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todd lyons
How Journalists Can Cover the Midterms to Help Protect Their Legitimacy
As President Donald Trump continues to insist he won the 2020 election, reporters must keep their readers informed about the 2026 voting process and press all candidates on whether or not they will accept the voters' decision.
Apr 10, 2026
A few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, I wrote “An Open Letter to My Old Tribe,” urging “every reporter who is covering this election at any level” to focus on a crucial question—whether the public would trust the election procedure and the losing candidate would accept the result as legitimate. “It does not seem an exaggeration,” I wrote then, “to say that the future of American democracy, perhaps its very survival, depends on the answer.”
More than five years later, with less than seven months to go before the midterm elections, that question is before us again, but in far starker terms than I could have imagined in 2020. So, here’s an updated letter to the media tribe I once belonged to, with suggestions broadly similar to those I made five years ago, but with a far sharper sense of urgency, even fear.
Here’s my first suggestion: Reporters in 2026 need to pay more attention to and offer more forceful coverage of President Donald Trump’s continuing insistence that Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was fraudulent and that year’s election illegitimate. (As recently as March 15, he tweeted this completely false allegation: “With time, it [the 2020 election] has been conclusively proven to be stolen.”)
While Trump keeps repeating that long-discredited claim, journalists should not treat his falsehoods as “old news” that no longer requires detailed coverage anymore. They should instead consider it an important and newsworthy story right now. Instead of briefly repeating a shorthand conclusion (“false” or “without evidence”) after a quote from the president, they should take a few more lines of type or minutes of air time to remind readers or listeners of the facts that show irrefutably why they should never believe his words. After all, Trump’s “rigged election” claims haven’t been validated in a single one of 64 court cases—that’s right, 64!—challenging the election results, or in any official investigation or recount.
Ask every Republican candidate on your state’s ballot to answer this question: Do you really believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and lost only because of massive vote fraud?
On that point, reporters can cite an authoritative 2022 report, “Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case That Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Election,” written by a panel of authors including two former Republican senators, a lawyer who served as solicitor-general under President George W. Bush, and five other prominent conservatives. After exhaustively reviewing every judicial proceeding and post-election probe in six states where election fraud was alleged, the authors concluded that “Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case.” Their definitive verdict on the overall issue was: “There is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct.”
(Journalists might also pass on this thought from David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, who, in a recent podcast, suggested that all 2020 election conspiracy theories rest on this dubious premise: “Democrats, being out of power, somehow managed a conspiracy against a sitting president, who controlled the entire government, to steal an election from him… and that four years later when those same Democrats held every lever of federal power, they forgot to do it again.”)
Reporters should also remind their audience of another important fact: Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election were emphatically refuted by Mike Pence, his vice president, and Bill Barr, his attorney general, both of whom publicly broke with the president, strongly denied his allegations, and unequivocally recognized that Joe Biden had been legitimately elected.k
In that connection, here’s a related suggestion for reporters: Ask every Republican candidate on your state’s ballot to answer this question: Do you really believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and lost only because of massive vote fraud? Press as hard as you can for an on-the-record, yes-or-no answer, and if you don’t get one, keep pushing. If a candidate says yes or evades the question, follow up with questions like: “What evidence do you have? How do you explain that those charges were not verified in a vote recount or in a single one of more than 60 judicial proceedings? Were judges in 64 courtrooms across six states all part of a nefarious conspiracy against Donald Trump, or do you have any other explanation?”
Report on the Process, Not Just the Arguments
Journalists in 2026 also have a much broader task: to keep their audiences informed on the details of the election process and the ongoing efforts to undermine its legitimacy. Covering those themes systematically and proactively will not be easy at a time when the headlines are bound to be filled with other explosive issues: a major war in the Middle East (and possibly beyond); the ongoing bitter controversy about the Trump administration’s chaotic immigration enforcement campaign that led to the violent deaths of two US citizens; the continuing effects of drastic staff reductions in federal agencies that have eliminated or significantly reduced government services and benefits for millions of Americans; and a long list of other divisive subjects. But the threat to public trust in the election process poses a clear and present danger to the principles, traditions, and values of the American political system, and news organizations need to adapt their campaign coverage accordingly.
