Democracy Now! 2026-04-13 Monday

From New York, this is Democracy Now. The bad news is that we have not reached the agreement, and I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America. After the U.S. and Iran failed to reach a deal, President Trump orders a naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, a move Iran has decried as piracy. We'll get the latest. Then Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban concedes defeat, ending 16 years of far-right rule. Hungary's opposition leader, Peter Magyar, celebrated after winning by a landslide. Today, the Hungarian people said yes to Europe. They said yes to a free Hungary. They said yes to represent them, to help them, to put the country in order, because this is a Hungarian government, the responsibility of the Hungarian government. Then the Trump administration's fired six more immigration judges, including two, who blocked the deportation of Ramesh Ozturk and Mosa Madali, students who'd advocated for Palestinian rights. Plus, the federal government's preparing to begin automatically registering eligible men ages 18 to 26 for the military draft pool. We'll speak to an organizer with the Anti-Draft Coalition. Readiness for a draft enables planning for larger, longer wars without having to think about whether people are willing to fight them. Our goal is to take the draft off the table as an option by repealing the military selectives service act. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump's announced a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz starting 10 a.m. today. Iran called it an act of piracy. It comes after negotiations between the U.S. and Iran and Islamabad, Pakistan collapsed Sunday without a deal. Vice President Jay Devance declared Iran, quote, shows not to accept our terms, unquote. Iranian state media blamed, quote, excessive demands, unquote, from Washington for the talks collapse. Meanwhile, President Trump watched a UFC cage fight in Miami with Secretary of State Marco Rubio during the ceasefire negotiations. This comes as CNN's reporting China is preparing to deliver new air defense systems to Iran within weeks following over a month of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. This is President Trump speaking to Fox News Sunday. We didn't get there on the important issue. They want to have nuclear weapons. They're not going to have nuclear weapons. I've been saying that for 30 years. I would never allow that to happen before I was in politics. And that country will not have nuclear weapons. In Lebanon, an Israeli strike killed an infant girl during her father's funeral on Sunday. The baby's sister, seven-year-old Aline Zayed, had attended the funeral wrapped in bloodied bandages from an Israeli strike on her family home Wednesday. The Israeli strike on Sunday also killed other relatives at the funeral. This is Nasser Zayed, the girl's grandfather. What humanity are they talking about? This is humanity. This isn't humanity. This is a war crime. Where are the human rights? If a child, a child is wounded in Israel, the whole world jumps up. Are we not people? Are we not humans? We're like them. Lebanon's health ministry says Israeli attacks have killed over 2,000 people, including 165 children since March 2nd. More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced. On Sunday, an Israeli military tank rammed into UN peacekeeping vehicles twice in southern Lebanon, blocking a road used to access UN positions in the region. An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon also killed a Red Cross paramedic and injured another emergency worker. At least seven Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across the central and southern Gaza Strip on Saturday. An Israeli drone fired two missiles near a police post in Barij, a refugee camp, hitting a group of civilians. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli attacks have killed more than 700 Palestinians and injured more than 2,000 since the so-called ceasefire took effect last October. Meanwhile, a second global Samoud flotilla carrying humanitarian aid set sail for Gaza on Sunday from Barcelona. Aiming to break the Israeli blockade, organizers are calling it the largest civilian maritime effort in history. Last October, the Israeli military halted the previous global Samoud flotilla, arresting Gratitunbiri and more than 450 other participants. This is organizer Thiago Avila. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu need to fear the people because of their violations, both war criminals, but also the Epstein class and all the other things that they do, they will be made accountable, and we will not stop. In the United Kingdom, police arrested over 500 pro-Palestinian activists at London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday. They were holding signs that read, quote, I oppose genocide, I support Palestine action, unquote. The Palestine action was declared a terrorist organization in the U.K. last year, making support for the group punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Britain's High Court struck down the ban earlier this year on free speech grounds. The government's appealed the ruling. Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested since the ban on Palestine action was first imposed, hundreds faced charges. President Trump slammed Pope Leo on Sunday night, posting on Truth Social he does not, quote, want a pope who criticizes the president of the United States because I'm doing exactly what I was elected in the landslide to do. Trump claimed credit for Pope Leo's election, writing, if I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican. Trump also criticized Pope Leo for meeting with David Axelrod, the former senior adviser to President Obama. Earlier today, President Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ. Here's Pope Leo responding to Trump's attacks. I don't want to get into a debate with him. I don't think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing. And I will continue to speak out loud against war. Pope Leo is on a four-country trip in Africa. He's just landed in Algeria. The Trump administration's fired immigration judges who dismissed high-profile deportation cases against international students who joined protests in support of Palestinians. Judge Rupal Patel had ruled in January. The government had no grounds to deport Ramessa Ozturk, the Turkish-born, tough student targeted by the Trump administration. Ozturk was personally targeted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio after she wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper critical of tough university stances on Palestinian causes. Judge Patel was fired Friday, as were five other judges, including Nina Froze, who in February ended deportation proceedings against Columbia University Palestinian student Mohsen Madawi. Both of the fired judges told the New York Times they'd come under pressure from the Trump administration to order more deportations. In Hungary, the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, has conceded defeat in Sunday's parliamentary election, bringing 16 years of authoritarian rule to an end. Official results show Peter Magyar and his center-right pro-EU to his party, won in a landslide with more than the two-thirds majority needed to reverse Orban era changes to Hungary's constitution. Tens of thousands of people celebrated the results in the streets of Budapest Sunday night. I think this nation woke up and we try to again to rebuild all the relationship in our families because this is the most important thing, the loving kindness and to believe in the future. And this nation, one of the best nations in Europe, and we can show, we can change also other nations to wake up. Orban has been prime minister of Hungary since 2010, making him the European Union's longest serving leader. He was supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Trump administration. Last week, Vice President J.D. Vance traveled to Budapest to campaign for Orban ahead of Sunday's election. We'll have more on this story later in the broadcast. Nigeria's government's denying reports that its air force mistakenly bombed a crowded market Saturday after Amnesty International reported over 100 civilians, including children, were killed in attack on the village of Zili in Yobes state. The village is near the border of Borno state, the epicenter of a Boko Haraman's urgency that's ravaged the region for over a decade. In a statement, a spokesperson for Nigeria's president called the market a legitimate military target adding, quote, the narrative that those who were killed are innocent civilians is totally false, unquote. The Nigerian military regularly bombs vast forest enclaves to battle Boko Haraman Islamic state groups operating throughout the region. In Southern California, a 29-year-old warehouse worker is being held without bail after his arrest in connection with a massive six-alarm fire at a paper products warehouse east of Los Angeles. Tuesday's fire at a Kimberly-Clark warehouse completely destroyed the 1.2 million square foot facility, causing an estimated $600 million in damages. Prosecutors say it was started by Chamele Abdul Karim, who allegedly texted a co-worker after comparing himself to Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A social media video appears to show Abdul Karim using a lighter to set fire to paper products while criticizing corporate greed and inadequate pay. All you had to do was pay us enough to live. All you had to do was pay us enough to f*****g live. In Ireland, a man climbed onto the roof of a U.S. military aircraft as it was parked at Shannon Airport Saturday using a hatchet to sabotage its wing and fuselage. Police said they arrested a man in his 40s but didn't identify him as action caused extensive damage to the $75 million C-130 Hercules military transport. Shannon Airport is the frequent site of protests demanding the Irish government and U.S. military chartered flights and weapons shipments to Israel. In California, Democratic Congressmember Eric Swalwell has suspended his gubernatorial campaign after a former staffer said he twice raped her when she was heavily intoxicated, leaving her bruised and bleeding. Three other women also alleged sexual misconduct by Swalwell in interviews with CNN. Swalwell denied the claims but said he would suspend his campaign for governor of California while fighting what he called serious false allegations. On Saturday, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office said it had launched an investigation into the rape allegations. A growing number of lawmakers, including Democrats, are calling on Swalwell to resign from Congress. Many are also calling on Texas Republican Congressmember Tony Gonzalez to quit. After he admitted to an affair with a former staffer who later took her own life, burning herself to death, Gonzalez is also accused of sending sexually explicit messages to a former campaign aide. A New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani marked his first 100 days in office with a pair of rallies Sunday, first at Terminal 5 in Manhattan and later at the Knockdown Center in Queens. Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at both events. Mayor Mamdani touted his accomplishments to roll out 2,000 daycare seats in low-income neighborhoods and fill 100,000 potholes in his first 100 days. He also announced New York City will open a city-owned grocery store in East Harlem by the end of his first term. This is Mayor Mamdani. It, as I said, on that freezing January afternoon to more than 8.5 million New Yorkers, we will make no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a Democratic Socialist and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, Democracy Now!.org, The Warned Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Ship traffic has halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the U.S. military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting today at 10 a.m. Eastern. Iran denounced Trump's move as an illegal act amounting to piracy. Iran is threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation. Trump ordered the blockade after the U.S. and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan. The negotiations marked the highest level talks between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance headed the U.S. delegation, which included U.S. Envoy Steve Whitcoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Iranian negotiators had flown to Pakistan on a plane they called Minab 168 as a tribute to the 168 people killed in a U.S. missile strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab on February 28. The plane carried images of the dead schoolchildren along with bloodstained school bags recovered beneath the rubble. Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade. We're joined now by Yervan Ibrahimin, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the author of several books, most recently Oil Crisis in Iran, from nationalism to coup d'etat, his forthcoming book, 1979, an inevitable revolution. So your response to what transpired in Pakistan, the deal that was not reached between Iran and the United States, and what this means, professor? Well, I think both sides actually presented basically ultimate demands which the other side couldn't accept. So it was a full start. But the implications of the failure is going to be actually quite drastic on United States because Trump's main concern has been to actually put a limit and lid on the oil prices going up. And they've already jumped from $88 a barrel to over $100. They're going to increase more with the present crisis, with the embargo on the straits of foremost. And as the crisis escalates, I think the U.S. will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf oil installations, gas installations. And oil prices then could really zoom up. Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel. In that case, it will have long term implications for Wall Street and the whole American economy, not to mention the world economy. So things that Trump has tried to avoid, he's got actually himself into the major crisis, economic crisis. You have Robert Malley, who had previously been involved with talks with Iran, saying, quote, 21 hours was 20 hours too many if the goal was to reiterate a demand Iran had already rejected. It was many hours too few if the goal was to negotiate your response. Here's exactly right. And I think, I mean, what Iran sees as the present crisis is an existential one because, although the talk has been regime change, the Israeli policies clearly in the last 10 years has been more than regime change. It's basically been the destruction of the Iranian state, Iranian nation. So Iran sees this as an existential threat. There was a speech that Trump made when he launched the attack on Iran a couple of weeks ago. It was actually quite interesting speech. He talked about various ethnic minorities being oppressed in Iran and they were dying to be liberated from Iranian control. And he listed, obviously, ethnic groups. But then there was one ethnic group that really I'd never heard of. So I scratched my head, what is this group? I did what most people do. You Google. And lo and behold, this ethnic group actually exists in the other side of the Caucasus mountains in Dagestan. So you wonder what reason of the hat for putting this ethnic group that doesn't exist in Iran as one of the ethnic groups unless there's some sinister idea that the Israelis have over civil war in Iran where they will recruit actually mercenaries from the other side of the Caucasus to bring into Iran. Of course, this sounds far fetched, but this is what actually happened in Syria. You had a lot of Chechians actually brought in to fight against Assad. So the Israelis may be thinking in those terms of actually long civil war in Iran where they would be bringing in mercenaries from outside. So for this reason, I think Iran sees this as a real serious existential war. It's not just a question of a minor sort of fine tuning of relations with the United States. You've written about oil in Iran a great deal. Ghalibath, the Speaker of Iran's parliament, tweeted on Sunday, enjoy the current pump figures with the so-called blockade. Soon you'll be nostalgic for four to five dollar per gallon gas. Yeah. I mean, the price could go up to 200 barrels, dollars a barrel, even more than that. If basically the Gulf oil is not just Iranian oil, but the whole Gulf oil and gas is actually cut off from the world market. So let's talk about what Iran wants right now and what the U.S. wants. 10 o'clock a.m. we're broadcasting right before that. Eastern time is when the U.S. Navy blockades apparently the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. What exactly this means? How will the Gulf nations be affected? How will Iran be affected? Because of both exports oil, but of course it needs oil and makes a great deal of its own oil. Yeah, I mean, it won't break Iran because Iran has other ways of actually exporting oil. Obviously, we're hardship, but it'll be a much worse hardship on the Gulf states if Iran actually dismantles their oil installations. And that affects directly United States economy because so much of Gulf oil, money, gas money, actually goes into high tech United States. And much of the American, basically modern technology is funded by subsidies from the various Gulf states. So it would have drastic repercussions on U.S. economy. What does Trump want? His latest and what Vance said, right, Vance leaves the Hungarian