by TRNN | Oct 16, 2025 | Article, awards, Press Release, Press Releases, Stories of Resistance, The Marc Steiner Show
The Signal Awards Judging Academy has awarded Gold to two of our premiere podcasts, The Marc Steiner Show and Stories of Resistance.
Our brilliant colleague and Baltimore radio legend Marc Steiner won Gold for Best Host of an Individual Episode for this masterful, powerful, perspective-changing interview he conducted with three Canadian doctors returning from a medical mission in Gaza.
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Latin-America-based journalist and longtime TRNN contributor and collaborator Michael Fox is also won Gold in the History Podcast category for his truly unique, rich, and inspirational weekly series Stories of Resistance.
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The Signal Award Judging Academy is a large, esteemed body made up of media professionals, scholars, and practitioners across the industry. To get this recognition from our peers is humbling and motivating validation of the importance and quality of the work we do, and of the impact our unique brand of grassroots storytelling has on those who hear it.
Lastly, if you’re not already a regular listener to our unique slate of podcasts, be sure to subscribe to The Marc Steiner Show, Stories of Resistance, and The Real News Network feeds wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Take a moment to leave positive reviews of our shows on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, send us your feedback, and recommend our shows to your friends, family members, and coworkers.
by Stephen Prager | Oct 15, 2025 | Article, elections, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Supreme Court, Voting Rights
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 15, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The US Supreme Court will rehear a case on Wednesday that could strike a death blow to the Voting Rights Act and, in the process, virtually guarantee that Republicans hang on to power in the 2026 midterm elections and well into the future.
At issue in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, is Section 2 of the VRA, which outlaws racially discriminatory redistricting. Max Flugrath, communications director for the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, wrote for Slate that “by taking the unusual step of reopening arguments, legal experts believe, the court’s far-right majority may have telegraphed its intent to dismantle Section 2.”
“If it falls, the impact will reverberate far beyond Louisiana, reshaping political power across the entire country,” he said.
According to a report from Fair Fight and Black Voters Matter, if Section 2 is dismantled, it would guarantee Republicans an additional 19 safe seats in the US House of Representatives, and as many as 27 when combined with the GOP’s Trump-led push for mid-decade gerrymandering.
“It’s enough to cement one-party control of the US House for at least a generation,” according to the report.
The origins of the case itself are highly unusual. It began typically enough, with a conservative Fifth Circuit Court affirming a lower court’s ruling that the congressional maps drawn by the state GOP in 2022 constituted an illegal racial gerrymander. Despite Black residents making up roughly a third of Louisiana’s population, many of them were crammed into a single district, while the other five in the state remained majority white.
After the court ruling, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry convened
by Julia Conley | Oct 15, 2025 | Article, Chicago, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint, Tech
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 15, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Chicago residents in recent weeks have found numerous ways to resist the Trump administration’s deployment of hundreds of federal agents in its increasingly violent “Operation Midway Blitz” anti-immigration campaign—with thousands of people marching to demand armed officers leave the city, some physically intervening in arrests, and community members volunteering to patrol their neighborhoods to warn the public when agents are nearby.
But the alliance between Big Tech and the Trump administration on Tuesday interfered with efforts by more than 80,000 Chicagoland residents to show solidarity with immigrants and people of color, as Facebook suspended a community group where people have been tipping off their neighbors when they see US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in public areas.
Days after far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has gained considerable influence in the White House despite holding no formal government position, spoke out against a group called ICE Sighting-Chicagoland, Facebook parent company Meta suspended the group to stop its 84,000 members from sharing information about impending ICE raids and enforcement actions.
Loomer wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday that “Big Tech executives” such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg should “use this as an opportunity to be in compliance and to support President [Donald] Trump’s immigration policies, but they aren’t.”
She said the presence of the community group was evidence of Zuckerberg’s “leftist subversion of Trump and his policies.”
Two days later, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that action had been taken to stop Chicago area residents from discussing the deployment of federal agents.