So, here’s a suggestion (one I made in that earlier letter years ago) to reporters, editors, and news directors across the country:
Starting now, treat the election process in your state as a significant running news story. Make it a separate beat, alongside the traditional coverage of the reactions of candidates and voters. Touch base regularly with local and state election administrators. Learn (and then tell your readers or listeners) the details: how voters are registered, how and where the voting will be conducted, and exactly how their votes will be counted. Cultivate sources and regularly report what local officials are doing (or not doing) to ensure a credible election. Meanwhile, before any votes are cast or counted, press candidates and their minions to state exactly what they would define as evidence of miscounting or fraud, what they would consider grounds for contesting the outcomes of local or other races, and how they envisage conducting those contests—standards for which they can then be held accountable if they do end up disputing the official results.
Don’t cover such subjects only when they arise in a partisan debate where the traditional role of journalists is to report both sides (candidate A says the ballot count will be falsified or ineligible voters will be allowed to vote, candidate B or election administrator C says the voting will be legally conducted and the count will be accurate). Instead, monitor and regularly update your audience on what’s actually happening. Track problems as they appear and solutions as they are proposed, discussed, and adopted.
For example, on the controversy about voting by mail—an issue now before the Supreme Court—don’t just report the opposing arguments and leave it to readers and listeners to choose which side to believe. Give them the knowledge to decide for themselves. Don’t wait for partisans on one side or the other to bring up the subject. Take the initiative with a story detailing the rules in your state that define who can vote by mail and how to do so. When the time comes, report how many mail-in ballots have been distributed and track how many have been returned. Explain in detail how those ballots are stored and protected and when and how they will be opened and counted—facts that will let news consumers reach their own conclusion about the practice and whether it’s risky or not.
Reliable Sources
A useful resource for journalists covering such issues is the nonprofit news organization Votebeat, which focuses exclusively on covering how elections are conducted and distributes its articles at no cost to readers or local and national news outlets. Founded in 2020, Votebeat has reporters based in five states (Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin) that were centers of controversy in that year’s election. On the national level, in 2024 it operated an “Expert Desk” where journalists could ask voting-related questions and get knowledgeable answers from a panel of nearly 100 election administrators, cybersecurity experts, attorneys specializing in election law, and other professionals. It plans a similar program to assist journalists covering this year’s election. Reporters or anyone else concerned about election issues can sign up here to regularly receive its reports.
A variety of other organizations across the political spectrum can answer media queries on election procedures and management. Here are a few more groups whose work reporters should follow and contact if needed:
- Voting Rights Lab, “a campaign hub designed to supercharge the fight against voter suppression.” It operates the Election Policy Tracker, which “analyzes voting and election laws across all 50 states and the District of Columbia and provides near-real time analysis of election-related legislation pending across the country.” The tracker is designed to support “policy experts, advocates, researchers, legislators, and anyone on the front lines of the pro-democracy movement with critical information about the laws and legislation shaping our elections.”
- Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group bringing together “conservatives, moderates, and progressives” who share a common goal: “preventing American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government.”
- The Center for Election Innovation & Research, whose stated goal is “to restore trust in the American election system and promote election procedures that encourage participation and ensure election integrity and security.” (David Becker, the group’s executive director, is quoted earlier in this article.)
- Defending Democracy Together, an organization created by “lifelong conservatives and Republicans” to defend “democratic norms, values, and institutions” and oppose “abuses of power that threaten to undermine the integrity of US elections, federal agencies, and the Republican Party as a whole.” Its list of directors includes William Kristol, founder of the right-wing magazine The Weekly Standard, and Mona Charen, a staff member and speechwriter in Ronald Reagan’s White House.