Prime Minister campaigning for him, Orban, who is soundly defeated and then goes to Islamabad to lead this negotiation. He says it's all about nuclear weapons. Vance said the simple fact is we need an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon. They will not seek the tools that will enable them quickly to achieve a nuclear weapon. Your response? Exactly. I mean, that's exactly what the Obama agreement was. That Trump pulled out of? Yes, which Trump pulled out. But if you look at that agreement, basically it said Iran had the right to enrich, but it had to be supervised to make sure it couldn't enrich to the level of nuclear weapons. So that in our case, it was vague agreement. In fact, it was very precise. Iran could enrich to 3.67% of uranium. That's as precise as you can get. It was limited to 200 grams of enriched uranium. And also everything was supervised. There were 140 international monitors, including American monitors. So this was an incredibly tight procedure to make sure that Iran would actually fulfill its promise not to go into nuclear weapons. When Trump pulled out of that, it basically unwound the whole system. And the best he can get is going back to that. So the demand that Iran should have no nuclear enrichment is a non-starter. The best he could get is go back, permit Iran to have enrichment, but with on monitoring, that it would not be weapons enrichment. We just have a minute. In a call with the Russian President Putin, Iran's President, Massoud Pesashdian, said, a deal is, quote, not out of reach. So if you can talk about whether, where you see this all headed? Well, there are people in Iran, basically in the National Security Council, including Pesashdian, who think that they can make a deal with United States. And they've been there a long time. But there are also people now, I think, hardliner, who are stronger now than before the war, who are arguing that you can't make a deal with Trump. Even if he makes a deal with Trump, he could, the following week, decide if he's going to pull out. So it's a non-starter from their point of view, unless U.S. can actually make full commitments. And I don't see how they can do that, because Trump is basically untrustworthy. So from that point of view, I think the hardliners in Iran could argue, persuasively, the more the pressure they have, the more the prices are going to go up. The more it goes up, sooner or later, the patients will have a heart attack or a stroke. So they have an upper hand at the moment. Yerevan Ibrahimian, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Professor Emeritus of History at the Graduate Center at City University of New York, author of several books, most recently Oil Crisis in Iran, his forthcoming book, 1979, An Inevitable Revolution. Coming up, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban concedes defeat, ending 16 years of far-right rule. Stay with us. Bofosafu by Amadou and Mariam, performing in our Democracy Now! studio. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. In Hungary, official results from Sunday's parliamentary elections show opposition candidate Peter Magyar won in a landslide, with more than two-thirds majority needed to amend Hungary's far-right leader. Prime Minister Viktor Orban was defeated after 16 years in power. Magyar spoke to supporters Sunday night. In the history of democratic Hungary, never before have so many people voted, and never before has a single party been given such a strong mandate as TISA. Thank you for believing that it can be done. Thank you for believing that we change our fate. Thank you for believing that we ourselves, the Hungarian people, write our own history. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Viktor Orban was elected in 2010, making him the European Union's longest-serving leader as re-election campaign, was supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Trump administration. Last week, Vice President J.D. Vance traveled to Budapest to campaign for Orban ahead of the election. Orban conceded defeat to supporters after vote counting showed he was roundly defeated. Dear friends, the election result is not final yet, but is understandable and clear. The election result is painful for us, but clear. The responsibility and possibility of governing was not given to us. I have congratulated the winner. For more, we go to the Hungarian capital, to Budapest, where we're joined by the journalist and analyst, Szilard Pap. He is an editor with Parizan, a popular Hungarian independent media channel broadcast on YouTube, and he is a journalist and a journalist. Szilard, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about what happened, the significance of Orban being defeated and what happened in the streets last night. Yes, so, an entire one-generation rule of Viktor Orban has ended yesterday. And I walked around after we closed our election night broadcast. I walked around the city for two hours. Its strangers were hugging each other's music, drinks, cars, honking. So basically it was like a street carnival for the entire night. So talk about what happened. How was he defeated and who Peter Magyar is? So in order to understand the Hungarian political situation, I think we have to understand what was the forces that brought Viktor Orban to this very long period in power. And I think here we have to see, on one hand, we have to see the kind of generalized disillusionment of Hungarian people with the results of the liberal transition after communism in 1989. So the promises of this democratic transition were not kept up. And afterwards, around the 2008 financial crisis, the signs of generalized economic mismanagement were also seen. And so basically Orban promised to right the wrongs of the first 20 years of Hungarian democracy, to end with technocracy, to end with this kind of austerity politics, and to restore somehow popular