When A Congressman Beat A Senator Unconscious, America Confronted The Limits Of Free Speech

In John Magee’s print, Preston Brooks wields a cane against Charles Sumner, who is clutching a pen and a rolled-up speech. John L. Magee, The New York Public Library

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,

VIRGINIA TECH

On May 22, 1856, Preston Brooks strode into the United States Senate chamber and beat Sen. Charles Sumner unconscious with a cane. Brooks, a South Carolina congressman, was retaliating for a speech Sumner had given condemning slavery and personally insulting a relative of Brooks.

Though lasting only a minute, the beating had far-reaching consequences. It pushed Americans one step closer to civil war.

And, as I discovered while researching my book “The Man Behind the Cane: Preston Brooks, Political Violence, and the Road to the Civil War,” it sparked a nationwide debate over free speech, political violence and the relationship between the two.
Speak without reprisal

Northerners denounced the caning as an attack on Sumner’s right to free expression. Even if they thought Sumner’s abolitionism too radical – as most white Northerners did in 1856 – they believed a U.S. senator had the right to say what he wanted without violent reprisal.

Visual images of the caning reflected the Northern take on free speech. In John Magee’s political caricature, “Southern Chivalry – Argument Versus Club’s,” Brooks wields a sturdy stick against a defenseless Sumner, who is clutching a pen in one hand and a rolled-up speech in the other. Winslow Homer’s print “Arguments of the Chivalry” depicts Sumner writing at his desk as Brooks prepares to strike.

Homer’s headline captured the message of both depictions: “The Symbol of the North is the Pen; the Symbol of the South is the Bludgeon,” which is a quote from a speech by antislavery activist Henry Ward Beecher.

Defenders of Brooks insisted any abolitionist speech was too incendiary to deserve protected status. Brooks’ hometown newspaper in Edgefield, South Carolina, berated Sumner for “licentiously prostituting the principle of freedom of speech,” reflecting the widespread conviction among white Southerners that free speech had limits.
Collapsing the distinction between words and violence

The argument between supporters of Brooks and Sumner was not isolated to the caning incident. Societies throughout history have punished language deemed blasphemous, seditious, inciting or slanderous. In most times and places, authorities have hewed more to slaveholders’ conception of free speech as a limited privilege than to abolitionists’ assertion of an absolute right. In the United States, the idea of free speech as virtually inviolable became mainstream only in the 20th century.

To pro-slavery Americans, abolitionist words warranted violent responses because such words were themselves tantamount to violence.

Alexander Stephens, future Confederate vice president, justified the caning by saying, “I have no objection to the liberty of Speech, when the liberty of the cudgel is left free to combat it.”

Another Southern politician wrote to Brooks, “Address your arguments to the Skin, to the physical sensibilities.” And one of the many replacement canes given to Brooks bore the revealing inscription “Use Knock-Down Arguments.”

Slaveholders were collapsing the distinction between words and physical violence. Language could constitute violence, and an act of violence could be a counterargument.

This logic has resurfaced in our own time, but instead of slaveholders using it to maintain white supremacy, today it is more often deployed to designate certain types of expression, such as burning crosses or displaying Nazi symbols, as hate speech against marginalized communities. It has also appeared in the increasing moves by the Trump administration to label dissent as terrorism.
Suppressing antislavery language

While most Northerners in the 1850s continued to value freedom of speech over violence, the caning convinced some that they must respond in kind.

One Minnesota newspaper editor hoped that “every Northern member will fully arm himself, and if necessary plant a cannon by the side of his desk to be used as the most effectual argument in favor of Free Speech.”

It was increasingly difficult to keep rhetorical and physical violence separate as the slavery conflict heated up.

This was a new phase in the history of free speech. While abolitionists and increasing numbers of Northerners fought for an expansive idea of free expression, publishing pamphlets and newspapers and submitting petitions to Congress, slaveholders tried to suppress antislavery language.

Terrified that abolitionist words might lead to rebellions by the enslaved, slaveholders feared for their survival. As prominent abolitionist Frederick Douglass recognized, “Slavery cannot tolerate free speech.”

Political reformer Lydia Maria Child described a growing threat: “A slaveholding community necessarily lives in the midst of gunpowder and, in this age, sparks of free thought are flying in every direction.”

Responding to those sparks of abolitionist free thought with violent repression, including acts such as the Sumner caning, slaveholders’ violence fueled the rise of the new Republican Party. The Republicans articulated their opposition to slavery with their slogan of “free soil, free speech, free labor, free men.”

Brooks and his kind ultimately brought about their own demise by provoking Northern outrage – outrage that ultimately led to war once the slaveholding South seceded.

Who gets to say what to whom? Are there any words that can justify violence? These questions polarized the country after the caning. In new forms, they continue to confound American politics 170 years on.

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Racial Stereotypes Of African Footballers Persist. A World Cup Is A Good Time To Talk AboutThem

Assumptions about natural differences between black and white athletes are entrenched in the global talent trade. Florian Schmetz/Unsplash

BY UROCS KOVAC AND IKECHUKWU EJEKWUMADU

With a Somali referee being denied entry into the US, and the surge of online racist abuse after 2026 World Cup matches, racism and exclusion in football are once again in the news.

Overt anti-Black racism in football is well reported and researched. Less visible but important structural issues remain little scrutinised, though.

The 2026 World Cup is a perfect moment to examine the deeply entrenched – but often hidden – logic of the global market of footballers that reproduces racist stereotypes about Black athletes.

Assumptions about natural characteristics of African athletes persist in football transfers. Africans are often regarded as physically strong athletes with raw talent that are lacking in discipline and technical refinement. But these assumed characteristics are far from natural – they are actively nurtured.

One of the less obvious places that this happens is in west African football academies that seek to empower young footballers, but effectively reproduce stereotypes.

We are a sport sociologist and an anthropologist who have been researching football-related migrations from west Africa to Europe since 2014. We’ve worked with aspiring footballers in Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon. Most recently, we interviewed coaches at four football academies in Nigeria, as well as 24 football migrants in Europe. We asked the coaches about their selection strategies, and the footballers about their aspirations and career paths.

Our combined findings show that racial inequality still exists in global football. It can be detected in young footballers’ dreams, football academies’ business models, and the demands of the global market.

Strikingly, it is often reproduced through practices that are framed positively – opportunity, empowerment, inclusion – rather than through overt racism alone. This makes racial inequality in football particularly durable – it happens through strategies that many experience as allowing for social mobility.

This matters, because we cannot fully comprehend racism in sports without understanding the deeply rooted dynamics that fuel it.

‘Whiteman country’

In many west African countries, football has become one of the most attractive ways for young men to migrate overseas. Confronted with a lack of stable economic opportunities and glaring global inequalities, they seek “greener pastures” overseas, where they hope to start earning a living and providing for their families.

The footballers travel everywhere, including Asia and the Gulf States. But the most desirable destination remains Europe. This is because of the enormous popularity of European elite football leagues and the visibility of elite African footballers in European clubs. There’s a perception that European football offers the best prospects for social and economic mobility.

In western Cameroon, Europe is often called “whiteman country”. It’s a catch-all term for “the west” that has ambiguous connotations. Young people see it as a place of prosperity, comfort and economic opportunity, but also of anti-Black racism, overwork and inequality. Many see it as a key destination – often unavailable because of strict border policies – that holds opportunities.

Natural athletes

Myths about Africans as being natural-born athletes persist in the global market.

For instance, one European coach we interviewed in Cameroon emphasised that Africans were immensely talented – they had “rhythm in their blood”. They also reportedly lacked discipline. The coach consistently compared European footballers – allegedly untalented but inclined to work hard – with African players – supposedly very talented but not geared to hard work.

In Nigeria, coaches we interviewed routinely emphasised that Africans had “natural” abilities for sports. Most prominent were myths about physical strength and endurance that were supposedly inherent in African bodies.

Moreover, talented young players were often labelled as “diamonds in the rough”, raw materials with potential but in need of refinement. The labels make for disturbing parallels with images of Africa as full of natural minerals ready to be exploited.

These examples are not isolated or anecdotal – racial stereotypes about African athletes have been documented in studies over and over and over again.

They are also not isolated to football. Similar myths have been documented in many disciplines, like boxing, rugby, American football, and long-distance running.

Cultivating difference

These stereotypes have a profound influence on how football talent is nurtured on the continent.

