SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Here's a different kind of story about media and politics.
It demonstrates how the monstrosity of a crime a century old still divides and scorches the world. And it's one more example of how digital technology is changing geopolitics at every level, from interfering with other nation's elections to the current wave of ransomware cyberattacks and even the release of motion pictures.
Here's a different kind of story about media and politics.
It demonstrates how the monstrosity of a crime a century old still divides and scorches the world. And it's one more example of how digital technology is changing geopolitics at every level, from interfering with other nation's elections to the current wave of ransomware cyberattacks and even the release of motion pictures.
Last Tuesday, Donald Trump had a chummy meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There was a lot to talk about -- NATO, Syria, ISIS. They also discussed the continued presence in the United States of Fethullah Gulen, the Erdogan foe on whom the Turkish leader blames last summer's failed coup d'etat.
In a Washington Post op-ed just prior to Erdogan's visit, Gulen wrote, "The Turkey that I once knew as a hope-inspiring country on its way to consolidating its democracy and a moderate form of secularism has become the dominion of a president who is doing everything he can to amass power and subjugate dissent."
No wonder Erdogan wants Gulen extradited to Turkey, where he would probably face certain death. So far at least, we have refused to do so. Meanwhile, as Erdogan looked on, his security detail viciously beat protesters outside the Turkish ambassador's residence in Washington.
So given this particular White House, and Trump's expressed admiration for Erdogan, you know that one topic not up for discussion was Erdogan's ever-escalating suppression of human rights, especially in the aftermath of the unsuccessful coup and the recent referendum in which he consolidated even more power.
Here's another forbidden but related subject that wasn't on the agenda: the horrific Armenian genocide committed a century ago by Turkey's Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1922, at least 1.5 million were massacred, some 80 percent of the Armenian population.
Like his predecessors, and unlike the government of Germany after the Holocaust and World War II, Erdogan still refuses to acknowledge what the Turkish government did. Instead, he has admitted that yes, Armenians lost their lives, but as Cara Buckley at The New York Times wrote, "... He implied that they were victims of a war in which all Ottoman citizens had suffered -- rather than the victims of a genocide."
(Although Donald Trump and Barack Obama have condemned the atrocities committed against Armenians, for fear of offending their NATO ally neither used the word "genocide" while president. During the 2008 campaign, Obama pledged he would but never did).
This year, the anniversary of the beginning of the genocide has been marked by the release of two movies, each offering a very different account of what happened. Only one of them is truthful and the response has been both fascinating and troubling.
At the center of all this is the movie The Promise, co-written (with Robin Swicord) and directed by Terry George. It's about a love triangle: an Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac), an American photojournalist (Christian Bale) and a worldly, beautiful Armenian woman (Charlotte Le Bon) with whom both men are involved. As Turkey aligns with Germany during World War I and begins the systematic extermination of ethnic and religious minorities, their romantic rivalry is put aside and the three unite for survival.
In the interest of full disclosure, Terry George and I have known each other for a long time. Last year, he asked me and a few other friends to come screen The Promise while he still was adding the finishing touches. I thought it was terrific then and still do. The movie's an old-fashioned love story in the style of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago or Ryan's Daughter, an epic set against a vast historical landscape devastated by cruelty and bloodshed.
With Jim Sheridan, Terry George wrote the movies In the Name of the Father, Some Mother's Son and The Boxer, all of which dealt with the "troubles" in Northern Ireland. In 2004, Terry directed and co-wrote Hotel Rwanda, nominated for three Academy Awards, an unflinching look at the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the world's indifference to it. So jumping into the middle of the Armenian genocide dispute was not unusual for him. He joked, "If it doesn't cause controversy, what am I doing it for?"
Last year, Terry realized that another picture on the topic was about to be released. The Ottoman Lieutenant has a similar story structure but it presents a sanitized version of the genocide in which the murders of Armenians are not part of a systematic, state-sanctioned policy but random acts of violence committed by rebellious soldiers.
The New York Times reports, "According to several people familiar with the project, Turkish producers oversaw the final cut, without the director's knowledge.
