Latest news with #ProjectEsther
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
What is Project Esther, the playbook against pro-Palestine movement in US?
Washington, DC – When the Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank in the United States, released a playbook last year for how to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement, it did not garner much attention. But more than eight months later, the policy document – known as Project Esther – now faces heightened scrutiny from activists and media outlets, in part because President Donald Trump appears to be following its blueprint. The authors of Project Esther have presented their report as a set of recommendations for combating anti-Semitism, but critics say the document's ultimate aim is to 'poison' groups critical of Israel by painting them as Hamas associates. Project Esther was created as a response to growing protests against the US support for Israel's war on Gaza, which United Nations experts and rights groups have described as a genocide. So, what is Project Esther, and how is it being applied against activists? Here is a look at the document and its ongoing implications for the US. The Heritage Foundation is an influential conservative think tank in Washington, DC, whose stated mission is to 'formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense'. Yet, critics argue that Project Esther calls for government interference to curb individual freedoms, including the rights to free speech and association when it comes to opposing Israeli government to a New York Times report published earlier this month, the project is overseen by Victoria Coates, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation who served as deputy national security adviser during Trump's first term. The Heritage Foundation is also behind Project 2025, which critics describe as an authoritarian playbook for the second Trump presidency. Ahead of the elections last year, Democrats repeatedly invoked Project 2025 to criticise Trump, but the then-candidate distanced himself from the document. The initiative says that it aims to 'dismantle the infrastructure that sustains' what it calls the 'Hamas Support Network' within 24 months. The authors claim that groups engaged in advocacy for Palestinian rights are members of the Hamas Support Network (HSN). They define the supposed network as 'people and organizations that are both directly and indirectly involved in furthering Hamas's cause in contravention of American values and to the detriment of American citizens and America's national security interests'. In short, the document alleges that the 'pro-Palestinian movement' is 'effectively a terrorist support network'.No. There is no such network in the US, which has stern laws against providing material support to groups designated as 'terrorist organisations', including Hamas. Beth Miller – the political director at Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group that the Heritage Foundation names as part of the network – called Project Esther's allegations 'outlandish'. 'It exposes the length of lies and of absurdity that they are going through to try to tear down the Palestinian rights movement,' Miller told Al Jazeera. The Heritage Foundation did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment. The document calls for a multi-faceted campaign against supporters of Palestinian rights, targeting them legally, politically and financially. The initiative outlines 19 goals that it labels as 'desired effects'. They include denying Palestinian rights supporters who are not US citizens access to universities, ensuring that social media platforms do not allow 'anti-Semitic content', and presenting evidence of 'criminal activity' by Palestine advocates to the executive branch. It also calls for refusing to grant permits for protests organised in support of Palestinian rights. Project Esther suggests that Israel's backers should conduct 'legal, private research' into pro-Palestine groups to 'uncover criminal wrongdoing' and undermine their credibility. 'We must wage lawfare,' it reads, referring to the tactic of using litigation to pressure appears to be the case. 'The phase we're in now is starting to execute some of the lines of effort in terms of legislative, legal and financial penalties for what we consider to be material support for terrorism,' Coates told The New York Times. Trump's crackdown on college protests seems to align with what Project Esther is trying to achieve. For example, the US administration has been revoking the visas of foreign students critical of Israel. This echoes a proposal in Project Esther, which calls for identifying students 'in violation of student visa requirements'. The Heritage Foundation also extensively cites Canary Mission – a website dedicated to doxxing and smearing pro-Palestine students – in its footnotes for Project Esther. The Trump administration is also suspected of relying on the website, along with other pro-Israel groups, to identify students for deportation. In addition, Project Esther singles out the 'Middle East/North Africa or Islamic studies' programmes as having professors who are 'hostile to Israel'. The Trump administration has been pressuring elite universities to revamp academic departments, including Middle East studies programmes, that it views as biased in favour of Palestinians. Columbia University, for instance, appointed a provost to review its programmes at Trump's request, 'starting immediately with the Middle East' department. The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment. The initiative explicitly identifies several Arab, Muslim and progressive Jewish organisations as well as student groups as part of the so-called Hamas Support Network. The initiative claims that 'the network revolves around' American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), an educational and civic advocacy group. Osama Abuirshaid, AMP's executive director, said Project Esther points the finger at the group because it has 'Muslim' in its name, playing on Islamophobic bigotry. 