sovereignty, to give back voice and give back decision-making power to the people. And also promised security and prosperity. And it took a lot of time to come out or to become manifest that these promises were not kept up and that he, on the one hand, continued many of the anti-labor inequality increasing policies of the earlier period. And he also combined this with generalized graft corruption, economic mismanagement, plus some kind of a radical right culture wall of politics, demonizing minorities, building a border at the southern border, building a wall at the southern border of Hungary against refugees, making campaigns against LGBT people and so forth. And so basically for a period of time, during the 2010s, the post-crisis global regeneration of the economy, generalized growth within the European Union also had Hungary. So in Hungary, there was also an increase of prosperity, real wages were growing, factories were opening. So there was a wave of reindustrialization as well. And all this for a period of a while, for a period actually managed to hide away the darker side of the government. So the corruption that was present, the authoritarianism that was present. And after the COVID crisis, so the COVID crisis, the war in Ukraine, now the war in Iran, all of them caused more than four years of economic stagnation. And these more than four years of economic stagnation helped somehow disenchant Hungarians, large part of the population, become disenchanted with the government. Also during these 16 years, the government was very much against the reform, against the improvement of public services. So Hungary has a public education system, a public health system, public railways, buses, so public transportation. And all these infrastructures got deteriorated, active neglect by the government basically. And by now the situation became untenable, both in the state of hospitals, for example, or how the every generation of Hungarian students are performing worse and worse on international tests and so forth. So these different strengths came together. And Peter Magyar, who used to be a politician in Orban's party, he used to be the husband of the ex-minister for justice in Orban's government. After a public scandal where the government basically, where it turned out that the president of the Republic, which also belongs to Orban's party, gave pardon to a convicted criminal who was convicted with aiding and abetting a pedophile crime ring, or a crime. And so basically because of this public scandal, it focused all the anger of the population. And Peter Magyar left behind his party and started talking against it. He's a very charismatic politician. He promises to fix public services, to fix public infrastructure. And he actually spent the last two years campaigning in the countryside, going around, holding rallies in places where the earlier opposition never actually went, to places that were considered the strongholds of Orban's party. And through this systematic work of building up a new movement and using the disenchantment of population with economic and social conditions, managed to defeat in a landslide victory. Céline, Magyar's rise began after an interview he gave to Partisan in 2024, which went viral. What did he say in that interview? Why did it get so much traction? You're the editor of that magazine, Partisan. And then I also want to ask you about Orban's crackdown on the press. So before Orban could be actually defeated, the old ineffective opposition had to be defeated. So by 2022, the separated or fragmented left wing and liberal opposition parties became unrepresented. They lost an election for the fourth time. So in a landslide again in 2022. And so there was in the anti-Orban camp or the anti-Orban electorate, there was a generalized disenchantment. And they were looking for a new vessel, a new politician to represent their views, to represent their desire to fight the government. And so basically, Magyar became this person when he came into our studio. He talked about the fact that the generalized corruption of the system and the unresponsiveness in transparency and the unresponsiveness of the government is actually hurting Hungary. And so basically what he said is that the original promise of Orban was not kept. And this was a message that galvanized a lot of people coupled with the lack of effective opposition for the previous 12 years. And so these two couple of strands came together and and helped Magyar. But when he came into our interview room, he said that he's not planning to make an opposition party. And it was a gradual learning process for him as well. So initially he just started as some kind of a whistleblower, a dissident from a party. And gradually in a couple of months, he realized that the popular forces are pushing him towards actually forming a party, actually forming a movement. And so by by the summer, it became clear that he's going to form a party. This was in 2024. Szilard Pap, I wanted to end by asking you about Trump's role. You know, he's a close ally, Orban was. In the last days, Vance has sent the vice president. How was he perceived and what did it mean for Trump to go as a benefit to a liability? Yes, so basically, Victor Orban was one of the first global politicians to endorse Donald Trump in 2015. And so there there was like a very strong relationship, at least in the media. This is how the government media portrayed here. And. The war in Ukraine is a very important problem for Hungarians. It caused a lot of anxieties here is just over the border. Hungary is neighboring Ukraine, so it's a close issue. And the message that Orban was transferring was that with the return of Donald Trump, peace is going to be reestablished and all these kind of things. And it turned out that Donald Trump is not the person of peace, not the representative of peace, but he's actually opening up