This article is part of our series on the ‘Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse.’ With several weeks left in the 2026 midterm elections, we believe this is the moment to capture the damage the Trump administration has inflicted throughout the U.S. and the world – and profile some of the people most responsible. Read Part 1 here. The only way we can report original, long-form stories like these is with your support. Support independent media in this new age of American authoritarianism. – Mehdi

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In the days before the 2020 election, a group of Donald Trump supporters surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas, seemingly trying to force it off the road.

“We love what they did, but here’s the thing they don’t know,” Marco Rubio said shortly after. “We do that in Florida every day.”

It was one of several moments that revealed how the Florida senator was changing.

“That was not who I thought I knew – who I always thought was really respectful of democracy, and worked well with Democrats,” a former Rubio Senate staffer tells Zeteo. “Being flippant about some of these things that either were, or were adjacent to, political violence… this crossed the line, for me anyway.”

Others saw something else.

“That’s typical Marco Rubio, trying to get something positive out of it, because he knows deep down that was wrong,” Mike Fasano, a former Florida state legislator who served alongside Rubio, says with a chuckle. “Marco Rubio has still a great future in his political life – and I can understand why he says some of the things he says, because I’ve seen firsthand how you get elected. You have to appease the primary voter.”

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One of the most successful Republicans in the modern era, Rubio has consistently meant different things to different people. He has climbed from a state legislature, to the U.S. Senate, to one of the most powerful offices in the world, leading the State Department in Trump’s second administration.

Rubio rose on the strength of his backstory, the son of Cuban exiles. He was seen as a conservative but reasonable Republican, a supporter of immigration reform, free speech, human rights, and foreign aid as soft power. That’s all changed.

It is a feature of the Trump era that most Republicans have put aside supposed morals and beliefs in order to maintain – or gain – power. Perhaps none have debased themselves as conspicuously, thoroughly, and successfully as Rubio.

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Justin Baragona here. In tonight’s edition, our lede story is so packed with news and juicy details that we decided to devote the entire newsletter to it. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

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Inside the ‘Crazy Bonkers’ CBS London All-Hands

I’ve reported extensively on Bari Weiss’s year-long reign of terror atop CBS News. I’ve heard about newsroom clashes with Weiss and her deputies, and concerns over the David Ellison-installed leadership injecting their pro-Israel and other biases into the network’s coverage.

But what I heard on audio I obtained from yesterday’s “crazy bonkers” editorial meeting at the CBS London bureau in the aftermath of press coverage of the network’s handling of an Oct. 7 story is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. You won’t believe what she said about Benjamin Netanyahu, or what she called the Palestinian death toll in Gaza. She also had a blunt warning for staffers who cross her.

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We’re just two days away from a special LIVE taping of Zeteo’s flagship ‘We’re Not Kidding’ podcast with Mehdi Hasan and acclaimed Palestinian-American comedian and actor Mo Amer.

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The two are taking the stage this Friday at Houston’s Cullen Performance Hall for a night full of laughs and important political and social commentary. Thanks to your enthusiastic response, this event is now sold out. BUT there’s still a chance for you to stream the conversation LIVE, including an audience Q&A session with Mehdi and Mo.

PLUS, tune in for a special one-on-one conversation with Mehdi and Texas Rep. Greg Casar, who will also be taking audience questions.

Events like this are made possible by your support, so we’re thanking our paid subscribers with exclusive access to the livestream:

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If you’re a free subscriber, now’s the perfect time to upgrade to watch the livestream, get early access to future events, and never hit a paywall on any of Zeteo’s award-winning content ever again!

Special thanks to the Risala Foundation for sponsoring this live event.

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Good morning. Martin and Swin here, writing up another utterly bizarre day in Donald Trump’s DC. Martin at least is old enough to have already been quite old 10 years ago, when Sean Spicer kicked off the world of weird that is Trump press secretaries, their press conferences, and their relationships with both reporters and the basic concept of truth. There have been some doozies, but it seems that under new pick Katie Zacharia, things are about to get stranger still.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we take a look at Zacharia’s terrible, no good, absolutely horrible first press briefing and the gathering fallout from it. We also consider new steps in Trump’s shamelessly political investigation of Ilhan Omar, and take in developments in the illegal Iran War and on the midterms trail. In and on we go.