- Republicans for Voting Rights, committed to defending “the accessibility, integrity, and competitiveness of American elections” and to oppose Republicans “pushing for more restrictive voting laws designed to support unfounded accusations that the [2020] election was stolen and the results were illegitimate.”
And one last suggestion for journalists covering this year’s election: Go down the ballot in your state and ask every candidate running for the Senate or House of Representatives or any significant state or local office for an unequivocal on-the-record commitment to respect the voters’ decision, whatever it might be. If any candidates waffle or decline to answer, don’t just leave it at that and go on to the next story. Instead, keep asking them (and their political allies, campaign organizers, and spokespeople) the same question and press them to explain exactly why they are dodging the issue.
I ended my 2020 letter with this closing paragraph:
Journalists alone will not win the fight to protect the legitimacy of this election, but they can make an important contribution—perhaps the most important since reporters covering the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped make the country confront the realities and the profound injustice of the segregation era. In the coming weeks, it will be absolutely vital for journalists everywhere, in every medium, to recognize the challenge and greatly intensify their efforts in rising to it. The stakes could not be higher.
Sadly enough, in 2026, those words ring even more pertinently than when I wrote them.
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What Need a Theory of Change That Recognizes the Democratic Establishment Has Been Doing It Wrong
Effective change begins with believing in what seems impossible now: that workers should have significant power in our government and in our economy.
Apr 10, 2026
Recently the political director of a major labor union reminded me that we need a theory of change to build a fairer and more just society. That challenge struck me as worth exploring. What theory of change do we need?
Let’s start with the No Kings mobilizations. The theory of change behind No Kings is to rally as many people as possible against President Donald Trump and inspire a huge turnout in November to take the House and Senate away from the Republicans. Control of Congress would at least slow down Trump’s attacks against immigrants and his assault on democratic norms. The No Kings theory of change is simple: Mass mobilization in the streets and at the polls = curtailing the Trump assault.
If successful, these efforts would provide critical relief to hard-working immigrants and put up some guard rails to protect democracy. But No Kings doesn’t directly deal with the broader problems that impact working people, especially job instability and the high costs of housing, healthcare, and education.
What Theory of Change Would Build a Better Economy for Working People?
Every theory of change has two major components: one is the substance of the change and the other is the political vehicle needed to achieve it.
A call for secure jobs at living wages also could lead to a reattachment of working people to politics—to a belief that building a better, more secure society is possible.
For me the the key substantive issue today is job instability. You’re nothing in our society if you can’t hold a job. Yet, over the last several decades we have allowed, as a society, tens of millions of workers to be tossed out of work due to no fault of their own. Stock buybacks, private equity, hedge funds, globalization, and new technologies have been destroying jobs at profitable and unprofitable companies alike. AI is likely to make it all worse.
Breaking Away From Corporate America’s Framework
To find solutions worthy of promotion we need to distinguish between people-centered and capital-centered frameworks. Right now, nearly all the discussion about the problems facing working people flow from a capital-centered perspective. That has led to reliance on financial incentives to encourage corporate job creation, as in the Inflation Reduction Act.
It also has led to thousands of subsidies costing billions of dollars provided by state and local governments to attract and maintain corporate investments to create more job opportunities.
Encouraging job creation in the private sector by subsidies and tax breaks leaves employment decisions to the corporation (unless constrained by strong collective bargaining agreements.) Hiring and firing are seen as sacrosanct corporate rights essential to a free society.
What About a Right to a Job?
A people-centered perspective, is very different. Consider:
Everyone who is willing and able to work should have the right to a job at a living wage. And if the private sector is unable to provide it, the public sector should.
This idea is so far outside of today’s corporate-centered framework, that it is dismissed out of hand. Won’t job guarantees lead to a bloated public sector causing taxes to rise through the roof? And what would these workers do?
To follow this path we have to change how we value public goods. Right now public infrastructure is starved for investment. Our roads, our bridges, our schools need repair. Our public transit systems are hobbled, the internet in many parts of the country is slow or nonexistent. We need more childcare workers, more teachers, more healthcare providers, and more workers to remediate our deteriorating environment. Sit down with any group of workers and they could make a list of all the work that needs doing. Clearly, the richest society in the history of the world can afford it.