new fronts, making new global problems that cause Hungarian fuel prices to rise as well. So let's just refer back to the previous discussion about Iran. So basically, it turned out that the whole Trump myth was a hoax. And so this is how it turned around that the majority of the Hungarian population as the majority of the European population. So different countries in the EU see Trump and the US more and more as a competitor, as a threat to global security, as opposed to being an ally or a friend. Cilar Papuana, thank you for being with us, Hungarian journalist and analyst, editor with Partisan, popular Hungarian independent media channel broadcast on YouTube. Coming up, the Trump administration fires six more immigration judges, including the judges who block the deportation of tough student Ramessa Ozturk and Columbia student Losen Madali, both students advocated for Palestinian rights back in 20 seconds. And the hoggerly forsaken got no reason to cry. He got to chew the angels falling from on high, waiting for no answer. Bacon, waffle pie, pie of eyesight, pie of blue, black. Oh, that pie, the pie of pie pie. In the hoggerly forsaken, he will leave you one more chance, which if you won't be taken, he'll leave it for the ants. Sings out in the wilderness, sings for friend and foe. He sings of these and those times as well as the times to go. The hoggerly forsaken got no reason to cry. He got to chew the angels falling from on high. Pog of the Forsaken by the late folk musician Michael Hurley in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, democracynow.org. I'm Emy Goodman. In immigration news, the Trump administration fired six more immigration judges on Friday in their efforts to reshape immigration policy and the immigration courts. Two of the fired judges, Rupal Patel and Nina Fros, had each dismissed high-profile cases brought by the government against international students who advocated for Palestinian rights. Tough student Rumeisa Ozturk and Columbia student Mohsen Madali. Ozturk is a Turkish-born student who was studying at Tufts University after she wrote an op-ed in her student paper critical of the university's response to the student government stance on Israel's war in Gaza. She was arrested off the street by masked ICE agents. Her student visa had been revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Boston immigration judge Rupal Patel blocked Ozturk's deportation in January, saying the Homeland Security Department did not have enough evidence to deport her. Ozturk has since completed her doctorate in child development. Mohsen Madali, as a Palestinian green card holder, arrested following his participation in campus protests at Columbia University, in which he advocated for Palestinian rights. Massachusetts judge Nina Fros blocked his deportation after ruling in February, DHS, had not proven its case. Unlike judges in the judicial branch, immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department and are hired and fired by the Attorney General. Around 100 immigration judges have been fired by the second Trump administration. Fireings in previous administrations were rare. Under Trump, a record number of asylum claims have been denied, leading to a record number of deportation orders. For more, we're joined by two guests. Carmen Maria Ray Caldas is a former judge in New York immigration court, appointed in 2022, and fired last year without explanation. She's joining us in our Democracy Now! studio and joining us from Washington, longtime immigration attorney Cyrus Mehta. He represents Columbia student Mohsen Madali. Welcome you both to Democracy Now! Judge, let's begin with you. You were a judge in the immigration court here in New York for three and a half years before you were fired. Can you respond to what has just taken place for people to understand how rare what is happening is? The concept of procedural due process, the idea that you get to have a hearing in the United States, whether an immigration court or a criminal court or a federal court, and you have access to a neutral decision maker, is a bedrock principle of law. And I don't, I'm not the person to say that. I mean, this is Justice Scalia, who I believe last said that very, very forcefully, while he was still alive. And the Supreme Court has recently kind of reiterated that principle in some of the Trump administration rulings regarding Venezuelan nationals. Despite that, the Trump administration has done its utmost to erode that principle by firing judges that it perceived as being opposed to the administration's stated goal to deport as many people as possible with the least amount of due process possible. Let's bring in Cyrus Mehta. Can you respond to the firing of Judge Nina Frouze, the immigration judge who ruled to dismiss the government's deportation case against your client, Mulson Medawi? She's just been fired. Explain what happened in his case, arrested exactly a year ago tomorrow in Vermont. He was going in for the final stages of becoming a U.S. citizen into a Vermont hearing. He had that hearing, and then the immigration agents moved in. Explain how this firing of the judge will affect his case. Yes, sure. My client's deportation was based on a document that was issued by Secretary Rubio, indicating that his presence in the U.S. was contrary to our foreign policy. This document was not authenticated. It's an important document. It was being used to deport my client, who is a green card holder, and there was no basis to demonstrate that it was a genuine document. It was issued by Secretary Rubio. These are standard procedures in any court proceeding, including immigration court. The immigration judge correctly terminated the proceeding. We have no basis to know whether that decision caused the firing because she was on probation. We have no idea, but there's a strong inference that this decision may have resulted in her termination because she does not have a very liberal record with regards to granting asylum cases, for example. At this point of time, my client's case was terminated. The government has appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. It's independent of this judge's termination. The Board of Immigration Appeals will hear our appeal and could either dismiss the government's appeal or remand back to the immigration court. If the case gets remanded back to immigration court, we won't have the same judge. The firing of an immigration judge is very disturbing. 