Our interviews reveal that football academies in Nigeria strategically cultivate footballers that fit global stereotypes of the Black athlete. This is to create value in the global market.

They argue that physical qualities are the most important thing foreign scouts look for in African footballers. So academies strategically select young men who are physically strong, tall, and with high endurance. In the process, they may overlook players with high technical skills and tactical awareness.

In one instance, an academy spent years developing players, but found it difficult to sell the small players, despite their technical prowess. They eventually disbanded the team and selected a new crop of youngsters. This time they had to be at least six foot tall.

The academies, we found, also model the development of players on successful African internationals. They might focus on scouting and developing defending midfielders – a position that benefits from exceptional physical strength. Or they nurture physically imposing strikers like Romelu Lukaku or Victor Osimhen. The academies say they’re exploiting and creating a niche in the global market that’s especially fitting for Africans.

This matters, because football academies, coaches and agents play key roles as gatekeepers in the global market. They promise young footballers – often from underprivileged backgrounds – empowerment and inclusion through access to global markets.

The market is big and complicated, and not all academies reproduce these tropes – at least not consciously. But racial stereotypes clearly continue and have a profound impact on how athletes are selected and cultivated.

Racial capitalism

For a long time, prominent postcolonial thinkers have developed theories about the racial order of the global economy.

US political scientist Cedric Robinson used the term “racial capitalism” to explain how capitalism was built on a foundation of colonialism, slavery, and racial differentiation. That created a society where racialised groups are exploited to extract profit. Capitalism exploits people on the basis of imagined racial differences.

Indian feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak wrote about “strategic essentialism” to highlight how people may deal with these structures. Marginalised groups sometimes use simplified ideas about who they are. This can help them gain recognition or improve their opportunities.

These ideas are remarkably relevant nowadays, and essential for understanding how racial inequalities endure through sports.

Global football shows how markets commodify bodies, commodify difference itself, and continue to fuel these inequalities. It also shows how people respond to this, and how talk of empowerment and inclusion can reinforce inequalities.

These issues are made visible through sport, but they are not exclusive to it. They are also not inevitable.

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DRC Has Taken Rwanda To The World Court Over Genocide Again. A Law Scholar Explains What’s Different This Time

The Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, which is the seat of the International Court of Justice. Wikimedia Commons

BY KERSTIN BREE CARLSON

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR INTERNATIONAL

LAW, ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY, DENMARK

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) filed a lawsuit against Rwanda at the International Court of Justice at the end of June 2026. The 60-page complaint alleges acts of genocide and other atrocity crimes by Rwandan forces and their intermediaries dating from 1996 to the present day.

The DRC has twice before brought similar cases against Rwanda at this court. Both failed on questions of jurisdiction. So, what explains yet another case against Rwanda? Kerstin Bree Carlson, a scholar of international justice and author of a book on international law in Africa, examines this history and what’s behind the DRC’s confidence in its latest push.
What did the DRC’s previous cases involve?

The DRC has twice tried to bring Rwanda before the International Court of Justice in relation to violence carried out or backed by Rwanda on its soil. It was unsuccessful both times.

In 1999, the DRC brought claims against Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda before the court over the armed invasion of its territory. It sought reparations for armed aggression and intentional acts of destruction and looting.

It later dropped its claims against Rwanda and Burundi because neither country had consented to the court’s jurisdiction.

The case against Uganda went ahead, and in 2005 the court ruled in the DRC’s favour. It found that Uganda was responsible for acts of violence in the country. In 2022, the court ordered Uganda to pay US$325 million in reparations, marking a significant victory for the DRC. Kampala paid the first instalment of US$65 million that year.

In 2002, the DRC resubmitted claims against Rwanda.

The DRC invoked eight international treaties, including the Genocide Convention. This is a UN treaty that entered into force in 1951 and establishes genocide as an international crime.

The International Court of Justice dismissed the DRC’s case on jurisdictional grounds, which drew criticism. The court said it lacked the authority to hear the dispute because Rwanda had entered a “reservation” when it joined the Genocide Convention, rejecting the court’s jurisdiction under the treaty. In the 2006 ruling, a majority of International Court of Justice judges recognised the validity of this reservation.
What has happened in the past 20 years that might change the outcome?

First, in 2008 Rwanda withdrew its reservation to International Court of Justice jurisdiction under the Genocide Convention and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (which came into force in 1969). That means that the jurisdictional hurdle relating to Rwanda’s consent is resolved.

The DRC has invoked both these treaties in its current submission to the court.

Second, in 2008 Rwanda became a party to the Convention Against Torture (which came into force in 1987). Claims made under this UN treaty do not need to meet the same rigorous “intent” standard that genocide claims do. Further, the court’s jurisprudence is well established under the torture convention. For example, claims under this treaty played a critical role in efforts to bring Chad’s former president Hissène Habré to justice.

The DRC has invoked this history in its submission.

Third, international law has evolved. Recent cases like The Gambia’s suit againt Myanmar (2019) and South Africa’s case against Israel (2023) have expanded the Genocide Convention’s reach.

Together, these factors suggest that the DRC’s third attempt may have a stronger chance of clearing the jurisdictional hurdle. However, whether this would eventually lead to a judgment against Rwanda is much harder to predict.
Why has the DRC turned to international law?

International law, the law of nations, creates all nations as equals. The International Court of Justice is the oldest, most established global arbiter of disputes between them.

There are two principles of international law that play out in this case.

First, states are generally bound only by obligations they have explicitly accepted. This includes agreeing to the jurisdiction of the court. Second, international courts have no police force or other means of enforcing their judgments. It is up to states themselves to comply with court rulings. This compliance includes a duty on other states not to recognise as lawful situations created through serious breaches of international law.

Although the court cannot compel states to act, its opinions matter. They represent the most authoritative statements of international legal norms. In other words, International Court of Justice judgments represent the clearest statements we have regarding how international legal principles apply in practice.

Recognising international law’s persuasive power is key to understanding why the DRC has repeatedly turned to the International Court of Justice and other international courts to seek rulings against Rwanda and its proxies. These include the International Criminal Court and the African Court on Human and People’s Rights. International lawfare represents a principled battle for recognition and legitimacy.
Why does the case matter?

The DRC’s creative legal attempts to bring Rwanda to justice in relation to its engagement in and support of armed conflict in the DRC over the past several decades are efforts to invalidate violent incursions on its soil. It also seeks to reassert its sovereignty by having Rwandan-backed violence recognised as illegal by international law’s apex court.

As I have argued before and in my book examining international law in Africa, the power of international law resides in states’ agreements to use it in place of violent conflagration, and to be bound by it.

Rwanda challenges these standards in both regards. Credible allegations of Rwandan-backed massacres in the DRC date from 1996 through to the present day. Despite being the recipient of significant international legal investment, Rwanda resists participating as a good international citizen. So far, neither Rwanda nor its allies are addressing or redressing its behaviour.

By contrast, the DRC is expanding international law’s promise and potential by applying it as intended. International law derives its power chiefly from the expectations it creates.

The DRC is not blameless in the three decades of violence its submission describes. But by framing that violence through the lens of international law, the country helps legitimise alternatives to violence.

Justice Jackson’s Birthright Citizenship Opinion Includes Black Americans In The Story Of The Nation’s Search For Equality

Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on pending judicial nominations on April 28, 2021, in Washington. Kevin Lamarque/Pool via AP

BY AUSTIN SARAT

WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL PROFESSOR

OF JURISPRUDENCE AND POLITICA;L

SCIENCE, AMHERST COLLEGE

In the annals of Supreme Court decisions, the public likely remembers what justices wrote for the court in famous cases, such as the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.

Or perhaps the public remembers great dissenting opinions that display foresight and speak across the ages. Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, which legalized racial segregation, is a shining example.

But Supreme Court scholars and the public alike seldom pay much attention to concurring opinions, in which a justice expounds on the views of their colleagues in the majority. Some legal experts have denigrated concurring opinions as “the worst form of legal clutter… that are, usually, better left unwritten.”

On June 30, 2026, in the Trump v. Barbara ruling, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson showed how wrong that view can be when she delivered a monumental concurring opinion in the birthright citizenship case.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, ruling that the 14th Amendment guarantees automatic citizenship to virtually everyone born on U.S. soil. The decision invalidated President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to deny citizenship to children born to foreign parents who are unlawfully in the United States.