But these public needs have been undermined by a pervasive corporate dogma that government is incapable of good works and that the private sector (which has been churning jobs) is the epitome of efficiency and productivity. Yet Social Security runs well and Medicare is far more efficient than private insurance. Charter schools have yet to prove to be more effective than public schools, and many public universities are every bit as good as private ones. Our libraries work efficiently and so do our emergency services.
Government can work well if we shift our framework from capital first, which abhors public funding, to people first.
A call for secure jobs at living wages also could lead to a reattachment of working people to politics—to a belief that building a better, more secure society is possible. Add in Medicare for All, affordable housing, help with childcare costs, and free higher and vocational education, and we have the makings of a compelling people-first political platform.
How Do We Get There?
For most progressives, the Democratic Party is the one and only vehicle. The goal is to reform it (realignment) by running more candidates like Bernie, AOC, the Squad, and Mandami, as well as a new crop of working-class oriented candidates like Graham Platner in Maine, and James Talerico in Texas.
It’s heartening to see so many working-class candidates take up the reins and run this year. Realignment through working-class candidates has been badly needed. These efforts, we hope, will prove to the party apparatus that waitresses, union leaders, electricians, flight attendants, and even oystermen can run and win. The goal would be to have these worker-oriented candidates become the future leaders of the Democratic Party, forming a bloc that is powerful enough to return the Democrats to their working-class roots.
Going Independent?
But in this difficult moment, realignment is not enough—we also need an outside, independent strategy to credibly compete in places the Democratic Party has abandoned, and where working people have abandoned the Party.
As we found in our survey of 3,000 Midwestern voters, 70% had negative views of the Democrats, and from the get-go a Democratic candidate faces an 8% deficit in voter support when running against an independent while saying exactly the same things.
To reach these working people, we need independent working-class candidates running on a people-first platform like Dan Osborn is doing in Nebraska. The only way he can win against a wealthy Republican incumbent is to distance himself from both parties—escaping what he calls “the two-party doom loop.”
If independent working-class candidates can win, there should be a knock-on effect for reforming the Democratic Party. The outside competition, free from party labels and corporate money, could pressure Democrats to field more working-class candidates.
But say the word “independent” to many union members and they often say something like, “We have to back those who back us—the Dems.” Or as another labor leader told me, “They’re the only friends we have.”
Some also equate “independent” with “spoiler”—a fringe counterproductive effort that takes votes away from the Democrats and elects Republicans.
But, the union political director who prompted this article hit the nail on the head:
This strategy, whether they like it or not, is oriented on realigning the Democratic Party, not acting entirely outside of it. This is a needed one, but not wholly sufficient for the scale of the political crisis in front of us. And the reality is that an increasing number of working-class people do not feel at home in either version of two-party duopoly. But the losses Dems have faced in the industrial Midwest, the South, etc. require both realignment AND independent brute force in order to reclaim our values. It has to be both/and!
A closer look at the country’s political landscape shows 130 US House districts in which the Democrats consistently lose by 25% or more. In those districts there is no Democratic Party to spoil. Instead, these areas could become the proving ground for developing independent working-class candidates under the banner of “Not Red, Not Blue: I’m a Working-Class Independent!”
The Baked-In Ideological Resistance
Why does the Democratic Party need so much pushing and cajoling? Why isn’t it already recruiting hundreds of working-class candidates?
It’s their mindset. The Democrats, from the high officials to the funders, from the consultants to the pollsters, from the candidates to their PR firms—all are stuck in the capital-first framework. Yes, they want to raise taxes on the billionaires and stop the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attacks on immigrants. And yes, they would like to add resources to Obamacare, protect women’s rights, promote better climate policies. All that’s to the good.