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‘She’s Flopping’

Speaking to reporters before leaving the White House for Alaska, Donald Trump said he thought his new press secretary, ex-Fox talking head and ardent hate, conspiracy, and extremism monger Katie Zacharia, was “very good” in her first briefing, which concluded not long before.

Safe to say, few reporters or pundits shared the president’s confidence. In barely 15 minutes at the briefing room podium, Zacharia read extremely haltingly from notes, head down, then took very few questions, calling only on right-wing sources: Breitbart, Fox, and the Daily Mail.

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She failed to give an answer on whether the U.S. was still sharing intelligence with Ukraine. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” she said. A softball about doing her job as a mother of four produced a flub, referring to “My president, excuse me, my husband. That’s a good one.” That at least raised a laugh. Another question produced hard news, Zacharia saying, “We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” meaning envoy to Greece (and former Donald Trump Jr. fiancée) Kimberly Guilfoyle, who has been caught up in corruption allegations. That made an impact, but Zacharia blurted on for a bit about learning about work-life balance from predecessor Karoline Leavitt, voice shaking all the while, and then was outta there pronto.

It wasn’t just pundits who piled onto the airwaves to voice their astonishment. Swin admits he had not realized Zacharia was taking her bow, what with having been buried in projects including a lengthy profile of White House Wormtongue Stephen Miller.

Getting very annoyed at the sound of his phone constantly dinging, Swin finally took a swift look. Republican operatives, Trump advisers, and administration officials were blowing up the phone, panning Zacharia’s performance.

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This week, we are launching our series on the ‘Four Horsemen of the Trump-ocalypse.’ With several weeks left in the 2026 midterm elections, we believe this is the moment to capture the damage the Trump administration has inflicted throughout the U.S. and the world – and profile some of the people most responsible. The only way we can report original, long-form stories like these is with your support. This is why we all need to support independent media, in this new age of American authoritarianism. – Mehdi

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The United States is now run by someone whose critics and victims routinely dub an American “psycho,” a man who revels in the pain and suffering of his enemies and his prey. Indeed, many of his allies, and his past and present colleagues, would describe him using precisely the same word.

We are, of course, talking about Stephen Miller, not his boss, Donald Trump.

Miller, who serves as Trump’s top policy architect and one of the president’s most committed loyalists, doesn’t care about human life the way you or I do, former and current Trump administration officials who’ve worked with him tell Zeteo. Several of these sources actually quite like Miller. Still, the degree to which Miller does not care about – or at least tolerates – the loss of human lives in the pursuit of his and President Trump’s policy vision has unnerved, or disturbed, some of his Republican colleagues, multiple Trump advisers and U.S. government officials recount.

Some of his associates in and close to the administration even accuse him of intentionally trying to push major U.S. cities to riot, to create a pretext for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, an early 19th-century law, so that he could send thousands of active-duty and National Guard troops to fully occupy those urban areas. One source directly familiar with Miller’s private deliberations tells Zeteo: “Stephen wanted to provoke a very strong response, so that the president would deploy troops.”

It has been just under two years since Trump won the presidency for the second time, and the scale of democratic backsliding, rampant corruption, and sheer violence unleashed on this continent and others is remarkably difficult to tabulate. The administration has normalized putting troops in the streets; deploying masked, violent immigration agents to kidnap and intimidate and kill people; punishing immigrants, including many with a legal right to be here, by shipping them to dangerous countries, including places where they have no ties, simply to be cruel; murdering supposed drug smugglers with regularity in international waters; tearing apart the core constitutional right to due process at every opportunity, so that people can’t challenge the government’s claims against them before they are removed or killed; politicizing every lever of the government so that it targets their enemies, and only their enemies, as part of a swarming attack on Democrats and the left and liberal nonprofit and political infrastructure; actively ignoring the First Amendment; spewing the most blatant kinds of racism from the White House, including at Somali Americans and Haitians; plotting in broad daylight to rig elections and subvert the American democratic order; and so, so much more.

