Open Newswire

Journalists covering the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran should be telling their audiences not only what they know but what they were prevented from finding out, and by whom. That doesn’t just mean an occasional editorial bemoaning threats to press freedom. Those are valuable, but on their own, they turn speech suppression into a side issue. The reporting itself should include acknowledgment and explanation of how censorship impacts what the public sees and reads.The censorship infrastructure surrounding this war is extraordinary. On the American side, self-proclaimed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has virtually eliminated press access to the military and limited press credentialing to journalists who pledge to remain official stenographers. As a result of his policy, the press corps covering the Pentagon is composed of Trump-aligned outlets like One America News, Turning Point USA’s Frontlines, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s LindellTV streaming service.It’s arguably not the worst outcome for serious reporters to get their time back so they can dig through public records instead of listening to Hegseth’s lies and weird pep talks. But if they try, they’re sure to run into problems caused by the Trump administration’s widespread gutting of public records and transparency mechanisms, elimination of government websites, and blatant noncompliance with the Freedom of Information Act.Some of the same outlets excluded from the Pentagon are likely to face harassment from Brendan Carr’s Federal Communications Commission and others within the administration eager to use their leverage over corporate transactions to deter criticism. Trump has claimed that kitchen cabinets threaten national security during peacetime — imagine what he’ll say about investigative journalism while at war. The administration’s war on leaks is sure to accelerate as whistleblowers seek to expose the embarrassing mistakes and awful human rights abuses that the war is almost certain to bring. After the raid of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home over her source’s alleged Espionage Act violations, further intrusions on newsgathering seem inevitable. Trump has reportedly been looking for an opportunity to take it one step further and prosecute a journalist under the same archaic law.The congressional subpoena of journalist Seth Harp, for identifying a military official leading Trump’s attack on Venezuela, likely foreshadows what’s to come for journalists who publish news the administration seeks to conceal about the war.The administration’s efforts to distort the concept of “doxxing” to criminalize reporting on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s abduction spree may prove to have been a practice run for tactics to silence war correspondents. President Donald Trump has claimed that kitchen cabinets threaten national security during peacetime — imagine what he’ll say about investigative journalism while at war.Attacks that don’t silence critics directly are apt to lead to self-censorship. Sources won’t come forward at risk of federal investigation. Corporate news moguls will tone down their coverage to avoid government threats to their more lucrative holdings. Smaller outlets and independent journalists will hesitate to risk incurring life-altering legal fees.Sure, some journalists and whistleblowers are courageous enough to risk everything to tell the truth, but we shouldn’t be dependent on heroism for uncensored reporting.On the Israeli side, the censorship is often even more direct. Israel’s military censor, which reportedly banned publication of 1,635 articles and partially censored another 6,265 in 2024, will be back at it — likely emboldened by U.S. backsliding under Trump. Journalists who disobey the censor — which also prohibits them from reporting they’ve been silenced — risk arrest.Stories that aren’t killed by the censor are deterred with the threat of being blown to bits. Israel has systematically targeted news outlets and individual journalists in Gaza, as well as Iran. There’s no reason to assume Iran will be any different — an Iranian state media complex has reportedly already been bombed. Add to that the “accidental” killings of journalists resulting from unwillingness to take basic measures to protect civilians.And then there’s Iran itself, which, to paraphrase Hegseth, didn’t start this war but is sure going to censor it. The remnants of the regime are likely to lash out to violently stifle all sorts of dissent, including journalism that doesn’t parrot their narratives. Stories that aren’t killed by the censor are deterred with the threat of being blown to bits. Iran — which ranked 176th out of 180 on Reporters Without Borders’ global Press Freedom Index last year — is intolerant of adversarial journalism during peacetime and will surely escalate censorship now, as we saw during the Israel-Iran war last year.Since the start of the current war, Iran has already blacked out phone and internet access, as it did during its horrifically violent suppression of January’s uprisings. It will almost certainly continue to do so, thereby severely limiting the information that comes out of the war’s primary battleground, and leaving journalists and news consumers to gauge the credibility of competing government narratives.None of this is unprecedented in isolation — the George W. Bush administration used highly restricted embed access in Iraq as a propaganda tool, subpoenaed reporters, and floated prosecuting them under the Espionage Act. The Obama administration pursued more Espionage Act cases against whistleblowers than all prior administrations combined. The Biden administration extracted a plea deal from Julian Assange over WikiLeaks’ exposure of Iraq war crimes. But all of that is going to be on steroids now, in terms of both scale and brazenness.Journalists will find a way to report the news and investigate government abuses and lies, despite it all. Lawyers and activists will do what they can to help. But it’s unrealistic to expect reporters to overcome this multipronged attack entirely.What they can and should do, even if it feels awkward, is let the public in on the obstacles they are dealing with and how the lack of reliable information during modern conflicts harms us all, allowing politicians to lie their way into wars that enrich their friends while killing schoolchildren.If reporters are going to quote Pentagon spokespeople or news releases, the public deserves to know who the reporter was not allowed to interview and what documents they were not permitted to review. It’s vital context without which the reporting is arguably misleading. And reporters from the U.S. — which is somehow still the least censored of the three main parties to this war — may be the only ones who can provide it.It might not fix the secrecy surrounding this war, but it could lead to greater demand for transparency and greater skepticism of official narratives in the run-up to the next “forever war.” Maybe it could even help avoid the next one altogether.

