Democracy Now!

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have declared a “new era” in Chinese-Russian relations after meeting in Moscow earlier this week. The two leaders reportedly discussed China’s 12-point proposal to end the war in Ukraine, with Putin stating that China’s plan could be the basis for a peace agreement. Though he has not yet met with Xi himself, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently also expressed a willingness to consider China’s peace plan. For more, we speak to Andrew Bacevich, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about the rise of China, as well as the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Bacevich is professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University and the author of On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century.

China and Russia Display Alliance; Zelensky Asks Beijing to Back Ukraine’s Peace Plan, 10 People Indicted for Murdering Irvo Otieno in Hospital During Mental Health Crisis, Philadelphia Will Pay $9.25 Million to Racial Justice Protesters Brutalized by Police in 2020, Biden Designates New National Monuments in Nevada and Texas in Victory for Indigenous Groups, Indigenous Advocates Testify in Court in Bid to Halt Transfer of Oak Flat to Copper Mining Co., Brazilian Forces Evict Illegal Gold Miners from Yanomami Territory in Amazon, Journalists in Ecuador Targeted with Explosive Devices, Uganda Passes Bill Criminalizing Identifying as LGBTQ, Imposing Death Penalty in Some Cases, 72-Year-Old U.S.-Saudi Citizen Released from Saudi Prison, MN House Passes Bill to Protect Patients and Providers Who Travel from Out of State for Abortion, Manhattan Grand Jury Reconvenes, Could Issue Trump Indictment, Fox Producer Says She Was Coerced in Dominion Lawsuit Testimony, Cites Fox’s Culture of Misogyny, Swedish Court Says Greta Thunberg and Other Activists Can Sue Their Gov’t over Climate Inaction, Senior Climate Activists Protest Big Banks, Cut Up Credit Cards, for Financing Fossil Fuel Industry

As we continue to mark the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we look at how the corporate U.S. media helped pave the way for war by uncritically amplifying lies and misrepresentations from the Bush administration while silencing voices of dissent. Longtime media critic Norman Solomon says many of the same media personalities and news outlets that pushed aggressively for the invasion then are now helping to solidify an elite consensus around the Ukraine war. “In the mass media, being pro-war is portrayed as objective. Being antiwar is portrayed as being biased,” he says. Solomon is author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and the forthcoming War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.

We speak with Dipti Bhatnagar, climate justice activist based in Mozambique, about the recent death on March 9 of the popular rapper and cultural icon Azagaia. He was just 38 years old. He inspired many with his music and sang about injustice, including mistreatment of people by the authorities, as well as about poverty and social injustice. Azagaia’s death has sparked protests in Mozambique which authorities have violently suppressed.

In a major new report released Monday, the United Nations is calling for immediate and drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in order to stop global warming. The “final warning” by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes as the death toll from Cyclone Freddy just swept through southeast Africa, killing hundreds of people and displacing hundreds of thousands more. Climate justice activist Dipti Bhatnagar with Friends of the Earth Mozambique describes it as “yet another reminder that climate impacts are not in the future but very much happening to our communities right now.” We also continue our conversation with environmental activists Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, and Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club.

We speak with Third Act founder Bill McKibben and Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous about protests they’ve organized today across the United States to demand the four biggest banks — Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America — stop financing the expansion of fossil fuel projects.

U.N. Warns of Climate Catastrophe, Urges Immediate and Dramatic Action, Report Finds Drought Killed 43,000 People in Somalia in 2022, Russia Says Fighter Jet Intercepts U.S. B-52 Bombers Over Baltic Sea, U.S. Claims All Sides Committed War Crimes in Ethiopia’s Tigray, Kenyan Opposition Politicians Tear-Gassed at Protests Against President William Ruto, South African Protesters March Against Mass Unemployment and Power Outages, French Government Narrowly Survives No Confidence Vote After Macron Slashes Pensions, Four More Oath Keepers Convicted over Jan. 6 Insurrection, Amazon Announces More Job Cuts, Bringing Recent Layoffs Total to 27,000, Los Angeles School Workers Launch Three-Day Strike, Demanding Living Wages, Protesters Decry Military Recruitment at Bronx School Fair Co-Hosted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

At around 5:30 a.m. local time in Baghdad on March 20, 2003, air raid sirens were heard in Baghdad as the U.S. invasion began. Within the hour, President George W. Bush gave a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office announcing the war had begun. The attack came on the false pretext that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, and despite worldwide protest and a lack of authorization from the United Nations Security Council. We spend today’s show with two Iraqis looking back at how the unprovoked U.S. invasion devastated Iraq and helped destabilize much of the Middle East. Feurat Alani is a French Iraqi writer and documentarian who was based in Baghdad from 2003 to 2008. His recent piece for The Washington Post is headlined “The Iraq War helped destroy what it meant to be an Iraqi.” Sinan Antoon was born and raised in Baghdad. He is also a writer, as well as a poet, translator and associate professor at New York University. His latest piece appears in The Guardian, headlined “A million lives later, I cannot forgive what American terrorism did to my country, Iraq.”