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On Trump’s behalf, Miller has overseen, or orchestrated, all of it. He has led Trump’s deportation operations and the president’s efforts to target and selectively prosecute his enemies at an intensely granular level. That includes overseeing what a Trump adviser described to Zeteo as the administration’s “Must Deport list.” When Miller has discussed behind closed doors the administration’s deportations to third-countries (where the immigrants have no ties), he has explicitly said that it is better to strike those agreements with nations with lousy human rights records – in part because those regimes often do what they’re told by the United States, sources who’ve been in the room with him say.

It is impossible to come to any other conclusion: At almost every single meaningful turn of the second Trump era, the president’s lead policy author has sought to make the government’s crackdowns more painful, and less humane, for its countless dragnet victims and their families.

Let that be his, and his boss’s, legacy – and perhaps their undoing.

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And it was a disaster of a debut. Zacharia ended the briefing after about 15 minutes, only having answered three questions and accidentally calling her husband “my president.” Yikes.

But her abysmal performance isn’t the most concerning thing about her.

And as mainstream media is already normalizing her as the newest voice of the Trump administration, Zeteo is not.

So here are seven things you need to know about Katie Zacharia, the newest insane member of this insane administration:

1. She promotes QAnon conspiracy theories about pedophilia rings

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New York City was thrust into the spotlight overnight, exposing the deep political rifts and widespread anxieties gripping the nation as a whole.

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In his latest book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Anand Giridharadas takes a deep dive into what exactly happened in that subway car and what it reveals about the greater character of American politics as we know it today.

“We have lived in a climate over the last 11 years in which there’s a tremendous amount of messaging we are all absorbing creating a permission structure for DIY violence. So I wanted to understand what we could see about ourselves if we looked more closely in that subway car,” he tells Mehdi.

While people from all walks of life were present in that subway car, Giridharadas points to a shared feeling of “abandonment,” which he calls “the defining political emotion of our time.”

But how did we get here exactly? And why has this shared feeling of abandonment divided us more than united us?

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In this 38-minute conversation, Mehdi gets to the bottom of these pressing questions and what they mean for the midterms and the 2028 presidential election looming ahead.

Paid subscribers can watch the full interview above, while free subscribers can access a five-minute preview. Consider upgrading your subscription to never hit a Zeteo paywall again!

And be sure to check out Giridharadas’s latest book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City. If you’ve already read it, feel free to share your review of the book in the comments below!

Looking for more book recommendations? Visit the Zeteo book club here for inspiration!

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Good morning all, and welcome to Tuesday’s ‘First Draft.’ It’s our first newsletter of the week because Monday was the Indigenous Peoples’ Day holiday, but it wasn’t a quiet day for news.

Before dawn, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the DC home of Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, as part of a criminal investigation into her immigration status. Transparently political, utterly hypocritical, and close to high-stakes elections, it was the act of an openly fascist regime.

Elsewhere, the man at the top of that regime, Donald Trump, did his best to help Kansas Senator Roger Marshall, whose actions as a doctor who had his own patients arrested are dragging him towards a surprise midterms defeat. Trump’s illegal Iran war, of course, dragged on. Let’s read in.

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‘Promise Made, Promise Kept’

Rep. Ilhan Omar came to the U.S. from Somalia as a refugee in the mid-1990s. More than 25 years ago, when she was still a child, just shy of 18, her father filed for U.S. citizenship.

Elon Musk, the SpaceX billionaire, Twitter owner, champion of the global far-right, and GOP megadonor ($276 million and counting in these midterms alone), also came to the U.S. from Africa in the mid-1990s. In 2013, in an interview at the Milken Institute, his brother Kimbal Musk said that at the start of their careers in U.S. tech the two South Africans “were illegal immigrants.” Elon Musk protested, “I’d say it was a gray area.” Kimbal Musk repeated: “Yes, we were.” Reporting by outlets including the Washington Post – headline, “Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally” – seems to have backed up Kimbal’s claim.