"La conclusión que se impone es sencilla: no habrá fin de la opresión de género sin fin del capitalismo", escribe Lucía Casado. La entrada Contra el machismo y el fascismo, las mujeres trabajadoras a primera línea se publicó primero en lamarea.com.

FRANKFORT — A Republican committee chair defended making it harder for Kentuckians to be heard in utility regulatory cases by blaming “outside groups” for causing delays, an apparent reference to debunked claims that Russia has funded the Sierra Club through a third-party foundation. “Russia and China have gone through other organizations to fund groups that […]

گفت‌وگوی صدای آمریکا با ساریت زهاوی، سرهنگ دوم (ذخیره)، مؤسس و رئیس آلما (مؤسسه اسرائیلی متخصص در چالش‌های امنیتی در امتداد مرز لبنان) با سابقه ۱۵ سال خدمت در بخش اطلاعات ارتش اسرائیل.

Six Daxbot robots study sidewalks and trails in Burleson as part of an American with Disabilities Act assessment.

"Si alguien cree que EE. UU. o Israel quieren defender a las mujeres musulmanas, la democracia o los DDHH, sólo tiene que preguntarse por qué no bombardean Arabia Saudí", analiza Arantxa Tirado. La entrada La guerra contra Irán y el derecho a la legítima defensa se publicó primero en lamarea.com.

Francia ha reclamado al Gobierno de Netanyahu que evite una ofensiva terrestre y que proteja a la población civil, en un contexto de creciente riesgo de expansión regional vinculado al conflicto con Irán.

Albares rechaza “tajantemente” que Gobierno vaya a “cooperar militarmente” con EE UU después de las amenazas de Trump de cortar todo el comercio con España por su rechazo a facilitar el uso de las bases militares en la operación contra Irán.

United Way of Tarrant County is hosting its 16th community tax assistance event with free resources and financial counseling to community members.

Mounting pressure from party leaders to drop out before a key deadline this week.

Two bills seek to regulate hidden fees and predatory sales tactics.

Fermandarîya Navendî ya Amerîkayê (CENTCOM) bersiva nûçeyên şaş ên Komara Îslamî ya Îranê da. CENTCOMê roja Çarşemê raportên rejîma Îranê yên ku dibêjin hêzên Amerîkî vedikişin an keştîyek Amerîkî binav kirine, red kirin. Her wiha îdî'ayên Pasdaran ên ku dibêjin wan balafireke şer a Amerîkî xistiye xwarê, an jî ku rejîm dibêje wan 100 leşkerên deryayî yên Amerîkî kuştine, red dike. CENTCOM dibêje ku ev hemû derew in. Li şûna nûçeyên şaş, CENTCOM rastiyên jêrîn ragihandin: Hêzên Amerîkî...

Tras los ataques de Estados Unidos contra Irán ordenados por el presidente Donald Trump, se ha reavivado el debate sobre el alcance de los poderes de...