Xi Jinping Visits Moscow Following ICC Arrest Warrant Against Putin, Defiant Visit to Mariupol, Protesters Call for End to U.S. Wars on 20th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion, Protests in Gaza as Israeli, Palestinian Officials Pledge to Deescalate Ahead of Ramadan, Turkish and Egyptian Foreign Ministers Meet as Countries Relaunch Diplomatic Relations, UBS Buys Credit Suisse Amid Turmoil, Consumer Fears in Global Banking, Collapsed Signature Bank Acquired as Sen. Warren Calls for Bank Crisis Probe, Firing of Fed Chair, French Protests Continue, Hundreds Arrested, as Macron Faces No-Confidence Vote over Pension Law, Belarus Jails 2 Prominent Journalists as U.N. Warns Belarus May Be Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity, Pakistani Court Cancels Arrest Warrant for Imran Khan as Police Arrest His Supporters, 16 People Killed After 6.8-Magnitude Earthquake Hits Ecuador and Peru, Deadly Storms Cause More Misery in Earthquake-Stricken Turkey and Northwestern Syria, California Hit by 12th Atmospheric River as Residents, Farmers Reel from Unrelenting Storms, Wyoming Bans Abortion Pill as Wider Abortion Ban Goes into Effect, Maternal Mortality Rate Soared by 40% in 2021, Trump Says He Expects to Be Arrested Tuesday, Calls on Supporters to Protest, Veteran Sentenced to 2 Years for Rioting at the Capitol, Miami Beach Imposes Curfew After Deadly Shootings During Spring Break, Farmworkers Demand Publix, Kroger, Wendy’s Back the Fair Food Program

With the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 20, we speak with Oxford University international relations professor Neta Crawford, who says the region is still reeling from the impact of the war. “The story continues. It’s not over,” she says. Crawford is co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, where her latest report pegs the cost of U.S. wars in Iraq and Syria since 2003 at nearly $2.9 trillion. Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 under the false pretext of preventing Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction, more than half a million people have been killed in Iraq and Syria. Millions more were displaced or died from indirect causes like disease. “It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t cost-free,” says Crawford.

We continue our coverage of the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by looking at the imprisonment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been jailed for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. One video released by WikiLeaks showed a U.S. helicopter gunship in Baghdad slaughtering a dozen civilians, including a Reuters journalist. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019 as he fights the U.S. campaign to extradite him to face espionage charges. If convicted, the publisher faces as much as 175 years behind bars. His legal fight is documented in the new film Ithaka that centers on Assange’s father John Shipton, who has been crisscrossing the globe to raise awareness of the case and the danger it poses to press freedoms. We speak with Shipton, as well as filmmaker Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s brother and a producer of the documentary.

This week nearly 400 human rights groups urged the Biden administration not to revive the controversial practice of migrant family detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Biden ended family detention when he took office two years ago but is now reportedly reconsidering it as part of a wider crackdown as his administration prepares to phase out the contested Trump-era Title 42 pandemic policy used to expel over 2 million migrants without due process at the southern border. We speak with Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, who says “the Biden administration has faltered and is going against all the promises that they made on the campaign trail.” We also speak with Mike Ishii, co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity, which joined the call to stop family detention. He notes many Japanese Americans are still healing from the trauma of mass detention during World War II. “There’s an intersectional history here of always targeting communities of color and immigrant communities with this kind of state violence,” says Ishii.