"The people familiar with the project said that tensions emerged on the 'Ottoman' set after producers pushed to minimize depictions of Turkish violence against Armenians. Several people who worked on the project felt that the final version butchered the film artistically, and smacked of denialism: Dialogue that explicitly referred to systematic mass killing had been stripped out."
Writing for The Daily Beast, Michael Daly discovered that one of The Ottoman Lieutenant's producers, "ES Film is based in Istanbul and its co-founders include Yusuf Esenkal, who is said to be a business partner in other ventures with Bilal Erdogan, son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The younger Erdogan has been accused by Russia of trading in oil with ISIS and is being investigated by Italy of laundering massive sums of money there, all of which he has denied."
ES Film also is behind a current TV series that glorifies the life of the last sultan of Turkey, "perpetrator of the first wave of mass killings that were the lead-up to the Armenian genocide."
So suddenly a film appears running counter to The Promise narative, produced by Turks whose motives might be less than pure. (It should be noted that The Promise got most of its funding from the late movie mogul, Armenian-American Kirk Kerkorian).
Then things got even stranger. The Promise premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. After just three screenings, IMDB, the Internet Movie Data Base, was flooded with 85,000 terrible reviews, a statistical impossibility. Only a handful could have seen the film.
As Mary Wald noted at HuffPost: "85,000 is not a few irate people. It is an organized mob. Or more likely a small network on laptops or in a boiler room working to make it look like a mob. Either way it is coordinated. And to coordinate something of this magnitude, you pay for it."
IMDB removed all but the 32 or so reviews that they believed to be legitimate. But that wasn't the end of it. According to Terry George, a similar smear campaign took place on the Turkish version of Twitter and the comment section at YouTube briefly had to be shut down. And he says that in Chicago and other cities large blocks of tickets were bought via the Fandango website and then refunded just before the movie was scheduled to start so that patrons would walk into near-empty theaters.
In the great scheme of things, this may seem like small ball when put up against election hacking, vast troves of leaked documents or taking down an entire national health service, but these insidious tactics add up, pile onto the "fake news" trope and give comfort to the denialists of every stripe. As Mary Wald wrote:
"Governments who are accustomed to controlling the media have put considerable energy into working out how the supposedly open and objective Internet can surreptitiously be harnessed to enforce a political agenda."
That seems to be precisely what the Turkish government and its friends are doing as they continue to resist the reality of the Armenian genocide.
In 2014, Turkish President Erdogan tried to ban Twitter and YouTube, describing social media as a "knife in the hand of a murderer" when it was effectively used to mount protests against him. Now he has a Twitter account all his own and the knife is in his hand as well. Like deniers and haters here and everywhere, he and his allies have come to realize that the Internet, like any weapon, works both ways. It's all about where you aim it.
The Promise opens in Spain next month and in Germany in August, and Terry George wonders whether the hostile reaction will be even more strident in Europe. Whatever happens, "We're in it for the long haul," he said, noting that he intends to utilize social media to generate outreach programs for classrooms that will heighten awareness of a bleak and overlooked time in world history. It's a monstrous tale that must be told wherever it can, on movie screens or in cyberspace, never to be forgotten.
Political revenge. Mass deportations. Project 2025. Unfathomable corruption. Attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Pardons for insurrectionists. An all-out assault on democracy. Republicans in Congress are scrambling to give Trump broad new powers to strip the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit he doesn’t like by declaring it a “terrorist-supporting organization.” Trump has already begun filing lawsuits against news outlets that criticize him. At Common Dreams, we won’t back down, but we must get ready for whatever Trump and his thugs throw at us. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. By donating today, please help us fight the dangers of a second Trump presidency. |
Here's a different kind of story about media and politics.
It demonstrates how the monstrosity of a crime a century old still divides and scorches the world. And it's one more example of how digital technology is changing geopolitics at every level, from interfering with other nation's elections to the current wave of ransomware cyberattacks and even the release of motion pictures.
Last Tuesday, Donald Trump had a chummy meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There was a lot to talk about -- NATO, Syria, ISIS. They also discussed the continued presence in the United States of Fethullah Gulen, the Erdogan foe on whom the Turkish leader blames last summer's failed coup d'etat.