100 judges or more have been fired. It is egregious because non-citizens are not going to get due process, and they're going to be subject to the ruling of judges that are under pressure. Judges, even their employees of the Department of Justice, should be able to neutrally adjudicate cases without any fear of retaliation, regardless of how they rule. For instance, if you win the case before a judge, we don't want the judge to get fired. It makes a mockery of the justice system in the immigration courts. In the case of Judge Patel and the case of Judge Froze, they were both presiding over these cases of the Tufts University graduate student now, Mosa Madawi, a Columbia graduate student. First of all, who's being promoted in their place? What can you do now because it isn't like Mosa's case in a federal court and an immigration court? Yeah, that's right. We don't know who's replacing these judges. Probably the government is hiring new judges that will be more aligned to the Trump administration's policies that are geared towards deporting non-citizens. We're going to do our job. We're going to continue to brief the issue. If we win at the Board of Immigration Appeals, it's great. If the case gets remanded, we will continue to effectively brief the issue and even bring it into federal court if we have to. And just like every other respondent whose judge may have been terminated, non-citizens need to bring these issues up in their appeals. I want to ask Judge Karman, describe the environment these firings create among immigration judges, political pressure on judges and what's the message being sent out? It's really interesting because the latest firings have received a lot of attention in part because both of these judges were presiding over relatively high-profile cases. But judges make decisions over the lives of non-citizens, thousands of non-citizens across the country every day. We make decisions supposedly based on the record before us and only that, without undue influence from external sources. But we are still people, which means that when we wake up to a presidential announcement about how federal judges need to be taken away from their jobs by Congress, how the Supreme Court is acting improperly when it disagrees with the President, when the executive branch of government fails to respect the independence of the Department of Justice and the courts, that trickles down. And we can't blind ourselves because we're just people to the fact that individuals who oppose the interpretation of law that is being advanced by the Trump administration are fired, when those who support the interpretation of law advanced by the Trump administration are promoted, whether or not that interpretation is actually correct and in accordance with the laws of the United States. And so people, judges who are just people who are trying to feed their children and keep going in the United States of America, have to weigh how much they want to keep their jobs when they decide cases. And that in itself is an unfair putting of weight on the balance of justice and courts. Were you shocked when you were fired in August? No. You weren't one of the most conservative immigration courts, right? I was. I spent two and a half, nearly three years in Georgia at the Stewart Detention Facility, where I don't think that my grant rates or denial rates were any, you know, markedly different from those of my colleagues, in part because we were dealing with a detained population and in a detained setting, as the Trump administration well knows, which is why it's putting so many immigrants in detention, people abandon their cases. The detention conditions are so horrific that people would rather just be deported. And so we had very high rates of removal. And then I was transferred to the New York immigration court shortly before the Trump administration. Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. We will continue to follow these cases as the judges are fired and who is being deported and who isn't. Former immigration judge Carmen Maria Ray Caldas was fired in August. Cyrus Mehta, attorney for Mosa Madawi, a Columbia graduate student whose judge was just fired. This is DemocracyNow, democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman. The federal government's preparing to begin automatically registering eligible U.S. men ages 18 to 26 for the military draft poll. The U.S. hasn't had a draft since 1973, but it still maintains a registry of eligible men in case the draft is restored. The new rules around automatic military draft registration were tucked into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. In early March, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt did not rule out President Trump reinstating the draft itself. She was questioned by Fox News host Maria Bartiroma. Mothers out there are worried that we're going to have a draft, that they're going to see their sons get it and daughters get involved in this. What do you want to say about the president's plans for troops on the ground? As we know, it's been largely an air campaign up until now. It has been and it will continue to be and President Trump wisely does not remove options off of the table. We're joined now by Edward Hasbrook, organizer of the Anti-Draft Coalition, which opposes the