BT Live: Trump Targets BreakThrough | India Protests | Hands off Asia!

BT Live! Join hosts Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra and special guests twice weekly for the breaking news that matters and the sharp left, anti-imperialist analysis you need to keep fighting.

BreakThrough News is under attack: the MAGA-dominated House Ways and Means Committee subpoenaed BT this week, demanding internal communications, financial records, and more. We are not charged with any crime, because our only “crime” has been to tell the truth – about the Palestine solidarity movement, about ICE’s terror in our streets, about Washington’s crimes around the world, from Cuba to the Congo. This is a flagrant abuse of power, and a direct attack on our work as journalists and on the First Amendment.

The State Department’s dangerous “Cuba report” released Monday – blasting Havana as the global center of a sinister anti-American communist plot by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, even Hamas and Hezbollah – is reviving McCarthyism. Just how serious is this new Red Scare? Brian Becker, host of the Socialist Program, joins the show to discuss Trump’s crackdown on dissent, Marco Rubio’s Cuba conspiracy blacklist of Americans, NSPM-7 and what “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism” signals for what’s to come for American dissent.

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was detained outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence in Delhi on Wednesday, as more than a month of mass protests demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan escalate, fueled by the government’s mismanagement of this year’s NEET, India’s standardized nationwide med school entrance exam. Hungerstriker Sonam Wangchuk has been forcibly hospitalized; is the government ready to respond to the peoples’ demands? Dr. John Brittas, MP representing the State of Kerala in the Rajya Sabha, joins to explain how what began as a Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement sit-in at Jantar Mantar exploded into the biggest challenge in years for Modi’s far-right government.

And the China Report with Amanda Yee is back! This week Amanda’s joined by Tings Chak, researcher at the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, to discuss the rapid militarization surrounding China and the Hands Off Asia campaign.