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On Monday, before dawn, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a home in Washington, DC. Guess the owner.

Omar has long been the target of foul racist invective from Donald Trump and MAGA, who reserve particularly disgusting animus for Somali Americans, as demonstrated just last week by the president’s clear call for racial violence ahead of the midterm elections. For years, Trump has attacked Omar in terms notably stringent even compared to attacks on other prominent progressive women of color, stoking right-wing conspiracy theories about her immigration status and threatening to deport her.

But Trump has also mused about deporting Musk. In July last year, as the two men feuded following Musk’s time leading Trump’s DOGE attack on the federal government, and Musk’s consequent threat to expose Trump’s links to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump told reporters “We’ll have to take a look” at deporting Musk, thereby sending him “home to South Africa.”

So, who got raided? Hint: It’s not the guy who was also pals with Jeffrey Epstein.

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Paid Zeteo subscribers can watch this episode in full, but to access all of Zeteo UK’s shows and essays, as well as Zeteo content, going forward, do consider upgrading to our much cheaper bundle option today.

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In just eight years since Misan Harriman took up photography, his photos have become some of the most iconic images of global protest movements from Black Lives Matter to climate change, LGBTQ+ and pro-Palestine rallies. In August 2020, he made history as the first Black male photographer to shoot a cover for British Vogue.

And in this episode of ‘Sangita Meets…’, Misan speaks to Sangita Myska about what drove him to pick up the camera. “Watching somebody that looks like me, George Floyd, lying in his own piss, asking for his mama, while still calling the men who had [a knee] on his neck, sir, as he left his mortal coil … The choice was already made for me,” he says.

In this personal and in-depth interview, Sangita also asks Misan – who has taken intimate portraits of Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and their children – about how the British media has treated the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. “There is a healthy dose of good old fashioned misogyny, misogynoir, racism,” he says. “It’s a combination of greed as well because…that hate sells. It feeds an algorithm that’s designed for that.”

Misan also opens up on:

• The “poison pen” of the press and its culpability in the tragic suicide death of Cambridge Professor Jason Arday, following what critics call a relentless, and often racist, media frenzy over his academic record

• The vicious online campaign against him over his support for Gaza and criticisms of Israel (“The forensic scraping of any story posts, any collabs, any shares … It means that they would have seen my advocacy with multiple Jewish groups.”)

• How he responds to criticisms that he’s part of the British elite

• What it feels like to have someone else tell his own story, in the documentary about his life, ‘Shoot the People’.

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“The original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth.”

That’s how the White House lauded none other than Christopher Columbus in Donald Trump’s official proclamation last year to rename the second Monday in October ‘Columbus Day.’

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The holiday has become one of Trump’s obsessions on his anti-woke warpath, as he declared last year that he would bring it “back from the ashes.” It’s a direct attack on efforts to rename it “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” in recognition of the natives who suffered at the hands of colonists’ violence.

But while Trump attempts to sanitize the person behind this day, there is no running away from the horrible record Columbus holds. Facts, after all, don’t care about your feelings, right?

So here’s a list of seven shocking things you may not know about Christopher Columbus:

1. Columbus didn’t actually discover anything new

Surprise!

While history textbooks often credit Columbus as the first European to reach or ‘discover’ the Americas, the truth is that it was actually ‘discovered’ by Europeans about 500 years before Columbus even set sail. And that’s even if we entertain the idea that nothing existed until a European ‘discovered’ it.

Around 1,000 CE, Viking explorer Leif Erikson was blown off course en route to Greenland, instead arriving in North America. There, he established a settlement called “Vinland,” which is now recognized as Newfoundland, Canada.

But what about the United States? Well, Columbus never actually set foot on North American soil, with Oct. 12 instead marking the day Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas.