Yellen Declares, “Our Banking System Is Sound,” as Wall Street Props Up First Republic Bank, Iran Agrees to Stop Arming Yemen’s Houthis in Pact with Saudi Arabia, Poland and Slovakia Will Send Fighter Jets to Ukraine, U.N. Inquiry on Ukraine Finds Wide Evidence of Russian War Crimes, China Urges Diplomatic End to War in Ukraine as Xi Jinping Plans Trip to Kremlin, Biden Approves Sale of 220 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles to Australia , White House Threatens to Ban TikTok Unless Chinese Owners Sell Stakes, Israeli Forces Kill 4 More Palestinians in Jenin Ahead of Security Talks in Egypt, Macron Pushes Through Pension Reform Despite Overwhelming Public Opposition, Strikes and Protests Continue in U.K. as Workers Demand Living Wages, General Strike Brings Greece to Standstill Amid Anger over Fatal Train Crash, High Levels of Toxic Chemicals Detected in East Palestine Soil After Train Derailment, North Dakota Supreme Court Leaves Access to Abortion in Place as Ban Is Challenged, L.A. Times to Stop Using “Internment” to Describe Imprisonment of Japanese Americans in WWII

As the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq approaches next week, Democracy Now! begins our look at the Iraq War’s lasting after-effects on Iraqi society and the shape of global politics today. “The story of the past 20 years is a story of destruction, devastation, corruption, incompetence, but also a story of resilience,” says Nadje Al-Ali, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University and author of several award-winning books on the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, including What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Wednesday with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other top officials, including leaders from the northern Tigray region. Blinken praised the four-month-old peace deal that ended two years of fighting between government troops and forces in Tigray, and called for accountability for war crimes committed during the conflict without casting blame on either side. Blinken also announced $331 million in new U.S. humanitarian assistance for Ethiopia. “It’s an important trip by the secretary of state, because the U.S. is one of the major brokers of the peace deal that was signed in November between the Tigrayan officials and the federal government,” says journalist Tsedale Lemma, founder of the Addis Standard, an English-language monthly news magazine based in Ethiopia. She says the U.S. must push for the “full implementation” of the peace deal, which is currently not happening.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting Niger and Ethiopia as part of the Biden administration’s growing competition with China and Russia for influence across Africa. Niger has become a critical U.S. ally in the Sahel region, and the U.S. opened a new drone base in the city of Agadez in 2019. The U.S. has about 800 military personnel in Niger, and Blinken’s trip marks the first visit to the country by a U.S. secretary of state. “Niger is one of the last strongholds of U.S. security partnerships in the region,” says Stephanie Savell, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, who has researched U.S. militarism in West Africa and beyond. We also speak with writer and activist Coumba Toure, chair of the board for TrustAfrica and an ambassador for Africans Rising for Unity, Justice, Peace and Dignity. “Africa needs to be looked at as a continent where there are human beings, not just for power gains and for exploitation,” says Toure.

U.S. Tells Russia It Will Fly “Wherever International Law Allows” After Downing of Drone, Assad Welcomes New Russian Bases in Syria, Recognizes Russian Annexations in Ukraine, Swiss Central Bank Bails Out Credit Suisse Bank Amid Market Jitters, Democratic Senators Press for Criminal Probe of Silicon Valley Bank Executives, Federal Judge in Texas Hears Arguments in Case That Could Disrupt Abortion Access Nationwide, Massive Protests Continue in Israel as President Isaac Herzog Warns of “Civil War”, Construction of New Indonesian Capital in Borneo Threatens Indigenous Lives, Rainforest and Wildlife, U.S. Regulators Approve Major Rail Merger Over Objections of Unions, Michigan Lawmakers Vote to Overturn Anti-Union “Right to Work” Law, Georgia Grand Jury Hears Another Tape of Trump Trying to Overturn 2020 Election, Senate Confirms Eric Garcetti’s Ambassadorship to India Despite Sex Harassment Claims, Texas State Officials Take Over Houston’s Majority Black and Latinx Public School District, San Francisco Hears Slavery Reparations Plan for Black Residents

As news of missing Americans in Mexico dominates headlines, tens of thousands of Mexicans remain missing in cases that have gone unsolved — some of them for decades. This includes the 2014 case of 43 young men from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college who were attacked and forcibly disappeared. Senior analyst at the National Security Archive Kate Doyle joins us with new details about what happened in Ayotzinapa, drawn from the 4 million emails and records stolen from the Mexican Defense Ministry by an anonymous collective of hackers known as “Guacamaya.” Doyle co-produced the After Ayotzinapa podcast with Reveal as part of the NSA’s ongoing work on this case.

We look at today’s hearing by a federal judge in Texas who could restrict medication abortions throughout the United States and revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, the abortion medication used in a majority of pregnancy terminations across the country. The Trump-appointed judge has ruled against the Biden administration in numerous cases and is widely expected to favor the anti-abortion side in the case, though an appeal of any ruling is all but certain. Amy Littlefield, The Nation's abortion access correspondent, says that while medication abortions are still possible without mifepristone, it can be less effective and more painful. “We're talking about imposing suffering on medication abortion patients across the country,” Littlefield says.