In a Washington Post op-ed just prior to Erdogan's visit, Gulen wrote, "The Turkey that I once knew as a hope-inspiring country on its way to consolidating its democracy and a moderate form of secularism has become the dominion of a president who is doing everything he can to amass power and subjugate dissent."
No wonder Erdogan wants Gulen extradited to Turkey, where he would probably face certain death. So far at least, we have refused to do so. Meanwhile, as Erdogan looked on, his security detail viciously beat protesters outside the Turkish ambassador's residence in Washington.
So given this particular White House, and Trump's expressed admiration for Erdogan, you know that one topic not up for discussion was Erdogan's ever-escalating suppression of human rights, especially in the aftermath of the unsuccessful coup and the recent referendum in which he consolidated even more power.
Here's another forbidden but related subject that wasn't on the agenda: the horrific Armenian genocide committed a century ago by Turkey's Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1922, at least 1.5 million were massacred, some 80 percent of the Armenian population.
Like his predecessors, and unlike the government of Germany after the Holocaust and World War II, Erdogan still refuses to acknowledge what the Turkish government did. Instead, he has admitted that yes, Armenians lost their lives, but as Cara Buckley at The New York Times wrote, "... He implied that they were victims of a war in which all Ottoman citizens had suffered -- rather than the victims of a genocide."
(Although Donald Trump and Barack Obama have condemned the atrocities committed against Armenians, for fear of offending their NATO ally neither used the word "genocide" while president. During the 2008 campaign, Obama pledged he would but never did).
This year, the anniversary of the beginning of the genocide has been marked by the release of two movies, each offering a very different account of what happened. Only one of them is truthful and the response has been both fascinating and troubling.
At the center of all this is the movie The Promise, co-written (with Robin Swicord) and directed by Terry George. It's about a love triangle: an Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac), an American photojournalist (Christian Bale) and a worldly, beautiful Armenian woman (Charlotte Le Bon) with whom both men are involved. As Turkey aligns with Germany during World War I and begins the systematic extermination of ethnic and religious minorities, their romantic rivalry is put aside and the three unite for survival.
In the interest of full disclosure, Terry George and I have known each other for a long time. Last year, he asked me and a few other friends to come screen The Promise while he still was adding the finishing touches. I thought it was terrific then and still do. The movie's an old-fashioned love story in the style of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago or Ryan's Daughter, an epic set against a vast historical landscape devastated by cruelty and bloodshed.
With Jim Sheridan, Terry George wrote the movies In the Name of the Father, Some Mother's Son and The Boxer, all of which dealt with the "troubles" in Northern Ireland. In 2004, Terry directed and co-wrote Hotel Rwanda, nominated for three Academy Awards, an unflinching look at the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the world's indifference to it. So jumping into the middle of the Armenian genocide dispute was not unusual for him. He joked, "If it doesn't cause controversy, what am I doing it for?"
Last year, Terry realized that another picture on the topic was about to be released. The Ottoman Lieutenant has a similar story structure but it presents a sanitized version of the genocide in which the murders of Armenians are not part of a systematic, state-sanctioned policy but random acts of violence committed by rebellious soldiers.
The New York Times reports, "According to several people familiar with the project, Turkish producers oversaw the final cut, without the director's knowledge.
"The people familiar with the project said that tensions emerged on the 'Ottoman' set after producers pushed to minimize depictions of Turkish violence against Armenians. Several people who worked on the project felt that the final version butchered the film artistically, and smacked of denialism: Dialogue that explicitly referred to systematic mass killing had been stripped out."
Writing for The Daily Beast, Michael Daly discovered that one of The Ottoman Lieutenant's producers, "ES Film is based in Istanbul and its co-founders include Yusuf Esenkal, who is said to be a business partner in other ventures with Bilal Erdogan, son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The younger Erdogan has been accused by Russia of trading in oil with ISIS and is being investigated by Italy of laundering massive sums of money there, all of which he has denied."
ES Film also is behind a current TV series that glorifies the life of the last sultan of Turkey, "perpetrator of the first wave of mass killings that were the lead-up to the Armenian genocide."