So much fuss for a guy who didn’t actually ‘discover’ North America.

2. Columbus set the transatlantic slave trade into motion

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From the numbers alone, intense public antipathy for Donald Trump’s economic record makes no sense. Our economy has not crashed.

Unemployment, which measured 4.2% in September, remains well below the 21st century average. Inflation, 3.4% year-over-year in August, exceeds the 25-year average by less than one percentage point. Overall growth, currently projected at 2.3% this year by the Federal Reserve, tracks the economy’s long-term potential.

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That scoreboard cannot explain why only 26% of Americans approved of Trump’s economic performance in an Associated Press/NORC poll last week – a number that has Republicans fearing a midterm elections catastrophe.

What can explain it: Two years after campaigning on a promise of rapid improvements, Americans see that his policies have made things worse. And if that weren’t bad enough, the billionaire president openly scorns their struggles with affordability as “a hoax.”

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As we mark three years since the genocide in occupied Gaza began, not a single doctor highlighted in this film has seen justice. No one has been held accountable for the harrowing testimony and evidence of war crimes revealed in this documentary, and much of the suffering you see persists to this day. In August, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) described healthcare in occupied Gaza as a “system in crisis.” As a result of Israel’s restriction on aid going into Gaza, the organization reports that “the presence of a health facility no longer guarantees that services are operational.”

This film was produced by the award-winning Basement Films team that brought us the Zeteo exclusive ‘Israel’s Reel Extremism.’ This comprehensive investigation examines the systematic targeting of Gaza’s healthcare system, including all 36 of its main hospitals, multiple times, and the killing of its doctors, nurses, and paramedics.

We are sharing this documentary again because the stories in it are not over. Help us keep them alive by watching the documentary above and supporting the work we do in bringing stories like this and much more to our subscribers across the world.

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If you were moved by the stories in this documentary, check out our other collaboration with Basement Films:

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The word “ceasefire” has lost all meaning.

One year ago, Israel and Hamas agreed to a supposed truce, only for Israel to almost instantly and repeatedly violate it with impunity.

It seems to Israel, “ceasefire” means killing children, firing on breastfeeding mothers, and blocking the entrance of meaningful amounts of aid or any reconstruction materials. To Israel, “ceasefire” means killing journalists, denying children the simple pleasure of flying kites, and striking funeral processions. To Israel, “ceasefire” means killing more than 1,480 Palestinians in one year.

Palestinians cannot mark one year since the so-called “ceasefire” took effect – because there has been no real ceasefire at all.

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Just this week in Gaza, Israel killed over a dozen Palestinians, including children, and issued new forced displacement orders across the Strip. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces and settlers attacked Palestinians trying to harvest their olives, and Israel’s extremist national security minister posted another sick video.

Here’s more on those stories and others from another deadly and troubling week in Palestine:

Saturday, Oct. 3 – Pope Mourns Israeli Attack on Christian Community in Gaza

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Veteran Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher joins Zeteo’s John Harwood to answer those questions and more – unpacking what’s at stake these midterms, why he thinks Democrats could take back both the House and Senate, and why the forces driving voters go far beyond gas prices.

“There’s something deeper about who we are as Americans that’s being violated,” Belcher says of the dynamic this election cycle.

This was a live conversation on Zeteo.com and the Substack app, where subscribers could ask questions in real time. Be sure to subscribe to catch the next Substack Live.

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Watch the full conversation to hear Belcher compare 2006’s blue wave to today’s, evaluate the GOP’s culture-war strategy, explain the limits of public polling, and weigh in on what this election might reveal about the 2028 presidential field.

Free subscribers can watch a 1-minute preview, and paid subscribers can watch the full, 39-minute conversation. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription and never hit a paywall again!

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The countdown is officially underway. We’re now just 25 days away from the U.S. midterm elections, which will be a test for a democracy that has been undermined, battered, and beaten since Donald Trump retook the White House less than two years ago.