Jackson, however, used her concurrence to go far beyond that and offer a new understanding of the origins of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and its promise of equal treatment. She did so while emphasizing the singular contributions of Black Americans to that endeavor.

Along the way, Jackson criticized Justice Clarence Thomas and the court’s dominant originalist jurisprudence – centered on interpreting the Constitution based on how it was understood when it was adopted – for distorting the historical record. Jackson has previously signaled that a responsible use of history requires examining all relevant sources instead of cherry-picking among them to make a particular point.

As a politics scholar who has written about history and law, I believe that years from now, when Americans look back on Trump v. Barbara, it will be Jackson, not Roberts, whom they remember.

No shrinking violet

During her brief tenure on the court, Jackson has shown herself to be no shrinking violet. From the start, she has made her voice heard during oral arguments and in her written opinions.

As political scientists Jake Truscott and Adam Feldman wrote in December 2022, after her first three months as a justice, Jackson “was by far the most active participant in oral arguments.”

Since then, nothing has changed about Jackson’s style on the bench. The Washington Examiner reports that she “took up more than 20% of the Supreme Court’s questioning last term.”

Jackson also is not shy about writing dissenting opinions, and the occasional concurrence, whether in combination with others or alone. In both her dissents and concurrences, Thomas, the court’s only other Black member and its leading proponent of originalism, has been one of her main targets.

For example, in her 2023 dissent from the court’s decision to end affirmative action in higher education, Jackson directly criticized Thomas when she wrote that “those who demand that no one think about race … refuse to see, much less solve for, the elephant in the room – the race-linked disparities that continue to impede achievement of our great Nation’s full potential.”

Originalism, Jackson-style

Jackson has also called herself an originalist. However, she departs from Thomas’ brand of originalism.

For Jackson, to understand how any provision of the Constitution was understood requires unearthing sources of constitutional meaning that have been largely ignored by others on the court.

That vision was on display in her concurring opinion in the birthright citizenship case. There, Jackson paid particular attention to what Black Americans did in inspiring and crafting the 14th Amendment.

This contrasts with the traditional originalist story that highlights white protagonists such as Pennsylvania Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, who introduced the proposal to add the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, or President Andrew Johnson, who resisted the 14h Amendment on the grounds that it infringed on states’ rights.

Justice Thomas embraced this sort of vision in Trump v. Barbara. As he tells it, the birth of the 14th Amendment can be traced to the concerns of members of the Reconstruction Congress that the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which extended certain fundamental rights to “all persons born in the United States,” would be repealed or overturned in the courts.

Black people have little or no role in Thomas’ account.

Black Americans and birthright citizenship

Jackson’s opinion registers her impatience with such an exclusion. She faults Thomas for his “narrow vision of the Fourteenth Amendment (that) bears little relationship to the history of its ratification.”

Instead, Jackson traces the 14th Amendment to work done by people “within and beyond Congress.”

Jackson follows Harvard historian Jill Lepore’s suggestion that originalist judges should always attend to “all the people who are basically knocking on the windows and banging on the doors with their ideas about what should be in the Constitution.”

As Jackson recounts, “In the decades leading up to the ratification of the 14th amendment, black Americans organized and gathered at more than 600 local and national conventions across the country. There, delegates erected the political and intellectual scaffolding of the 14th amendment and, later, for the black civil rights movement more generally.”

Contrary to Thomas, who argues that birthright citizenship applies only to former slaves and their offspring, Jackson notes that Blacks “helped galvanize the push for full equality.” When ratified, Jackson explains, “the citizenship clause thus vindicated the universalist vision of the delegates at the colored conventions and their allies in Congress.”

And in a pointed dig at her colleague, Jackson writes that the “distortion of historical facts – retellings that reimagine and repurpose past events to lend credence to misbegotten aims” – poses a grave threat to the constitutional project and America’s well-being.

Extending the work of the 1619 Project

Jackson’s concurrence in the birthright case builds on the approach to history taken by the so-called 1619 Project. That project, unveiled by The New York Times in 2019, “aimed to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project, insists “the United States simply would not exist without us. The idealistic, strenuous, and patriotic efforts of black Americans have helped the country live up to its founding ideals.”

Jackson fully embraces that story and, in her concurring opinion in Trump v. Barbara, extends it to include what happened in 1866 when the U.S. restated and renewed its founding commitment to equality. She suggests that the 14th Amendment would not have come into being without similar “patriotic efforts” by Black Americans.

What makes Jackson’s concurrence extraordinary, Slate’s Robyn Nicole Sanders writes, “is that it insists on telling the 14th amendment story honestly … (and) it is at moments elegiac in its remembrance of the people whose suffering and resistance gave birth to the citizenship clause.”

That is why I believe Jackson’s concurrence will be remembered as one of the great opinions produced by a Supreme Court justice.

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Serving A State That Couldn’t Pay: Why South Sudan’s Civil Servants Didn’t Quit During The War

Public administration, Yambio, Western Equatoria, South Sudan. Emmanuelle Veuillet, Author provided (no reuse)

BY EMMANUELLA VEUILLET

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

UNIVERSITY OF JUBA

When civil war broke out in South Sudan in December 2013, civil servants found themselves at the centre of a deep political and economic crisis.

The state was, and remains, the largest employer, surpassing private companies and NGOs. In 2015, the approved national budget accounted for 465,041 government personnel. Over 85% were engaged in security-related functions. Despite the absence of official statistics, observations confirm that the civil service has not shrunk over the years.

As the conflict became increasingly politicised and shaped by ethnic divisions, civil servants had to navigate shifting loyalties and growing insecurity.

The war also triggered an economic collapse. In 2015, the South Sudanese pound lost nearly 90% of its value against the US dollar. Trade routes were disrupted. Domestic production of products declined and shortages of imported goods fuelled hyperinflation.

The near-total collapse of oil exports – the government’s main source of revenue – severely weakened state finances. By late 2015, the government was effectively bankrupt and increasingly unable to fund the public sector.

This resulted in long delays in civil servants’ salary payments from several months to a year. Hyperinflation also eroded the value of wages.

This did not lead to a mass exodus from the civil service, however. During my PhD fieldwork, I found that many civil servants chose to stay. As a political sociologist, I was interested in understanding their decision to remain in a broke administration during such challenging times. I explored the little-known wartime experiences of ordinary middle-ranking civil servants to make sense of it.

Drawing on 22 months of fieldwork in South Sudan, I found that civil servants chose to remain in government because – despite the absence of a salary and direct income – their jobs provided benefits. These included social status, and access to networks and opportunities. The job provided a sense of normality, too, during a period of political upheaval. It was also a realistic route to paid employment in a hoped-for future. Other options were scarce.

The civil war formally ended with the 2018 peace agreement, but South Sudan remains mired in political and economic crises. My findings help explain why, despite repeated shocks, state institutions have endured.

The study

I collected the data in my study between 2017 and 2022 in the region of Western Equatoria in South Sudan. The region doesn’t have oil resources, hosts a variety of ethnic groups and plunged into war later than many others. I relied on observations from various administration offices at county and state levels, and informal conversations held during these visits.

As part of my research, I followed the stories of six civil servants – two women and four men – from different departments and directorates at the county and state levels. They held different grades within the administration. They were aged over 30 and held at least a high school certificate.

The findings

My study shows that civil servants’ attachment to a state with no money was shaped by material, social and political factors.

Before the war – from independence in 2011 to 2013 – even lower-ranking government jobs provided civil servants with a modest but stable standard of living. For instance, a cleaner (grade 16) in public administration earned around US$180 to US$200 at the time. But after the conflict began, that economic security disappeared.

By April 2017, a director’s monthly salary (grade 3) could only buy a 20kg bag of rice and a 10kg bag of red beans. An administrative officer’s (grade 12) salary could barely pay for 2kg of rice.

All civil servants had to look for other sources of income for daily survival. These included farming, small-scale businesses, and renting or selling properties. The economic security attached to a position in the civil service had vanished.

Yet civil servants continued to go to the office because it still gave them access to other forms of resources, helped them maintain their status and preserved an appearance of normality.

The benefits included:

access to opportunities, such as NGO trainings and workshops that provided per diems for the period of participation, or a certificate of attendance that could be added to a CV

the knowledge and power to help people and do favours, which helped them cultivate social networks that could be used to access goods, services or credit

preserving social position and maintaining practices that reinforced a sense of normality, both in the eyes of others and for themselves


a shared experience which fostered forms of solidarity and mutual understanding among civil servants. They organised social activities and support mechanisms, such as savings groups, among themselves rather than with other social groups.

