MICHAEL FOX:  OK. One, two. OK. Yeah, we’re good. All right, I will start it off.

MARC STEINER:  OK, you want to start it off? Oh yeah. Then I’ll throw this out.

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah, exactly.

MARC STEINER:  All right.

SPEAKER 1 [CLIP]:  …Under arrest.

SPEAKER 2 [CLIP]:  Turn around, turn around, turn around. Turn around [crosstalk].

SPEAKER 3 [CLIP]:  OK, let’s not — OK, OK. He’s not resisting.

SPEAKER 2 [CLIP]:  Stop resisting, stop resisting.

MICHAEL FOX:  Mahmoud Khalil was detained and arrested on March 8, 2025, outside of his Manhattan apartment. It’s a chilling video. Plainclothes agents are there. They refuse to give their names. He’s handcuffed and shoved into the back of a car. His wife, eight months pregnant, watches and tries to understand what’s happening. 

This is not a scene from some dark chapter of a distant past filled with black and white photos of bygone dictatorships. This happened here in the United States of America. Mahmoud Khalil is a graduate student from Columbia University. He led protests in 2024 against Israel’s US-backed occupation of Palestine and the genocide there. 

But speaking out today has a high price. Mahmoud Khalil is a US resident, born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, but Trump officials said they stripped him of his green card. They held him for months at an ICE jail in Louisiana, far from his home in New York, far from his wife and newborn son.

He was finally released after 100 days in prison and widespread condemnation, just one highly visible victim of so many attacks on free speech in the United States today. And it’s getting worse.

MARC STEINER:  This is The Battle for Free Speech, a new multipart narrative podcast series brought to you by The Real News. We’re your hosts. I’m Marc Steiner.

MICHAEL FOX:  And I’m Michael Fox. Over the coming weeks, we’re going to take you on a journey to understand the important role free speech has played in US history.

MARC STEINER:  From the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights organizing to the threats facing free speech today and how battles are being waged over free speech at home and abroad. 

Today, we want to set the scene by beginning in the present. We met a pretty disturbing assault on First Amendment rights here in the United States. Mike is taking lead in reporting here, so why don’t you take off?

MICHAEL FOX:  Excellent, Marc. Thank you so much. So I wanted to start off today. I’ve been speaking to a lot of people in recent weeks, victims and lawyers about this current moment and the attacks on free speech rights. It’s harrowing hearing their stories, but also the context of looking at where we are today. And I wanted to kick us off with a conversation I had with a woman named Lisa Femia.

LISA FEMIA:  I am a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is a nonprofit dedicated to protecting civil liberties and civil rights online and in the face of new and emerging technologies.

MICHAEL FOX:  And she’s been looking at all of this stuff, and in particular the Trump crackdown on noncitizens, residents within the United States, stripping them of their visas, the same thing we saw with Mahmoud Khalil.

Just for context, she said that obviously we’ve seen this increasing attack on free speech rights in recent years, but this massive uptick within Trump’s second administration, and that’s not a surprise to anyone. 

But she in particular underscored this question of Trump targeting noncitizens, visa holders, and how they’re clearly trying to censor and deport noncitizens for speaking out, particularly around the question of Palestine.

LISA FEMIA:  Yeah. I mean, in terms of specific numbers, it’s broad reaching because you have both people who have been arrested, been deported, had other negative actions taken against them, and some of them have been quite public, like Mahmoud Khalil, for example. But then you also have the mass chilling effect that happens for everybody’s speech.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, her organization has launched a lawsuit with the support of three different unions.

LISA FEMIA:  United Auto Workers, Communication Workers of America, and American Federation of Teachers.

MICHAEL FOX:  And what’s interesting here is that it’s specifically looking at the administration’s social media surveillance program against noncitizens.

LISA FEMIA:  And they each surveyed their members before we filed about how has this surveillance program affected your activity online and your willingness to express yourself? And overwhelming amounts of members said, yes, I have changed my behavior, especially the noncitizen members, but citizen members as well. Of the respondents aware of the surveillance program of the UAW, 85% of the visa holders said that they had changed their activity online, including just eliminating their presence online entirely.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, what does that mean? That means that, in some cases, they’ve just gotten offline altogether. They’ve deleted accounts. In other cases, they’ve changed the way they communicate online, what they post, what they don’t post, who they communicate with, who they retweet, how they talk about things. And this is interesting because oftentimes we hear about the high-profile cases and the situations which we’re going to dig into today, but this looks at the minutia of what happens when you’re censoring people, when you’re attempting to deport people or lock them up, when you’re firing teachers.

LISA FEMIA:  And I think maybe some people hear this and like, OK, but that’s just online speech. But you have to remember how much speech happens online now, how much political organizing happens online now. For the unions, how much labor organizing and being able to literally just communicate with their members happens online now. And people are just shutting down. They’re just locking down and keeping quiet because they’re scared. So, it’s almost hard to measure the effect of this because there’s so many people that are chilled even if they haven’t had a direct action against them yet.

MICHAEL FOX:  And what that means is then what we see online and what we see, the speech that becomes online and the speech that’s allowed to remain the way it is or becomes even more viral or becomes even more outspoken are those people who are in support of Donald Trump and far-right policies. And the other speech, say it’s in defense of Palestine or speaking out about Trump’s policies, becomes minimized because people are afraid to speak out. That’s literally what this one lawsuit is talking about. I just thought that was so fascinating because it’s not something that we’re hearing at all. It’s just this unprecedented moment that we’re seeing in the United States right now.

MARC STEINER:  I’m a huge student of what happened in Germany in World War II in the Third Reich. I’ve covered it a lot, done podcasts about the history, and it feels as if we are in 1930, as an analogous period, where the authoritarian forces of the right are really gaining strength. They have their figurehead at the top in Donald Trump, and he is mouthing the words that they want him to say so they can begin this authoritarian push in America to shut opposition down, to shut voices down, to kill the independent press, and to bring everybody in line to where they want to take America. 

I think we are in the most dangerous place we’ve been in the history of this country, unless you happen to be Indigenous or Black and living in the 19th century, even the 20th century in this country. 

I think that we can take lessons from Reconstruction. The lessons when there was this huge gasp of fresh air and people believing in freedom and building a new kind of democracy that was absolutely crushed by the forces in Washington, DC, and former Confederates that killed the rights of Black people in America and changed America for the next 90 years, became an oppressive nation for Black people in this country, and Indigenous and other people.

And what we’re facing now is broader, even. We’re facing a threat to the democracy that we have, and we’re facing a threat to freedom in general, and it’s building slowly. As a father and a grandfather and a great-grandfather, I am absolutely worried for all of my children and their friends and their peers and what they’re going to face because I see the right growing in power and I see the oppositional forces in absolute disarray. I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole now. I just wanted to lay that out, but I think we’re in a very dangerous moment.

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah. You know what’s fascinating, Marc, is obviously I agree with you and I see the question of free speech and I think that’s why this podcast that we’re embarking on is so important, because it’s almost as if this is the canary in the coal mine in a lot of ways with people being silenced, with people being fired, with people being deported for speaking out and the increasing attacks on this.

MARC STEINER:  For context, just to put it in everybody’s head who’s listening right now, because we take for granted the founding documents of our country — And those founding documents, yes, they were written by a slave owner, no question. He wrote them for white people, but they’re universal in terms of what they mean. And let me just read for all of us what the First Amendment says:

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual’s religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press and the rights of individuals to speak freely. It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government. Our democracy has flaws, but it has helped make the democracy we have what it is. The right to speak your mind, say what you want, assemble and fight for your rights, assemble to protest is fundamental to this country. That’s what they’re eroding. That’s what they want to take away. That’s my fear.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s a perfect segue into this next world I want to take you. Because one of the places they have been most trying to silence people from speaking out and from standing up is around Palestine. And so I spoke recently with a woman named Corinna Mullin. She is a professor at CUNY, the City University of New York, or at least she was.

CORINNA MULLIN:  I’ve been teaching at CUNY for eight years, and also I teach about Palestine. I teach about settler colonialism. I teach about US imperialism. And the two Title VI investigations I was subjected to had to do with false accusations of antisemitism. And the university, rather than defend me from these accusations — And not only that, from the doxxing — And instead of defending us, they have contributed to it. They’ve thrown us under the bus.

MICHAEL FOX:  She is currently a member of the Fired Four. So, she and three colleagues were all fired for very similar situations. They all were very active in the pro-Palestine movement on campus. They were all very active [in] standing up and defending students and speaking out, and all four of them were fired.

CORINNA MULLIN:  In our cases of the Fired Four, we haven’t actually been given the reason for our firing. There’s almost no due process and very little in terms of contractual protections because we’re all adjuncts, and we could be fired for any reason or no reason at all. What we share in common is that we have all been outspoken in solidarity with Palestine in contesting the genocide and in challenging also the role of our institution in its complicity, its collusion with that genocide through its investments and contracts with companies that benefit from settler colonialism, war, and genocide.

MICHAEL FOX:  Now, they’ve had a big campaign to try and get them reinstated by the union, which has been really pushing this, which is exciting and important, but her situation and her case I think is so… it’s just one case of so many that we’ve seen around the country. So, both of those investigations against her were found to be unsubstantiated, but regardless, she talks about how her academic freedom was undermined.

CORINNA MULLIN:  Because when I am in class and I’m teaching a course on the politics of the Middle East, for example, and I’m talking about [Palestine] because I can’t teach a course on the politics of the Middle East without talking about the history of settler colonialism in Palestine, then of course that’s in the back of my head. There’s always going to be this fear that there might be another investigation despite the fact that these two investigations have been found to be unsubstantiated. So there’s that. 

The fact that the university allows for what is really a form of harassment, and many of these students might even be paid by Zionist organizations. They might have their own political agenda. So, to allow that to take place already and to pursue these investigations itself is a form of violation of academic freedom

MICHAEL FOX:  Again, the teachers union has stood up. Many students have defended her, and, in fact, the union president himself has called this a McCarthyite political purge.