'American Muslims for Palestine is an easy target. Given the Islamophobic tendencies, it's easy to assume guilt of American Muslims, Palestinians. That's a name that sticks,' Abuirshaid told Al Jazeera. He added that the group is also a target because it is effective and has a 'solid constituency'. 'If they can cripple and bring down AMP, that will have a chilling effect within the movement. So they think, if they can bring us down, other organisations will stop working on Palestine solidarity,' Abuirshaid Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, said Project Esther targets universities because Israel is bleeding support among young people in the US. 'That's why there's such an overwhelming focus on universities and college campuses,' he told Al Jazeera's The Take podcast. Kenney-Shawa explained that support for Israel's war on Gaza has been trending downwards across US demographics. But on college campuses, the change is more pronounced. 'While this change is absolutely across the political spectrum, it's obviously a lot more acute in the left and among young Americans,' Kenney-Shawa said. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 53 percent of US respondents had negative views of Israel, a number that rises to 71 percent among Democrats below the age of 50. Advocates say that, in the immediate future, the crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement threatens the safety and wellbeing of activists, especially foreign students. But it has also sparked a backlash. 'The extreme nature of these attacks has also emboldened people to defiantly continue to speak out in the face of these attacks,' JVP's Miller said. 'And it has actually, in many cases, awoken people – who weren't paying attention before – to the hypocrisy that has so long existed in the willingness to silence and censor Palestinian rights activists.' Earlier in May, several right-wing lawmakers and Trump allies came out in opposition of a bill that aimed to expand restrictions on boycotts of Israel, citing free speech concerns. Abuirshaid echoed Miller's comments. He acknowledged that the media attacks, arrests and lawsuits against advocates and student protesters have been 'distracting' from the mission of focusing on Palestine. However, he added, 'I'm going to be clear: It's energising us to continue this fight.'
Al Jazeera
3 days ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
What is Project Esther, the playbook against pro-Palestine movement in US?
Washington, DC – When the Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank in the United States, released a playbook last year for how to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement, it did not garner much attention. But more than eight months later, the policy document – known as Project Esther – now faces heightened scrutiny from activists and media outlets, in part because President Donald Trump appears to be following its blueprint. The authors of Project Esther have presented their report as a set of recommendations for combating anti-Semitism, but critics say the document's ultimate aim is to 'poison' groups critical of Israel by painting them as Hamas associates. Project Esther was created as a response to growing protests against the US support for Israel's war on Gaza, which United Nations experts and rights groups have described as a genocide. So, what is Project Esther, and how is it being applied against activists? Here is a look at the document and its ongoing implications for the US. The Heritage Foundation is an influential conservative think tank in Washington, DC, whose stated mission is to 'formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense'. Yet, critics argue that Project Esther calls for government interference to curb individual freedoms, including the rights to free speech and association when it comes to opposing Israeli government policies. According to a New York Times report published earlier this month, the project is overseen by Victoria Coates, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation who served as deputy national security adviser during Trump's first term. The Heritage Foundation is also behind Project 2025, which critics describe as an authoritarian playbook for the second Trump presidency. Ahead of the elections last year, Democrats repeatedly invoked Project 2025 to criticise Trump, but the then-candidate distanced himself from the document. The initiative says that it aims to 'dismantle the infrastructure that sustains' what it calls the 'Hamas Support Network' within 24 months. The authors claim that groups engaged in advocacy for Palestinian rights are members of the Hamas Support Network (HSN). They define the supposed network as 'people and organizations that are both directly and indirectly involved in furthering Hamas's cause in contravention of American values and to the detriment of American citizens and America's national security interests'. In short, the document alleges that the 'pro-Palestinian movement' is 'effectively a terrorist support network'. No. There is no such network in the US, which has stern laws against providing material support to groups designated as 'terrorist organisations', including Hamas. Beth Miller – the political director at Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group that the Heritage Foundation names as part of the network – called Project Esther's allegations 'outlandish'. 