Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Pro-palestinian protest at Biden rally shows split within his base

​Pro-Palestinian demonstrators

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally at George Mason University’s campus in Manassas, Va., where President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made ther first joint appearance of the 2024 campaign.

Juliann Ventura/Medill News Service

Ventura and Mason are graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and reporters at Medill News Service.

MANASSAS, Va. – At their first joint campaign event in the 2024 presidential race, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rallied voters around abortion access and reproductive rights in Northern Virginia, but several pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupted the president with criticisms of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.


The event at George Mason University’s Manassas campus, about 30 miles from Washington, D.C., showcased both a strength and a weakness of the Biden-Harris ticket, a pairing likely to dog the incumbents throughout the campaign.

Biden and Harris hope reproductive rights will help them win competitive states like Virginia, where Democrats largely campaigned on abortion access during off-year state elections last November, ultimately flipping the state House. But the hecklers underscored a growing potential weakness among some of the Democratic base. It was the second time pro-Palestinian demonstrators have disrupted Biden during a campaign speech. The first occurred at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Jan. 8, emphasizing some Democrats’ disapproval of the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

“I think, in my personal opinion, that you cannot vote for Joe Biden if you believe in human rights,” said Mohamed Azab, 42, an immigrant and local resident who was one of almost a dozen protesters standing in the audience.

Biden, who was forced to pause with each interruption, promised to restore Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that declared abortion a constitutional right but was overturned in 2022. But Neda, a demonstrator in her 30s who would not provide her last name to protect her anonymity, wasn’t convinced.

“We know that Biden is here to talk about women's rights, and about their reproductive rights, but he did forget to mention that he is dealing with a genocide that has taken away women’s rights in Gaza and in Palestine,” she said. Neda provided her first name only because she felt safer having some sense of anonymity.

Israel’s war in Gaza has not been officially called a genocide, but a case considering such charges is underway before the International Court of Justice. About 25,000 people have died there, many of them women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry. Biden has requested Congress approve a $14 billion aid package for Israel and has not called for a ceasefire, but he has criticized Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.

A United Nations Population Fund staff member said in November that more than 5,000 pregnant women will be forced to give birth without anesthesia and in unsanitary conditions given the lack of resources and electricity in the region.

At the Jan. 23 rally, protesters shouted “Ceasefire now!” and “How many kids have you killed today?” before being escorted away. Biden supporters on- and offstage attempted to drown out the hecklers by chanting: “Four more years!”

Azab, a recent U.S. citizen who will be eligible to vote for president for the first time in November, said Biden’s policy in the Israel-Hamas war was the most important issue for him. He argued that Americans should not vote for Biden, regardless of the alternative.

“Nothing is gonna change if we elect Joe Biden,” he said.

But when 20-year-old Keoni Vega, a student studying American politics at the University of Virginia, compared Trump and Biden, he said that Trump was by far the worse option.

“I think as Biden would say, ‘Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative,’” said Vega. “And so if you look at these issues that a lot of people are upset with and, for the most part, rightfully so, you have to realize if it's not Biden, it's going to be Trump, who's going to be tenfold worse.”

Longtime abortion advocate Sharon Wood echoed Vega’s opinion that Democrats should rally around Biden.

“I don't agree with everything about him. I think he should be stronger on pushing for a ceasefire, but he's our guy,” said Wood, 74, who lives in nearby Chantilly.

Read More

elections
Report: Party control over election certification poses risks to the future of elections
Brett Deering/Getty Images

The Trump Administration’s Efforts To Undermine Election Integrity

The administration’s deployment of the military in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., on a limited basis tests using the military to overthrow a loss in the midterm elections. A big loss will stymie Project 2025, and impeachment may perhaps loom.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the president have said L.A. is “prelude to what is planned across the country,” according to U.C. Berkeley law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. Chemerinsky reports that on June 8, “Trump said, ‘Well, we’re gonna have troops everywhere.’” The Secretary of Homeland Security recently announced that in L.A., “Federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to ‘liberate’ the city from its ‘socialist’ leadership.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Is Trump the Wizard of Oz? Behind the Curtain of Power, Illusion, and a Constitutional Crisis
Getty Images, bbsferrari

Is Trump the Wizard of Oz? Behind the Curtain of Power, Illusion, and a Constitutional Crisis

“He who saves his Country does not violate any law.”

In February 2025, Donald Trump posted a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte on Truth Social, generating alarm among constitutional experts.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Wealthy Congress Doesn’t Reflect American Constituents

US Capitol

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

A Wealthy Congress Doesn’t Reflect American Constituents

Imagine being told from a young age that your life is already written: the jobs you’ll hold, the obstacles you’ll face, the limits you’ll never cross. What you’re born into is what your life will be. For millions of Americans making a low wage, that’s the reality. Democracy, in theory, is supposed to offer a way out — a chance to shape your own future. That’s the “American dream.” But for too many, it remains just a promise, out of reach. When children grow up believing their circumstances are permanent, they inherit a cycle instead of a chance.

I know this tension firsthand. On paper, I might look like I fit the mold of opportunity: white-passing, educated, and building a career. But beneath the surface, my story goes beyond that. I grew up in a low-income, mixed-race household with a Hispanic father and a white American mother. In my family, the paths laid out were often blue-collar jobs, teen pregnancy, addiction, incarceration, or worse. None of my three sisters graduated from high school, and no one in my immediate family attended college. I became the exception — not because the system was designed for me but because I found a way through it.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

U.S. President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker

Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

Trump says his deployment of federal law enforcement is about restoring order in Washington, D.C. But the real message isn’t about crime—it’s about power. By federalizing the District’s police, activating the National Guard, and bulldozing homeless encampments with just a day’s notice, Trump is flexing a new kind of presidential muscle: the authority to override local governments at will—a move that raises serious constitutional concerns.

And now, he promises that D.C. won’t be the last. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia—cities he derides as “crime-ridden”—could be next. Noticeably absent from his list are red-state cities with higher homicide rates, like New Orleans. The pattern is clear: Trump’s law-and-order agenda is less about public safety and more about partisan punishment.

Keep ReadingShow less