SPEAKER 4 [CLIP]:  So we will not allow for these disingenuous McCarthy-like attacks on higher education. We will not allow it on CUNY. We will fight for the professors, for the students, for the people that make CUNY great every step of the way.

MICHAEL FOX:  And I think that connection to the past, to McCarthy, to remembering what has happened in the past when people stood up or spoke out, and what’s happening now clearly on university campuses. I mean, that’s like the big image around the country where people are being purged, where people are being attacked and undermined, and people are being fired or silenced.

CORINNA MULLIN:  And it’s only escalated since Trump has come to power. And now with the congressional hearings, for example, there’s the congressional hearing on higher education, so-called claims of antisemitism in higher education, which really are just conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

SPEAKER 5 [CLIP]:  We’ll hear today about antisemitism at three institutions: Haverford College, DePaul University, and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

CORINNA MULLIN:  That all of this has really escalated and pushed the administration or emboldened the administration to really crack down on academic freedom and the rights of students to organize and speak out against settler colonialism and genocide on campus.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s a really concerning and terrifying moment that I know I haven’t seen in my lifetime. Marc, have you ever seen something like this at this level?

MARC STEINER:  At this level, I mean… I grew up in the shadow of HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee.

SPEAKER 6 [CLIP]:  The question is, have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

SPEAKER 7 [CLIP]:  I’m framing my answer in the only way in which any American citizen can frame his —

SPEAKER 6 [CLIP]:  Then you deny it —

SPEAKER 7 [CLIP]:  Which invades his absolutely…

MARC STEINER:  Family, friends, and some of my peers, a couple of my closest friends, their parents were dragged before HUAC for being allegedly communists or having been a member of the Communist Party, being active in trade unions, being active in progressive politics. And so that period was a very frightening moment. 

That period, and as I said, that and the end of Reconstruction are emblematic of what we face today, but it’s even more serious because I think the power of the right, the authoritarian nature of the power of the right is in ascendancy in some ways because the opposition is in disarray. I don’t mean to sound as if I think it’s all over. It’s not. But I’m saying that we’re facing a threat that authoritarianism will mask itself as freedom and take hold of the country.

MICHAEL FOX:  Marc, have you met or do you know many individuals who have seen, have been the victims of this backlash either at university campuses or elsewhere around the country?

MARC STEINER:  There are people I know who I’ve talked to around the country who are feeling immense pressure. Where we broadcast from in Maryland, we live in a state that has a pretty powerful progressive movement inside the Democratic Party and outside. And I think that’s a little different here. But around the country, there are people that are just terrified to open their mouths, to say anything. I think we take these things for granted because we live here and we think it’s inviolable. Nothing can stop it.

MICHAEL FOX:  I want to take this to Charlie Kirk because of the big issues that we’ve seen this year where there’s been silencing free speech and backlash, people losing their jobs, like the top two cases I think are around obviously Palestine and pro-Palestinian activism and around the fallout over Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

So, just for context here, for those who are listening, remember, Charlie Kirk was a right-wing political activist. He was the founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA. He did these tours on college campuses across the United States, and he had very radical extreme views. Hateful views, many would say.

CHARLIE KIRK [CLIP]:  Strong men built the West and won the wars and built the building that we’re in right now. And without strong men, then you all of a sudden see civilization unfold upon itself, and we’re seeing that happen in real time.

MICHAEL FOX:  And he was killed on Sept. 10, 2025, literally while he was speaking out in public, while he was doing one of these tours on a university campus. And I feel like in so many ways that upended so many things. 

A, it’s so important to say, and it’s so defining for free speech. It’s so important to say, first off, there’s no excuse for violence like this. There’s none. It has to be denounced from every place, particularly in a podcast about free speech where the whole idea is everyone has the right to speak their minds. Everyone has their right to speak. 

But what we saw in the backlash against those commenting on Charlie Kirk’s murder has been really shocking. The highest profile case, Marc, was clearly the whole firing and scandal and then rehiring of the comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

JIMMY KIMMEL [CLIP]:  Thank you. Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted [audience laughs], if you’re just joining us, we are preempting your regularly scheduled encore episode of Celebrity Family Feud [audience laughs] to bring you this special report. I’m happy to be here tonight with you all [audience cheers]…

MICHAEL FOX:  Did you watch this unfold? Did you follow Jimmy Kimmel’s work?

MARC STEINER:  I don’t follow religiously, but when this happened, I took a deep dive, yes.

MICHAEL FOX:  What did you find? Tell me about what did you see happening there?

MARC STEINER:  Given everything that’s coming out of the Trump administration, I think it was a fear among the people who own some huge broadcast stations that they were going to be attacked. They were going to be investigated. They were going to have their licenses removed. I think that Jimmy Kimmel was a test to see how far they could go in stopping freedom of speech in our country. It didn’t work, but it doesn’t mean it won’t work. It was a test run. I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that people are organizing their resistance to how America has changed. And Jimmy Kimmel was a test run. I see him as a test run.

MICHAEL FOX:  It’s interesting how other comedians have spoken out, obviously clearly in defense of Jimmy Kimmel in the days and the weeks afterwards.

NEWS REPORT 1 [CLIP]:  Late night hosts are coming to Jimmy Kimmel’s defense tonight.

NEWS REPORT 2 [CLIP]:  In fact, both Stephen Colbert and John Stewart unloaded tonight on ABC’s decision to suspend Kimmel’s show, and both claim it’s part of a campaign by President Trump to limit free speech and silence his critics.

JON STEWART [CLIP]:  We have another fun, hilarious… administration-compliant show.

STEPHEN COLBERT [CLIP]:  Well, you know what my community values are, Buster? Freedom of speech [audience cheers].

MICHAEL FOX:  Obviously, it wasn’t just Jimmy Kimmel. Hundreds of people have lost their jobs: university professors, federal employees, private business, mostly for what they posted online or what they spoke out against, but clearly the backlash was shocking. 

So, I wanted to understand this from behind the scenes, what was happening with Jimmy Kimmel, but was always happening in the wake of Charlie Kirk. And so, recently I went to the offices of FIRE in Washington, DC. Do you know this organization? It’s the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. It’s a free speech organization in downtown DC, big office. I was impressed by the amount of staffers and people who are there. And they’re doing incredible work all in defense of free speech today. So, I met with staff attorney David Rubin.

DAVID RUBIN:  I work on the litigation team, so we’re filing lawsuits in court and challenging speech-restrictive statutes and stuff like that. And then we also have a ton of other really smart lawyers who work here and nonlawyers who are doing a lot of different kind of advocacy work.

MICHAEL FOX:  And he has this really interesting background, Marc, because his background is actually in comedy.

DAVID RUBIN:  And so before law school, I worked in Los Angeles in the business of standup comedy for four or five years. I worked for Budd Friedman, who founded the Hollywood Improv and discovered Rodney Dangerfield, Bette Midler. And Lenny Bruce used to go there. But anyways, I have this longstanding love of comedy.

MICHAEL FOX:  So of course, the connection to Jimmy Kimmel and comedy in the United States historically today was really interesting to talk with him about that. Because he told me he only did stand-up a couple of times. It wasn’t really his thing [Steiner laughs]. But he worked in the stand-up world in Los Angeles for several years before becoming an attorney. And that’s really his passion. People like Lenny Bruce or George Carlin, which for him are like the exemplification of free speech.

DAVID RUBIN:  Comedy has a big role in First Amendment protection and just in building a free speech culture, like George Carlin and the seven dirty words and all that.

GEORGE CARLIN [CLIP]:  Nobody even tells you when you’re a kid what the words are that you’re supposed to avoid. You have to say them to find out which ones they are. Shit [smack]! Oh, fuck [audience laughs]! That’s two!

MICHAEL FOX:  For him, these folks exemplify what free speech should be, because you’re up there on stage and you’re making your own critique of the reality in the United States, whatever that might be, and it’s your freedom to be able to speak out in public or make jokes in public about this. So, that was like one just fascinating anecdote of speaking with David. 

Did you follow these people like Lenny Bruce or George Carlin or some of these other comedians?

MARC STEINER:  All my life, Richard Pryor, all of them. They pushed humor to the cutting edge of America, almost at the abyss, and they were funny. But to some people, they were really dangerous and they had to be stopped. And they used sometimes not just their politics, but also the sexual content was too much for uprighteous Americans to take, at least some of them. It’s not surprising comedians, people in the creative world, are among the first to be attacked. It happened in Nazi Germany and it’s happening here.

MICHAEL FOX:  Yeah. So the main reason I actually went to speak with David was about this very specific case in Tennessee. Have you heard about the case of Larry Bushart Jr.?

MARC STEINER:  No. Tell us, what’s the case?

MICHAEL FOX:  OK. So it’s wild and it’s shocking because it’s one of those situations that just got to this extreme that it’s hard to even believe it’s happened within the United States.

DAVID RUBIN:  It was a speech chilling environment. It was a very crazy time for a week or two, but this happened in the late stage of that big wave.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, Larry Bushart Jr., he’s a retired police officer and sheriff’s deputy for 24 years. And between late September until the very end of October, he spent more than a month in jail for posting a meme on Facebook in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

MARC STEINER:  Oh, yes. Right.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, this story first went viral over The Intercept. FIRE was following it closely as well as David Rubin. Bushart Jr. was vocal on Facebook about Donald Trump, has been for a very long time. He called Trump and his supporters a cult. He was active online after Kirk’s killing about why he shouldn’t be praised, basically saying, look, we can’t praise this guy. And he was very active particularly on Facebook, but it was one meme in particular that got him in trouble.

DAVID RUBIN:  It’s just a picture of then-President Trump saying, after a shooting at an Iowa high school named Perry High School, after a shooting there, the day after he said, we’re all going to have to get over this, something to that effect, with the obvious implication that it meant perhaps we might be being a little hypocritical here where if we have to get over it the day after a bunch of kids get killed, and we’re still firing people nine days later because they say something bad about this one person.