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This week in democracy saw revelations of more possible corruption, another ICE shooting, and racism at its purest form. Here’s just a taste of how Trump and his cronies harmed democracy, undermined the Constitution, and hurt Americans and societies worldwide over the last seven days:

Saturday, Oct. 3 – Talks to End War in Ukraine Include Oil Deal Tied to Trump Envoys

The New York Times reported that a multibillion-dollar oil deal has been discussed as part of the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia to end its war in Ukraine.

The deal, which would cover oil fields, refineries, and gas stations owned by one of Russia’s biggest energy companies, is being sought by an arm of the U.S. government, a U.S. investor who donated $2 million to Trump-related causes, and two Middle Eastern investor groups with ties to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – the two main U.S. negotiators to end the war in Ukraine.

Sunday, Oct. 4 – On Her Last Day at DHS, Kristi Noem Secured Deal With Political Donor

The Times also reported that on Kristi Noem’s last day as Homeland Security secretary, the agency signed a multi-million-dollar agreement to buy five airplanes from a company whose owner had been one of Noem’s political donors. In a statement, Noem said “the purchase of these planes was not completed” during her tenure, but didn’t answer specific questions about the agreement.

The agreement, which saw the planes purchased at a substantial markup, came after the company’s chairman, William Walters, donated $10,000 to Noem’s PAC in 2024. During her time as Homeland Security secretary, the agency gave more than $900 million in contracts to companies led by Walters.

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Monday, Oct. 5 – Trump Says He’ll Pay for Ads Himself, But Won’t Commit To Reimbursing Taxpayers

On Truth Social, Trump said he would pay for his campaign-style TV ads himself, “and with money I raised for MAGA, INC,” a pro-Trump super PAC.

Democrats, legal experts, and even some Trump officials have labeled the ads illegal, with some saying they could be an impeachable offense.

A day after Trump’s post, the White House said the super PAC isn’t planning to reimburse taxpayers for over $10 million the government had already spent on the ads, and Trump himself refused to commit to pay back the funds himself.

Tuesday, Oct. 6 – Whistleblower Reveals Trump Wanted Protesters Investigated By FBI

NBC News reported that the Trump administration ordered the FBI to investigate protesters engaging in anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles last year, according to a whistleblower report from a former agency employee.

The complaint alleged that the investigations violated protesters' First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful assembly and also went against FBI policy. While the whistleblower said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to justify the probe, she was told by a colleague that “the president wants this investigation.”

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Wednesday, Oct. 7 – ICE Reviewed Voter Records, Targeted Nonprofits

Democracy Docket reported that ICE obtained the voting records of tens of millions of U.S. citizens. The agency also investigated hundreds of nonprofit organizations across the country last year that help people register to vote, and considered deploying undercover agents as part of its probe.

The effort targeted nonprofits in Ohio, New Jersey, D.C., Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, including the latter’s state branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations – the country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

Thursday, Oct. 8 – ICE Shoots Man in New York

In New York City, an ICE agent posing as a construction worker shot 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in the neck after firing seven rounds into his vehicle, while a 5-year-old was in the backseat. Wired later reported that the agent who shot Belgal has repeatedly been accused of unlawful arrests and excessive force, including tackling a pregnant woman to the ground, during arrests in New York and Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, Trump went on his latest racist tirade on Truth Social, disgustingly claiming that Somali immigrants have “taken over” Minnesota and urging residents to “fight back.” (Read more about Trump’s efforts to start a race war to win the midterms in Zeteo’s ‘First Draft.’)

Friday, Oct. 9 – Trump Renews Push to Fire Lisa Cook

Trump signed a presidential memo establishing a panel to investigate Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud she has steadfastly denied. The panel will ultimately report to Trump on whether there is “cause” for her removal.

The latest push to fire Cook follows a Supreme Court ruling in June allowing her to continue in her position. The ruling, however, didn’t prevent Trump from attempting to remove Cook from her post again.

