Three years later, life in East Palestine, Ohio is still derailed
This article was first published by The Lever, an investigative newsroom. Click here to get The Lever’s free newsletter.
On a balmy evening last September, Michael Fowler stumbled out to the south rail line in East Palestine, Ohio, and sat down in the middle of the tracks. His dog, a white Chihuahua, was beside him. The sun was setting. He waited perilously for the next oncoming train.
He wouldn’t have to wait long. Dozens of times a day, freight trains blare through East Palestine, cleaving the small Ohio town in two. The stretch of tracks on which Fowler sat was just a few hundred yards west of the site where two and a half years earlier, a Norfolk Southern train carrying tank cars full of toxic chemicals derailed and burned. The accident sent dark plumes of smoke over the town, leached toxins into local creeks and soil, and ignited a national reckoning around rail safety, one that has since delivered few reforms.
Fowler, 54, was upset with Norfolk Southern, an East Palestine police officer later reported in a sworn affidavit. He had not received the money he was promised from the $85 billion rail company — his cut of the $600 million settlement that Norfolk Southern had agreed to pay to resolve residents’ class-action lawsuit over the derailment. Eighteen months after the settlement’s announcement, still no check had arrived.
That September night, Fowler had decided to take matters into his own hands. He hoped to “cost the railroad money,” the police officer wrote, by putting himself in the path of the trains, which ran so close to his home that he could see the tracks from his front lawn.
Fowler was not the only East Palestine
TikTok takes down Gaza journalist Bisan Owda’s account mere days after US deal
This story was originally published on Truthout on Jan. 29, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Well-known Gaza journalist Bisan Owda has been banned from TikTok, she says, just days after the finalization of the company’s sale to U.S. investors — including a firm headed by the notoriously pro-Israel Larry Ellison.
Owda announced the censorship of her account in a video on Instagram on Wednesday, saying that TikTok had banned her permanently. She had 1.4 million followers on the platform, she said, as a result of years of audience-building under Israeli occupation and genocide.
“I had 1.4 million followers there. I have been building that platform for four years now,” she said.
The account did appear to be banned on Wednesday and Thursday. However, late Thursday afternoon Eastern Time, Owda’s account appeared to be restored, but restricted. Some content seemed to not be available, and a banner appeared at the top of her feed that read: “Posts that some may find uncomfortable are unavailable.”
The Palestinian journalist has spent years documenting life in Gaza under Israeli occupation and, recently, amid Israel’s genocide. Her series with Al Jazeera’s AJ+ has won numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and even an Emmy. At the same time, pro-Israel voices have sought to silence Owda, including in a campaign in 2024 to pressure her Emmy nomination to be withdrawn.
In her Instagram video, Owda said that the ban was “expected” due to pressure from high-powered figures to censor Palestinian voices from TikTok.
She overlaid a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he named TikTok as a “number one” priority of Israel.
She also shared a
‘Totalitarian nonsense’: Don Lemon arrested by federal agents over coverage of church protest
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 30, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Journalist Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal law enforcement agents on Friday morning in Los Angeles, the latest escalation against the free press by the Justice Department under the control of President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, both of whom have repeatedly targeted journalists for doing their jobs.
The former CNN anchor had been accused of misconduct by Trump following his coverage of an anti-ICE protest that took place inside a Minneapolis church on Jan. 18. While organizers and participants of that protest—aimed at the pastor of the congregation who is also a federal immigration enforcement official—chanted and disrupted the service, Lemon later interviewed the pastor and covered the events as they took place.
According to the Associated Press:
Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents in Los Angeles, where had been covering the Grammy Awards, his attorney Abbe Lowell said.
It is unclear what charge or charges Lemon is facing in the Jan. 18 protest. The arrest came after a magistrate judge last week rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge the journalist.
Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, has said he has no affiliation to the organization that went into the church and that he was there as a journalist chronicling protesters.
Fellow journalists and free-press advocates swiftly came to Lemon’s defense and condemned the Trump DOJ over the arrest.
“Reporters in America are free to view, document, and share information with the public. This arrest is a constitutional violation, an outrage, an authoritarian breach, and utterly appalling.” —Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen
“They arrested Don Lemon. This is horrifying,” said Jemele Hill,
‘Beginning of the chaos’: FBI raid in Georgia seen as ominous sign of Trump plans for 2026 midterms
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 29, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The FBI’s Wednesday raid on an elections center in Fulton County, Georgia is raising alarms about President Donald Trump’s plans to disrupt the 2026 midterm elections.
Shortly after FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations center to search for materials related to the 2020 presidential election, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory warned that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
“Fulton County is right now the target, the only county right now fighting over an election that already happened,” she said, referring to Trump’s election loss that he has refused to concede more than five years after it happened. “But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue.”
Commissioner Mo Ivory: Fulton County is right now the target, the only county right now fighting over an election that already happened. But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue. pic.twitter.com/0HvPMMoQO8— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) January 28, 2026
In a Wednesday interview on MSNOW, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) described the raid on the elections center as a “seismic event” that should be a flashing red light for US voters.
“This should have people across the country absolutely shook,” Ossoff said. “This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County Elections office. [Trump’s] conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been based in Georgia from the very start… this