A few moments of controversy have touched an otherwise sleepy, wide open race to be California’s next governor.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.Tennessee Republicans continue to advance legislation that would require public schools track and report the immigration status of their students despite heated pushback from local educators. House Bill 793 would require schools to start tracking and reporting anonymized data on students’ immigration status as early as next school year.But an amendment filed Wednesday indicates a controversial 2025 effort to either block undocumented students from enrolling in K-12 schools or charge their families tuition is dead for the year. Bill sponsors previously wanted to use the legislation as a vehicle to challenge the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe that protects access to public education for undocumented students.Senate Republicans passed Senate Bill 836, the bill to charge tuition, last spring (Tennessee has two-year legislative sessions). But its House companion bill stalled amid bipartisan concerns that it could have jeopardized more than $1 billion in federal education funding. House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Republican from Portland who sponsors the HB 793, has repeatedly said he was in discussions with the U.S. Department of Education for further guidance on the bill, including a guarantee it wouldn’t jeopardize Tennessee’s federal funding. That guidance has not materialized, even after Republican leadership said it had worked closely with the Trump White House to develop a hardline immigration package this year. Lamberth has instead dialed back the bill to a documentation bill at odds with the Senate version. “We’ve sent several questions to them to try to get answers to a very straightforward question: Would the bill in the previous form endanger $1.1 billion? We have not been given a guarantee that it would not,” Lamberth said. HB 793 passed out of a House finance subcommittee on Wednesday and is now headed for a hearing in the full committee next week..subtext-iframe{max-width:540px;}iframe#subtext_embed{width:1px;min-width:100%;min-height:256px;}fetch("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alpha-group/iframe-resizer/master/js/iframeResizer.min.js").then(function(r){return r.text();}).then(function(t){return new Function(t)();}).then(function(){iFrameResize({heightCalculationMethod:"lowestElement"},"#subtext_embed");});The new House bill requires Tennessee public schools to collect documentation on either a student’s citizenship or immigration status. Schools would then be required to report that anonymized data to the Tennessee Department of Education, legislative leaders, and the Tennessee Immigration Enforcement office. That sparked concerns from some immigration advocates about data privacy.It’s not yet clear if Senate Republicans would agree to changes to the bill. But even dialing back the legislation to a documentation effort could lead to a legal challenge to Plyer. In 2012, a federal appeals court ruled a similar Alabama law requiring schools to check students’ immigration status when they enrolled was unconstitutional. Tennessee educators have criticized the legislation, decrying it as both unfair to children and an impractical logistical burden to place on schools whose resources are already stretched thin. The bipartisan Knox County Board of Education late last year voted to formally oppose immigration documentation requirements. On Wednesday, Knox County Board Member Katherine Bike testified against the legislation in a committee room packed with protesters.Bike cited a report released this week by the Immigration Research Initiative that estimated requiring Tennessee schools to verify and track the status of 963,000 students could cost the state up to $55 million and require hundreds of new school employees. The legislature’s fiscal analysis has not determined an estimated cost to local districts. However, the state’s documentation requirements for its recently implemented voucher program, which does not accept undocumented immigrants, show verifying special immigration status such as specialized visa documentation can be complex.“Where are we going to come up with this money? Is that our special education services that are going to be cut ? Is that our Student Support department, our security budget?” Bike asked. “Where is it going to come from? We always make do but don’t make us do this. I urge you to vote no on this harmful bill.”Meanwhile, a separate bill that could also require student tracking is progressing through the General Assembly. House Bill 1711 is set up as a trigger bill, meaning it would not be enforced unless the Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe ruling is overturned.A Wednesday committee vote on HB 1711 was delayed until next week. Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

COLUMBIA — Sgt. Warren Cavanagh still remembers every smell, sound, and gun shot from Dec. 16, 2011. That’s the day his police dog Fargo was shot and killed by an armed robbery suspect, the Richland County Sheriff’s officer told a House panel Wednesday. Cavanagh said he sat with his beloved dog in the back of […]

Award-winning author Eva Hornung’s time-travelling new novel explores Australia’s tensions around land ownership and belonging.

Iowa House lawmakers unanimously approved legislation Wednesday that would provide certain military members with a waiver for their public university education. House File 2491 would require the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa to waive tuition and mandatory fees for veterans with a “permanent service-connected disability rating” of 100%, […]

In the midst of a debate to regulate kratom in Utah, a lawmaker made the bold choice to suggest replacing the entire bill for the scripture responsible for most Latter-day Saints skipping coffee, tea and alcohol, known in the faith as the Word of Wisdom. Arguing that allowed substances like alcohol and tobacco can be […]

Şeva Çarşemê, êrîşek li ser baregeha Komeleya Zehmetkêşên Kurdistanê li Sûrdeşê ya nêzîkî Silêmanîyê, hatiye kirin. Emced Hisên Panahî, endamê Komeleya Zehmetkêşên Kurdistanê, êrîşe bo Dengê Amerîka piştrast kir û got, “Êrîş bi mûşekan rasterast li ser çeperên me yên Pêşmerge hatiye kirin." Wî got, "Me berî niha û ji ber gefên êrîşan çeperên xwe vala kiribûn, ji ber vê yekê ti qurbanî çênebûn." Di dema êrîşên Amerîka û Îsraîlê yên dijî rejîma Îranê de, Îranê gelek caran baregehên partîyên...