'It exposes the length of lies and of absurdity that they are going through to try to tear down the Palestinian rights movement,' Miller told Al Jazeera. The Heritage Foundation did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment. The document calls for a multi-faceted campaign against supporters of Palestinian rights, targeting them legally, politically and financially. The initiative outlines 19 goals that it labels as 'desired effects'. They include denying Palestinian rights supporters who are not US citizens access to universities, ensuring that social media platforms do not allow 'anti-Semitic content', and presenting evidence of 'criminal activity' by Palestine advocates to the executive branch. It also calls for refusing to grant permits for protests organised in support of Palestinian rights. Project Esther suggests that Israel's backers should conduct 'legal, private research' into pro-Palestine groups to 'uncover criminal wrongdoing' and undermine their credibility. 'We must wage lawfare,' it reads, referring to the tactic of using litigation to pressure opponents. It appears to be the case. 'The phase we're in now is starting to execute some of the lines of effort in terms of legislative, legal and financial penalties for what we consider to be material support for terrorism,' Coates told The New York Times. Trump's crackdown on college protests seems to align with what Project Esther is trying to achieve. For example, the US administration has been revoking the visas of foreign students critical of Israel. This echoes a proposal in Project Esther, which calls for identifying students 'in violation of student visa requirements'. The Heritage Foundation also extensively cites Canary Mission – a website dedicated to doxxing and smearing pro-Palestine students – in its footnotes for Project Esther. The Trump administration is also suspected of relying on the website, along with other pro-Israel groups, to identify students for deportation. In addition, Project Esther singles out the 'Middle East/North Africa or Islamic studies' programmes as having professors who are 'hostile to Israel'. The Trump administration has been pressuring elite universities to revamp academic departments, including Middle East studies programmes, that it views as biased in favour of Palestinians. Columbia University, for instance, appointed a provost to review its programmes at Trump's request, 'starting immediately with the Middle East' department. The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment. The initiative explicitly identifies several Arab, Muslim and progressive Jewish organisations as well as student groups as part of the so-called Hamas Support Network. The initiative claims that 'the network revolves around' American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), an educational and civic advocacy group. Osama Abuirshaid, AMP's executive director, said Project Esther points the finger at the group because it has 'Muslim' in its name, playing on Islamophobic bigotry. 'American Muslims for Palestine is an easy target. Given the Islamophobic tendencies, it's easy to assume guilt of American Muslims, Palestinians. That's a name that sticks,' Abuirshaid told Al Jazeera. He added that the group is also a target because it is effective and has a 'solid constituency'. 'If they can cripple and bring down AMP, that will have a chilling effect within the movement. So they think, if they can bring us down, other organisations will stop working on Palestine solidarity,' Abuirshaid said. Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, said Project Esther targets universities because Israel is bleeding support among young people in the US. 'That's why there's such an overwhelming focus on universities and college campuses,' he told Al Jazeera's The Take podcast. Kenney-Shawa explained that support for Israel's war on Gaza has been trending downwards across US demographics. But on college campuses, the change is more pronounced. 'While this change is absolutely across the political spectrum, it's obviously a lot more acute in the left and among young Americans,' Kenney-Shawa said. A recent poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 53 percent of US respondents had negative views of Israel, a number that rises to 71 percent among Democrats below the age of 50. Advocates say that, in the immediate future, the crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement threatens the safety and wellbeing of activists, especially foreign students. But it has also sparked a backlash. 'The extreme nature of these attacks has also emboldened people to defiantly continue to speak out in the face of these attacks,' JVP's Miller said. 'And it has actually, in many cases, awoken people – who weren't paying attention before – to the hypocrisy that has so long existed in the willingness to silence and censor Palestinian rights activists.' Earlier in May, several right-wing lawmakers and Trump allies came out in opposition of a bill that aimed to expand restrictions on boycotts of Israel, citing free speech concerns. Abuirshaid echoed Miller's comments. He acknowledged that the media attacks, arrests and lawsuits against advocates and student protesters have been 'distracting' from the mission of focusing on Palestine. However, he added, 'I'm going to be clear: It's energising us to continue this fight.'