But when it comes to challenging the job-destructive behavior of corporate America, their knees knock. Some, but not all the corporate-friendly attitudes come from the need for campaign funds and from having an eye out for future lucrative jobs for themselves, their families, and friends once out of office.
Real change that empowers working people requires an independent electoral strategy that challenges the Democratic Party establishment.
But corporate Democrats also believe that private capital is the engine of prosperity and employment. They see no inherent conflict between labor and capital. Grow the pie and all can prosper. Make sure that everyone has the opportunity to succeed, without discrimination, and that’s fair enough—the procedural essence of equality.
If we dig down deeper, I think most Democratic officials believe that the super rich deserve what they have earned, reaping the rewards of their hard work and talents. In their eyes it is simply insane to suggest that every worker should have a right to a job at a living wage—provided by government if necessary. Make that argument and they will look at you with pity, thinking you are a lost soul living in a fantasy world.
The Populists of the 19th Century
That fantasy world looked very real during the 1880s and 1890s when the Populist movement—the progressive kind—developed a vision that captured the imagination of millions of workers and farmers. Robber barons had control of the shipping, finance, farm machinery, and crop storage, at the time, driving farmers and industrial workers deeper and deeper into peonage.
The Populists responded with a new vision of a cooperative commonwealth with public ownership of railroads, banks, and grain elevators. And they didn’t just dream about it; they formed hundreds of cooperatives that bound these working people together in common enterprises to improve their lives. They also took their crusade into politics, changing the country for decades to come. Depending on their location they ran as Democrats, as Republicans, and as third-party independents, winning thousands of elections.
Although the movement was eventually defeated as a national party, its state and local victories paved the way for the regulation of corporate America during the Progressive era, the establishment of the progressive income tax, and for the economic enhancement of farmers and workers during the New Deal.
We have a long way to go to catch up with the theory of change that gave the Populists so much influence.
But that theory of change is still alive. It starts with believing in what seems impossible now: that workers should have significant power in our government and in our economy.
There’s no way around it. Real change that empowers working people requires an independent electoral strategy that challenges the Democratic Party establishment, even if doing so makes people uncomfortable.
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We Must Fight Fossil Fuel Oligarchs to Save Democracy
It’s no coincidence the fossil fuel industry has lined up behind racist, belligerent, and authoritarian leaders like Trump.
Apr 10, 2026
The second Trump administration has been an unrelenting assault on democracy.
Basic democratic rights are disappearing. Unarmed people have been executed in the streets and smeared as “terrorists” by the government. Entire families are being kidnapped and denied basic rights in inhumane detention centers. And journalists are being arrested for doing their jobs.
Against this backdrop, working for climate justice might seem like a distraction.
But a clear-headed look at how we ended up in this grim situation in the first place shows that the movement for climate justice, far from being a distraction, is an essential part of the fight to defend and deepen democracy.
We cannot defeat authoritarianism without breaking the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry on our economy and our political system.
The Trump administration has received major political backing from fossil fuel oligarchs—in response, in fact, to Trump’s open solicitation to trade favors for their support. The government has subsequently followed an energy and environmental policy agenda that benefits the industry.
The administration has expanded the industry’s access to resources at home through leases and permits for drilling in public lands and waters. It has attacked Venezuela, kidnapped its president, and is attempting to open up the country’s oil reserves to US corporations.
And of course it launched an unprovoked war on Iran, sending the price of oil skyrocketing—and leading to genocidal threats from the president against Iran unless the country reopens the Strait of Hormuz, through which Gulf oil passes.
Meanwhile at home, the Trump administration has weakened environmental standards, including mercury pollution standards for power plants. By attacking motor vehicle fuel economy standards, it has effectively grown the captive market for the industry’s products. And it has abused the federal permitting process to try to kill the fossil fuel industry’s main competitors, wind and solar energy.
This is not merely a case of an administration that supports the fossil fuel industry and also happens to be authoritarian. The industry directly supports and benefits from an authoritarian government that curtails democratic rights and silences dissent. It also benefits from a government that upholds white supremacy and enforces racial hierarchy.