A desired future

Despite the South Sudanese government’s withdrawal from many of its social responsibilities, civil servants continued to imagine a different kind of state. Those I interviewed shared a vision of a strong and functioning state.

It was often accompanied by a sense of self-fulfilment, as they imagined themselves helping to build such a state. Maintaining the functioning of state institutions and preserving some level of public service during the crisis became a meaningful commitment, a survival strategy and an investment in upward mobility within a “wished-for state”.

The decision to remain in this career was also shaped by a lack of alternatives, however. Middle-ranking civil servants had relatively low levels of formal education and lacked the networks needed to secure other employment. The private sector has remained small because of a difficult business climate and a lack of economic diversification.

The total collapse of a functioning state would mean the disappearance of their jobs – which helps explain their efforts to keep the administration going.

The economic crisis in South Sudan raises questions, however, about how long civil servants can continue to sustain state institutions.

In many cases, salaries have gone unpaid for more than a year. And cash shortages in banks prevent civil servants from accessing whatever funds may be available to them.

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South Sudan At 15: How The Political Elite Have Found A Way To Profit From Peace As Well As War

Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Wikimedia Commons

BY MARTIN BENSON STROHMAYDER

RESEARCH FELLOW AND SUDANS RESEARCH

DIRECTOR, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in 2011 was meant to close the chapter on one of Africa’s longest civil wars: the north-south war that preceded it. Formally, it did. But independence did not end the deeper struggles over power, revenue and coercion inside the newly independent state.

South Sudan returned to war in 2013, watched a 2015 settlement collapse, and now lives under a 2018 Revitalised Agreement whose promised transition has been postponed repeatedly.

This is usually told as a story of failed peacemaking, with too many spoilers and too little political will. But what if these deals are not failing so much as working? What if they stabilise order precisely by preserving the systems that make violence profitable?

Political settlements theory helps explain why peace agreements often focus on dividing power, offices and resources among elites. The hope is that if rival leaders receive a share of power, offices and resources, they will have less reason to fight. But negotiated transitions can also carry wartime systems into peace. The question, then, is not only who gets a share of the state, but what kinds of war economies, revenue systems and coercive practices are being preserved.

As an economic historian of war and peace, I have spent more than a decade tracing how rulers in South Sudan and Sudan raise money, goods, labour and other resources, and how payment is enforced through soldiers, officials, checkpoints and offices. My recent research paper examined how South Sudan’s peace agreements reshaped the country’s systems of revenue, spending and coercion: who could extract resources, who could allocate them, and who could enforce payment.

My analysis drew on 2020-2024 fieldwork and archival, secondary and peace agreement data. I sought to answer three questions: who collected revenue from monetary and non-monetary sources, such as cash, cattle, grain and labour; who paid; and who benefited.

What emerges is that peace settlements have redistributed access to money, offices and external finance among elites, while leaving intact the coercive revenue system and war economies that preceded them. In some cases, peace has formalised those systems by turning wartime access to extraction into recognised office, revenue authority or security control. Violence changes form rather than ending; it recedes from the battlefield and lodges in the revenue systems, security forces and war economies that continue to extract from civilians – now in the name of order.

This is a pattern I call predatory peace.

The same machinery makes the state itself a prize: controlling it is so lucrative that capture remains worth fighting for, and when the power-sharing breaks down, as it did in 2013, the fighting returns. Peace and war become two settings of one extractive machine rather than true opposites.

Similar dynamics have emerged in other resource-rich, conflict-affected states, such as in oil-rich Angola and the mineral endowed Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). South Sudan is resource-rich too, above all because of oil. But the wider issue is not only natural resources. It is the political control of revenue streams such as oil, customs, aid, loans, contracts, checkpoints, timber, charcoal and other forms of extraction.

It’s all part of a wider pattern in peacemaking that has repeatedly paired political deals with economic reforms that entrenched elite control over revenue and other resources.

None of this is inevitable. A different approach would start by treating the whole revenue complex as the heart of peacemaking itself, not as a technical issue to be postponed until after a peace agreement is signed. It would ask who controls money and other resources, including humanitarian and development assistance; who is allowed to extract resources, payments and labour from civilians; and whether people can see anything in return for what they pay.

Peace as ‘organised robbery’ in South Sudan

South Sudan’s national revenue system includes taxes, customs, fees, oil revenues, international loans, aid and off-budget income. It also includes non-monetary extraction, such as cattle, grain, labour and goods taken from civilians. These flows are enforced through soldiers, security forces, government offices and checkpoints. Together, they form what I call a revenue complex: the machinery through which rulers extract the resources that allow them to govern, reward allies and sustain coercive power.

In much of South Sudan, “peace” has reshuffled who profits from the revenue system, not what it does to those who pay. A businessman in Malakal, a city in Upper Nile State, described the tax system as “organised robbery” in which soldiers were overcharging and pocketing the proceeds. He was told that the system had to be endured to “maintain peace”.

Predation was not a breakdown of order; it was a condition of order.

None of this began with the peace process. My peace agreement analysis starts in the early 1970s, but in separate archival research and an earlier round of just over 200 interviews, I traced the territory’s revenue complex back to at least 1899. Across colonial, rebel and independent rule, I found a similar logic: revenue sources were used to secure rulers’ control more than to fund public goods.

Across more than 120 years, changes in government did not dismantle the underlying machinery of extraction and control. Each major political settlement since the 1970s has been laid over that inheritance, reshuffling who profits from it.

Confusion is integral to the system. Traders described being shuttled from office to office to meet fresh demands; collectors themselves spoke of decrees “passed from nowhere” that shifted revenue to other units. A businesswoman in Wau described fierce competition for tax collection posts because of what could be skimmed from them. This is not administrative failure, but a system that works for those who run it. When revenue authority is spread across overlapping offices, no one can be held to account and everyone can be rewarded for their loyalty.

This performance of state finance runs all the way up. In 2012, the president conceded that some US$4 billion in oil money had simply been “stolen”. In 2026, a UN panel of experts found that South Sudan continued to sell oil months in advance of delivery, and that disputes over undelivered oil cargoes and oil-backed debts had reached UK commercial courts.

State budgets perform reform while the money moves elsewhere.

What people get in return

South Sudanese nevertheless do not reject the idea of contributing to public authority. They contrasted community-level payments and contributions, which they could see returning as boreholes, roads or clinics, with state taxation, which they experienced as extraction without return.

Many insisted that paying tax is good, so long as it is reciprocal, transparent and tied to public goods.

The problem is that peace agreements often leave that link severed, even as they formalise new bargains among elites.

What non-predatory peace would require

A different kind of peacemaking would mean taking the following steps.

rebuilding of a transparent, civilian-controlled revenue complex


linking what people pay to what they receive


making external support conditional on genuine revenue reform.


Lastly, South Sudanese civic actors should be supported to monitor the cross-border flows – oil, arms, timber, charcoal, looted goods and finance – that fund fighting.

This work does not fall solely to donors and mediators. People are already documenting where the money goes.

A serious settlement would treat them as central to any peace worth the name.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

THE INTERVIEW: ‘All I Have Is The Power To Talk And Be Heard’

Tucker Carlson - Wikipedia

Tucker Carlson on pitying Donald Trump, never listening to podcasts, and planning a new political party—while selling you nicotine pouches.

BY AMOS BARSHAD

On a recent afternoon, I drove down a wooded Maine road, past serene ponds with no people in sight, until I reached a big white barn. I parked, in patchy grass, near a Ford F-350 with a crane bolted onto the back, an American flag, and an idling black SUV. A guy in the driver’s seat of the SUV, whose tattoos peeked out beneath the sleeves of a white dress shirt, sent me thirty feet down the road to another guy, in a large white SUV, who politely told me to wait. Tucker Carlson was still recording.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to see anyone—a United States senator? A prison guard claiming to have evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered? Donald Trump?—walk out of that barn. Carlson, who is fifty-seven, occupies a singular space in American media: after decades in corporate television, most famously at Fox News, he now hosts The Tucker Carlson Show, a video podcast, where he can and does follow his every whim, taking his hordes of fans along with him. A recent episode, “The Secret History of Biblical Giants,” has 1.5 million views on YouTube.