Fox News
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Evening Edition: Fight Against Anti-Semitism Criticized
The Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank in D.C., launched a major effort to fight anti-Semitism last year on the first anniversary of the October 7th terror attack on Israel. Heritage dubbed it 'Project Esther', named after a hero in Jewish culture, and it has a focus on shining a light on the support network of the terror group Hamas. It has also influenced the Trump Administration's fight against anti-Semitism, like cutting federal funding to certain universities that haven't done enough to curb anti-Semitism on their campuses, but the project is now being called radical by critics. FOX's Eben Brown speaks with Victoria Coates, former deputy national security advisor to President Donald Trump, Victoria Coates is Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, who says the recent criticisms are political and religious 'hit jobs'. Click Here To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Project Esther' exposes the reality of Trump's agenda to fight antisemitism
President Donald Trump has enacted a raft of suppressive policies ostensibly designed to combat antisemitism, such as cutting off funding to universities that he claims haven't done enough to curb antisemitism on campus. But if you take a look at the little-known playbook that appears to have inspired many of his most aggressive moves, it becomes evident how little it has to do with ending bigotry against Jews. The playbook is called Project Esther, a policy paper created by the Heritage Foundation, arguably the most influential right-wing think tank of the Trump era. Heritage also produced Project 2025, the extreme policy manifesto that has shaped much of Trump's agenda. Project Esther is a kind of miniature Project 2025, offering guidance on using authoritarian tools to crush criticism of Israel across the country. Trump has used many of the extreme policies it has recommended, including deporting immigrants who express pro-Palestinian sentiment and attacking academia using public defunding. There was some reporting on Project Esther before Trump entered the White House, although it got relatively little attention. But new reporting from The New York Times details how it came together and lays out how much Trump appears to have hewed to it. The White House didn't respond to the Times' query about Project Esther's influence on its goals, and Heritage couldn't confirm its influence, but a co-author of Project Esther told the Times he believed it was 'no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.' The Heritage Foundation formed an antisemitism task force after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, which helped lay the groundwork for the Project Esther paper. Strikingly, only one of the four people who started the task force was Jewish, according to the Times, while two of them were Christian Zionist leaders. The task force was joined by mainly conservative and Christian organizations, rather than Jewish organizations. In a pitch deck that Heritage used to entice donors for the task force, George Soros — a Jewish billionaire and the bogeyman at the center of countless antisemitic conspiracy theories — is listed at the top of 'masterminds' behind what it calls an antisemitism 'ecosystem,' as Forward reported in 2024. That deck also singles out Jewish Voice for Peace — a progressive Jewish organization known for its organization of protests that criticize Israeli policy — at the top of its list of 'organizers' contributing to the antisemitism ecosystem. In its statement of purpose, the task force identified anti-Zionism as 'hatred against Jewish people,' even though there has long been a tradition of anti-Zionism across the international Jewish community and it isn't inherently antisemitic to criticize the ideology of Zionism. In other words, this antisemitism task force was giving heavy Christian Zionist vibes. Christian Zionists view their unconditional support of Israeli policy and Israeli expansionism as a spiritual duty. John Hagee, a pastor and chair of Christians United for Israel, has espoused repugnant antisemitic beliefs, and other Christian Zionists often weaponize a nominal concern about antisemitism — even while trafficking in antisemitic tropes and beliefs. As Emily Tamkin wrote for MSNBC in her assessment of Hagee's appearance at a rally to support Israel in 2023, 'One can support Israel and also spread antisemitism.' The Times reports that the Heritage antisemitism task force's policy recommendations served as the basis for Project Esther, which is an astonishingly radical and paranoid document — and not without some problematic statements about the Jewish community of its own. In a document that sounds plainly McCarthyist, Project Esther posits that the pro-Palestinian movement in America is 'part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN)' and that this network is 'supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy.' It continues: [T]he HSN benefits from the support and training of America's overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community's complacency." That last line is an astounding example of Project Esther's condescension to American Jews — who the authors seem to think aren't up for the challenge of identifying antisemitism. But this perspective also holds that activists in America objecting to U.S. support for Israel, as it commits what many human rights organizations and genocide scholars have described as genocide, are actually part of some nihilistic, shadowy international terrorist organization that wants to covertly take over and destroy