Questions continue to swirl about who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September. Last month, the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported the sabotage was carried out by the U.S. Navy with remotely triggered explosives during NATO exercises. The U.S. has denied the claim. We speak to The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill about his latest article, “Conflicting Reports Thicken Nord Stream Bombing Plot.”

A U.S. drone crashed in international waters Tuesday after being intercepted by Russian fighter jets over the Black Sea. According to U.S. officials, one of the Russian warplanes collided with the MQ-9 Reaper drone and damaged its propeller, but Russia denies the aircraft made contact. The incident occurred about 75 miles southwest of Crimea and marks another blow to relations between the two nuclear-armed powers. Jeremy Scahill, senior correspondent for The Intercept, describes the drone encounter as “an incendiary development” in the U.S. proxy war against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. “This is a vehicle of war, and it doesn’t have to have missiles on it to be part of a system that makes the U.S. a combatant in this war,” says Scahill.

U.S. Accuses Russia of Striking Drone Over Black Sea, Dems Introduce Bill to Reinstate Dodd-Frank Regulations After Twin Bank Failures, EPA Proposes Rules to Reduce Toxic PFAS in Water, Biden Signs Executive Order on Gun Control as He Visits Monterey Park, Former Pakistani PM Imran Khan Evades Arrest for Second Time This Month, Sec. Blinken Meets with Ethiopian Leaders Before Heading to Niger, Death Toll from Historic Cyclone Freddy Reaches 220 in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar, Novo Nordisk Is Second Major Drug Co. to Cut Price of Insulin After Intense Public Pressure, Wellesley Students in Favor of Opening Up Admissions to All Nonbinary and Transgender Students, Ohio Sues Norfolk Southern over Toxic Train Derailment, Meta Lays Off 10,000 More Employees, Implements Hiring Freeze, California Court Upholds Prop 22, Allowing Companies Like Uber to Keep Denying Workers’ Basic Rights, Illinois Signs Law Mandating Paid Time Off “For Any Reason”, Pat Schroeder, Ex-Colorado Congressmember Who Pushed for Women’s Rights and Against War, Dies at 82

New details from an independent autopsy of the activist fatally shot by Atlanta police in January concludes their hands were raised up and in front of their body when they were killed. Georgia State Patrol shot Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán during a raid on an encampment of forest protectors who oppose the construction of Atlanta’s $90 million police training center dubbed “Cop City.” An independent autopsy released Monday also shows 26-year-old Tortuguita was likely seated cross-legged when they were shot 14 times. Tortuguita’s family on Friday sued the city of Atlanta after the release of more video evidence of the shooting was blocked. “There’s no reason to withhold this evidence. The public deserves to know. More importantly, the family deserves to know,” says civil rights attorney Jeff Filipovits, who is representing the family. He adds that despite law enforcement claims that Tortuguita may have fired on officers, there is no evidence of that.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are the largest bank failures since the 2008 financial crisis, which prompted lawmakers to pass legislation to increase regulations on banks and other financial institutions. But during the Trump administration, a number of Democrats joined Republicans in Congress to weaken laws including Dodd-Frank, the landmark regulatory reform passed in the wake of the crisis. Executives from Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were among those who successfully lobbied to weaken rules that may have prevented their collapse. The fallout from the bank failures now threatens to spread to other financial institutions, and the Biden administration has taken extraordinary steps to guarantee all deposits in the two failed banks and to shore up the rest of the sector in what many are criticizing as a bailout of rich bank customers. For more, we speak with The Lever's David Sirota and banking law professor Mehrsa Baradaran, whom progressive groups at one point backed as the Biden administration's pick for comptroller of the currency, an influential regulator of banks.

Biden Breaks Climate Pledge, Approving Massive Oil & Gas Development in Alaska, Death Toll from Cyclone Freddy Tops 100 as U.N. Scientists Finalize Climate Action Plan, Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon Hit Record High for Month of February in 2023, Biden Insists U.S. Banking System Is Safe Following Collapse of SVB and Signature, North Korea Fires Missiles as U.S. Holds New Round of War Games with South Korea, Biden Formally Announces Deal to Sell Nuclear-Powered Subs to Australia, U.S. Once Again Tops List of World’s Most Prolific Arms Traders , Biden Extends Relief to Ukrainian Refugees as Venezuelan Asylees Are Pushed Back from Border, Honduras’s First Woman President Ends Ban on Emergency Contraception, South Carolina Republicans’ Bill Would Punish Abortion with Death Penalty , Tens of Thousands of U.K. Doctors Strike to Recover Salaries Lost to Inflation, Michael Cohen Testifies to Grand Jury, Says Trump Needs to Be Held Accountable for “Dirty Deeds”, Nobel Prize-Winning Japanese Novelist and Peace Activist Kenzaburo Oe Dies at 88