So suddenly a film appears running counter to The Promise narative, produced by Turks whose motives might be less than pure. (It should be noted that The Promise got most of its funding from the late movie mogul, Armenian-American Kirk Kerkorian).
Then things got even stranger. The Promise premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. After just three screenings, IMDB, the Internet Movie Data Base, was flooded with 85,000 terrible reviews, a statistical impossibility. Only a handful could have seen the film.
As Mary Wald noted at HuffPost: "85,000 is not a few irate people. It is an organized mob. Or more likely a small network on laptops or in a boiler room working to make it look like a mob. Either way it is coordinated. And to coordinate something of this magnitude, you pay for it."
IMDB removed all but the 32 or so reviews that they believed to be legitimate. But that wasn't the end of it. According to Terry George, a similar smear campaign took place on the Turkish version of Twitter and the comment section at YouTube briefly had to be shut down. And he says that in Chicago and other cities large blocks of tickets were bought via the Fandango website and then refunded just before the movie was scheduled to start so that patrons would walk into near-empty theaters.
In the great scheme of things, this may seem like small ball when put up against election hacking, vast troves of leaked documents or taking down an entire national health service, but these insidious tactics add up, pile onto the "fake news" trope and give comfort to the denialists of every stripe. As Mary Wald wrote:
"Governments who are accustomed to controlling the media have put considerable energy into working out how the supposedly open and objective Internet can surreptitiously be harnessed to enforce a political agenda."
That seems to be precisely what the Turkish government and its friends are doing as they continue to resist the reality of the Armenian genocide.
In 2014, Turkish President Erdogan tried to ban Twitter and YouTube, describing social media as a "knife in the hand of a murderer" when it was effectively used to mount protests against him. Now he has a Twitter account all his own and the knife is in his hand as well. Like deniers and haters here and everywhere, he and his allies have come to realize that the Internet, like any weapon, works both ways. It's all about where you aim it.
The Promise opens in Spain next month and in Germany in August, and Terry George wonders whether the hostile reaction will be even more strident in Europe. Whatever happens, "We're in it for the long haul," he said, noting that he intends to utilize social media to generate outreach programs for classrooms that will heighten awareness of a bleak and overlooked time in world history. It's a monstrous tale that must be told wherever it can, on movie screens or in cyberspace, never to be forgotten.
Here's a different kind of story about media and politics.
It demonstrates how the monstrosity of a crime a century old still divides and scorches the world. And it's one more example of how digital technology is changing geopolitics at every level, from interfering with other nation's elections to the current wave of ransomware cyberattacks and even the release of motion pictures.
Last Tuesday, Donald Trump had a chummy meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There was a lot to talk about -- NATO, Syria, ISIS. They also discussed the continued presence in the United States of Fethullah Gulen, the Erdogan foe on whom the Turkish leader blames last summer's failed coup d'etat.
In a Washington Post op-ed just prior to Erdogan's visit, Gulen wrote, "The Turkey that I once knew as a hope-inspiring country on its way to consolidating its democracy and a moderate form of secularism has become the dominion of a president who is doing everything he can to amass power and subjugate dissent."
No wonder Erdogan wants Gulen extradited to Turkey, where he would probably face certain death. So far at least, we have refused to do so. Meanwhile, as Erdogan looked on, his security detail viciously beat protesters outside the Turkish ambassador's residence in Washington.
So given this particular White House, and Trump's expressed admiration for Erdogan, you know that one topic not up for discussion was Erdogan's ever-escalating suppression of human rights, especially in the aftermath of the unsuccessful coup and the recent referendum in which he consolidated even more power.
Here's another forbidden but related subject that wasn't on the agenda: the horrific Armenian genocide committed a century ago by Turkey's Ottoman Empire. Between 1915 and 1922, at least 1.5 million were massacred, some 80 percent of the Armenian population.
Like his predecessors, and unlike the government of Germany after the Holocaust and World War II, Erdogan still refuses to acknowledge what the Turkish government did. Instead, he has admitted that yes, Armenians lost their lives, but as Cara Buckley at The New York Times wrote, "... He implied that they were victims of a war in which all Ottoman citizens had suffered -- rather than the victims of a genocide."