Eventually, Carlson—boyish, tanned, wearing an outdoorsman vest and New Balances—welcomed me into the barn. As I entered, I passed that day’s interviewee: Nick Maynard, an English surgeon who has worked extensively treating Gazan victims of Israeli air strikes.

On his show, Carlson advocates long-held hard-line conservative views, which include total opposition to immigration, abortion, and trans rights. He also takes a strong stand against war: Carlson has vociferously denounced the American and Israeli attacks on Iran—during which over thirteen thousand targets have been bombed and more than three thousand people killed—as well as Israel’s post–October 7 assault on Gaza. Carlson has personally lobbied Trump, whom he’s known at least since both were NBC television personalities, not to attack Iran. He’s an imperfect vessel for the anti-war argument, but his reach and influence may make him America’s most prominent crusader for the cause.

Because of his reputation among American conservatives, Carlson can book guests such as Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, and grill them on their warmongering. In a 2025 interview that went viral, Carlson asked Cruz to tell him the population of Iran; Cruz couldn’t do it. “You’re a senator who’s calling for the overthrow of the government,” Carlson shouted in response, “and you don’t know anything about the country!” It was a rare thing: a complete pantsing of a powerful public figure. “I am always struck by the ignorance of policymakers,” Carlson told me. “I wanted him to feel shame. And he felt no shame.”

Carlson’s relevance is rooted in the fact that he can both book Cruz and embarrass him. It’s also connected to his symbiosis with a subset of Republicans. According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll of self-identified Republicans and Trump voters, nearly 60 percent of those with a “very favorable” view of Carlson say “they want the next Republican presidential nominee to take the party in a new direction.”

What may be most significant about Carlson now is that his campaign against the Iran war and Israel’s influence on the American political system has placed him in strange cultural territory: suddenly, he has fans on the left. Cenk Uygur, the creator of the progressive news show The Young Turks, has cheered Carlson for criticizing Trump’s attacks on Muslims. When Olivia Reingold, a writer for the Free Press, compiled a dossier against Rama Duwaji, the First Lady of New York City, one of Reingold’s ostensibly damning reveals was that Duwaji had liked a Carlson post criticizing AIPAC.

Peter Beinart—the editor-at-large at Jewish Currents and a prominent Israel critic—has pushed back on the left’s support for Carlson, arguing in a recent Substack video that any progressive who is going on Carlson’s show “should not leave your principles at the door. If you’re against bigotry” and “the argument that somehow white Christians are superior to Black and brown immigrants,” then don’t “ignore all of that because you think you’re working with him to try to turn US policy against Israel.” Carlson recently spoke to Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a journalist for the New York Times, who pressed him about his interview with Nick Fuentes, the white-nationalist influencer.

Carlson often starts his podcast episodes with lengthy, showy monologues. He doesn’t write them down, he told me, instead sketching them out in his head during daily sauna sessions. The monologues encapsulate both his appeal and the fear he strikes in people. Whatever the topic—biblical giants, Christian nationalism, Gaza—he is a preternaturally compelling speaker. At one point in our conversation, he fell into a reverie describing all the cigarettes he smoked in Dubai while sitting down with an aide to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. “I love smoking so much,” Carlson said. These days, though, he mostly gets his fix via his own nicotine-pouch brand, ALP, which stands for American Lip Pillow.

Carlson’s barn, in the town of Woodstock—his family has owned the barn for years, and their summer home is nearby—feels like a GOP-themed chain restaurant. Nearly every spare inch is covered with taxidermy or Republican memorabilia. Carlson took a seat under a big stuffed bear head and torso, near a Nixon/Agnew sign and a Bush ’88 ashtray. He spit out an ALP, popped in a new one—with twelve milligrams of nicotine, he made sure to point out, making it one of the most potent pouches on the market—and we began talking. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

AB: Fox fired you in 2023. Did you anticipate any of what would come next?

TC: No! I don’t anticipate where I’m going to be after dinner tonight. I’m not a planner. I never have been. A lot of our producers got fired with me. We immediately pivoted from television to the internet. It was actually a lot easier than I thought. We had the Fox studio in the other part of the barn: they came and took all their cameras and the lighting rig and the soundproofing.

I certainly did not anticipate talking about Israel. I had been on TV for thirty years. I don’t think I had ever really talked about Israel. From my perspective, I got pushed into it.

How so?

I felt I had no choice. Early in 2025, Netanyahu showed up at the White House right after Trump’s inauguration, and I thought, “This is a little early to be siphoning off the energy from this campaign and this election for the benefit of another country.” And I resented it. I very quickly began to understand the point of these visits was a regime-change effort in Iran. And that’s something that I talked to Trump about many times over ten years. Fifty times! More! In public, but mostly in private.

The breaking point and the huge change in my life came in June of 2025, with the Twelve-Day War—which was not about Iran’s nuclear program. It was the first salvo in a regime-change effort led by Israel. And that’s just antithetical to everything Trump ran on.

I’ve been to Israel several times, both for work and as a visitor. I love Jerusalem—amazing city—but I’m not interested in Israel. I don’t think it’s significant as a country from an American perspective. It’s not in our hemisphere. It’s got no resources. So I just don’t care. But once you start taking over my political system and destroying my country, then I have a right to care. So now I do care.

When you’re trying to dissuade Trump from going to war, what do you see as your role? Are you speaking as a concerned American or as a journalist?

What category do I occupy? I haven’t the faintest idea. I’m not interested at all in defining it. I’m not a politician, that’s for sure. I’m not a rival to Trump for power. I have no power. I’m someone who knows Trump, and I know him well, and I’ve known him for a long time. I can call him. He often calls me.

Do you still speak to Trump?

I haven’t spoken to him since the regime-change war began. I’m not interested in talking to him. I feel sorry for him. He’s not a man in charge of his own life at this point. I feel sorry for anybody who’s enslaved, including him. I mean, I visited him three times at the White House in the month before the Twelve-Day War, and I told him the same thing all three times: “You’re not gonna see the rise of a democratic, pro-Western government in Tehran. The best you’re gonna see there is just this suppurating wound.” And he said, “I know.”

What is it really about, in Trump’s mind? Why did he destroy himself? His administration? His legacy? The Republican Party and America? I don’t know, but maybe someone at CJR should get on this and find out.

Okay, so, three years after leaving Fox, you’re suddenly one of the most prominent anti-war voices in America—

It’s not hard, because no one else is against it! Where is everybody?

Are you surprised to find yourself in this position?

Well, no. I’ve been against war since December of 2003, when I was in Iraq and I was highly distressed by it. So I’ve had the same views for twenty-three years now, more or less. But I just stayed away from Israel because—and I would say this to people who worked for me at Fox—it’s not worth it. It’s too personal. The unwritten rule is that criticism of Israel is criticism of all Jews, and because I am not against Jews, it’s not worth it.

I’ve been to Israel a lot, so I’m fully aware of the apartheid situation in Israel. I’ve been offended by it going back twenty years. But I would always say to myself, “Okay, I’ve been in a lot of places with injustice.” I’ve seen Nigerians treat Liberians like animals, firsthand, in West Africa, and I was offended by it. But I didn’t organize my life around defending oppressed Liberians.

Occasionally, something would happen and my staff at Fox would bring me a story about Israel. I’d be like, “Nope, I don’t want to do it.” Now, that was probably cowardice on my part, but also the truth was I had mixed feelings about it. I’m not defending this. I’m just telling you the way I thought. I would sublimate it. “Is it really worth it? I don’t want to think about it, and I’ve got all these children, and I want America to be a decent place.” But the Iran war, that was too far.

There’s been speculation that hawks like Marc Thiessen, the Washington Post columnist, have played a part in convincing Trump to continue the Iran war. Do we, meaning the public, have a good understanding of how people in the media influence Trump?

I don’t know if people have a good understanding of it. I don’t know if I always have a good understanding of it. But I don’t believe that Trump is substantially influenced by Marc Thiessen. I doubt Marc Thiessen influences his wife, assuming he has one. I think that Marc Thiessen and others like that are just a sideshow designed to divert your attention away from the people who are influencing the president. And those would include his donors. Those would include John Paulson and Miriam Adelson and Rupert Murdoch, who’s had a huge effect on Trump. Rupert Murdoch would call Trump three or four times a day to encourage him to attack Iran. And I know that because I’ve talked to Trump about it many times.

You and Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war, were both on Fox. Do you have any thoughts about his fitness for the job?