MICHAEL FOX:  Underneath this quote were the words “Donald Trump on Perry High School mass shooting one day after.” And in the image that Bushart Jr. posted on Facebook, he wrote “seems relevant today.” So that was it. 

But the posts caught the attention of Perry County Sheriff. And that night at almost midnight, four officers came to his door, to the door of Bushart Jr. They had a warrant, they handcuffed him, and drove him to jail. And this video was released by The Intercept showing him as he’s arriving at the jail. An officer reads the warrant.

POLICE OFFICER [CLIP]:  Threatening mass violence at a school.

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  At a school?

POLICE OFFICER [CLIP]:  It’s referring to a school. I have no idea [crosstalk].

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  [Inaudible].

POLICE OFFICER [CLIP]:  That’s what they’ve called us for. And I ain’t getting to it.

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  I played on Facebook. I threatened no one. I know you don’t give a —

DAVID RUBIN:  They arrested him and charged him with making a threat of mass violence on a school, which is like a class E felony or something like that. So they put him in jail. The judge set a $2 million bond, which is pretty insanely high for any crime.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, essentially the sheriff said that people could read Bushart Jr.’s post as a possible future threat on a local school. And it’s just this shocking moment in America where someone can go to jail for more than 30 days for posting a meme on Facebook. I mean, it’s like we’ve reached another level. And it was so shocking that The Intercept, when it published this article on Oct. 23 and then there was clearly a backlash, and the charges were finally dropped in the very end of October, and he was released from jail the following week after Oct. 23.

DAVID RUBIN:  So they dropped the charges, and now he’s free.

SPEAKER 8 [CLIP]:  How do you feel right now?

LARRY BUSHART JR. [CLIP]:  Thanks to all and any supporters out there, and very happy to be going home. I didn’t seek to be a media sensation, but here we are. But that’s about all I can say right now.

MICHAEL FOX:  And the folks at FIRE believe it was in large part due to the pressure, both the media pressure from continued reporting on this case, but also the reality that there was nothing to stand on. It’s just somebody posting a meme.

Have we ever seen anything at this level before?

DAVID RUBIN:  I have not seen anything like this.

MICHAEL FOX:  This is the new world order almost that we’ve entered. Had you ever heard of anything like this before, Marc?

MARC STEINER:  I mean, not since I was really young during the Red Scare of the ’50s. When people I know whose parents were fired from their jobs, whether they were airline mechanics or physicians or whatever, they were teachers, were being fired here in Baltimore. And the only thing that stopped it was the end of McCarthy and, oddly enough, the beginning of Eisenhower began to change what was happening. 

But I think that we are facing something, that a similar moment is happening now, and I think that it’s creeping. This is not something that is overt and in your face every day, but it’s undermining our educational institutions. It’s undermining our freedoms, and it’s seeping in with the power of the right taking over the country.

So, I think it’s almost like, again, if you go back — And I don’t deal with hyperbole — But if you go back to 1931 Germany and study how slowly it moved and what it did, who they went after, the same process is happening now in this country. We’re on a cusp. 

Look, our broadcast, where we are now, The Real News, places like this, this is under threat, and I think that’ll be the first line. So, I think that one of the most important parts for me in doing this work with you at this moment is beginning to really sound the alarm, but also talk about people who are standing up to it and how you organize and fight against it.

MICHAEL FOX:  Well, we’ll get to organizing and fighting against it. We will get there, folks.

So, when I spoke with David, part of my question for him was what do we know about what’s behind the scenes about these situations? So we know that, for instance, hundreds of people have lost their jobs or faced backlash for their response to the Charlie Kirk assassination. We know that nearly 300 people have been investigated at the Pentagon. So, Pentagon employees who were investigated for their own response or their own views. We know that [the] State Department revoked the visas of several people who spoke out against Kirk. 

And Marc, did you follow this at all? It’s really crazy because they’re totally blatant where the State Department is actually retweeting tweets by people, other things that people have posted online, and it basically says, don’t like it? Visa revoked. It’s almost like this viral amusing joke meme, but they’re actually responding to what people have posted online in response to Kirk.

And we know that at least six people have lost their visas this way. Someone from Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, and Paraguay.

MARC STEINER:  And they’ve been shipped out.

MICHAEL FOX:  I don’t know the… but that’s what at least the State Department said online.

SPEAKER 9 [CLIP]:  I’m sure we should not be giving visas to people who are going to come to the United States and do things like celebrate the murder, the execution, the assassination of a political figure. We should not. And if they’re already here, we should be revoking their visa.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, I wanted to understand what’s behind the scenes here. How are people being targeted? And this is something we don’t hear a lot about in the news. We hear a lot about this professor was fired or [these] other people [are] trying to create a lawsuit to get their jobs back, or these other people from these different employment were fired for this, but we don’t necessarily understand what the minutia is behind this that’s driving these firings, because they’re not by accident. 

And in many cases, they’re these coordinated campaigns. I’m not saying nationally coordinated, but it’s a process that is actually happening and coordinated so that people then get to a place in which they are fired or so that powerful people take these decisions. 

So, this is what I sat down, part of what I sat down with David Rubin about, and I really wanted to understand what was actually happening, how were people being targeted.

And David Rubin said, no, this isn’t by accident.

DAVID RUBIN:  I would say there is a campaign, or many multiple smaller campaigns, certain influencers like Libs of TikTok or like Scott Pressler or like Robby Starbuck. If you look at them, they were crowdsourcing comments from people that they disagreed with that said something about Charlie Kirk, and then all their followers were going and tweeting to that person’s boss and saying, oh, you employ this person? You should fire him. You have to fire him.

MICHAEL FOX:  And he explained to me that this is very much a coordinated campaign, which he called it a heckler’s veto. Do you know this term?

MARC STEINER:  Yes, go ahead.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, it’s basically the idea that individuals who aren’t directly impacted by these professors, so they’re not necessarily the professor’s students. It might be a student or another student, but it’s usually individuals that have nothing to do with that local situation who then find something online, or they find a tweet online from these professors, and then they start to push it out virally and promote this to then more powerful people. Then it gets picked up by viral right-wing or conservative influencers, usually on Twitter but sometimes elsewhere like Libs of TikTok and other things. 

And this is how many of these firings have actually happened, where we’ve seen this coordinated campaign against left individuals speaking out in the wake of Kirk’s assassination or standing up in defense of Palestine

DAVID RUBIN:  And that’s one area in First Amendment law that needs to be addressed is this heckler’s veto that happens when politically interested but otherwise diffuse groups get really interested and keyed in on something. And if a teacher says something and their students’ parents have a problem with it, maybe that’s one thing. But if some random right-wing or whatever, left-wing podcaster and all their fans don’t like it, and then they send a bunch of emails and make a bunch of calls to the school, that is very anti-free speech culture.

MICHAEL FOX:  I think it’s interesting that, for instance, Charlie Kirk’s own group that he founded, Turning Point USA, has its own professor watch lists. So, these are professors, left and progressive professors. Some of these individuals who were then pointed out, detailed online, and then the campaigns raised for their firing are individuals who are on this Turning Point USA watch list.

SPEAKER 10 [CLIP]:  Turning Point USA leaders continue to publish an online database of university professors they say advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.

DAVID RUBIN:  I fear that this is the start of some kind of new wave of political violence on college campuses and that folks, for instance, on the professor watch list could be targeted as well.

MICHAEL FOX:  And it’s important to point out that there isn’t just one group that’s doing this. It’s being pushed by many different groups, by many different far-right social media influencers, but it is happening, and it’s in many ways coordinated. 

So here’s one very, very specific example, Marc, that I’m going to take you to Clemson University for a second.

MARC STEINER:  OK.

MICHAEL FOX:  I spoke with Allen Chaney.

ALLEN CHANEY:  I’m the legal director at the ACLU of South Carolina.

MICHAEL FOX:  And they’ve been very focused on this one case around a professor named Joshua Bregy. Bregy is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences. And then following Charlie Kirk’s murder, he reposted a friend’s post on Facebook.

ALLEN CHANEY:  That was vehemently nonviolent but, at the same time, pointed out the conflict between, on the one hand, the insistent lack of empathy by Mr. Kirk, and on the other hand, the militant demand for empathy by Mr. Kirk’s supporters in the wake of his death.

MICHAEL FOX:  What’s interesting about this case is that it’s so benign. The post first denounces Kirk’s assassination and clearly the violence. It expresses grief for Kirk’s friends and family, but it also points out the hypocrisy of Kirk’s own violent discourse, which is something we’ve seen a lot online by people in the response, right?

MARC STEINER:  Right.

MICHAEL FOX:  And so the post said, in one quote, “It sounds to me like karma is sometimes swift and ironic. As Kirk said, play certain games, win certain prizes.” And that’s probably the most demonizing phrase in the post.

ALLEN CHANEY:  Now, immediately after Dr. Bregy posted that on Facebook, nothing happened. Dr. Bregy does not have a particularly large Facebook profile. He’s a climate scientist, not a huge online presence really at all. And as news was starting to break about some of the retaliation against folks for their speech, Dr. Bregy went ahead and made his post private just in an abundance of caution. 

A few hours after that happened, Clemson College Republicans, which is an on-campus student group, reposted a portion of Dr. Bregy’s Facebook post, describing it as a now-deleted post, along with some old profile pictures of his, one of which had a “climate change is real” sign, and the other one which had a Black Lives Matter banner, and tagged Libs of TikTok as well as some other political profiles and demanded that Clemson fire him.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, this then makes its way all the way up to the South Carolina State House Rep. Thomas Beach, who also adds fuel to the campaign. Before you know it, it’s powerful elected representatives who are lobbying leaders at Clemson University.

ALLEN CHANEY:  That’s exactly right. And so, the Clemson College Republicans’ post and their tagging of Libs of TikTok is really what ignited this social media firestorm that was directed at Dr. Bregy, as well as one other Clemson professor, and then really at Clemson itself. 