plan for automatic registrations calling for repeal of the Military Selective Service Act. Editor and publisher of Resisters.info, he is a member of the War Resisters League and the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild. His recent piece for responsible statecraft is headlined, Even if Team Trump wanted a military draft would be a fiasco, unquote. In the 1980s, Hasbrook publicly refused to register for the draft and spent six months in prison. Can you talk, Edward, about what has changed? What is this draft registry that the Trump administration is bringing back? Well, since 1980, men have been supposed to register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday and tell Selective Service within 10 days every time they move until they reach age 26. Very few people do the efforts to enforce that against a handful of public non-registerants whose public statements could be used to convict us, collapsed in the early 1980s. Nobody has been prosecuted in decades. But in the face of growing pressure to recognize the failure of Selective Service and the unavailability of a draft, instead to save their jobs, the Selective Service System came up with a plan which they managed to sneak through Congress last year to give Selective Service a second chance to try to register potential draftees automatically. Now, that won't work because the federal government doesn't have the data they need, but it will produce a database that's highly vulnerable to misuse and weaponization. And even more importantly, it will continue to prop up the myth that the draft is available as a fallback, which in turn enables continued planning for larger, longer wars without war planners having to think about whether enough people would be willing to fight them. Why do you write that to activate the draft would be a fiasco? Well, in order to figure out who's supposed to register, the government would need to know current addresses, which they don't have. You don't have to report to the government when you move. They would have to figure out sex as assigned at birth, which is the criteria for eligibility for the draft, which isn't reflected in current records in many cases that show current gender. They'd need to know the names and mailing addresses of every immigrant, including undocumented immigrants who clearly aren't included in current federal databases. So they wouldn't have a database that's either accurate or complete. And in addition, they would have the same problems enforcing an actual draft that they had when they tried to enforce registration back in the 1980s, which are that they could only prosecute people if they could prove that their refusal was knowing and willful, which meant they first had to track them down and provably notify them, which they could do in a handful of cases for show trials, but it didn't really scale. And the reason they abandoned the enforcement of draft registration back in the 1980s was that the prosecutions backfired, and young people got the message that there was safety in silence and safety in numbers. And it's that continued, quiet but persistent, nonviolent, non-cooperation by young people that has been one of the most greatest successes of the peace movement on a nonviolent direct action in past decades that has prevented a draft. We should thank young people for their service in reining in military expansionism. Shortly after Trump's inauguration, Doge was sent in and given access to the current Selective Service Registration Database. What's the relationship between the Selective Service System and immigration enforcement? Well, even before putting in place this plan for automatic draft registration, which will take effect in December unless in the meantime, in this crucial year, we can get the Selective Service Repeal Act, which will be reintroduced probably quite shortly in Congress. If we can't get that enacted, the change will take effect in December. But what that will do is it will give Selective Service unprecedented power to obtain from any other federal agency any information they think might help them identify or locate potential draftees. Now, even before that took effect at the end of last year, the Selective Service did give notice that they will be turning over their existing registration list for immigration enforcement and other purposes. And once it goes to Doge, we don't know what those other purposes are, but given the information in the database, it's particularly likely to be weaponized for other purposes against vulnerable trans and immigrant youth. And finally, if you don't have a draft, how does it end up? It's poor people who go into the military because they need the financial support, and that's who ends up fighting U.S. wars. We have 30 seconds. I think the important thing is to take the draft off the table, remove it from the arsenal of war planning, which by forcing the government to confront the question before they make wars, of whether enough people will fight them, actually constrains wars before they happen, as opposed to fighting an anti-war movement after they're on. I want to thank you so much for being with us. Edward Hasbrook, organizer with the Anti-Draft Coalition, will link to your new piece. Even if Team Trump wanted it, a military draft would be a fiasco. That does it for our show. I'll be speaking tonight at the Independent Film Center, IFC, at West Forth and Sixth Avenue. Steal the story, please. The film about Democracy Now continues at the IFC in its first week here in New York City. I'll be doing Q&A with the director Carl Deo and tomorrow as well at 1.30, then headed to the Cinemart Center in Huntington, New York for the screening of the film there. Check our website, democracynow.org. Then we head to Los Angeles, the Lumley theaters, and the Roxy in San Francisco, and beyond. I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now.