I feel sad about the whole thing. I think it’s disgusting to brag about killing people. It’s totally unchristian and immoral. We should treat death with reverence, period. You can certainly make the case that some people should be killed, but I don’t think anyone should ever celebrate the death of another human being. And by the way, you’re gonna be punished for that.

What do you make of Trump’s lurching attempts to end the war in Iran with the memorandum of understanding?

It’s a humiliating defeat for the United States, but it’s still an improvement over what would happen if we kept going, so I’m grateful for it. Israel is the victim in this. Israel got so far over its skis. Imagine it from Israel’s perspective: you think you’re gonna be the regional hegemon, and then, three months later, Iran becomes a global power. It’s a freaking nightmare!

But there’s no meaningful diplomatic effort; Israel doesn’t even have the capacity for diplomacy. “We’re just gonna explode your pagers.” You can talk yourself into thinking you’re far more powerful than you are, and when you do that, you get hurt. I learned that at twenty-five in a bar fight. And I never punched anyone again, because last time I did, I got the snot knocked out of me, and I had to go on TV with a black eye. I was married. With kids. I was actually thirty-two, now that I’m thinking about it. And my wife was not impressed at all, and my kids were confused. Everything about it was bad. But I realized I’m better at talking my way out of problems than fighting my way out of problems.

I don’t think I’m making complicated points, and I don’t think I’m saying anything radical. Like in that interview with the New York Times. Midway through it she gets kind of emotional and treats me like I’m a dangerous figure. I don’t see myself that way at all. I see myself as thoroughly moderate, and more so as I get older, and I don’t think I have any weird sacred cows that I’m not admitting in public.

The Times reporter, Garcia-Navarro, asked repeatedly about your interview with Nick Fuentes, which seemed to surprise you.

I’m happy to answer questions about Nick Fuentes, but if you’re asking me your eleventh question on Nick Fuentes, I’m gonna have to call it out for what it is, which is a diversion tactic.

I feel like the thing that people are really mad about is the fact that they can’t get jobs that are well-paying enough to build an independent life. Young people are threatened by the promise of AI, which is taking away their futures. And she wants to talk about Nick Fuentes? It is so perfectly representative of the way a certain class of people in America thinks, which is small and narrow. We’re supposed to be running the world! Not with people like you, man.

You did express regret in that Times interview about interviewing Fuentes, at least on the basis that it created too much blowback for you. If you are going to continue to be a prominent anti-war voice and Israel critic, are you thinking about calibrating your approach in any way?

No. I’m not an anti-Semite; if I was an anti-Semite, I would just say so: “I’m against the Jews, here’s why.” I don’t have an employer. I don’t have investors. I don’t even have any creditors, so I can say whatever I think is true, and I plan to.

I find it so interesting that people are unwilling to accept my word. I always say, “Well, why wouldn’t I just say it? What am I going to get? Canceled? I’ve already been fired.” I had the highest-rated show in the history of Fox, and they fired me anyway. So it’s like, what are you going to take from me now?

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan recently reported that JD Vance pitched having you interview Ghislaine Maxwell in prison as part of the Trump administration’s pushback to negative coverage around the Epstein files. Were you involved in this idea?

I was one of the very first, maybe the first person to attack the administration in public last summer for hiding the Epstein materials. Not only was I not involved in a cover-up, I was publicly attacking them. I’ll be happy to interview Ghislaine Maxwell or anybody else. That’s my job. But no, I was not involved in a plot to cover it up.

In an interview recently, Sebastian Gorka, the White House counterterrorism “czar,” name-checked you after being asked about right-wing terror threats.

Sebastian Gorka—he’s not even American. My family’s been here for like four hundred years. And I’m the terror threat because I would like democracy and free speech. I texted him immediately and said, “Let’s have a conversation.” He never responded. He used to invite me over for dinner to his house, and I got such a creepy vibe. I just knew, I’m gonna get over there and he’s going to have me put on a costume.

Sorry, a costume? What kind of a costume?

I don’t know. I’m just guessing. If there’s anybody that has a costume room, it’s Gorka.

Speaking of free speech crackdowns—one of the most famous recent examples when it comes to Israel/Palestine is Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia student-protest leader detained by ICE.

Even then, I didn’t say anything. So determined was I to stay out of this that I made the—in retrospect, probably foolish and maybe even cowardly—decision to not say anything when they started revoking people’s visas for their political views.

Now, I’m for less immigration. In fact, I’m for ending all immigration today. I don’t know how you can justify immigration when half of all white-collar jobs are going away because of AI. What are people going to do for a living? There’s no economic justification for any immigration in the United States because we can’t even figure out what we’re going to do with all these unemployed people. So it’s crazy. Social-services spending, healthcare, education—who’s going to pay for that? So I’m opposed. And in the case of Sebastian Gorka—like, I would deport him immediately.

Legacy media is in constant flux. Do you see the old-school press being able to navigate this era? Or is it slowly just withering away?

Do I see NBC News making a comeback? No! I don’t know David Ellison, but he’s not a genius, I’ll tell you that. He’s buying CBS. Are you gonna buy RCA Records next? I wouldn’t take CBS News for free. I wouldn’t take CNN for free—maybe CNN International. But, like, Paramount Pictures? This is not the future. It’s not even the recent past. It’s the distant past.

I’m not exactly sure where young people are getting their information, but wherever they’re getting it is the right place, because they are so well-informed. For years, I thought that weed and porn and SSRIs and benzodiazepines have totally disabled young people. But I don’t think that anymore. I employ a lot of them, and they’re the sharpest, hardest-working people. They give me a lot of hope. And boy, they don’t believe anything. And they’re very well-informed. So much better-informed than I was when I was twenty-seven. I thought the CIA was a force for good! I literally thought that!

I think Trump is the last Fox News viewer. I’m so grateful every single day that I got fired. I probably wouldn’t have left, knowing me. I’d just be increasingly unhappy.

And here, you feel like you’ve found your—

I feel totally happy. I mean, I think my influence is overstated. I don’t seem to have influence at all. I couldn’t stop Trump from attacking Iran. And my wife, who is hilarious, literally laughed at me after the war started: “So I guess you weren’t very good at that, Mr. Powerful Influential Guy!” What matters is the ability to affect outcomes. And I have no demonstrated ability to do that. None.

Some have referred to the current divide on the right as being a split between Fox News Republicans and YouTube Republicans. Are you strategically positioning yourself as counterprogramming?

I’m not strategic in any way. I make almost all decisions on the basis of smell and instinct. I have no real idea who watches our show. I’m sure there are people who work here who have, or claim to have, a better sense of who the audience is. I really don’t. I make all decisions about what we air myself, usually without consulting anybody. I have a short attention span. That’s been a huge advantage for me over the years.

One thing I always loved about Rachel Maddow, and I often told her this, is that she just existed in her own universe. She’s off in the Berkshires alone, thinking. She was disconnected from the herd. I’ve always wanted to be that. I haven’t always succeeded. It’s shameful the number of times I’ve covered something because everyone else was talking about it. But I really try not to be that way. And increasingly, especially as I age, I am cut off.

I’ve never posted in my life. I don’t have my password on social media. I don’t read anything. I get almost all my information by text message or phone call. That’s it. It could be every bit as wrong. But I just don’t trust anybody at all, and I don’t want it in my head. I’ve never listened to a podcast. I have some form of intense dyslexia, and something about podcasts and movies and television puts me to sleep almost immediately. I still read books every day.

Are you interested in aligning yourself with other anti-war voices?

I do know what really matters is war and finance. Where does the money come from? Where does it go? And who gets killed? And on those questions, the parties are in lockstep solidarity with each other. That’s not a democracy. That’s a one-party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be broken, and there’s going to be a third party, and I’m going to do everything I can to bring that about.

And that’s the lesson of the last two and a half months, to me. If you vote for Trump and you still wind up in a regime-change war—if Chuck Schumer is strongly behind Trump’s foreign policy, which he is—then we need options, or else let’s just give up and be ruled by the most unscrupulous people. And I’m just too young to accept that. We need a third party.

And when you say do everything you can—

I’m going to help build a third party. There should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country. I mean, if you make sixty thousand dollars a year, you’re degraded. Your life expectancy has gone down, and the promise of your children’s lives is likely gone. No one seems to care. It’s not even a factor. “What about Hamas?” I officially don’t care about Hamas. The US government should have, as its first priority, the welfare of its own people.