And so you see some posts like — Give me a second, I can pull them up. So you see folks like Rep. Thomas Beach, who’s there in the Pickens area reposting the Clemson College Republicans’ post and saying, “Another leftist indoctrinator has been identified in the Clemson faculty. This is whose salary your dollars are paying for. We can do better. Take action, fire these radicals.” And when that doesn’t work, the threats become increasingly more explicit and they become more official as well. 

And so you no longer just have fringe Freedom Caucus folks like April Kromer and Thomas Beach and Jordan Pace. You see a letter from the speaker of the House, the president of the Senate on official General Assembly letterhead going to the Clemson University decision makers saying, your funding depends on you making the quote “right decision” here, and encouraging them to take decisive action.

And so, there was really no question that lawmakers were giving Clemson an ultimatum — Fire these professors, or we’re going to pull your funding.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, it’s this fluid, sometimes clear, sometimes unclear campaign whereby certain local groups, in some cases it might be the local university Republicans group, and in other cases it might be other groups online, who find these or who are actively looking for these types of posts and then making it, building a whole campaign. Then it’s getting pushed by social media influencers online to powerful right-wing or conservative Republican leaders who are then lobbying those schools or offices or businesses or whatever it might be to get these people fired.

ALLEN CHANEY:  But over the course of five days, you see the coercive tactics of lawmakers really start to erode Clemson’s commitment to the First Amendment. And then about five days later, before Dr. Breggie showed up to teach his first class after the Facebook post, he was fired. He was dismissed for cause and in a manner that really directly conflicts with Clemson’s own faculty manual.

MICHAEL FOX:  So it’s this fascinating thing that’s actually happening against left and progressive in particular professors, but also we’ve seen this elsewhere, singled out by these smaller groups. And what’s interesting is that in a lot of cases, like for instance this one, not necessarily did Professor Bregy do anything. He didn’t post. He reposted somebody else’s post that really wasn’t that damning. But the fact that he’s a professor that is probably on their watch list already, that is left a progressive, he’s a climate scientist in the environmental department, which is clearly proenvironment and whatnot. And so this is an individual they had clearly pointed out as someone they want to get removed. 

And this is like the epitome of what the heckler’s veto is. None of Professor Bregy’s… His students stood beside him. They stood up for him. The union stood up for him. His colleagues at Clemson University stood up in defense, and most of this campaign against him was from groups or individuals from outside Clemson University who have a clear political plan to try and get him fired or removed because of his views.

And what does this do? Again, it goes back to what we were talking [about] at the very beginning, Marc, where it’s not just the individual who has spoken up or spoken out or has posted something online, but it creates this chilling effect throughout the university and throughout other places where people are afraid to speak out. People are afraid to speak out against Trump, against the Trump administration, against other issues because they think, well, I might be next.

ALLEN CHANEY:  The disruption is not internal to these universities or colleges, nor is it organic. It’s manufactured. So, we see a coordinated effort to identify people within academia who made posts about Charlie Kirk that could be used as ammunition to push the universities to fire these people, not really for their comments about Charlie Kirk. 

I mean, you see it in my case where it’s really more about the Black Lives Matter and the climate science is real positions, and the Charlie Kirk comment is just the mechanism by which they can push their agenda into the universities and push out people who carry views that they don’t like anymore. 

And so it was political opportunism of the most discouraging sort where you have a national tragedy — Regardless of how you feel about Charlie Kirk and his views, the idea that someone was gunned down at a public event because of those views should be frightening to all of us — But then to in the hours following that, see an opportunity and seize on an opportunity to, because of public employees’ views, drive them out of the public workforce.

MICHAEL FOX:  And that’s the goal, really. The bottom line is to take out these professors, but also to create this chilling effect around speech so that people are not as vocal online and that people restrict their speech. We saw it from what I mentioned [at] the very beginning of that one situation of this one survey of individuals who were visa holders where 85% had changed their habits online. But I’m sure that if we were to look at some sort of other survey or other analysis that I don’t have in front of me, but if there was something like that done, we would see a huge difference in how people are interacting online over social media and what they are posting, what people are afraid to post, and how that’s impacting academic freedom at universities.

MARC STEINER:  And I think that one of the things we have to take into account here are the people who are in power in Washington now. When you look at Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, as much as some people who are liberal on the left don’t want to admit it, these are really, really brilliant men who are highly organized, and that’s what’s pushing this right-wing takeover of everything going on and the killing of free speech. I think that that is something that really has to be delved into deeply to understand who these people are and the powers behind the throne, what policies they’re putting in place, how they support what’s going on in these universities. I think that people have to connect these dots to understand what we’re up against and what we’re facing. 

As I said earlier, I think this is the most dangerous moment in American history in a long time. And I think what you just described is the tip of the iceberg, and it’s going to get deeper and more intense over the next several years in this administration. 

And in a pure political sense, one of the things that I’ve been reading a lot about, writing about, and thinking about how to produce is how weak the opposition is, how disorganized the opposition is, how there’s no game plan among people on the left or about Democrats about how to confront this and stop it. 

And I think that what you were just describing, again, if you go back to the 1930s and the early part of this in this country in the 1910s and the 1930s in Germany, this is how it began. You target what would be a weak link: universities. You target to begin the process, and that’s what we’re witnessing. That’s why what you just described is really critically important to understand in the context of how the right pushes power.

MICHAEL FOX:  Two things I want to say that I think are a little hopeful within this context, particularly —

MARC STEINER:  I didn’t mean to be so Mister Negative [laughs].

MICHAEL FOX:  No, of course. So first off, the ACLU has this case.

ALLEN CHANEY:  Yeah, we filed a complaint, and shortly thereafter we filed a motion for a preliminary injunction which asked the court to rule that we are likely to prevail on the merits of our First Amendment claim and to order Clemson to reinstate Dr. Bregy as faculty, put him back on the payroll, remove any adverse employment findings, and treat him as if he’s not done anything wrong, which we don’t think he’s done anything wrong, and we think that the First Amendment agrees with us.

MICHAEL FOX:  The timeline is slow. I asked them about the timeline. They said, well, we wish it was faster. I wish I could define the timeline, but it’s happening, and that’s what’s important. And that lawsuits like this are happening and pushing back around the country. 

I thought it was really interesting because I’ve been Googling this in recent days, and if you Google for “Charlie Kirk firing,” if you Google those words right now, it’s article after article of people pushing back, of lawsuits against universities, against school districts, of lawyers picking up people’s cases of trying to get people rehired. I think it’s really hopeful that if you had Googled the same thing just a couple months ago, then you would’ve seen story after story of people being fired, and now you’re seeing story after story of people of fighting back and trying to be rehired because they’re standing up for their free speech rights.

So I think that’s one thing that is really, really key. There’s a couple of the things that… Like I mentioned, Marc, I’ve been speaking to a lot of people in recent days and one of the things that was that almost everyone told me was that yes, of course, cancel culture happens on both the right and the left, and that’s what we’ve seen in recent administrations in recent years, but that this, what we’re seeing now is a whole new level and that things are bad and getting worse. Like you’ve mentioned McCarthyism, and the McCarthyist moment is the closest reference that almost all these people, all these different staff attorneys and victims and any people that I’ve been speaking with, this is like the main moment that so many of them reference of being particularly a US reference of where we are now and what this looks like.

JOSEPH MCCARTHY [CLIP]:  One communist on the faculty of one university is one communist too many. One communist among the American advisors at Yalta was one communist too many. And even if there were only one communist in the State Department, even if there were only one communist in the State Department, there would still be one communist too many.

MICHAEL FOX:  And Marc, I wanted to come back to Lisa Femia just for a second — Remember, she’s from EFF, this free speech rights organization out in the Bay Area — Because I asked her one specific thing about our definition of free speech because for me, I’ve for a long time felt like we’re seeing an attempt to redefine free speech in America where it’s not just your right to say anything you want, where it’s clearly not right now your right to protest because we’ve seen these attacks against pro-Palestinian protests, and obviously Trump is calling out the National Guard against protests and things. 

So, clearly there’s this push to try and almost redefine what we understand as free speech. And I think Trump’s first day in office was a really clear moment in defining that. This is when he signed his executive order, which was called “Restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.” He spoke about this in his inauguration.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP [CLIP]:  After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will also sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.

LISA FEMIA:  Yeah. I think that there was a moment where you saw Trump and allies make these free speech arguments in a way that meant free speech for them, but not necessarily for people they disagreed with. I think in that early executive order on free speech, you could tell it wasn’t, for a variety of reasons, you could probably tell this wasn’t like a fully thought out full protection of free speech because it talked only about speech from the previous administration as if this hasn’t been a push and pull in American history since the founding. 

But recently, I’m not even sure, I think the administration in some ways has dropped the guise and has talked about speech in a way that is now categorizing speech they don’t like as potential domestic terrorism or threats trying to push speech into national security area, which is sort of an easier area of the law for the administration to get away with what it wants to. 

And I’m not sure I’m even seeing the administration talk about speech in the way that it did even last year anymore. And you see this with even Trump discussing his executive order on flag burning.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP [CLIP]:  And we’ve made it a one-year penalty for inciting riots. We took the freedom of speech away because that’s been through the courts and the court said you have freedom of speech. But what has happened is when they burn a flag, it agitates and you end up with riots. So we’re going on that basis. We’re looking at it from not from the freedom of speech, which I always felt strongly about but never passed the courts.

LISA FEMIA:  It’s like, maybe we don’t need free speech. I think the tone has shifted, and we’ve almost moved beyond some of the ideas that they were expressing before into a new area where they treat speech that is against their policies or their administration as a direct threat to the United States.

MICHAEL FOX:  Lisa’s quote on this, what she said to me, I think, was just so powerful. She’s like, we’re at a whole new level. It’s not just about the discourse or justification of free speech for my people, not for your people. It’s now just an open attack on free speech itself, and Trump feels like he doesn’t even have to [pay] lip service to it.

LISA FEMIA:  It’s a concerning shift. I’ve found it troubling, to say the least.

