme right. He may create a situation where it’s irreversible.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s Nimrod Novik, former adviser to Shimon Peres, in The Bibi Files, the documentary produced by Alex Gibney, who’s with us now. So, talk about how this trial plays out right now. I think most people in the United States aren’t even aware. I mean, you have the horror in Gaza. You have what’s now taking place in Syria, what’s happening in Lebanon. Explain how this all fits in.

ALEX GIBNEY: Well, this is a trial that’s been going on for four years. And Netanyahu has been trying to elude a reckoning related to these charges for that much time. And what he constantly does is to wrap himself in the mantle of leadership. And so, what better way to do that? And this is a tried and true political formula, as grisly and as grotesque as it is, is to wage war, is to continue to use weapons and say, “We’re in danger of being annihilated, so we must strike back.” But, I mean, the destruction that’s going on in Gaza, for example, is a kind of wanton destruction at this point that is just beyond any kind of moral reckoning. And, you know, I think that also the United States bears some responsibility for this. That’s why we included those clips of him in the Congress. You know, we supply Israel with so much aid and so much — 

AMY GOODMAN: And to be clear, Sara, his wife, and when she’s being questioned, she yells at the police and says, “Do you know how he’s treated in the United States when he addresses a joint session of Congress?” Alex Gibney, we’re going to have to leave it there, Academy Award-winning filmmaker and producer of The Bibi Files. His next film is about Luigi Mangione and the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. I’m Amy Goodman. Happy birthday, Jeff Stauch!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.

As President Biden enters his final month in office, he’s facing calls to grant more debt relief to millions of student borrowers. According to the White House, the Biden administration has approved $175 billion in student debt relief for nearly 5 million borrowers over the past four years. But advocacy groups, including the Debt Collective, have urged Biden to support broader debt relief before Donald Trump returns to the White House. The Debt Collective recently launched a campaign to pressure the Biden White House to cancel student debt for older student debtors. This is an excerpt from a video produced by the Debt Collective.

NARRATOR: President Biden still has full authority to free elders of these debts before Trump takes power.

BECKI WELLS: The only thing that’s standing between us and student loan relief is political will.

RENITA WALKER: But I think the broken system is what put us here. Advocating for myself and the other people in the Debt Collective is the reason I am here today.

UNIDENTIFIED: We give billionaires a slap on the wrist and bail them out. It’s time to bail out struggling working people.

NARRATOR: If Biden doesn’t use his powers, millions will die in debt.

SARAH BUNDY: There’s going to be an army of seniors who are having their Social Security garnished for their student loans. And that social safety net that’s put in place for so long — people are going to be in poverty.

BECKI WELLS: There is a provision, federal claims collection provision 902.2, that will allow the president to eliminate the debt, even if there are legal challenges. And so, we’re here to let the senators know about it.

NARRATOR: Federal claims provision 902.2 allows government agencies to cancel debt based on the debtor’s age. Essentially, the federal government knows these debts will never be paid and will simply be discharged when people pass away.

TRIANA ARNOLD JAMES: It is the right thing to do, especially for an older debtor. It’s the right thing to do.

AMY GOODMAN: A new video from the Debt Collective. We’re joined now by Astra Taylor, co-founder of the collective. Her new piece for The Nation is headlined “It’s Still Not Too Late for Biden to Deliver Debt Relief.” She’s also a filmmaker and author of several books.

Astra, we only have a few minutes. This is such a critical issue right now. Explain what you’re saying Biden has it in his power to do. You’re going to the White House in a few days once again to talk to the folks there.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes, this is a Titanic moment for the Biden administration. They have crashed into the authoritarian iceberg of the Trump administration, and it is their duty to fill as many lifeboats as possible, to do what they can to protect us on multiple fronts. Student debt relief is the one I know well. There are many legal mechanisms, long-established legal authorities, that the Biden administration can use to issue group discharges for people who have ironclad claims to debt relief. This is work the Biden administration should have done on day one, make no mistake, but as we have a limited number of days, they need to get to work and do this.

You know, we’re pushing against stereotypes. There’s the stereotype of the student debtor as privileged — right? — as upwardly mobile. The fact is that the vast majority of student debtors, especially the people in the most distress, went to for-profit colleges where they are systematically defrauded. I hear a very deep resonance with the previous guest. And when you turn over public goods to the profit motive, terrible things happen. So, these are schools that target vulnerable borrowers, first-generation students, single parents, veterans, disabled folks, and bury them in debt for worthless degrees. These people have strong claims, and the Biden administration has a backlog of over 400,000 applications for debt relief for these folks. And Senator Edward Markey and Dick Durbin and 70 other representatives have signed a letter saying, “Cancel the debt for these folks.”

And then there also are older debtors, who, contrary to stereotypes, are the fastest-growing demographic of student debtors. Every quarter, there are more and more older folks in debt. People are aging into their student loans, not aging out. Nine million older debtors over the age of 50 owe $400 billion. They’re going to get relief when they die. Not to be morbid, but it’s coming. Why not let them retire in dignity by canceling this debt? Because we know once Trump is in office, their hopes are dashed.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain that, when Trump is in office, Project 2025 and the far-right push against student debt relief. Talk about what their plan is. And President Biden is saying he tried, but courts stopped him.