America. The assessment doesn't just preposterously conflate criticizing aid to Israel with supporting Hamas; it suggests that criticizing Israel is tantamount to a siege against the state in America. Based on its hyper-reactionary assessment of the pro-Palestinian movement, the Esther Project promotes a variety of policies that appear designed to circumvent First Amendment-protected speech and identify and suppress pro-Palestinian speech as support for terrorism. Many of its proposals, like a focus on deportations, have already been enacted. But some others, such as purging social media and expanding the idea of 'material support for terrorism,' haven't emerged in full force — and hopefully won't. There has been a surge in antisemitism in America in recent years across the political spectrum, which is a deeply distressing social problem worthy of serious engagement. Notably, Project Esther has nothing to say about antisemitism on the political right, which, according to a recent study, is more common than it is on the left. But the proposals of the Esther Project aren't good-faith efforts, nor are the Trump policies they've seemingly helped inspire. They instead exploit the reality of antisemitism to advance an antidemocratic project of unconditional support of Israel. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's attacks on your access to news are all part of Project 2025
Ignorance is Donald Trump's best friend, which would explain why he is not a fan of a free press that strives to provide fair and balanced reporting of the facts. Fair and balanced media just doesn't work for what this particular president and his team of government wrecking balls seem to have in mind, because it doesn't provide the steady, rage-inducing diet of misinformation required by his base. Or maybe I should say, required to keep his base in line and on script. Just for one example, Trump claimed last month that the price of eggs had come down 'like 93%, 94% since we took office.' That's not just misinformation, that's a lie. The truth is that the price of eggs hit a record high in March. If the only information American voters had access to was provided by a fair and balanced media, I suspect Donald Trump might never have been elected. But instead, we are deluged daily with a firehose of misinformation and disinformation mixed in with actual truthful information that is misleadingly presented as "choice." This mainline infusion of lies and more lies has gained traction in MAGA circles as 'alternative facts,' thanks in large part to Kellyanne Conway, former counsel to President Trump, who used the phrase in a Meet The Press interview in January of 2017. Between that, and Trump's fondness for referring to news he doesn't like as 'fake news,' too many folks these days seem to believe there is no such thing as actual truth, just what you choose to believe. If we continue down the road that says the truth is optional, then Trump is just the beginning of our woes, not the end. I'm not saying I know precisely how to do it, but I do know that we've got to figure this out. Maybe it starts with understanding that Trump's attacks on media are part of a coordinated plan, laid out in, what else, Project 2025. More from Freep Opinion: Project 2025 is bad. Its successor, Project Esther, plans for the Rapture. According to a rather lengthy but highly informative piece written last year about what Project 2025 could mean for the media, the Brookings Institute reminded its readers of the following: 'Congress enacted the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act because they believed an educated and informed citizenry was in the public, local, and national interest.' Now compare that to Project 2025's views of public media: 'To stop public funding (of public broadcasting) is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become 'a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,' but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.' In 1974, not even a decade after the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act, President Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office in disgrace after two young Washington Post reporters discovered that the president was trying to steal an election. But it wasn't just their steady stream of increasingly damaging scoops that resulted in Nixon's impeachment, followed by his resignation; it was the fact that the vast majority of Americans who followed these stories did not think to dismiss them as "fake news," and no one had ever heard of "alternative facts." The nation was largely incensed by what Nixon had tried to do, and the subsequent televised Watergate hearings became the primary relied-upon source of information for tens of thousands of Americans about the details of the coverup that nearly wrecked their country. Those were the days. More from Freep Opinion: How much of Project 2025 has been implemented? Enough to break us beyond repair. Today, Trump refers to the media as the "enemy of the people," and is now seeking to defund the Public Broadcasting System, among others. Trump's budget, released earlier this month, eliminates funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and National Public Radio. This is part of a broader plan, laid out by Project 2025, to at least severely cripple, if not dismantle, any and all media outlets deemed not friendly enough to the Trump administration. To quote the document itself: 'The 47th President can just tell the Congress — through the budget he proposes and through personal contact — that he will not sign an appropriations spending bill that contains a penny for the CPB. The President may have to use the bully pulpit, as NPR