Several years ago, a report I worked on for the Institute for Policy Studies documented how the fossil fuel industry has used its money and influence to push for state-level legislation to criminalize protest against fossil fuel infrastructure projects. These so-called “critical infrastructure laws” are now on the books in 19 states. The industry has also used strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) to intimidate and silence critics.
This is a predictable response of a powerful, politically connected industry that is under assault on two fronts.
First, competition from cheap, widely available wind and solar energy poses a serious economic threat to the industry. Renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels in most of the world, and new generation capacity is dominated by renewables.
Simultaneously, the industry faces serious political and reputational threats. Growing numbers of people worldwide are experiencing extreme heat, wildfires, storms, floods, and toxic air and water pollution attributable to the industry’s activities. Many of them are connecting the dots, and refusing to be passive victims of a powerful industry and its political backers.
Social movements against particular fossil fuel projects, or against the industry more broadly, have multiplied on every continent. What’s more, they are already winning. The industry faces restrictions in several political jurisdictions, and likely recognizes that it could even be expropriated in the not so distant future.
Faced with these twin crises, the fossil fuel industry is increasingly resorting to relying on the repressive apparatus of state violence to crush dissenting voices and maintain its dominance.
The industry has also historically benefited from a racially and economically unequal society. The lack of political power of Indigenous, Black, and other racially marginalized communities, and of poor communities of every race, has enabled the industry to locate polluting infrastructure in these communities, treating them as sacrifice zones. This has let the industry avoid the protracted zoning and legal battles they would have to contend with if they tried to locate their infrastructure in more privileged communities, greatly reducing the cost and lead time for their projects.
In recent years, the growing strength of the environmental justice movement has threatened the ability of the industry to continue to reap the benefits of racial and economic stratification. It is therefore no surprise that the industry is supporting an openly white supremacist political agenda that seeks to bring old racial hierarchies back and eliminate the very concept of environmental justice.
In sum, the far-right agenda in the US is deeply intertwined with the political and economic objectives of the fossil fuel industry that is at the root of climate change. We cannot defeat authoritarianism without breaking the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry on our economy and our political system.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that these observations are mainly based on US politics, but are applicable to many parts of the world. Fossil fueled fascism has become a global phenomenon, and our resistance to the fossil fuel industry must be similarly global in scale.
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The American Medical Association Is Failing to Speak Up for Dr. Abu Safiya
If they speak out to save just one Palestinian doctor's life, they could pave the way to save hundreds of other prisoners.
Apr 10, 2026
Israel tortured a 1-year-old baby. They burned him with cigarettes and drove nails through his feet as a form of torture during his father's interrogation. This isn't some twisted, made-up movie scene; this is real life. And it's the one case we know of right now, but who knows how many other babies, in all their innocence, have been tortured by the Israeli military? It also begs the question: Since they're willing to do this to an infant, what are they doing to older prisoners?
It's always been clear that the Zionist settler colony will go to any length to achieve its goal of being an ethnostate. To achieve this goal, it subjects Palestinians to mass-imprisonment campaigns. No title—child, teenager, mother, father, health professional, aid worker—is spared from the Israeli prison system. Because if Israel can't just outright exterminate all Palestinians at once, the next best option is to round them up and slowly kill them behind bars.
Well, that was the case before March 30, 2026, when the Israeli Knesset passed a bill that calls for the hanging of Palestinian prisoners within 90 days of being convicted of killing Israeli settlers. The bill was introduced by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been wearing noose pins and carrying around a physical noose to publicly show his excitement for potentially becoming Israel's official executioner. When the vote was called out and the bill was passed, Ben-Gvir popped champagne bottles with his cronies, celebrating the essence of killing more Palestinians.