ASTRA TAYLOR: You know, unfortunately, the Democrats have set the Republicans up for success. We’ve been organizing since the Occupy Wall Street era, pushing first for for-profit borrowers and then broadening our demands out for student debtors more broadly, with the horizon of total student loan abolition and free college for all. We think college needs to be free as in price and free as in freedom. It’s a public good. Unfortunately, the Democrats have only sort of tweaked at the margins, are very insistent on making individuals file for relief one by one, instead of tackling this issue.

And we saw this — we’ve seen this movie before. We were organizing under the Obama administration, and what we saw was that student debtors were thrown to the wolves, and that the first time around, Donald Trump made very clear that it was his priority to stop student debt relief and to also embolden the for-profit college industry. And we’re seeing right now, in advance of January 20th, when he takes power — we’re seeing the stocks of those for-profit education companies going up. So, Project 2025 is very clear that they want to end student debt cancellation, that they want to privatize public education. In fact, we won’t be talking about abolishing student loans; we’ll be talking about abolishing the Department of Education.

And so, it’s extremely serious. You know, people need to keep organizing. That’s what the Debt Collective is going to do as the — you know, in the years ahead. But right now it is incumbent on the Biden administration that they fill those lifeboats, that they grant clemency to debtors, who have done nothing wrong and whose lives are being destroyed.

AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration has granted some $175 billion in student debt relief to about 5 million borrowers. But you say in The Nation that even these numbers are deceiving.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, these numbers are deceiving. Well, first off, much of this debt relief was issued through programs that already existed, that they fixed to some degree — for example, public service loan forgiveness or income-driven repayment programs — but these were preexisting mechanisms that the government should make work. I mean, public service loan forgiveness is actually a George W. Bush-era program. So, while we cheer every instance of debt cancellation for nurses, for teachers, for other public servants, it’s the bare minimum.

And unfortunately, sometimes the reality doesn’t match the press release. So, there was a big to-do about debt cancellation for students from Corinthian Colleges, which is something we’ve been working on for a decade. The fact is that over 100,000 people have not actually gotten that promised relief.

So, there is a real problem with implementation, with matching deeds with words with the Democrats. And I think it’s actually a parable about the problems with how the Democrats govern, more broadly. You know, this speaks to a bigger problem than just student debt relief, which is having the courage of your convictions, actually governing to the full ability of your authorities. Again, there’s a Swiss Army knife of legal tools that the Biden administration can use to cancel debt relief. They should be using them all, as boldly as they can.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what are they telling you at the White House? You’ve been there several times.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Well, we’ve been told that for-profit debtors, in particular, have strong, irrefutable claims to debt relief. So, that makes us wonder, “Well, then, where is it?” Again, a backlog of 400,000 applications and many more people who are defrauded by these schools.

We have seen the headlines that said that in the administration’s final sprint, that student debt relief is a priority. We’re going to try to keep pushing them to make that happen. People should call their representatives, call the White House, say that this is important. And it’s important, in part, because it’s one of the things that can’t be undone. Once that debt cancellation is delivered to the people who deserve it, it’s going to be there. It’s going to change their lives.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re in a very unusual climate right now, where you have the alleged assassin of the head of UnitedHealth, the UnitedHealth CEO — you have him being hailed a hero by some, because it has opened up this enormous backlash, outcry against the health industry and insurance. Do you see student debt in the same way?

ASTRA TAYLOR: Absolutely. The Debt Collective is a union of debtors, and we organize across debt types. We also organize with medical debtors who are pushing for public universal healthcare. We are also organizing renters who are pushing for a model of housing provision that’s not based on profit. So we see these debt types as all connected. And many student debtors have medical debt. In fact, 100 million people in this country have medical debt. And that’s part of why people are so frustrated, right? That’s part of why people are using this moment to express their frustration with systems that profit from people’s pain, their sickness, their poverty. And so, this is something that we’ve been organizing around, doing different campaigns for medical debt relief. But this is urgent.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute to go. In this last month that President Biden is in office, you’re saying he should use this moment to support a number of issues, including abortion funds around the country. Explain.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes, the Debt Collective this week just announced that we’re erasing $50,000 of abortion debt, which is a horrible phrase that people probably never heard before, but it’s becoming a reality post-Dobbs, which is the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. So, without a constitutionally enshrined right to abortion, what’s happening? There are fewer opportunities for care, because providers are being shut down, and so people are having to travel further, which can cost — it can cost $1,500, $1,600, $2,000 to travel. So, abortion funds are in crisis. And what we’re hearing anecdotally is that providers are saying, “Put your abortion on a payday loan. Put it on a credit card. Borrow money from your family.” So, this is something that this is a new dimension to the crisis of reproductive health justice. We believe abortion debt is medical debt. It should all be abolished. Abortion is healthcare. Healthcare should be free. And the Biden administration should do what it can to pardon abortion providers in advance of the Trump administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us, Astra Taylor, co-founder and organizer of the Debt Collective. We’ll link to your piece in The Nation, “It’s Still Not Too Late for Biden to Deliver Debt Relief.”

Coming up, The Bibi Files. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial for corruption, we’ll look at this new film with the film’s Oscar-winning producer, Alex Gibney. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Cadence” by Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer. Hussain passed away Sunday at the age of 73.