Congress Just Subpoenaed Our Newsroom for Doing Journalism

This is part of an escalating attack on independent media and progressive activism by an administration so unpopular, they’re trying to crush anyone who dissents.

I’ve spent this week reporting on the Trump administration’s escalating war on the left, with the the anti-communism summit, the State Department’s 100-page report branding activists and journalists as agents of Cuba, the promise of more “terrorist” designations to come.

Now it’s arrived at my own newsroom.

The Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee has issued Breakthrough News a subpoena, demanding our internal communications, our financial records and more. Republican lawmakers have been harassing us for years with false claims that our reporting is part of a foreign plot. This subpoena is a major escalation against our journalism and the First Amendment to the Constitution. You can read our full statement and sign the petition here.

It’s important to note that we haven’t been charged with a crime, because there isn’t one. So, what was our offense? We reported on the genocide in Gaza and the movement to stop it, told the truth about ICE terror across the country and the uprising against it, shed light on U.S crimes from Cuba to Venezuela to the Congo to Lebanon. We did real journalism and that’s why they want to shut us down.

It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that our budget is teeny tiny compared to the billionaire-funded media that floods the airwaves with an endless stream of pro-war, corporate propaganda. Maybe they’re coming for us because we’re small and they want to keep us tied up in legal proceedings that drain our resources. This also serves as a warning to other independent outlets, which can cause a chilling effect, another likely goal of this assault.

Why now

There’s a reason this is happening now and it’s the opposite of what the subpoena is meant to make you feel.

They aren’t doing this from a position of strength. This administration and its agenda are deeply unpopular. Meanwhile progressive politics are ascendent. Socialist candidates are winning primaries, the movement against the genocide keeps growing, and public opinion on issues like Palestine, healthcare and the war machine has shifted faster than anyone expected.

You don’t criminalize dissent when you’re winning the argument, you do it when you’re losing it. That’s why they need the foreign plot story. It lets them avoid engaging with ideas that are beating them on the merits. Smear it as a nefarious foreign operation and you never have to explain why your own agenda is hated and failing.

Today on Breakthrough Live, me and my co-host Zoe Alexandra addressed the attack on our newsroom with Brian Becker, host of The Socialist Program. Brian put this new red scare in its proper historical context. We talked about the Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, what happened to the people that got buried in them and how the ones that survived fought back. You can watch that discussion in the video above.

What you can do right now

We’re going to fight this and we’ll continue to produce journalism while doing it. We’ve retained legal counsel and intend to challenge these unconstitutional attacks. But we need your help. There are two concrete steps you can take:

1. Sign the petition. It’s embedded in our statement. Add your name demanding the House Ways and Means Committee stop muzzling the press and drop this investigation.

2. Donate. Legal defense is expensive, and every dollar spent fighting a bogus subpoena is a dollar not spent on reporting.

This goes beyond an attack on Breakthrough News. This is part of an escalating attack on independent media and progressive activism by an administration so unpopular, they’re trying to crush anyone who dissents. If they can subpoena a newsroom’s internal communications because they dislike its coverage of Gaza or ICE or Cuba, then press freedom is whatever the House majority says it is on a given day.

Stand with Breakthrough News against this unconstitutional attack. Maintaining a free press depends on it.