Five weeks after the Norfolk Southern toxic train derailment and so-called controlled burn that blanketed the town with a toxic brew of at least six hazardous chemicals and gases, senators grilled the CEO of Norfolk Southern over the company’s toxic train derailment. The company has evaded calls to cover healthcare costs as residents continue to report headaches, coughing, fatigue, irritation and burning of the skin. For more on the ongoing fallout from the toxic crash, and its roots in the plastics industry, we are joined by Monica Unseld, a biologist and environmental and social justice advocate who has studied the health impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals used in plastics like those released in East Palestine. She is executive director of Until Justice Data Partners and co-lead for the Coming Clean science team. Also joining us is Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator and president of Beyond Plastics whose recent Boston Globe op-ed is headlined “The East Palestine Disaster Was a Direct Result of the Country’s Reliance on Fossil Fuels and Plastic.”

The Biden administration has approved a massive oil and gas development in Alaska known as the Willow project, despite widespread opposition from environmental and conservation groups that argue Willow will amount to a carbon bomb. The administration also announced Sunday it will ban future oil and gas leasing for 3 million acres of federal waters in the Arctic Ocean and will limit drilling in a further 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska’s North Slope. For more, we speak with Siqiñiq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, who says Willow would undermine Biden’s larger climate goals. “This project would emit so much carbon, it would actually double the amount that Biden had promised he would reduce,” they say.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations after seven years and reopen their respective embassies within months, in a deal brokered Friday by China and signed in Beijing. The rapprochement between the two rivals is the latest sign of China’s growing presence in world affairs and waning U.S. influence in the Middle East amid a shift in focus to Ukraine and the Pacific region. “If we have a more stable Middle East, even if it’s mediated by the Chinese, that ultimately is good for the United States, as well,” says author and analyst Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He adds that the U.S. focus in the Middle East is mainly on helping Israel normalize relations with Arab states while “all of the pressure is taken off of Israel to end its occupation” of Palestinian territory.

8 Dead After 2 Migrant Boats Capsize Off San Diego Coast, 5 Migrants Drowned, 30 Missing and 1,300 Rescued Over Weekend in Multiple Maritime Tragedies, Iran and Saudi Arabia Sign China-Brokered Normalization Deal, Israeli Forces Kill 3 More Palestinians as 500,000 Israelis Join Protests Against Attack on Courts, Hundreds Protest U.S. Visit of Israeli Minister Who Called for “Erasing” Palestinian Town, DRC Attack Claims 19 Lives as U.N. Warns of Mounting Humanitarian Disaster, Biden Approves Massive ConocoPhillips Oil & Gas Project in Alaska, Saudi Oil Giant Reports Largest-Ever $161 Billion Profit in 2022, Winter Storms Put 15 Million Under Flood Watch in California and Nevada, Cyclone Yaku Kills 6 People in Peru; Cyclone Freddy Makes Landfall for 2nd Time in Mozambique, FDIC to Fully Reimburse Depositors After Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank Collapse, Autopsy Concludes “Cop City” Activist Was Seated with Arms Raised When Shot Dead, Mike Pence Criticizes Trump Even as He Resists Subpoena to Testify About Jan. 6, Michelle Yeoh Makes History as “Everything Everywhere All at Once” Sweeps Oscars

Five women in Texas who were denied abortions are suing the state for denying them necessary medical care even though their pregnancies were nonviable and posed serious risks to their health. “I cannot adequately put into words the trauma and despair that comes with waiting to either lose your own life, your child’s life, or both. For days, I was locked in this bizarre and avoidable hell,” said Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff, during a press conference Tuesday in Austin to announce the case, which also includes two doctors. While the Texas abortion ban is meant to have exceptions, many doctors are reluctant to perform the procedure because of the high legal risk, including the loss of medical licenses, hefty fines and decades in prison. “Right now abortion bans are exposing pregnant people to risks of death, illness and injury, including the loss of fertility,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is bringing the lawsuit, at a press conference Tuesday in Austin. “Contrary to the stated purpose of furthering life, abortion bans are making it less likely that every family who wants to bring a child into the world will be able to do so and survive the experience.”