“Today, following outreach from the [Department of
by Shane Burley | Oct 14, 2025 | Article, ICE, Politics and Movements: US, Portland, Prisons and Policing
The crowds amassing on Portland’s South Waterfront on Sunday, Sept. 28, outside the city’s ICE processing facility, featured activists from nearly every community in the city, including volunteers handing out water and food from a mutual aid table and healthcare professionals nearby to offer onsite first-aid treatment. A cloud of tension sat over the metro region as residents waited to see exactly what President Trump’s latest pronouncement would mean.
Just one day earlier, Trump took to social media to loudly declare that he was “directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Perhaps most chillingly, Trump added that “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
While it has remained unclear if troops would ultimately touch down in Portland, 200 National Guard troops were authorized by Hegseth into federal Title 10 service on Sept. 28.
The notion that Portland is “War ravaged” came as news to people who actually live there.
The notion that Portland is “War ravaged” came as news to people who actually live there. As residents have repeatedly pointed out, Portland is far from the war zone Fox News, Trump, and the MAGA right claim it to be. The city is not facing destructive mass demonstrations; rather, there has been a small, ongoing, largely nonviolent demonstration happening outside of the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility south of downtown.
This was the 113th day of protests at this location. A permanent protest encampment was established here shortly after high-profile immigration raids and confrontations began dominating news coverage
by Mitchell Plitnick | Oct 10, 2025 | Article, Gaza, Israel, October 7: One Year Later, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on Oct. 10, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
As the genocide in Gaza began its third year, there was some hope — one can’t really call it optimism — that the end might finally be in sight. Wednesday evening, the United States announced that Hamas and other Palestinian factions had accepted the initial parts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-Point Plan. Specifically, they accepted the exchange of hostages and the first redeployment of Israeli military forces, along with an end to Israel’s offensive actions.
Yet, while Palestinians, especially in Gaza, celebrate, hope is tempered with the experience of two years of temporary pauses, which were just limited downscales of Israel’s violence, after which the slaughter returned with even greater ferocity than before.
Trump’s “20-Point Plan” has some potential for truly ending the genocide. But that potential is limited by its vagueness and its dependence on the United States to apply and maintain pressure on Israel.
Trump’s plan and motivations
Trump’s plan explicitly disregards the rights of the Palestinian people. It establishes foreign rule over an ostensibly Palestinian technocratic administrative apparatus but requires that current Palestinian representatives — in this case, Hamas, a body that has never been, nor ever claimed to be, representative of the entire Palestinian nation — agree to that foreign rule. Vague allusions to the possibility that there might one day be a path to a mythical Palestinian state do little to mitigate this reality.
Ironically, and despite the fact that Hamas has already made it clear that they have neither the authority nor the willingness to agree to such a thing, this demand might be the very reason the
by Kori Skillman | Oct 9, 2025 | Article, baltimore, ICE, immigration, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Racial Justice, Reprint
This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on Oct. 07, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
Highlandtown sidewalks tell a much different story today than they did a year ago. Shops that once bustled with conversation sit emptier; families who once roamed the streets have now retreated. The day-to-day has become filled with fear under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, sending shockwaves through the largely Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
Both noncitizen, long-time U.S. residents L and E (whose full names Baltimore Beat is not using for their safety) are family members who are two sides of the same coin: L was already forced to leave the country; E feels imprisoned in his fear. Every glance from strangers, every passing security officer a reminder of the attention their brown skin draws.
Their parallel lives reflect a community sentiment, where daily rhythms are interrupted by immigration enforcement vans and streets become more desolate with every deportation.
Lucia Islas, a case manager at the Southeast CDC, works with a client at their office in East Baltimore on September 30. Credit: J. M. Giordano.
While L’s fight ended when she was forced to leave the country, E’s continues toward an unknown. L has walked her final moments in the United States, holding the hands of her two young children, and E could not walk beside her. In this moment in history, to get too close would be a risk to his own freedom. His life the last seven months has been characterized by living in the shadows. His heart is still heavy that he could not comfort his loved one in the way he wanted to.
L, 32, came to the