and PBS have teams of lobbyists who have convinced enough Members of Congress to save their bacon every time their taxpayer subsidies have been at risk since the Nixon era. ... Stripping public funding would, of course, mean that NPR, PBS, Pacifica Radio, and the other leftist broadcasters would be shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest and receive the privileges that often accompany so acting. They should no longer, for example, be qualified as noncommercial education stations (NCE stations), which they clearly no longer are.' Without noncommerical status, PBS and NPR stations would have to pay for their licenses, and pay taxes, all while losing federal funds. But, naturally, Trump swore throughout his campaign that he didn't know anything about Project 2025, despite the fact that several key authors of that plan served in his administration. In March of this year, acting in lockstep with the blueprint he says he never heard of, Trump banned the Associated Press from White House grounds because they refused to start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The AP took the Trump administration to court and won a decision to once again be allowed to be a member of the White House press pool. But Trump, being Trump, has defied that court order, and still won't allow AP reporters on White House grounds. Trump has also filed lawsuits against the New York Times; the Des Moines Register (a member of the USA Today Network, of which the Detroit Free Press is part), dismissed in February; ABC, settled last year for $15 million; Simon and Schuster; CBS; and a $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN that was dismissed in 2023. It's true that Trump hasn't quite yet figured out how to completely shut down all media outlets he doesn't like, which is quite a few media outlets, and it's worth noting that plenty of publications do continue to publish the news, even if not all Americans care to consume it. Many college newspapers, however, have been experiencing incidents of students desperately requesting that possibly offensive articles be removed or retracted out of fear of what might happen to them for criticizing the Trump administration. The headline of a recent AP story, 'College journalists wrestle with transparency as students fear deportation for speaking out' pretty much spells it out: 'Many young editors are beginning to reconsider long-standing journalistic practices around transparency to protect the people who appear in their reports. It's happening amid a climate of fear on campuses that is causing certain students to be reluctant to speak out publicly. "These dramatic shifts in student media escalated after Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, was threatened with deportation and detained in March over what her lawyers say is apparent retaliation for an op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.' Remember that Trump is the same guy who is now gleefully deporting legal immigrants without due process, and has expressed a burning desire to similarly export born-in-the USA Americans who he deems as unworthy. And if that sweep manages to "accidentally" sweep up some non-guilty folk, then, oh well. Collateral damage and all that. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who realized early the power of televised news coverage to make the case for civil and human rights to be granted to Black people in America. During the civil rights movement, it was television that turned the tide in our favor when white people across America saw for the first time images of how ugly this country could be, with fire hoses and vicious dogs being turned on peaceful protesters. Not to mention the horrifying photo published on the cover of Jet magazine of a brutally disfigured Emmett Till in an open coffin, because his mother, Mamie Till, wanted America to see what white racism had done to her son. Because what if none of those incidents had ever been recorded or televised? Where would we be now? Or perhaps a more pertinent question might be, how different the reaction might have been to the disfigured image of Emmett Till in modern-day America? Today, social media and other "alternative" news outlets like Fox News have contributed to a total re-write of history for thousands of Americans who rely on them for "truth"; saying that the Jan. 6 insurrection was really just a tourist jaunt and that those arrested for being patriotic tourists were victimized political prisoners. Until Trump set them free. In such a climate, anyone who wanted to believe Emmett Till's murder was fabricated could easily find a "news" source to support whatever alternative facts they preferred to believe. As summer approaches, a remarkable number of anti-Trump protests have been organized around the country, including ridiculously large crowds in heavily Republican red states like Idaho and Utah. Trump has already tried to lie about the actual size of these crowds, which have been in the tens of thousands, but news coverage and cell phone cameras have made the truth plain to see. Many of us take this ability to tell the truth in the face of repression for granted. Don't. Free Press contributing columnist Keith A. Owens is a local writer and co-founder of Detroit Stories Quarterly and the We Are Speaking Substack newsletter and podcast. Submit a letter to the editor at and we may publish it online and in print. Like what you're reading? Please consider supporting local journalism and getting unlimited digital access with a Detroit Free Press subscription. We depend on readers like you. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump attacks on information access are part of Project 2025 | Opinion