As President Biden proposes his new budget, which expands military spending, as well as social services, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Barbara Lee, co-chair of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus. She recently reintroduced the People Over Pentagon Act to cut $100 billion from the Pentagon budget and reallocate funds to overlooked priorities like healthcare and education. Lee is one of three House Democrats who have announced their candidacy for outgoing California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat. Lee is the highest-ranking Black woman appointed to House leadership and would be just the third Black woman to serve in the Senate’s 233-year history. She shares her platform on foreign policy, reproductive rights and racial justice on Democracy Now! “We’re going to fight to make sure that the resources of our country go directly to the American people, because it’s a budget for the American people,” says Lee.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is calling China the “most consequential threat” to U.S. national security. Meanwhile, the Chinese parliament has unanimously voted to give Xi Jinping a third five-year term as president. On Monday, Xi directly accused the United States of suppressing China’s development, stating, “Western countries — led by the U.S. — have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us.” Both countries are beefing up their military presence along China’s naval borders, and President Biden has made repeated remarks that the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if it was attacked by China — statements backed by $619 million in high-tech arms sales to Taiwan. To make sense of fraying U.S.-China relations and rising tensions over Taiwan, we are joined by Alfred McCoy, history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who examines the developments in his latest piece, headlined “At the Brink of War in the Pacific?”

Biden’s FY2024 Budget Proposes Tax Hikes to Fund Social Programs and Record Military Spending, Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin Meets Israeli PM Amid Escalating West Bank Violence, U.N. Condemns Israeli Strike on Aleppo Airport; U.S. Votes Against Ending Involvement in Syrian War, Xi Embarks on Unprecedented Third Term as Chinese President, At Least 36 Killed in DRC Near Border with Uganda, Gunman Kills 8 People, Including Self, in Mass Shooting at Jehovah’s Witnesses Center in Germany, Another Norfolk Southern Train Derails as CEO Alan Shaw Appears Before Senate, New York Could Soon Charge Trump with Financial Crimes, Mitch McConnell Remains Hospitalized for Fall and Concussion, Arkansas Loosens Child Labor Protections, Uber and Lyft Drivers Receive Owed Pay Raises in NY After Strike Campaign, 35-Year-Old Exonerated After Spending Over Half His Life Behind Bars Due to Police Deception, Newark Unveils Harriet Tubman Statue, Replacing Statue of Columbus

Prosecutors in Atlanta have charged 23 forest defenders with “domestic terrorism” after their arrests late Sunday at a festival near the site of Cop City, a massive police training facility being built in the Weelaunee Forest. The arrests followed clashes between police and protesters on Sunday afternoon and came less than two months after Atlanta police shot and killed Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, a 26-year-old environmental defender. For an update on the growing movement to fight Cop City in Atlanta, we’re joined by Micah Herskind, a local community organizer, and Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders.

Mississippi’s Republican majority in the state Legislature has put forth a slew of bills in recent months to put the majority-Black capital of Jackson under a white-led superstructure. Under the proposed bills, the Capitol Police would be expanded and given greater authority over much of Jackson without being accountable to local leaders or residents, and a separate court system would be set up in the city, composed of judges appointed directly by white state officials. This comes after Jackson suffered a number of water crises in recent years stemming from systematic disinvestment by the state, and after the federal government approved $600 million late last year to address the city’s infrastructure problems. “These bills are an attack on Black leadership, a way to seize power of a majority-Black city which cannot be seized democratically through an election,” says Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. We also speak with community activist Makani Themba, who described the state’s plans in a recent piece for The Nation as “Apartheid American-Style.”

The Department of Justice has released a scathing report accusing the Louisville, Kentucky, police department of unlawfully discriminating against the city’s Black population, as well as against people with behavioral health disabilities. The report concludes an investigation that began after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot dead in her own home during a no-knock police raid on March 13, 2020. The DOJ also announced the establishment of a consent decree with Louisville police and an independent monitor who will oversee police reforms. “What we have are systems that absolutely need to be disrupted,” says Sadiqa Reynolds, longtime attorney and community activist in Louisville.