(Although Donald Trump and Barack Obama have condemned the atrocities committed against Armenians, for fear of offending their NATO ally neither used the word "genocide" while president. During the 2008 campaign, Obama pledged he would but never did).
This year, the anniversary of the beginning of the genocide has been marked by the release of two movies, each offering a very different account of what happened. Only one of them is truthful and the response has been both fascinating and troubling.
At the center of all this is the movie The Promise, co-written (with Robin Swicord) and directed by Terry George. It's about a love triangle: an Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac), an American photojournalist (Christian Bale) and a worldly, beautiful Armenian woman (Charlotte Le Bon) with whom both men are involved. As Turkey aligns with Germany during World War I and begins the systematic extermination of ethnic and religious minorities, their romantic rivalry is put aside and the three unite for survival.
In the interest of full disclosure, Terry George and I have known each other for a long time. Last year, he asked me and a few other friends to come screen The Promise while he still was adding the finishing touches. I thought it was terrific then and still do. The movie's an old-fashioned love story in the style of David Lean's Doctor Zhivago or Ryan's Daughter, an epic set against a vast historical landscape devastated by cruelty and bloodshed.
With Jim Sheridan, Terry George wrote the movies In the Name of the Father, Some Mother's Son and The Boxer, all of which dealt with the "troubles" in Northern Ireland. In 2004, Terry directed and co-wrote Hotel Rwanda, nominated for three Academy Awards, an unflinching look at the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the world's indifference to it. So jumping into the middle of the Armenian genocide dispute was not unusual for him. He joked, "If it doesn't cause controversy, what am I doing it for?"
Last year, Terry realized that another picture on the topic was about to be released. The Ottoman Lieutenant has a similar story structure but it presents a sanitized version of the genocide in which the murders of Armenians are not part of a systematic, state-sanctioned policy but random acts of violence committed by rebellious soldiers.
The New York Times reports, "According to several people familiar with the project, Turkish producers oversaw the final cut, without the director's knowledge.
"The people familiar with the project said that tensions emerged on the 'Ottoman' set after producers pushed to minimize depictions of Turkish violence against Armenians. Several people who worked on the project felt that the final version butchered the film artistically, and smacked of denialism: Dialogue that explicitly referred to systematic mass killing had been stripped out."
Writing for The Daily Beast, Michael Daly discovered that one of The Ottoman Lieutenant's producers, "ES Film is based in Istanbul and its co-founders include Yusuf Esenkal, who is said to be a business partner in other ventures with Bilal Erdogan, son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The younger Erdogan has been accused by Russia of trading in oil with ISIS and is being investigated by Italy of laundering massive sums of money there, all of which he has denied."
ES Film also is behind a current TV series that glorifies the life of the last sultan of Turkey, "perpetrator of the first wave of mass killings that were the lead-up to the Armenian genocide."
So suddenly a film appears running counter to The Promise narative, produced by Turks whose motives might be less than pure. (It should be noted that The Promise got most of its funding from the late movie mogul, Armenian-American Kirk Kerkorian).
Then things got even stranger. The Promise premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. After just three screenings, IMDB, the Internet Movie Data Base, was flooded with 85,000 terrible reviews, a statistical impossibility. Only a handful could have seen the film.
As Mary Wald noted at HuffPost: "85,000 is not a few irate people. It is an organized mob. Or more likely a small network on laptops or in a boiler room working to make it look like a mob. Either way it is coordinated. And to coordinate something of this magnitude, you pay for it."
IMDB removed all but the 32 or so reviews that they believed to be legitimate. But that wasn't the end of it. According to Terry George, a similar smear campaign took place on the Turkish version of Twitter and the comment section at YouTube briefly had to be shut down. And he says that in Chicago and other cities large blocks of tickets were bought via the Fandango website and then refunded just before the movie was scheduled to start so that patrons would walk into near-empty theaters.