MARC STEINER:  Right. No, I think that first of all, the whole burning of the American flag, A, it is against the law, and you can use that law to attack people, arrest them, and go after them. It hasn’t been done in a long time. It was done in the ’60s, and I had friends of mine who were arrested for burning a flag in protest in this country. Then when you add that to this administration’s Orwellian speak about free speech, they’re at the doorstep. 

I think that as I said earlier, Trump is a figurehead. He’s not the danger. He’s an idiot, but he’s surrounded by brilliant minds who are organizing this push. I’m spelling it like the German push takeover of this country. I think that one of the things that’s really important for this particular series we’re doing, and for all of us to do, is to begin to bring it to light, to bring the stories to light so people know what’s happening around this country at this moment that no one sees.

Because the stories you just told, the examples you gave, most people aren’t thinking about them because they’re tucked away. They’re not in front of you. I think that it has to be exposed and we have to raise the alarm and talk to people who are fighting and organizing against it.

MICHAEL FOX:  So, Marc, we did that recording quite a few months ago, and since then there’s been quite a few updates, and I want to run through some of these things because it’s important for several reasons. First off, according to a Reuters investigation from November 2025, roughly 600 people were fired, disciplined, investigated, or suspended due to online posts following Charlie Kirk’s murder. 600. In fact, they compared it to an ideological purge. But many of those victims have been pushing back and it has made a difference.

SPEAKER 11 [CLIP]:  So didn’t you see this? A professor who was fired over a social media post about the killing of Charlie Kirk is now being reinstated…

SPEAKER 12 [CLIP]:  Newark six, a FWC biologist will receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement money after she was punished for sharing a social media post about Charlie Kirk’s death…

[Several clips overlap]

MICHAEL FOX:  So, if you remember Joshua Bregy, he’s the professor from Clemson University. He was fired on Sept. 26. He sued the university through the ACLU, saying that his termination was a violation of the First Amendment. And then in early January, he settled with Clemson University. They agreed to rescind his termination, pay his salary and benefits throughout the original term of his employment. He didn’t teach this last semester, but he received payment. He agreed to drop his lawsuit and resign from his position as of May 15, just last month. And the Clemson provost also agreed to provide letters of recommendation. 

Allen Chaney, who I interviewed, he’s the legal director of the ACLU in South Carolina. He said, “We’re honored to represent Dr. Bregy and to reach an agreement that restores his employment.” So good news, clearly, in the case of Joshua Bregy because he pushed back and fought for it. 

Also in January in New York, the movement to reinstate the Fired Four at CUNY, the City University of New York, was partially successful. So, the university found that three of the four adjuncts were once again eligible for employment at Brooklyn College. And that includes Corinna Mullin. She was one of the professors I spoke with at the beginning of this episode. She too was reinstated. They’re still fighting, however, to get the last of the Fired Four reinstated. 

And the last person that I wanted to bring in here an update was about Larry Bushart Jr. Marc, I don’t know if you remember, he was the retired policeman from Tennessee who was jailed for 37 days for posting a Trump meme on Facebook following Kirk’s killing. So, he settled, again in May, an “unlawful incarceration” lawsuit for $835,000.

So, these are all really hopeful steps. You also have the former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil. He’s free. He’s not in jail, but of course he’s battling in the courts to remain free. 

I guess the overall vision here, Marc, is just the simple fact that organizing, fighting, pushing back can make a difference. And I think that’s just such an important theme to end up on here is that despite the attacks on free speech that are clearly happening throughout the United States that are being pushed by the Trump administration, what you have and what we’ve seen over the last six, seven, eight months are people standing up, people fighting back. And of course, not in all cases, but in many cases they’re being successful, and their rights are being defended.

MARC STEINER:  I’m glad you let all that out. I think that it’s really incredibly important for people to understand that it’s not just about people limiting our free speech. It’s about the struggle to fight for free speech and people standing up to it and not letting that go, and the bravery of people to lose their livelihood, to lose the life that they created because they stood up for free speech. It’s the most fundamental right in this country to stand up and be heard, to say what you believe and not be afraid that the law is going to come against you because you did. 

And I think that the more examples that we can give as in these podcasts that we do to tell the stories of people fighting for their free speech, that where it’s under attack, where it’s won, it’s fight back, or important for people to learn and understand, to keep that in front, because most people don’t see it because it’s not there. But the people you describe, their voices have to be heard. Their stories have to be heard because you’re next. Your name won’t be known, but you’re next if you don’t stand up.

MICHAEL FOX:  Hi, folks. Thanks for listening. We are so excited to have this series up and running. We’ve been working on it for a year.

MARC STEINER:  And next week we look back into the past at how free speech battles of the past help define the abolitionist and civil rights movements and what they mean today. That’s the next time on The Battle for Free Speech.

MICHAEL FOX:  If you enjoyed today’s podcast and you liked this series, please do us a favor, go to your podcasting app and give us a like, follow, a subscribe, or tell a friend about it and leave us a comment or a review. It really helps to spread the word about the show and the state of free speech in the United States today. 

Also, please make sure to sign up for The Real News Network’s newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can find that at therealnews.com or you can click on the links in the show notes. 

If you’d like to find out more about the stories we talked about today in this episode, we’ve added some links also in the show notes. The Battle for Free Speech is a production of The Real News. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

ARTURO DOMINGUEZ:  Four presidents, one prime minister, a vice president, and a host of Republicans all involved in this. If you include Trump, it’s four presidents.

I mean, this is a pretty big deal. For our generation, it’s probably one of the biggest geopolitical scandals of our time in our region. And what they’re doing there mimics what they’re doing to us here by taking our rights and trying to force a right-wing government by gerrymandering districts and forcing Republican wins. It’s about exerting far-right dominion over all of us here in the US and in Latin America.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  On the morning of April 30, the Spanish website Diario Red and the television channel Canal Red began to release a series of leaked audio recordings between powerful right-wing figures in the Americas. 

They called it HondurasGate.

By May 6, the outlets had released a total of 37 WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram messages. 

What they reveal is a shocking network pushing to destabilize elections and undermine leftist leaders in the region.

It’s one of the biggest political scandals in the Americas in years…  And it implicates the Trump administration, Israel, Argentina’s libertarian president, a load of right-wing Honduran officials,  and many more in underhanded activities to take down political opponents… With thousands of dollars funneled into a right-wing propaganda outlet, allegedly located in the United States.

The messages have been independently verified twice, confirming that they are not AI generated.

And you have likely heard little if nothing about them.

Today, I will take a deep dive into the leaks to understand what they are, what’s at stake, and why they are so concerning amid Trump’s onslaught of threats and attacks against leaders in the region.

That… in a minute.

[THEME MUSIC]

This is Under the Shadow — An investigative narrative podcast series that looks at the role of the United States abroad, in the past and the very present.

This podcast is a co-production in partnership with The Real News and NACLA.

I’m your host, Michael Fox — Longtime radio reporter, editor, journalist. The producer and host of the podcasts Brazil on Fire and Stories of Resistance. I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years in Latin America.

I’ve seen firsthand the role of the US government abroad. And most often, sadly, it is not for the better: invasions, coups, sanctions. Support for authoritarian regimes. Politically and economically, the United States has cast a long shadow over Latin America for the past 200 years. It still does.

This is Season 2 of Under the Shadow: “Trump’s Attack.”

Episode 11: “HondurasGate: Leaks Reveal the Far-Right Plan to Undermine Latin America’s Left.”

So… I want to begin with a little thought experiment.

Imagine for a second that leaked audio messages revealed that numerous top Republican lawmakers had colluded to create a fake news outlet to tank the reputation of leading Democrats in the United States and influence their state’s elections. 

Imagine these lawmakers talked about taking out, removing from office, or even killing their political opponents. About using violence to silence opposition.

Now imagine that the leader of this cabal was a convicted drug trafficker sentenced in US courts to 45 years in prison… who Trump pardoned late last year, with instrumental lobbying from Israel. And that Israel was interested in supporting the whole scheme’s destabilization plans.

That is the gist of the HondurasGate leaks. 

But instead of communications between Republican lawmakers, these leaks are audio chats between leading right-wing politicians in Honduras… although let’s be clear: Republican lawmakers are also mentioned.

The implications are global. The figures behind these conversations aren’t just trying to influence local or state elections. 

They discuss producing journalistic hit jobs on the leftist presidents of Colombia, Mexico, and the former presidents in Honduras. 

The people targeted in these messages — Gustavo Petro, Claudia Sheinbaum, Manuel Zelaya and Xiomara Castro — Are some of the most vocal leftist leaders standing up against Trump’s attacks on Latin America and the right wing wave that has spilled over Central and South America.

And in the leaks, these right-wing Honduran politicians talk about using real violence against resistance.

Now… before I dive further into the details, I want to give you the backstory, because so many of these leaks revolve around former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández and his push to now return to power in Honduras.

We covered his authoritarian government and the resistance against him in the first season of Under the Shadow. But here’s a recap. Remember, Hernández is a right-wing politician who ran the country’s national assembly in the wake of the 2009 US-backed coup against leftist president Manuel Zelaya. He then served as president from 2014 through 2022, during which time he won an illegal and fraudulent reelection in 2017 to stay in power. 

KAREN SPRING:  2017 rolls around. Juan Orlando Hernández decides he’s going to run for reelection — An illegal election, because the Honduran constitution forbids, or did forbid, second terms in office.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  I spoke with Karen Spring, the co-coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Network in 2024, shortly after Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking. She covered the trial, and we released our conversation as a bonus episode in the first series. Here are just a few important snippets of our conversation, because they help to set the scene for understanding HondurasGate.

KAREN SPRING:  So, the United States had the opportunity to pull their support and say, no, no, no, no, no. This is not a legitimate election. But they went ahead. They didn’t say anything. They let him run for election. And then in the election itself, there was massive electoral fraud that was even called out by the Organization of American States, which is not known to be a progressive, a pro-quo institution, at best, and even the OAS said, you know, it’s too hard to determine if these results are legitimate. Maybe there should be new elections in Honduras. 

And so again, the United States had an opportunity to pull the plug and say, no, we’re not going to support Juan Orlando Hernández. But they just kept supporting him, and they basically certified the electoral results in December of 2017, and they allowed him to continue in office.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Hernández, or JOH, as he’s often called in Honduras, cracked down on the resistance to his fraudulent reelection with an iron fist.

KAREN SPRING:  So, during the 2017 electoral crisis, there were over 30 people that were shot and killed by state security forces — Basically individuals that went to the street, protesters that went to the streets to protest the electoral fraud, and as the US was certifying the elections, state security forces were shooting protesters. So, that’s over 30 to 35 people that have been documented. 

There were also hundreds of individuals that were detained, illegally detained, during just the 2017 electoral crisis. And then 22 individuals were held for months, and my partner is one who was held for 19 months in a maximum security prison. They were the political prisoners of the 2017 electoral fraud.

There were a few disappearances as well during the electoral fraud. In the Aguán Valley region alone, I think from 2013 or 2014 and on to the end of JOH’s term in office, or a second term in office, there were over 100 campesinos, or small farmers. And that doesn’t even include disappearances or individuals that were injured or imprisoned.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Washington didn’t say a word. The United States had his back. Hernández was their man. As Karen explains, he portrayed this get tough on crime image — While running hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.

KAREN SPRING:  A lot of drug money went into basically buying his victory to become president of Honduras. And when he took office, he presented himself as this great champion, this warrior who was going to lead the war on drugs in Honduras, to crack down on organized crime, and to basically stop migration to the United States and Mexico border. 

And so there were so many operations that Juan Orlando Hernández did together with the US and Canada. We’re talking about the Green Berets, special forces, FBI, SWAT teams, JTF Bravo, which is a military force based in Palmerola air base in Honduras, and even the Canadian military, DEA operations. They all partnered with Juan Orlando Hernández to crack down on drug trafficking. 

And so, as the US prosecutors say, that image that Juan Orlando Hernández promoted along with the US and Canada was fundamental to his conspiracy to traffic drugs. 

Without the US backing and helping JOH to build this facade, he might not have been able to traffic as much of the drugs that he did because he used that to shield what he was actually doing behind closed doors, and that was trafficking thousands of kilos of cocaine into the United States. 

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  In 2021, Xiomara Castro won the country’s elections in a huge victory for the left. She promised to fight corruption, stand for women’s rights, and improve the lives of poor and working class people. Her husband is Manuel Zelaya… remember the president who was ousted in the US-backed coup in 2009. Many saw Castro’s victory as the return to democracy in the country after the coup and years of fraudulent rule under Juan Orlando Hernández.

She took office in early 2022. Then on April 21 of that year… 

XIOMARA CASTRO:  Good afternoon, everyone. Today, Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, was extradited to the United States to face federal charges. Hernández is charged with participating in a corrupt and violent drug trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States from 2004 to 2022.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  In 2024, he was convicted by a New York court and sentenced to 45 years in prison.

It was a big deal. He was basically the first high-profile former president from Latin America to have been convicted and sentenced in the United States for drug trafficking since Panamanian president Manuel Noriega three decades before.

Karen Spring attended the trial in New York. She said it was a historic moment for so many in Honduras, to finally see a powerful political figure like this held accountable for his crimes.

KAREN SPRING:  I spoke to several Hondurans that flew in from Texas, they came in from the Washington, DC, area, Colorado, so many different areas, and they just said, we want to be here. We want to see this former president face justice for once in the history of Honduras, and especially considering everything that JOH, as people often call him, has done in our country and all the impacts that his two-term presidency has caused in Honduras. So many Hondurans talked about how seeing him there in the courtroom was just such an exceptional historical moment for them.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  And then… just a year later, on Dec. 1, 2025, President Donald Trump pardoned him. Hernández left prison the same day.

The timing was not by accident. See, Trump’s pardon came the day after high-stakes elections in Honduras. 

In the lead-up to that election, Trump did what he could to sway the vote in favor of the right-wing candidate and Hernández ally, the former mayor of Tegucigalpa, Nasry Asfura.

Just two days before the election, on Nov. 28, Trump announced his plans for the pardon over Truth Social. He called on Hondurans to vote for Asfura and threatened to cut off all aid to Honduras if the leftist candidate won.

It took more than three weeks — And a manual vote count amid allegations of fraud — For Asfura to finally be declared victor. He won by less than a percentage point. 

Afura took office in late January. It was a big shift. Since 2022, Xiomara Castro and her leftist Libre Party had, despite huge obstacles, attempted to undo many of the conservative measures set in place under Hernández and the preceding coup government.

And that brings us to the leaks… 

The leaks are all available online. I’ll add links in the show notes. They are all audio messages sent during the first four months of this year. Most of them are short, less than a minute long. And I want to walk you through these messages, so you can hear people in their own words. Because the content is shocking… 

Many of the communications are between Juan Orlando Hernández, President Nasry Asfura, and other leading right-wing politicians in Honduras.

Hernández has been in the United States since he was released from prison. Many of the messages are focused around his return to Honduras and… his future return to power. Hernández doesn’t mince words.

In one voice message from March 18, former president Hernández tells the conservative president of Honduras’ National Congress, Tomás Zambrano, that the 67-year-old Asfura, who entered office as president just a few months ago, is old and confused and that he should start taking orders from him. “Listen to me,” Hernández says. “I’m the one who’s going to set the pace from here on out.”

In another voice message from March 12, which Hernández sent to current President Asfura, he says, “We had spoken. I left a message that we were going to win the election. And that you had to support me in these moments. The presidency has to be returned into the correct hands,” he says, referring to himself.

“That’s what President Donald Trump wants,” he says. “And if you go against him, I will communicate it immediately, and your government will fall.”

There’s this tone in many of Hernández’s messages as if he’s a mob boss ordering around his minions… and demanding that they use political violence, if necessary, to maintain control and clamp down on opposition to their government.

In this message, Hernández is speaking to National Assembly President Zambrano, who Hernández has asked to be his “right-hand” man for his return to the country.

“You have to kill people,” he says. “For us to be calm you just have to do it. If you have to return to repression to control the country, it has to be done. You have to do everything you have at your disposal to not let go of power. And you have to make it seem that everything that will happen — Deaths, killings, and kidnappings — Is being done by the communists.”

Those words are all the more terrifying when we remember the scale of violence, including crackdowns on protests, arbitrary arrests, and killings of social movement leaders that took place during Hernández’s time as president. He’s held onto power through brute force before. 

And I will mention this again and again, throughout this episode, because it needs repeating… Juan Orlando Hernández is a convicted drug and weapons trafficker responsible for widespread human rights abuses who was pardoned by President Donald Trump. And he is now empowered to push Trump’s vision of stamping out the left in Latin America.

I can’t help remembering US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s quote about the ruthless Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1939: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

The leaked messages get even more violent. Hernández sent this message on March 18, also to his guy, National Assembly President Zambrano.

“Honduras needs strength,” he says. “It needs logistics. It needs blood. If you want to control people, you have to oppress them. You have to squeeze them. Counter violence, generating violence. That’s what President Trump says, and you have to understand that he’s going to be there for forever. I don’t know how, but that’s just the way it is, and you have to listen to me. Don’t be so soft. Don’t let it get to you. Don’t be so soft. If not, you won’t be able to do the work. That’s what Pablo Escobar said,” Hernández says.

Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug trafficker who ran the Medellín cartel in the 1980s. He was the most iconic and powerful drug trafficker in Latin American history… The focus of the Netflix series Narcos. And this reference from Hernández, spoken from one drug trafficker about another, speaks volumes about his mindset: Honduras is open for business. And he clearly believes he and his allies have the green light from Trump to unleash violence against anyone who Trump sees as an adversary or who gets in the way of their bid to accumulate power and push a far-right agenda.

That includes killing, jailing, and buying off members of the Honduran Congress. 

They’ve had their sights set on Marlon Ochoa.

He’s a leftist Honduran politician with Xiomara Castro’s Libre Party. He served as the country’s minister of finance in 2024. Over the last two years, he’s sat on Honduras’ National Electoral Council, the body that oversees the country’s elections. And he was the most vocal voice on the council claiming fraud in the presidential elections last year. 

“This was perhaps the least transparent election in the history of Honduran democracy. Not just for the buying of votes that happened on the day of the election. Not just for the intimidation that thousands of people faced in cities across Honduras. But it was also an election that was not transparent and also fraudulent,” he said following the vote.

Several of the leaked messages call for his murder.

This message is from Jan. 27, the day President Nasry Asfura was sworn in. Right-wing Honduran Vice President María Antonieta Mejía says, “We’re gonna take back the Supreme Court. We’re gonna take back national Congress. We’re gonna take back all of the powers of government,” she says.

She’s speaking with Cossette López-Osorio, a member of Hernández’s right-wing National Party, who serves with Marlon Ochoa on the National Electoral Council. 

López-Osorio responds: “We have to jail Marlon. We have to put him in jail. More than that, I would pay to have him killed.”

She takes it even further in another message:

“If I had a gun in my hand,” she says, “and I had Marlon, Salvador, and Iroshka in front of me, with the same bullet I would kill all three,” she says.

Salvador Nasralla is a three-time presidential candidate who also served in Xiomara Castro’s government, and who was Asfura’s closest challenger in the 2025 election. Iroshka Elvir is Nasralla’s wife, a former beauty queen and a member of congress with the conservative Liberal Party.

These right-wing politicians in Honduras are obsessed with Marlon Ochoa. They clearly believe that to take back complete power, they’re going to have to take him out. 

“From my point of view,” Cossette López-Osorio says in another message from two weeks later, “Marlon should be objective number one.”

Two weeks after that, she leaves another voice message.

“Listen, tell me how we are going to continue without taking out this bastard Marlon from his seat on the council? You can’t do anything. You can’t move anything. You can’t touch anything. We can’t do anything without having a clear idea of the impeachment process. Once we remove him from the council, we are off to the races. First, jail or death. That’s the way I see it: jail or death. Either blood, or he’s fired,” she says.