These are illegal settlers under international law, who have been terrorizing Palestinian villagers for years, their attacks becoming increasingly frequent and heinous. Palestinians have had their houses set on fire while inside them at the hands of these settlers, backed by the state. It is important to remember that the Israeli military courts operate outside of constitutional processes and have been widely condemned for their human rights abuses. In these courts, Palestinians have a conviction rate of over 96%, most often for crimes they never even committed.
Our government is killing people in cold blood, and the institutions meant to advocate for us remain silent even when it is their peers being forced into tanks, handcuffed, and locked away and tortured.
Israel promotes its interests by incentivizing settlers to brutalize Palestinians and destroy their land. And now, after systematically denying Palestinians' right to defend themselves, they are branding them as cattle to be killed by hanging. Israel is carrying out its genocide in the form of codified law. This is the true face of the settler colonial state of Israel: dehumanization to the lowest level.
Right now, Israel is holding the highest number of Palestinian prisoners ever recorded. One such prisoner is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. He was the sole lead of the only functioning hospital in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital. For the "crime" of providing medical aid to Palestinians, he was surrounded by Israeli tanks and soldiers and forced into imprisonment in December 2024.
Israeli society is getting more and more draconian: no prosecution, no unanimity, nothing. Simply put, if the Israeli military sees fit to kill a Palestinian prisoner, they will do so. Dr. Abu Safiya has been in an Israeli prison for 16 months, and there is speculation that he is being tortured. But again, if they can torture an infant, what's a middle-aged man to them? The new Israeli bill gives the IOF a pathway to execute prisoners like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya: torturing them to force a confession, convicting them, and then hanging them. Clearly, he's been deemed a threat to the very existence of Israel because he helped save the lives of Palestinians.
This is the situation of medical professionals outside of the West, heroes who put everything on the line to provide care for their people. In comparison to the most "esteemed" doctors in the US—like those within the American Medical Association, with all their prestige and shiny titles—the healthcare workers subjected to deadly imperialist brutality deserve our recognition, and they urgently need our help.
You might be thinking, "What does the American Medical Association have to do with a detained Palestinian doctor?" Firstly, we need to contend with the fact that it is our US tax dollars that fund these genocidal soldiers, prisons, and policies that got Dr. Abu Safiya arrested in the first place. The American government and its institutions are just as guilty of the oppression of the Palestinian as the Israelis are. We need to stop operating on willful ignorance because it has cost thousands of lives in the region, a tally that is increasing by the second with the recent attacks on Iran and Lebanon.
Secondly, the American Medical Association (AMA) prides itself on its strong relationship with the World Medical Association, which has already called for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya, demonstrating alignment with its policies that "support the rights of physicians worldwide." The advocacy of foreign doctors is integral to the AMA as a whole. Why is a Palestinian doctor being ignored by them, then? Maybe the topic of genocide is too taboo for them. That would be ironic if so, when a genocide is the culmination of healthcare sectors being destroyed, lineages lost, and eugenics shaping a land and people forever. These are topics any medical association should be speaking about, especially one that represents the literal country that enabled this violence. Imagine the leverage the AMA could have in the halls of Congress when advocating for change.
The recent codification of the execution of Palestinian prisoners poses a grave threat to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's life. Will the AMA finally act now, in the face of such injustice and wickedness? If they speak out to save just one doctor's life, they could pave the way to save hundreds of other prisoners.
The genocide in Gaza has shown me that so much of what I thought about society was false. I once believed I lived in a world where good prevails, but I have come to realize that selective empathy is the rule. The leaders of this world don't hold empathy for anything or anyone that stands in their way of global domination. I frequently think of how many lives have been lost at the hands of US-Israeli imperial violence. The sheer number of casualties in Gaza, despite being predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands, has never been enough reason to stop. I think of how one of the first targets in the US war on Iran was a girl's elementary school, which they targeted with not just one strike, but three in a row.
Our government is killing people in cold blood, and the institutions meant to advocate for us remain silent even when it is their peers being forced into tanks, handcuffed, and locked away and tortured. At this point, advocating for the release of our prisoners who were wrongfully detained is the least we can do.
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