In the great scheme of things, this may seem like small ball when put up against election hacking, vast troves of leaked documents or taking down an entire national health service, but these insidious tactics add up, pile onto the "fake news" trope and give comfort to the denialists of every stripe. As Mary Wald wrote:
"Governments who are accustomed to controlling the media have put considerable energy into working out how the supposedly open and objective Internet can surreptitiously be harnessed to enforce a political agenda."
That seems to be precisely what the Turkish government and its friends are doing as they continue to resist the reality of the Armenian genocide.
In 2014, Turkish President Erdogan tried to ban Twitter and YouTube, describing social media as a "knife in the hand of a murderer" when it was effectively used to mount protests against him. Now he has a Twitter account all his own and the knife is in his hand as well. Like deniers and haters here and everywhere, he and his allies have come to realize that the Internet, like any weapon, works both ways. It's all about where you aim it.
The Promise opens in Spain next month and in Germany in August, and Terry George wonders whether the hostile reaction will be even more strident in Europe. Whatever happens, "We're in it for the long haul," he said, noting that he intends to utilize social media to generate outreach programs for classrooms that will heighten awareness of a bleak and overlooked time in world history. It's a monstrous tale that must be told wherever it can, on movie screens or in cyberspace, never to be forgotten.
"All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master."
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said during his address at an annual gathering of global elites on Wednesday that the world's addiction to fossil fuels has become an all-consuming "Frankenstein monster" imperiling hopes of a livable future.
"All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master. We just endured the hottest year and the hottest decade in history," Guterres said to the audience gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"A number of financial institutions and industries are backtracking on climate commitments," Guterres continued. "Here at Davos, I want to say loudly and clearly: It is short-sighted. And paradoxically, it is selfish and also self-defeating. You are on the wrong side of history. You are on the wrong side of science. And you are on the wrong side of consumers who are looking for more sustainability, not less. This warning certainly also applies to the fossil fuel industry and advertising, lobbying, and PR companies who are aiding, abetting, and greenwashing."
"Global heating is racing forward—we cannot afford to move backward," he added.
Guterres' remarks came as President Donald Trump, a fervent ally of the fossil fuel industry, took office in the U.S.—the largest historical emitter—and moved immediately to expand oil and gas production, which was already at record levels.
The U.S. is among a number of rich nations working to build out fossil fuel infrastructure and ramp up production in the face of runaway warming and worsening climate destruction across the globe.
Intensifying climate chaos—and global elites' disproportionate contributions to the planetary crisis—spurred several protests inside and near the Davos forum this week, with activists demanding higher taxes on the mega-rich and a rapid, just transition to renewable energy.
A climate protester calls for taxes on the rich during the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland on January 21, 2025. (Photo: Halil Sagirkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images)
"It is more than obvious that the super-rich must pay their fair share," Clara Thompson, a Greenpeace spokesperson in Davos, said earlier this week. "Especially when they are among the largest contributors to the climate crisis."
"It shouldn't be the people, already struggling to make ends meet, who have to foot the bill and suffer the consequences of worsening climate impacts," Thompson added. "The scarcity narrative is simply not true—there is enough money to fund a just and green future for all but it is just in the wrong pockets."
"In the coming months and years, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Donald Trump makes. Our job is to stay focused on the issues that are of importance to the working families of our country."
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump posed in a garbage truck and performed a staged shift at a McDonald's as he postured as a champion of the working class.
But Trump "ignored virtually every important issue facing the working families of this country" during his inaugural address, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted Tuesday in video remarks recorded after he attended the event, which was packed with prominent billionaires and corporate executives—some of whom the president has chosen to serve in his Cabinet.
"How crazy is that? Our healthcare system is dysfunctional and it's wildly expensive," said Sanders. "Not one word from Trump about how he is going to address the healthcare crisis. We pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs—sometimes 10 times more than the people in other countries, and one out of four Americans are unable to afford the prescriptions that their doctors prescribe. Not one word in his speech on the high cost of prescription drugs."
"We have 800,000 Americans who are homeless and millions and millions of people spending 50 or 60% of their limited income on housing. We have a major housing crisis in America, everybody knows it—and Trump in his inaugural address did not devote one word to it," Sanders continued. "Today in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had... but Trump had nothing to say, not one word, about the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else."