In another series of messages, they discuss plans to secure nearly $200,000 to buy off lawmakers to vote out Ochoa in a congressional impeachment of his council seat.

One of the voices here is that of former leftist lawmaker turned right-wing political power broker Jorge Cálix, who says he’s already spent too much of his own money on this.

Cossette López-Osorio, who originally called for Ochoa’s murder, comes to the rescue. This voice message is from March 13.

“I offer $110,000 of my own money, so you can begin this congressional impeachment of Marlon Ochoa. It’s so that we can find these sons of bitches. These congressmen that aren’t committing, and you get them on board,” she says.

Less than a month after the vote buying discussions, on April 9, Congress voted to begin a process against Marlon Ochoa to remove him from the electoral council. A week later congress removed him from the body. He was already out of the country.

After death threats against him and members of his family, Ochoa reportedly fled the country and was requesting asylum abroad. Hernández and his people were undeterred.

“I’m going to begin to look for him with the contacts that we have in US intelligence,” Hernández said. “And once we find him, then we’ll proceed with his capture or with whatever has to be done.”

This is terrifying, and I can’t let this audio pass without underlying just how sinister this is. It sounds like something from the dark days of dictatorship, when the security forces of the South American military governments collaborated on intelligence to take out their political opponents with the support of the United States.

But this audio is from just a handful of weeks ago: April 6. 

And it is not the only time the US or other countries are implicated in these leaks.

Israel is also mentioned. And this is key. In a voice message from Jan. 20, former President Juan Orlando Hernández refers specifically to Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The Israeli prime minister is going to support us,” Hernández says. “We are very thankful for him. They had a lot to do… everything to do, in fact, with the negotiations and my leaving prison,” he says. 

In another message, Hernández chastises allies in Honduras.

He says that some people are blocking his return to Honduras. He says, “You didn’t even pay the money for my pardon. It didn’t come from you. It came from a group of rabbis. And people that supported Israel… I am going to win the next elections in Honduras,” he says. 

There’s so much to unpack in this message. Was the Trump administration paid off to pardon Hernández? If not, what was the money for? For lobbying? That seems like the most likely possibility. But why would a group of rabbis, Israel, and Prime Minister Netanyahu be interested in Hernández’s release?

Because Hernández has deep ties with Israel and was a staunch supporter while in office. Hernández graduated from a leadership program run out of Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation. 

As president, Hernández traveled to Israel and he met with Netanyahu on multiple occasions. His government was one of Israel’s top allies in Latin America.

Netanyahu spoke to their ties during a joint press conference in September 2019, to commemorate Honduras’ opening of a commercial office in Jerusalem. 

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU:  We’ve had a great friendship, both personal — President Hernández and myself — But also between our peoples, our countries. There is an intrinsic cooperation because we’re sister democracies facing challenges that are obviously daunting, but we have the spirit and the ability to overcome it.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Honduras under Hernández was one of the few countries in the world to support Israel during a 2017 UN resolution vote rejecting Jerusalem as the capital. Honduras recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital in March 2019.

According to the Israeli government, Honduras under Hernández “was one of the two countries in Latin America, and five in the world, to most often abstain from resolutions opposed by Israel.” 

And it appears Netanyahu and Israel paid Hernández back in full by ensuring Trump’s pardon and his release from prison.

And the audio leaks show Hernández is trying to capitalize off his connections both to Israel and the United States… for himself and his right-wing allies now in power in Honduras.

In this message, he’s talking about how conservative lobbyist Roger Stone scored him a meeting with a group of Republicans. And he says, “It’s important that we speak with friends in Israel so they can support us with issues of logistics, intelligence, and other things. That’s really important for my return to Honduras,” he says.

In another message, he seems to follow up on that…

He tells Congress President Tomás Zambrano, “I sent you the people from Israel. They sent you money. I’m here in the United States, lobbying.”

It’s not by accident that, in mid-January, even before his inauguration, Honduran president Nasry Asfura traveled to Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. 

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU:  I’m delighted to welcome you, Mr. President. We’re refashioning the relationship between Israel and Honduras to the traditional lines of friendship, but we also want to seize the future… with you and the people of Honduras. I look forward to working with your government, both in economic fields and agriculture and technology in any of the areas that I think are laid before us. You should know that as far as Israel is concerned, the sky is the limit.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Then on Feb. 7, just ten days into his term, Asfura met with Donald Trump in Mar-A-Lago, Florida.

It’s clear from the leaks the right-wing victory in Honduras — Fraudulent or not — Already means a win for Trump. 

Asfura speaks to Hernández in a voice message three days later about his trip to Mar-a-Lago:

NASRY ASAFURA:  President. It’s a pleasure to greet you. We already had a private session with the investors, and it’s very positive for the expansion in Roatan for the ZEDE and in Comayagua for Palmerola.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Palmerola is the other name of the Soto Cano Air Base, a Honduran military base that has long been the most important headquarters for the US military in Central America… as we looked at in depth in the first season of Under the Shadow. This is another reason why Honduras is so important for the United States and for Trump.

NASRY ASAFURA:  We’re going to push for another Palmerola, specifically right there in Roatan, where Próspera is located,” Asfura tells Hernández. We’ve already negotiated it. And also an interoceanic train, which we are going to hand over to General Electric.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Roatan is an island just off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. And Próspera is a big deal for free market activists, bitcoin bros, and its Silicon Valley investors like Peter Thiel. It’s what’s known as a ZEDE, a classification that would essentially allow rich and powerful private individuals and corporations to set up their own autonomous private cities inside of Honduras. 

Honduras’ Congress approved the ZEDEs in 2013, when the body was run by then soon-to-be President Juan Orlando Hernández. They’re kind of like the Freedom Cities that Trump hopes to create in the United States. 

The ZEDEs were rolled back under the Xiomara Castro administration. The country’s Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. But the Próspera ZEDE has tried to hold out. It’s taken Honduras to international arbitration for more than $10 billion dollars in compensation. 

Now, it seems Hernández and President Asfura’s close ties to Washington and the United States — And Trump’s close ties to Silicon Valley — Have the current Honduran government pushing to once again green light the private cities. 

I visited Roatan a few years ago to report on the Próspera ZEDE. Let’s just say… the whole scheme is another huge reason why Honduras matters to powerful and wealthy people inside the United States. And why Trump took such an interest in the election late last year. 

That and this idea of a new US military base in Honduras.

This was Vice President María Antonieta Mejía’s message to Hernández shortly after Asfura’s visit to Mar-a-Lago.

MARÍA ANTONIETA MEJÍA:  He went there to negotiate first the return of Juan Orlando Hernández, the expansion of the ZEDEs, the territorial expansion of the manufacturing plants, the possible creation of a new tax-free zone,” she said. “Roatan is going to be the central point for a new US base. A new US base for conflicts with Cuba, Mexico, and possibly Venezuela.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Of course, those are the top countries in Latin America that Trump has been either attacking or threatening over the last year. And the three main countries I’ve focused on so far in this season of Under the Shadow.

But military might is not the only way that Trump and his right-wing allies hope to influence the region.

Jan. 30, 2026. Three days into Nasry Asfura’s term. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández makes a series of phone calls to both Asfura and Vice President María Antonieta Mejía’s. 

He asks for money to set up a fake news office in the United States with the help of some Republicans.

JUAN ORLANDO HERNÁNDEZ:  I need you to please send me, to Rosales’s bank account, $150,000, please. Because we are going to rent an apartment and set up an office to create a digital journalism outfit. Someone here from the team of the president of the United States is going to manage it. He’s one of the Republicans who is working with us. They’re going to set up a news website where they’re going to publish some important information about Manuel Zelaya and Xiomara Castro, he says.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Remember… Zelaya and Castro — Husband and wife, and both former leftist presidents. 

Asfura responds, “I’m going to transfer from the bank account of a friend. Let’s see if they can get it to you in cash. But tell me, what are we going to do with this. What do we get?”

Hernández says, “We’re setting up an information office, President. From here. From the United States. So that they can’t link it back to us there in Honduras. It’s going to be like a Latin American news site. I was on a call with [Argentine] President Javier Milei, and it was successful. Very, very, very good. And I think that with this, we can do some big things for all of Latin America. There are some files coming against Mexico. There are some files coming against Colombia. And most importantly against Honduras and the Zelaya family.”

Asfura tells him, “I think you also need some money for you. So, we are going to send you another $150,000, so you can survive a little more over there. We’ll take it out of INSEP,” he says, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Services. 

After his call with Asfura, Hernández spoke with Vice President Mejía.

He says, “I need this cash because we’re going to set up an office here, with the support of some Republicans, in order to attack and uproot the cancer of the left in Honduras and all of Latin America. I mentioned to President Asfura that we could talk with Javier Milei and he is supporting with $350,000. Also, another good friend of ours in Mexico is supporting, in order to focus on the issue of Mexico. We are pretty ready and hoping that this can really move forward,” he says. 

Mejía responds. 

“President, if you want, forget the details. I just want to confirm the amount. Now that I know, I will take care of all the details. $300,000 it is,” she says.

Money, taken from the Honduran Ministry of Public Services to support a convicted drug trafficker to set up a disinformation site in the United States to attack leftists leaders in Latin America… with the help of Republicans tied to the White House. 

This is a bombshell. The HondurasGate leaks have been covered in Latin America. But they have been almost completely ignored by every major news outlet in the United States.

Arturo Dominguez says this is the biggest story not being talked about right now.

ARTURO DOMINGUEZ:  This administration is just going balls out. They’re just gung-ho for overthrowing governments and taking control.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  He’s a Cuban American journalist based in Texas. He’s been reporting on HondurasGate and so many other things going on in Latin America. His latest piece in the Antagonist Magazine is entitled “How Far Will Trump Go to Destabilize Latin America?”