Would you be a candidate for this third party?

I don’t want to be a candidate. Before I did the Times interview, someone said to me, “They’re going to ask you if you’re running for president.” I was very tempted to say “I am running—on the pro-patriarchy ticket.” Just to make sure I gain no new fans.

What’s your goal in speaking to outlets like CJR or the Times—people who are presumably outside of your direct audience?

It’s the only power I have. I don’t have any tricky plan to win Times readers to my campaign for some office. I don’t have any institutional power. I don’t control a military. So all I have is the power to talk and be heard. And though it’s borne no fruit so far, I remain hopeful.

The headline of that Times interview was “What Does Tucker Carlson Really Believe?” The Atlantic used an almost identical headline for a 2019 profile.

So weird. Like I’m using some kind of verbal magic trick to hide something. From my perspective, I am the least mysterious person who’s ever lived. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything in public that’s complicated or hard to understand. I have a commitment to not doing that. I believe if you can’t explain something clearly, either you don’t understand it, or you’re trying to hide something.

What do I really believe? What do you think I’m hiding? I could talk for twenty-four hours! I’ll tell you everything I believe! I can’t stop talking!

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

WHO COUNTS?

The Committee to Protect Journalists’ role documenting members of the press killed in the Israel-Gaza war has made it a target.

Mourners carry the body of Abd Shaat, a Palestinian journalist killed in an Israeli strike. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, File)

BY JEM BARTHOLOMEW

At 12:37pm EST on June 25, Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), announced that the organization was reexamining the names in its database of journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war. “CPJ condemns in no uncertain terms the misrepresentation of combatants as journalists or media workers—or the misuse of ‘Press’ insignia. Such actions endanger every single individual journalist legitimately trying to report,” she said in a statement. “We are conducting a full review of the names on our lists to confirm that no one who was actively engaged in combat is listed in our data.” Ginsberg also pointed out that “in-person verification by researchers from outside Gaza has been impossible” because, as Gerry Shih wrote for CJR’s recent Access Issue, since the war began, Israel has barred international correspondents and press advocates from reporting independently in the territory.

Four hours later, at 4:47pm, Jacob Weisberg—the chair of CPJ’s board of directors and a cofounder of Pushkin Industries—emailed the board with an update on a parallel but distinct plan to reconsider who counts as a member of the press. He wrote, according to emails I have reviewed, that he’d established a “special task force to reexamine the question of ‘Who is a Journalist?’” He told board members: “This inquiry is not limited to Gaza, and will address questions about our protection of journalists affiliated with the non-military wings of identified terrorist organizations as well as journalists engaged in official propaganda or disinformation.” He said that nine people had already agreed to work on the task force, and that they would share their recommendation with the board at the next scheduled meeting, in October. (In response to interview requests, Weisberg referred to public statements and said that he was “not going to comment on the board’s internal discussions or processes.”)

The pair of announcements, one public and the other intended to be private, quickly set off a widespread debate about whether one of the world’s most influential press advocacy groups was caving to political pressure. Since the Israel-Gaza war began, in October of 2023, CPJ—a nonprofit headquartered in New York that promotes global press freedom, provides safety support to reporters, and produces research about attacks on the press—has kept a well-sourced and widely cited count of journalists killed. CPJ says the database records people’s names only after its researchers, based around the world, have confirmed via “at least two independent sources of information, desk-based research, and in-person research where possible” that each person is a journalist who has been killed in relation to their work. (Supporting evidence can include information from “family, colleagues, media reports, civil society, and government or independent investigations,” according to CPJ’s methodology.) The tally, at present, documents two hundred and sixty-three journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen, the vast majority of them by the Israeli military, which routinely targets journalists and accuses them, without evidence, of being terrorists. CPJ’s research puts Israel’s war on Gaza down as the deadliest conflict for journalists on record. This has made the CPJ database, and the methodology behind it, a target for attacks by those seeking to discredit critics of the Benjamin Netanyahu administration.

These attacks have grown louder in recent weeks, in the wake of an article by Nicholas Kristof, published on May 11 in the New York Times’ opinion section, that reported on allegations of sexual violence perpetrated by the Israeli military, titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” A right-wing news site called the Washington Free Beacon—which once ran a piece with the headline “January 6: An Anniversary Worth Celebrating”—has since published a string of articles seeking to discredit Kristof, his sources, his family members, and the organizations he cited, including CPJ. On May 23, the Free Beacon ran a story saying that CPJ had removed some names from its database of killed journalists. (The same Beacon article quoted a spokesman for Honest Reporting—an organization that Reporters Without Borders has said “constantly defames journalists and media outlets that take a critical view of Israel”—who made the absurd allegation that news organizations citing CPJ data were “amplifying Hamas propaganda.”) On May 27, the Free Beacon published another article, this one accusing CPJ of anti-Israel bias and attacking its board members for, among other things, describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

Behind the scenes at CPJ, meanwhile, a related, though very different, conversation was taking shape. Throughout the spring, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published obituaries or statements claiming that a number of people in CPJ’s database of journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war were, in fact, active combatants. After further research, CPJ removed several names. That meant that, since October 7, 2023, a total of twenty people had been removed from the list once new information emerged indicating that they did not meet CPJ’s criteria—including eight people who were found to be active combatants. On May 27, CPJ updated its site to provide details on why the recent changes had been made. At the beginning of June, the organization quietly started “a comprehensive review” of its database, according to Sara Qudah, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa regional director, who requested it. The goal was to check that everyone in the database fit the organization’s existing definition by verifying each individual’s status with at least two new independent sources; the undertaking also aims to uncover potential problems with the existing verification process. The review, which is ongoing, has been “led by a small team within the Middle East and North Africa program,” Qudah explained in an article for the New Arab, and is “entirely independent.”

Around the same time, a separate process got underway, under the auspices of CPJ’s board, which comprises almost thirty senior journalists, media executives, and leaders from related professions. (The board is not involved in the day-to-day running of the organization.) At a board meeting in early June, members discussed the recent Free Beacon coverage, and one member, Jonathan Klein, the former chief executive of Getty Images, told me that he proposed revisiting how CPJ defines a journalist. That proposal was taken up by Weisberg. “We are working on a process for the board to engage in that will allow us to consider the current definition and to assess what changes we might make,” he told the board on June 9, according to emails I have reviewed, promising “more details in the coming weeks.”

But when Weisberg sent his “Who is a Journalist?” email, on June 25, it came as a surprise to Nika Soon-Shiong, the publisher of Drop Site News and a CPJ board member since June of 2021. Though she was aware of Weisberg’s interest in the question, there had been no vote or discussion of whether to act on the proposal to reevaluate CPJ’s definition. “This was an effort led by a handful of board members to narrow the definition of who is a journalist and exclude Palestinian and Lebanese colleagues,” Soon-Shiong told me in a statement. On June 28, she sent an email to Weisberg and the rest of the board—which she later posted on X—voicing concerns. “I request that the Board vote on whether to proceed with this effort, given the absence of a clear objective, defined scope of work, or assessment of the potential institutional risks,” she wrote. Reevaluating the criteria for who counts as a journalist in a way that might exclude Palestinian and Lebanese reporters at state-backed outlets would cause “permanent reputational damage” to CPJ and would represent bowing to “political pressure,” she wrote. (Soon-Shiong also told me that, following her email, she was informed that her term on the board had expired; the set terms last five years. Weisberg declined to comment.)

The same day, Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer and poet who serves as the Palestine correspondent at The Nation, claimed on X that CPJ’s board of directors “will formally change its definition of who qualifies as a journalist, to broadly exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who worked for government-funded media outlets.” The move, he wrote, “makes a mockery of the purported mission of the organization.” The post sparked an immediate backlash on social media, including accusations that CPJ was acquiescing to political pressure—not entirely unheard of among media and tech organizations that have, for instance, been seen bending the knee to the Trump administration as it attacks the press.

On Wednesday, July 1, as controversy and confusion mounted over the operational review and the board’s plans, CPJ’s board held an emergency meeting and voted to affirm its existing definition of a journalist. The vote was seventeen to one, according to the Free Beacon, with “Fox News’s representative casting the lone no vote,” thereby halting the chair’s proposal. (The Beacon seemed to be referring to Katherine Meeks, the general counsel of Fox News Media, who did not respond to my request for an interview.) “It is not true that CPJ planned to change our definition of who is a journalist to exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese press killed in the Israel-Gaza war,” Weisberg said in a statement after the vote, calling reports to the contrary “unsubstantiated allegations” that “undermine” CPJ’s work and “endanger” Palestinian and Lebanese journalists.