Watch Sanders' full remarks:
Upon taking office, Trump immediately launched sweeping attacks on immigrant families, the environment, and the federal workforce, with more expected in the near future.
Trump also rolled back a Biden executive order aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.
In his remarks on Tuesday, Sanders said that "in the coming months and years, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Donald Trump makes."
"Our job is to stay focused on the issues that are of importance to the working families of our country, and are in fact widely supported by the American people," said Sanders, pointing to broad backing for guaranteeing healthcare to all as a right, slashing drug prices, tackling the housing crisis, raising the long-stagnant federal minimum wage, and taking bold action against the climate emergency.
"No matter how many executive orders he signs and no matter how many absurd statements he makes, our goal remains the same," the senator added. "We have got to educate, we have got to organize, we have got to put pressure on Congress to do the right things."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," said one mother whose daughter died after being denied care under Georgia's six-week ban.
Congresswoman Nikema Williams joined patients, healthcare providers, and activists—including the mother of a woman who died after being refused abortion care in Georgia—at a Tuesday press conference held a day before what would have been the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and amid fears of a national abortion ban during U.S. President Donald Trump's second term.
"I refuse to stand by while extremist politicians attack our freedoms, our health, and our future," Williams (D-Ga.) told attendees of the virtual press conference, which was hosted by the abortion rights group Free & Just. "Reproductive freedom is about healthcare, it's about dignity, it's about autonomy. It's about ensuring that everyone, every person, has the ability to make the best decisions for themselves and their families without government interference."
Speakers at Tuesday's event included Shanette Williams, whose 28-year-old daughter Amber Nicole Thurman died in 2022 after being forced to travel out of state to seek care due to a recently passed Georgia law banning almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a period during which many people don't even know they're pregnant.
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice."
Thurman, who was the single mother of a young son, is one of at least several U.S. women—most of them Black or brown—whose deaths have been attributed to draconian anti-abortion laws.
"She left a son, who every day is confused by why his mother is not here," Williams said of her daughter. "I'm here to be that voice, to fight, to push, to do whatever I need to do to help save another life. Because I never want a mother to feel what I feel today."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," Williams added. "In November, following reporting from ProPublica, officials in Georgia dismissed all members of the state's Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which investigates the deaths of pregnant women across the state."
Last September, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney struck down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that made the procedure legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
Avery Davis Bell, a Savannah mother who had to travel out of Georgia for care after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition that threatened her own life as well, said during Tuesday's press conference: "I could have been Amber Nicole Thurman. It is important for me to continue sharing my story and advocating for us to be able to build the families we want, protect our lives, and be here for our living children."
Atlanta-area ultrasound technician and abortion care provider Suki O. said during the event that Georgia's ban "has been in place for three years now and it doesn't get any easier."
"To turn women away is the hardest thing for me to do," she added. "How many Black women will die, have died, and will continue to die due to these abortion bans?"
Davan'te Jennings, president of Young Democrats of Georgia and youth organizing director at Men4Choice, told the press conference that abortion "is not just a women's issue, this is a man's issue as well."
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice," Jennings added. "What would it look like for you to have to watch your mother go through this? To watch your sister go through this?"
While Trump has said he would veto any national abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, reproductive rights advocates have expressed doubt that the president—a well-documented liar—would actually do so, and warned that his administration could use a 151-year-old law known as the Comstock Act to outlaw the procedure without needing congressional approval.
Critics also note that Trump has repeatedly bragged about appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 decision that canceled nearly a half-century of federal abortion rights.
The Trump administration is also widely expected to revive the so-called Global Gag Rule, which bans foreign nongovernmental organizations from performing or promoting abortion care using funds from any source, if they receive funds from the U.S. government for family planning activities.
Conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation-led coalition behind Project 2025—a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government—have proposed policies including a national abortion ban, restricting access to birth control, defunding Planned Parenthood, monitoring and tracking pregnancy and abortion data, and eviscerating federal protections for lifesaving emergency abortion care.
While campaigning for president, Trump said he would allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 12 states currently have near-total abortion bans, and 29 states have enacted prohibitions based on gestational duration.