As we’ve looked at already, he says, HondurasGate is so much larger than just Honduras. It reveals the US and Israel’s concern for backing far-right allies in Latin America at any cost and doing away with their political adversaries across the region. This is not new. These are just the latest tactics to push this far-right agenda in the region.

ARTURO DOMINGUEZ:  And that’s basically the strategy that’s been the foreign policy strategy against Latin America that’s been in place for, I don’t know, a hundred, over two hundred years now. It’s all interconnected.

The US has been doing this to Latin America for a long time, and they were much more covert before. And I say this a lot, but the incompetence in the White House right now has lifted the veil on what the US used to do in secret. They’re doing it out in the open, blowing up boats, indicting Raúl Castro on bogus charges, kidnapping Maduro. You know what I mean? Like everything is just manufactured to create pretexts to exert dominion over other countries. 

And that’s what we’re seeing right now in Latin America, and even in Greenland. When you’re talking about the Western Hemisphere and our entire region, you include Greenland and Canada in there. And suddenly all the rhetoric about Greenland and Canada starts to make sense. It’s about control over them, just like it is over Latin America.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  The HondurasGate revelations that Hernández is orchestrating a broader regional destabilization campaign are particularly concerning when it comes to Colombia: the country has high-stakes elections at the end of the month. 

Leftist senator Iván Cepeda is leading the polls, but the far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella is only a few points back. Many fear Trump will use his weight to try to influence Colombia’s vote in favor of De la Espriella, like he did in Honduras for Asfura.

Colombia’s Leftist president, Gustavo Petro, has consistently stood up to Trump and his meddling in Latin America.

This month, he called for an investigation into the leaks and their attempt to sway the vote on May 31.

He said the information in the HondurasGate leaks had to be investigated as a potential electoral crime. ”We are in an electoral season,” he said. “It is being planned with foreign money. It is forbidden by the Constitution to participate in electoral campaigns. And here, Minister of the Interior, we have to call the Commission of Guarantees to give this the attention it deserves.”

Arturo Dominguez says he doubts that any disinformation that right-wingers cook up now will have time to impact Colombia’s election. Still, the message is clear. 

ARTURO DOMINGUEZ:  I think the threat to Colombia is there. The threats of if you don’t elect who Trump wants, this is going to happen, remittances are going to get cut off, or aid, or partnership agreements, or stuff, and stuff will get cut off. 

MICHAEL FOX:  Arturo, you follow all this stuff really closely. How unprecedented is a leak like HondurasGate? Like, have we seen anything like this in recent years or decades?

ARTURO DOMINGUEZ:  In Latin America, there’s been some stuff that has been leaked out, plots to assassinate Petro in Colombia, things like that. But nothing this extensive that involves so many different presidents, prime ministers, lobbying groups. This is pretty deep. So the idea that you have all these countries pitching in and putting in money to influence elections in several countries in the region, it’s just nuts.

And the extent of this is just crazy when you start getting into this different, much more violent type of scenario where people’s lives are at risk. And threatening to assassinate somebody from the election board in Honduras just speaks for itself.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  I also reached out to Alberto Maresca, an Italian academic who focuses on Latin American foreign policy. He’s currently a PhD candidate in political science at Ghent University in Belgium. He’s also a columnist with the website Latinoamérica21.

I asked him whether Trump might ultimately be behind the whole network, or at least aware of its existence. 

ALBERTO MARESCA:  I don’t think it’s Trump, I think it’s Rubio.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  He’s referring to Marco Rubio, Trump’s Cuban-American secretary of state.

ALBERTO MARESCA:  I don’t think that Trump knows about it. I honestly doubt that Trump has an interest in this, especially now with what’s going on in Iran. I am sure that Rubio has a very second in, because this is something only a person with strong connections with Israel and the Latin American conservative sector has, which is the case of Marco Rubio. So, I’m pretty sure that it’s Marco Rubio that is networking those initiatives and those figures.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Could Rubio be the Trump administration Republican who Hernández says in the leaks is going to help set up this misinformation office? 

We don’t know. But it wouldn’t be out of the question. 

The US secretary of state met with incoming Honduran President Nasry Asfura in mid-January, even before Asfura’s inauguration. 

As for Israel’s role in the leaks and their support for achieving Juan Orlando Hernández’s pardon… Alberto says this is actually really consistent with Israel’s actions in Latin America, in particular in recent years.

ALBERTO MARESCA:  Well, this is very, very interesting, Michael, because by the time the HondurasGate audio came out, you had Israel and the president of Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu, meeting with several governments in Latin America, among which Panama, for instance. And in the leaks, you find that Israel would have supported this media campaign orchestrated by Milei and the US. 

If you read it through a foreign policy angle, which is what I do, this has been consistent with what Israel, since the genocide in Gaza, tried to do in Latin America: Find a place in which it does not get isolated, unlike Africa, unlike the Middle East, unlike Asia, and unlike even Europe. There are very few countries in Latin America that distance them from Israel. Chile under Boric, but they will be easily undone by Kast. Bolivia under Arce, and that is already being undone by the new Bolivian government. Brazil with Lula. And especially Colombia with Petro. But I can guarantee you that if a right-wing government gets elected in Colombia, that will be undone as well. So that has been the Israeli strategy. 

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Trying to find a region in the world, and this is the case of Latin America, where it doesn’t get isolated.

And removing Juan Orlando Hernández from prison is a helpful tool in that strategy.

Alberto has another piece of insight here that I think is really important to understanding how the HondurasGate leaks fit into Trump’s push in the region, and how so many of the region’s center and right countries have lined up behind the United States and president Donald Trump.

He calls this automatic alignment. It’s the focus of his latest article, “‘Hondurasgate’ and the tragedy of automatic alignment in Latin America.”

ALBERTO MARESCA:  Automatic alignment is an academic idea for which, contrary to nonalignment. Automatic alignment in the case of Latin America is aligned with the US and bandwagoning a bit the United States to its foreign policy because that would inherently benefit Latin America.

That’s why in my pieces I write about the tragedy of automatic alignment, which is the alignment of a given Latin American government to the US unconditionally. The ties with Israel, the acceptations of deportees from the US in Latin American countries. This is very important. Designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist groups… all of this pertains to the Shield of the Americas.

CLIP:  On this history day we come together to announce a brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  If you remember, that was Trump’s summit and initiative of more than a dozen countries that met in Florida in March and promised to fight narcotrafficking in their countries in collaboration with the US.military. I dig into this in depth in Episode 8 of this season.

ALBERTO MARESCA:  When in Miami we saw those right-wing governments standing together with Trump signing agreements that were not agreements at the end, were surrendering treaties, we believed, probably, that it was the usual rhetorical action without any consequence. Instead, it does have a consequence. It seems to me that there were a full set of demands that Latin American countries should abide by. And among them is the support for Israel.

So it is an automatic alignment with the global far right. Not even with the US and Israel as countries or governments in terms of bureaucracies with the global far right.

So, all those phases built a set of allies that under threat submitted to the US. They submitted because ideologically they were already inclined to do so, but then when they were threatened, they submitted. 

Now, those presidents, they went on board with so many initiatives with the US, among which is the Shield of the Americas. Then automatically they are obliged at the end of the day to do for the US what the US does not have the time or the resources to do.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Openly attack political opponents. Move against the leftists leaders in the region. Act as the United States’ attack dogs, with or without the direct order from the United States or Israel. 

ALBERTO MARESCA:  You don’t need to assassinate the presidents as you used to do or to replicate Jacobo Arbenz kind of events. You don’t need to do that anymore. And this is the tragedy of automatic alignment. You have Milei doing that for you. You have Noboa doing that for you. And this is the most successful foreign policy, honestly, in Latin America.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Or you have Juan Orlando Hernández doing it.

ALBERTO MARESCA:  That is automatic alignment. You need governments that are willing to make those interests going on even without the intervention of the United States in this case.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  He says Milei in Argentina is a great example of this. So are several countries in Central America.

ALBERTO MARESCA:  El Salvador is one of them, for sure. In the Caribbean you see several instances of that.

In the rest of South America as well. I’m… concerned about the region as a region, finding a unifying voice that can express autonomy in the international arena. Because if you don’t do that as a region, it is unlikely that a single country — Besides Brazil, that is a very special case — Can have such an ability.

MICHAEL FOX [NARRATION]:  Brazil, like Colombia, is another country in Latin America where big elections are coming up later this year. We can expect similar actions from the Trump administration against president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his reelection campaign. And if Hernández’s fake news outlet is up and running, it’s sure they will be churning out their own hit jobs… this time focused on Brazil.

I’ll be watching this race closely as we approach the October elections.

That is all for this episode of Under the Shadow. 

Please keep your eyes out for more. I wasn’t planning on bringing you a new episode so soon, as I’m hard in the midst of developing my new free speech podcast series for the lead up to the US’s 250th anniversary.

The first three episodes of that series drop in the beginning of June. Please check it out. It’s gonna be a powerful series looking at the attacks on free speech rights today under the Trump administration and how communities and countries are responding.

I’ll add links in the show notes here. 

And here is a sneak preview of the trailer. 

I hope you liked what you heard. Thanks so much, again for listening, following, and spreading the word.

I want to send a huge shout out today to Gloria Loves Bats. She’s a new supporter on my Patreon who has had great things to say about the show. If you haven’t visited my Patreon, you can find me at patreon.com/mfox. Or you can follow the link in the show notes. There, you can also support my work, become a monthly sustainer, or sign up to stay abreast of the latest on this podcast and my other reporting across Latin America. You can find a ton of content there, exclusively for my supporters. 

As always… if you are looking for more information, news and reporting on Trump’s onslaught, both on communities within the United States and abroad… please check out The Real News and NACLA. Both of them are publishing daily, indispensable reporting.

The theme music is by my band, Monte Perdido. You can find us on Spotify or wherever you stream music. This closing music playing right now is off our 2024 album, “Ofrenda.” I hope you check it out. 

Under the Shadow is a co-production of The Real News and NACLA.

This episode script was edited by Heather Gies.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.