DOJ Reveals “Pattern or Practice” of Abuse of Power, Racism in Louisville, KY, Police, DOJ Launches Review of Memphis Police; Judge Blocks Release of Video of Tyre Nichols Killing, D.C. Leaders Rally for Statehood as U.S. Senate Blocks D.C. Crime Bill, Mississippi NAACP Challenges GOP Effort to Take Control Over Black-Majority Capital Jackson, Zaporizhzhia Suffers Another Blackout as Missiles Rain Down on Ukraine, Killing at Least 9, NYT: Pentagon Blocking Biden Admin from Sharing Likely Russian War Crimes Evidence with ICC, Saudi Engineer Released from Guantánamo After More Than 2 Decades Without Charge, Israeli Forces Kill 3 Palestinians in New Jenin Raid as U.S. Defense Secretary Lands in Tel Aviv, Georgia Withdraws “Foreign Agent” Bill After Mass Protests, Sen. Warren Blasts Fed Chair over Plan to Hike Interest Rates, White House Condemns Tucker Carlson Coverage of Jan. 6 as Texts Reveal Carlson Said He Hated Trump, Kevin Alexander Gray, Civil Rights Activist and Jesse Jackson SC Campaign Mgr., Dies at 65

As we mark International Women’s Day on March 8, we look at the criminalization of abortion with filmmaker Celina Escher, who directed the award-winning documentary Fly So Far about abortion in El Salvador, which has enforced an abortion ban since 1998, and dozens of people have been convicted and imprisoned after having miscarriages, stillbirths and other obstetric emergencies. On Monday, women’s rights activists called for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to condemn El Salvador in a case brought a decade ago by a woman, Beatriz, who died after being forced to carry a pregnancy although the fetus could not survive. Escher says El Salvador’s current policies amount to “torture for the women and girls” forced to bring nonviable and dangerous pregnancies to term against their will.

Iranian parents and teachers have been holding protests in Tehran and other cities following a spate of apparent poisonings at girls’ schools since November. According to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, there have been at least 290 suspected school poisonings in recent months, sickening at least 7,000 students with symptoms including headaches, fatigue and more. Meanwhile, the head of the country’s judiciary said earlier this week that Iranian women could be punished for violating the Islamic dress code. His remarks came just months after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody sparked nationwide protests. For more on women’s rights in Iran, we speak with Manijeh Moradian, assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Barnard College, author of This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States and part of the Feminists for Jina network.

A top United Nations official said Wednesday that “Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights.” Since taking power nearly 19 months ago, the Taliban has moved systematically to erase women from public life by banning women and girls from schools, from working with nongovernmental organizations and from traveling without a male relative. “Afghanistan is now effectively one of the biggest prisons in the world for women,” says Zahra Nader, a freelance Afghan journalist who was formerly a reporter for The New York Times in Kabul and is now based in Canada. She is the editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a new Afghan women-led outlet documenting human rights issues in Afghanistan.

March 8 marks International Women’s Day around the world, seeking to end gender discrimination, violence and abuse. We start the show by looking at the day’s roots in socialism, and what it means for the movement for reproductive justice in the United States. Our guest is Nancy Krieger, renowned professor of social epidemiology at Harvard University’s School of Public Health and director of the Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She’s also co-founder and chair of the Spirit of 1848 Caucus in the American Public Health Association, which links social justice and public health. International Women’s Day has always been a struggle for “the conditions in which people can thrive,” says Krieger.

Israeli Forces Kill 6 Palestinians in Jenin Raid, as Settlers Attack Palestinian Family in Huwara, Wagner Group Says It Seized Eastern Bakhmut; NYT Reports Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, Russia Jails Blogger Dmitry Ivanov over Criticism of War on Ukraine, Georgians Take to the Streets over Proposed “Foreign Agents” Law, 3 Mada Masr Journalists on Trial Amid Ongoing Egyptian Crackdown on Press, Spain Advances Gender Parity Bill, Malnutrition in Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women and Girls on the Rise, 5 Women Sue Texas for Denying Them Abortions, Gigi Sohn Withdraws FCC Nomination After Vicious Industry and Right-Wing Smear Campaign, DOJ Sues to Block JetBlue’s Merger with Spirit Airlines, France Sees Largest Protest Yet Against Pension Reform

We examine the state of U.S. politics, Trumpism, journalism and more with Mehdi Hasan, host of The Mehdi Hasan Show on MSNBC and Peacock. His new book is titled Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking.

As the U.N. secretary-general blasts wealthy nations for rigging the global economy for their benefit, we speak with economist Joseph Stiglitz about how war, the pandemic and the climate emergency are causing economic crises across the globe. He also says interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve are making things worse for the Global South, as the cost of borrowing rises for many countries already struggling with debt. Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. He is also currently the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. His latest book is titled People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. Professor Stiglitz joins us on Democracy Now! to discuss the current global economy.

Biden Administration Mulls Return to Detention of Asylum-Seeking Families, Migrants in Tunisia Flee Hate Crimes and Violence Following President’s Racist Remarks, Survivors of Forced Labor Under Japanese Occupation Condemn South Korean Compensation Plan, North Korea Warns U.S. Shootdown of Test-Fired Missiles Would Be “Declaration of War”, Chinese Leaders Condemn U.S. Policy of “Containment, Encirclement and Suppression”, Ukraine Holds Out in Defense of Bakhmut as Both Sides Inflict Heavy Losses, Belarus Sentences Opposition Leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to 15 Years for Treason, Doctors Without Borders Considers Suspending Haiti Operations Amid Gang Violence, U.S. May Vaccinate Millions of Chickens as Avian Influenza Spreads, Atlanta-Area Prosecutors Charge 23 with Domestic Terrorism over Cop City Protests, Norfolk Southern Agrees to Limited Plan to Relocate East Palestine Residents During Cleanup, Minneapolis Residents Resist Plans to Demolish Warehouse on Toxic Site

A number of bombshell revelations about the inner workings of Fox News have come to light as part of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against the network. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, has admitted under oath that many hosts on his network “endorsed” Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election for financial, not political, reasons, stating, “It is not red or blue, it is green.” In court filings, Dominion also revealed that Murdoch had given Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner confidential information about Biden’s campaign ads and debate strategy in possible violation of election laws. Our guest, Angelo Carusone, is president of the watchdog group Media Matters for America, which recently sent a Federal Elections Commission complaint against Fox News based on evidence from the Dominion lawsuit. “All the way from Rupert Murdoch on down to the show producers, they knew what they were saying was not true, that it was actually a lie, and they did it anyway,” says Carusone.

At least 150 bills have been filed by Republican lawmakers across the United States that target transgender people, with at least seven states enacting bans on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. Other bills have targeted drag performers, doctors and trans adults seeking transition-related care. For more on growing conservative attacks on transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community, we speak to Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, who says the backlash “at its core has always been about pushing trans people out of public life and eradicating transness.”

The first-ever international treaty to protect the oceans was agreed to by negotiators from more than 190 countries at a United Nations conference this weekend, capping nearly two decades of efforts by conservation groups. The legally binding pact could help reverse marine biodiversity loss by establishing marine protected areas covering nearly a third of the world’s seas by 2030. We hear more from one of the treaty’s scientist-negotiators, Minna Epps, a marine biologist and director of the Ocean Team at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Nations Reach Historic Agreement to Protect High Seas, Iran and IAEA Agree to Strengthen Cooperation in Hopeful Sign for Nuclear Talks, Outrage Mounts over Mysterious Poisoning of Iranian Schoolgirls, U.N. Expert Says Taliban Attacks on Women and Girls Could Be Crime Against Humanity, Ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan Evades Arrest, Huge Blaze in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya Refugee Camp Destroys Thousands of Homes, Shell Pipeline Kills 12 in Nigeria; Massive Lawsuit Targets Shell’s Operation in Niger Delta, U.K. Cracks Down on Refugee Rights in Right-Wing Effort to “Stop the Boats”, Shahida Raza, Pakistani Pro Athlete, Named as Victim of Shipwreck Off Calabrian Coast That Killed 57, Protests Rock Athens Amid Mounting Anger over Greek Train Tragedy, Another Norfolk Southern Train Derails in Ohio Ahead of Senate Testimony by CEO Alan Shaw, Biden Commemorates 58th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, Donald Trump Repeats Lies About 2020 Election in CPAC Keynote Speech, Marianne Williamson Launches 2024 Presidential Campaign, 35 Arrested Near Site of Proposed “Cop City” Police Training Center in Atlanta, Deadly Storms Claim 13 Lives Across U.S., 22 Lawmakers Call on Biden to Block Willow Project Oil and Gas Development in Alaska, Judy Heumann, “Mother of the Disability Rights Movement,” Dies at 75

Guatemala’s presidential election this year is taking place against a backdrop of worsening repression against journalists, human rights activists and Indigenous environmental defenders. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court on Thursday upheld a decision by the country’s electoral tribunal to bar Indigenous human rights defender Thelma Cabrera from running. Cabrera and her running mate, former human rights ombudsman Jordán Rodas, are members of the leftist political party the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples. They visited the United States in February to meet with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights following their ban and spoke with Democracy Now! about the election, their platform and how political elites in the country have consolidated power. “Guatemala is a corrupt state that’s been coopted by criminals. This is now reflected in violating our right to participate in this presidential election,” said Cabrera.