Some media coverage confused two discrete processes—the ongoing CPJ review of its data, on the one hand, and an unsuccessful push to reevaluate the broader definition of a journalist, on the other. The board of the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) requested an urgent meeting with Ginsberg, held on June 30. They came away reassured. As they wrote afterward to members, Ginsberg told them, “There has been no board decision to change the definition. And if they change the definition to exclude Palestinian journalists, they can take my resignation with it.” One person in the meeting, Aymann Ismail—the AMEJA board president and a senior writer at Slate, who spoke to me in a personal capacity—said Ginsberg made a clear distinction “between the daily operations of CPJ, and the board.” According to Ismail, Ginsberg told AMEJA that CPJ’s database review was “something that they would have been doing regardless of what the board was discussing, because they care very deeply about their rigorous processes of verification.”

CPJ had, in fact, undergone a recent stress-testing of its methodology, in 2025. In the spring of that year, staff representing all parts and regions of CPJ met four times to discuss who counted as a journalist. The meetings, according to emails I reviewed, involved “kicking the tires” of the organization’s definition and figuring out “where we most often get tripped up.” Where, exactly, is the point at which someone becomes a propagandist, an activist, an influencer, a foreign agent? CPJ staff agreed that “accuracy” and publishing “fact-based” material was crucial to inclusion as a journalist; that the medium or platform in question did not matter; that for someone to be considered a journalist, their witnessing should not be a one-off; and that CPJ should look at the individual journalist, not the organization to which they were affiliated, when determining their status. The process led to a slight tweak in CPJ’s public definition: “CPJ defines journalists as people who regularly cover news or comment on public affairs through any medium to report or share fact-based information with an audience.” (Changes in italics.) In June of 2025, the board of directors voted to adopt that definition.

CPJ’s long-standing inclusion of reporters affiliated with state-backed media or militant or armed groups has made it a target of bad-faith organizations like Honest Reporting. But it’s worth emphasizing that CPJ researchers evaluate whether people killed were genuinely engaged in regular journalistic activity, and that anyone they judge to be actively engaged in combat or inciting imminent violence is automatically excluded from the data. This is in line with how many human rights organizations define journalists. The UN Human Rights Office, for instance, has said that journalists are people “documenting events, analyzing issues, gathering facts, and processing data, to inform society on matters of public interest.” Notice: not people who work for journalistic institutions, but people doing journalism. This rubric could include journalists at Al-Aqsa TV in Gaza (affiliated with Hamas, the militant group that runs the government); Xinhua News Agency in China (owned by the one-party state); or, for that matter, Stars and Stripes (owned by the US Department of Defense) or Voice of America (overseen by the US Agency for Global Media). “We recognize that across the world, individuals working for these outlets are essential in providing information to communities,” Ginsberg has said.

Some human rights professionals argue that making the test of who is a journalist about one’s function, not the politics or affiliations of their employer, is important because witnesses who work for one political group or another are more likely to be found in places where ordinary reporting is suppressed or access is denied. Amos Barshad has documented for CJR how international journalists have been trying to get into Gaza for years. Does that not make any bona fide journalistic work on the ground there a public service? A vital way of recording a war that would otherwise go unseen? And if someone is killed for doing that journalistic work—for performing the role of witness, even if they report for a state-owned media organization affiliated with a group whose politics we may find grotesque—why should they be excluded from a tally of journalists slain for doing their jobs?

Ismail, of AMEJA, told me that, following his meeting with Ginsberg, it became clear that the two separate reviews were being conflated in some reports and on social media. He added, though, that he understood why the misunderstanding had elicited such a fierce response. “This is emotional for so many people, for obvious reasons. This is a matter of life and death,” he said. “We’ve seen so many examples of the Israeli military justifying the killing of journalists who no one would question their status as journalists.” He noted the grim emergence of a new term used by the Israel Defense Forces: “They were calling these people ‘combat propagandists.’ It’s not a thing. And even if that were the case—where somebody was on someone’s bankroll—that does not make them a military target.”

Other Notable Stories …
By Jem Bartholomew

On Tuesday, NPR published—then quickly retracted—an article by Nina Totenberg, NPR’s Supreme Court correspondent, stating, incorrectly, that Samuel Alito, a Supreme Court Justice, had retired. Totenberg, who is eighty-two and has been a well-sourced reporter on that beat for decades, apologized to Alito and called it her “worst professional mistake of my more than fifty years in journalism.”

Totenberg explained that the error grew out of her having misheard the answer to a question: “I asked somebody what was going on inside, to which the answer was, ‘Retirement announcements.’ I didn’t hear the s on ‘announcements,’ and I assumed—something no reporter should ever do—that” Alito was retiring, she said, according to CNN. (The announcements referred to court staff retirements.) One NPR host told Brian Stelter of CNN that the retraction was “a worst-case scenario for us.”A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to temporarily halt its requirement for journalists to be accompanied by an official escort while inside the building, the New York Times reported. The ruling came in response to the second of two lawsuits the paper has filed in recent months seeking to overturn restrictions imposed on journalists by Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary. The latest lawsuit, filed in May, targeted the escort requirement, calling it “retaliatory.” Judge Paul L. Friedman, of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, said in a preliminary ruling that the escort policy violated the First Amendment. For more on the Pentagon’s effort to muzzle critical national security reporting, see Ivan L. Nagy’s recent timeline for CJR.

On Monday, a reporter and a photographer for CBS News Chicago were attacked during a shoot by three men, the news organization reported. One of the men reportedly shouted a racial slur at one of the journalists, who is Black, and ordered a German shepherd to attack (it did not obey); the assailants also cracked the windshield of a CBS News van with a traffic cone and smashed a camera. “They just were trying to do anything they could to scare them unnecessarily,” a witness said. Chicago police later arrested the three men, who face felony charges including committing a hate crime, criminal damage to property, and aggravated battery of a police officer. Lisa Nandy, the UK’s secretary of state for culture, media, and sport, said last week that she was likely to ask the country’s competition watchdog to scrutinize Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, which will significantly grow the Ellison family’s media empire and give it control over CNN. Nandy has given Paramount until July 6 to respond. “We are confident that our proposed transaction does not pose any media plurality issues in the UK and remain confident in our stated transaction timeline,” a spokesperson for Paramount said. In other news, Sky has announced a deal worth 1.6 billion pounds (2.1 billion dollars) to buy the broadcasting and streaming arm of ITV.For Vanity Fair, Margaux MacColl interviewed Goli Sheikholeslami, the chief executive of Politico, about, among other things, the outlet’s drive into AI. “While some media leaders have erred on the side of caution, enforcing policies that prevent or severely limit the use of AI tools, Sheikholeslami has leaned into experimentation, launching multiple public-facing AI tools and chalking up now-defunct products” as useful means of data collection, MacColl writes. One AI tool—which was still in beta and was later shut down—was asked by employees during testing to produce feature reports on fictitious lobbying groups, which it did, hallucinating false information and attributing it to Politico articles. “If you don’t participate, you don’t learn,”

 Sheikholeslami told MacColl.Three men were found not guilty on Friday of murdering Lyra McKee, a journalist from Belfast who died after being struck by a bullet in Derry, Northern Ireland, in April of 2019, at the age of twenty-nine. McKee was reporting on rioting at the time; the New IRA claimed responsibility for her killing. The three men had been on trial at Belfast Crown Court since May of 2024. Judge Patricia Smyth said “M​​cKee’s murder was an act of senseless violence” but added: “The gunman has never been brought to the court, and the evidence against those accused of assisting or encouraging has fallen short of that required for conviction.” Reporters Without Borders urged authorities to continue pursuing all legal avenues to secure justice for McKee. And Charles H. Townsend—who was chief executive of Condé Nast from 2004 to 2015, during the media industry’s transition from print to digital—died on June 11 in Florida, aged eighty-two. His daughter told the Times that his death, in a hospital, was from sepsis. Townsend “might have been an ideal steward for Condé” in an earlier era, Michael Grynbaum, a Times journalist, wrote in Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America. But he “had the misfortune to reach the summit just as the mountain began to melt.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE