Tag Archives: Denis Moynihan

#BreakingTheSoundBarrier Column: 20 Years Later, the Lessons of #HurricaneKatrina Go Unheeded

Posted on by toddpanther

Weekly Column

August 28, 2025

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29th, 2005, breaching New Orleans’ protective levees, unleashing unprecedented destruction. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in US history, killing over 1,800 people, mostly poor residents of New Orleans’ historic Black neighborhoods. Katrina was also the US’ costliest natural disaster, causing over $160 billion in damage. Katrina’s deadly waters long ago receded, but in their wake, with worsening climate change, the vital lessons of Katrina have gone unheeded. Indeed, President Donald Trump, by flaunting genuine risks, is aggressively courting disaster.

Take Trump’s attack on FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In a statement released by the White House in May, FEMA was lumped with a slew of federal agencies that, the statement reads, represent “the weaponized rot in our Federal Government.” Targeted agencies included the EPA, the IRS, and the NIH. The document accuses FEMA of being “wasteful and woke,” engaged in “official training to indoctrinate ‘intersectionality’ and ‘investment in diversity and inclusion efforts’ over disaster prevention and response, culminating in aid workers being directed to skip the homes of President Trump’s supporters in the wake of a disaster.”

As with most of Trump’s pronouncements, these accusations are presented without any evidence.

The bulk of FEMA’s functions, according to Trump, would be delegated to the states. Of course, hurricanes and other natural disasters don’t recognize state lines, and no state could single-handedly respond to a disaster of the scale of Hurricane Katrina. Such a response requires collective action, marshalling resources from across the country to save lives in the impacted region, to recover the dead, and to rebuild.

Indicative of Trump’s contempt for FEMA was his appointment of David Richardson, a former Marine with no experience in disaster recovery, as acting head of the agency. Upon his arrival at FEMA, Richardson reportedly shocked staffers by saying he was unaware the US has a hurricane season.

A group of current and past FEMA workers published a letter, called The Katrina Declaration, that they sent to a Trump-appointed FEMA review council and to Congress.

The letter opens, “Since January 2025, FEMA has been under the leadership of individuals lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a FEMA Administrator. Decisions made by [David Richardson and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem] hinder the swift execution of our mission, and dismiss experienced staff whose institutional knowledge and relationships are vital to ensure effective emergency management.”

Close to 200 current and former FEMA workers signed the letter. Most of the current FEMA employees signed anonymously to avoid retaliation. At least 21 of those who did sign their names have been placed on administrative leave.

Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA spokesperson under President Biden, explained why he signed the declaration, speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour:

“I would call this letter to Congress, unfortunately, a cry for help. The agency has been badly damaged by this administration. They’ve fired a third of the permanent workforce. They’ve cut trainings. They have installed a person at the top of the agency who has no experience.”

Edwards also criticized the White House’s reassignment of FEMA staff and funding to assist in Trump’s mass deportation program:

FEMA’s mission is very clear: to help people before, during and after disaster. Any single dollar that isn’t being spent to help people with that mission is a failure to the American people. That money should not be going to build immigration detention centers. They should not be sending FEMA personnel, which they are doing, to help on-board new ICE agents.”

From the denial of climate science, to the gutting of FEMA, to the militarization of American cities with Marines and the National Guard, it seems clear that those in control at the White House have chosen to ignore the devastating lessons of Hurricane Katrina.

One person who did learn hard lessons then is Malik Rahim, a longtime resident of the Algiers neighborhood in New Orleans. A co-founder of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panthers, Rahim organized a grassroots mutual aid effort immediately after Katrina, called Common Ground Relief.

Democracy Now! recently caught up with him, inside the New Orleans Convention Center, which served as a shelter of last resort for as many as 30,000 desperate city residents during Katrina. When asked about those stranded there, the FEMA director at the time, Michael Brown, famously replied that he was unaware of the dire conditions there.