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Did you miss previous weeks of ‘This Week in Democracy’? Catch up here. And check out more of Zeteo’s reporting from this week below:

If you want to receive more essays like this from Zeteo UK, in addition to everything Zeteo offers, you can always take advantage of our bundle option. And if you’re not already a paid subscriber, consider upgrading today so you never see a paywall again. A free press isn’t free!

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The South African jurist Navi Pillay, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, is one of the most distinguished human rights lawyers and judges of the past few decades. Early in her extraordinary career, she embodied the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, where she defended anti-apartheid activists. As a judge in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and in the International Criminal Court (ICC), she embodied the development of international criminal law, helping to advance accountability for crimes and shape the human rights system. As UN high commissioner for human rights, and later as chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine, she documented violations, supported mechanisms for protecting rights, and scrutinised states’ responsibility for violations – culminating in the commission’s 2025 finding that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

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By granting Pillay the prize, the Nobel committee has infuriated Israel, which had called for the commission to be abolished following its finding of genocide, and it has rebuffed President Donald Trump, who had made no secret of his desire to win the prize.

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It’s been three years since Israel started a genocide that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, including 21,000 children.

And while more celebrities are finally using their platforms to call out the genocide, many still remain quiet – or worse, actively voice their support for the country committing the atrocities.

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So here’s Zeteo’s list of Hollywood’s biggest names on genocide, from the good, to the bad, to the ugly:

The Good

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Good morning. Martin here again, delighted to be bringing you the news that matters for your Friday morning. Rejoice, for a long weekend is nearly here.

In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we look at an outburst from Donald Trump that was vile and dangerous even by his wretched standards, a broadside against Somali immigrants in Minnesota and a call for “the people of Minnesota” to “fight back.” When calls for violence are coming from inside the (White) House, America is really in trouble. Trump also spouted vile Islamophobic abuse at Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, who duly faced similar bile from Mike Rogers, his GOP opponent, on the debate stage in Grand Rapids.

Then we’ll look at a bombshell report from the New York Times, about how a close aide to Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is co-opting embassy practice to his own, openly pro-Israel ends. There was also a Senate debate in Georgia, and the Nobel Peace Prize goes to someone who has called out Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Let’s read in.

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‘Fight Back, Minnesota’

The president of the United States is trying to start a race war in Minnesota. This is not hyperbole. This is what he posted on Thursday:

“The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back. You have been robbed, and abandoned by your State Government. Your Governor is an incompetent thief who doesn’t want to get involved. He just wants to get out of town with as much as he can steal, and then, lead a quiet life. The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue. Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, must immediately ask for Federal help — and leave the rest to us! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Doubtless, defenders and apologists for the fascist in the White House will claim that when he writes “fight” he really means “vote,” that he is merely using typical exaggeration to encourage Minnesota voters to kick Democrats out of congressional office and reject Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for Senate and Amy Klobuchar for governor next month.

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If so, rubbish. Trump knows Republicans are losing and he is taking action accordingly. Remember Jan. 6, 2021? That dreadful day, speaking to his supporters outside the White House, Trump told the mob to “fight like hell” to block certification of his conclusive defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Nine deaths were linked to the riot that followed. Trump already has blood on his hands.

That concerned a presidential election. He has form when it comes to midterms too.

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Justin Baragona here. In tonight’s edition, I take a deep dive into how David Ellison went from a wannabe actor who starred in a box office bomb that his daddy financed to one of the biggest media tycoons in history – and what that means for the rest of us. Also, are CNN staffers being prematurely optimistic about the fate of the network under Ellison? And why won’t Fox air Trump’s rallies? Plus, I look at the horrific mainstream media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

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He Couldn’t Act. So He Became a Media Mogul Instead

Did you know that a 20-year-old movie that pulled in less than a quarter of its $60 million budget at the box office and holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 34% would become the catalyst for one of the largest mass-media consolidations in recent memory?

Of course, it would probably make a little more sense if I pointed out that one of the stars of that film was a 23-year-old nepo baby trust fund kid making his acting debut only after his obscenely wealthy father, who is now the eighth-richest man in the world, put up a huge chunk of cash to help him fund the project.

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