Those now running roughshod over FEMA should heed Malik Rahim’s wise words, as the US blunders through another hurricane season:

“The sad part about it, it could happen today. Déjà vu is alive and well here, because if a hurricane were to happen right now, we are ill-prepared for it, the same way we were ill-prepared 20 years ago.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

#DemocracyNow! “Breaking The Sound Barrier” Weekly Column: The Ominous ICE Arrest of #NewarkMayorRasBaraka #RasBaraka

Posted on by toddpanther

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

The march to authoritarianism in the US accelerated on May 9th with another arrest of an elected official by the Trump administration. Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, the largest city in New Jersey, had accompanied a Congressional delegation to Delaney Hall, a private prison run by GEO Corporation under contract to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The delegation included Congressmembers Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez, Jr., all Democrats representing districts that include or are near Newark. They went to the East coast’s largest migrant jail to conduct oversight as authorized by law.

They were allowed to pass through the gate, along with Mayor Baraka. There they waited for over an hour. Baraka was told to leave, which he did, moving outside the gate to public property. His subsequent unprovoked arrest was a shocking abuse of federal police power, another clear instance of President Donald Trump and his enablers trying to seize power and crush dissent.

Mayor Baraka was held by ICE for five hours then released, charged with trespass. He is no stranger at the gates of Delaney Hall, as he explained days after his arrest on the Democracy Now! news hour:

“I actually go there every day…I go at 7 a.m. with fire code officials, UCC [Uniform Construction Code] officials, health inspectors, to get in, as it is our right to inspect the facility for them to apply for a certificate of occupancy. We’re in court with GEO right now, because they’re defying city ordinances.”

GEO rapidly ramped up operations at the 1,000-bed jail in order to serve as a major hub for Trump’s mass deportations. Newark sued GEO on April 1st, alleging it “blatantly continues to violate City ordinances and regulations.”

Baraka recounted his arrest:

“When the special agent in charge, Patel [Ricky Patel, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations, Newark] showed up, he escalated the situation. The Congresspeople tried to reason with him, surrounded me inside, and finally got him to agree for me to leave. I left, on the other side of the fence…They arrested me, and the congresspeople and other bystanders tried to shield me from being arrested.”

Homeland Security later issued a press release falsely claiming that “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility. Representatives Robert Menendez, Jr. and Bonnie Watson Coleman and multiple protestors are holed up in a guard shack.” Acting US Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba, one of Trump’s former personal lawyers, falsely claimed on X that Mayor Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark…NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin expanded on the lies, telling CNN Saturday, “There will likely be more arrests coming. We actually have body-camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body-slamming a female ICE officer.”

Congressmember Bonnie Watson-Coleman, who is an 80-year-old cancer survivor, rejected the government’s allegations, saying on Democracy Now!,

“There was no body-slamming. The Department of Homeland Security or the representatives from the administration are doing what they do consistently, and that is to lie and to deflect and to try to create legitimacy for illegitimate things that they are doing.”

So, in addition to arresting an elected city mayor, the Trump administration is now threatening to arrest sitting members of Congress. This makes even more alarming a pronouncement by Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, hours before Baraka’s arrest:

“The Constitution is clear…that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. It’s an option we’re actively looking at.”

Habeas corpus is the right of those detained to demand the government justify their imprisonment in court or be freed.

Mayor Baraka, who is running for governor and is campaigning for the June 10th Democratic primary, appeared in federal court on Thursday, pleading not guilty to trespass. Alina Habba demanded a full trial, despite the mountain of exculpatory evidence.

The prosecution of Mayor Ras Baraka, like the prosecution of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin, accused of helping an immigrant avoid arrest by ICE agents, and the threatened arrest of members of Congress – all portend a frightening escalation in Trump’s drive to authoritarianism.

Several blocks from the Newark courthouse is Harriet Tubman Square, where in 2023 Mayor Baraka unveiled a memorial to the great Underground Railroad conductor and abolitionist, who escaped slavery and returned again and again to lead others to freedom. Newark has a long history of resistance to oppression, as President Trump and his enablers are about to find out.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

#AmyGoodman #BreakingTheSoundBarrier Weekly Column: First They Came for #MahmoudKhalil

Posted on by toddpanther

First They Came for Mahmoud Khalil

Weekly Column

April 03, 2025

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

The Trump administration’s nationwide roundup of international students accused of holding opinions it dislikes is picking up speed, sowing fear, separating families and driving people to go underground or out of the country. This targeting appeals to President Trump and his followers as it bolsters three pillars of the MAGA movement: It attacks universities, long reviled as a source of liberal power; it fuels the anti-immigrant fervor long promoted by people like Trump advisor Stephen Miller; thirdly, by targeting Palestinian solidarity activists on campus, it amplifies the false narrative that criticizing the state of Israel is antisemitic (even though many of the protesters are Jewish) enabling the attacks on academia while providing cover for Israel’s resumed ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

History teaches us that standing by silently as others are disappeared is a failed strategy, as the next person grabbed off the street by masked agents of the state may be you.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University grad student until last December, was the first arrested, on March 8. He was a legal permanent resident of the United States, with a green card (now revoked). His wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, is a U.S. citizen who is about to give birth to their first child. Eight months pregnant, she filmed her husband’s arrest as she spoke to his lawyer on the phone. She tried to learn the identities of the arresting plainclothes agents as they dragged Mahmoud into an unmarked car.

Mahmoud joined in the Palestine solidarity protests at Columbia University last spring, and was accepted by both the protesters and administration as a negotiator. He thus had a prominent public role in the first major protest encampment against Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, which sparked similar encampments nationwide. This is very likely why he was targeted for deportation. He has been held in an ICE jail in Jena, Louisiana, since March 9. A federal judge has blocked his deportation while his legal team fights for his release.

Days after his arrest, President Donald Trump threatened on his social media site, “This is the first arrest of many to come.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, addressing the press on March 27, claimed that at least 300 student visas had been revoked.

Names of those targeted have been surfacing day by day.

Ranjani Srinivasan, another Columbia graduate student, left for Canada after her visa was revoked and agents came to her door. She wrote in an open letter, “With the rapidly escalating situation, the criminalization of free speech, and imminent travel bans, what has happened to me can happen to you. … We must exert maximum pressure on Columbia and other universities to protect international students from these arbitrary state actions.”

Momodou Taal, a graduate student at Cornell University and a citizen of both the U.K. and The Gambia, left the U.S. rather than risk deportation or imprisonment. Before leaving, he appeared on the Democracy Now! news hour, saying from an undisclosed location, “What we’re seeing now isn’t just a crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech … but we’re seeing that any criticism of the state of Israel, any criticism of the United States government or Trump’s administration, you can be liable for deportation.”

Those targeted include Columbia students Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the Occupied West Bank, and Yunseo Chung, a South Korean native and green card holder, who has been in the U.S. since she was 7 years old. Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University medical doctor, was deported to Lebanon. Badar Khan Suri of Georgetown University has been locked up by ICE, not for his activism, but likely because his wife, a U.S. citizen and thus not deportable, is an activist.

In one of the most disturbing incidents, Tufts University Ph.D. student and Fulbright scholar Rumeysa Ozturk was snatched off the street outside Boston by half a dozen masked ICE agents as she was walking to iftar with friends, to break the daily fast during Ramadan. The abduction, caught on a neighbor’s doorbell camera, was a chilling demonstration of the brutal tactics being used against this vulnerable population. The day after her arrest, over 1,000 people turned out to protest near Tufts, demanding her release.

Back at Columbia University, protests continue. On Wednesday, about a dozen Jewish students chained themselves to two campus gates. Aharon Dardik, an Israeli American student, speaking to Democracy Now!, explained why:

“We, as Jewish students … said that we weren’t going to leave until the university named who it was amongst the trustees who collaborated with the fascist Trump administration to detain our classmate, Mahmoud Khalil, and try to deport him.”

Among the signs they held was one that read, “First, they came for Mahmoud,” a reference to Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous saying from Nazi Germany that ends, “and I said nothing … then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.