by Randy Shaw on March 16, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)

The Starlight Market. See below for videos of other corners

Starlight Market at Ellis and Jones is among four corners filled with drug users, dealers, and other substance abusers. It’s only two blocks from the Hilton but this intersection is a different world. Longtime businesses in the area are struggling to survive.

Why does this out of control drug scene remain despite years of complaints? Three main reasons.

The Tenderloin

First, it’s located in the Tenderloin. Despite City Hall’s insistence that the city does not use the Tenderloin as a drug containment zone, the scene at Ellis and Jones and other corners of the Tenderloin says otherwise. No other neighborhood has four corners of open air drug markets.

Second, three of the four corners are controlled by owners who never complain to police about drug activities. The exception is Sam Patel, owner of the Mentone Hotel at 387 Ellis. On the corner under the Mentone is the legendary Cinnabar bar. Patel has constantly requested city help to clear the area bordering Cinnabar. He often gets Jones Street temporarily cleared, but drug activities soon resume.

Patel has cut the Cinnabar’s rent in half due to these problems. That the Mentone Hotel is an all-private bath Permanent Supportive Housing site has not given it any added protection from sidewalk drug users.

A video taken on February 2, 2026 shows how drug activities have taken over the corner. According to Patel, “This goes on day and night.  The Cinnabar operators are fed up and are thinking about leaving. This is a legacy business that has been open for 40 plus years.”

Across from the Cinnabar at 401 Ellis is the former historic bar, Jonell’s Cocktail Lounge. Much of William T. Vollmann’s best selling 2013 book, Whores for Gloria, is set in Jonell’s. Like many San Francisco bars, Jonell’s did not survive Covid. While closed it became a perfect spot for drug activities. It reopened as Family Corner Discounts  around February 2024. The market was soon closed by the City Attorney for illegal activities. Here’s what the City Attorney found at Family Corner Discounts:

In January 2025, a San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officer saw people crowded around a gambling machine in the store, and saw an individual walk in and show the clerk a container of laundry detergent concealed under his jacket, indicating a possible fencing operation. The following day, undercover officers used the gambling machines at the store and observed five other gambling machines.

Later that month, SFPD executed a search warrant and seized six electronic gambling machines, $4,456 of cash, a payment ledger, foreign tobacco products, merchandise on display for sale with CVS price stickers, and 50.8 grams of methamphetamine located under a display shelf. The store also sold drug paraphernalia, including hundreds of glass pipes commonly used to smoke methamphetamine and crack cocaine, and small plastic baggies used to store narcotics.

The former owner of Family Corner Discounts also owns Starlight Grocery at 402 Ellis across the street. On December 11 2024 JJ Smith posted videos about the Starlight corner. Smith described it as a place that has seen “multiple assaults, robberies, murders and mayhem.”

Many will find what Smith shows happening to be shocking. And to warrant a major police crackdown. But nothing has changed. It’s the worst of the four corners.

John Dung Quoc has operated the Pho Tan Hoa restaurant for over 25 years at 431 Jones just up from the Starlight. His business has taken a terrible hit in recent years. Potential customers understandably avoid walking by the Starlight Market drug scene. Quoc’s landlord never raises the rent, but absent police intervention this could be the next legacy Vietnamese restaurant in the Tenderloin to close.

The fourth drug-filled corner is under the Riviera Hotel at 420 Jones. The store on the corner is owned by the same person who owns the Starlight. He once owned stores on three of the four drug-filled corners. Here’s a photo from 2024 that shows the crowd of daily substance abusers on the corner.

No Urban Alchemy Presence

We are always told how complicated it is to close open-air drug markets. But does anyone believe Ellis and Jones would be dominated by substance abusers and dealers if Urban Alchemy were monitoring these blocks?

City Hall has allowed the Ellis and Jones drug scene to persist without consistent interventions. Recently Glide Ambassadors were funded to address problems in the area given its proximity to the church. After I passed the crowd at Starlight I asked an ambassador what they are doing to clear the area of drug activities. He told me, “we can offer services but can’t get them to move.”

This raises a question: Why is the city paying ambassadors if they make no difference in improving public safety on sidewalks? Does budget-starved San Francisco really need to be paying people who keep sidewalk drug users in their place?

A Broader Negative Impact

When guests at the Hilton look down Jones Street you can be sure that most decide to stay away from the Tenderloin. Tourists don’t want to navigate through the Ellis/Jones drug scene. Nor do local residents.

That’s why allowing four corners of Ellis and Jones to be controlled by the drug trade hurts all Tenderloin businesses. It  leads customers to stay away from the entire area.

Mayor Lurie said at the recent ribbon cutting for reviving Little Saigon that the city can’t comeback without the Tenderloin coming back. A good place to signal the Tenderloin’s comeback would be closing the four corners of drug activities at Ellis and Jones.

Randy Shaw

Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.

More Posts

1. Tell Congress: Stop Trump’s War! Since Trump launched his war on Iran, as of this writing, thirteen US servicemembers, more than 1,400 Iranians, and hundreds of civilians across the region have been killed. Tell your Members of Congress to use every lever they have to end it: conduct oversight; force more votes on War Powers Resolutions; restrict funding; and oppose the war publicly.
   
2. Call your senators and tell them to press Trump’s nominee for DHS secretary, MAGA loyalist Markwayne Mullin, for real answers during his confirmation hearings. Kristi Noem is out at DHS, but Trump’s nominee to replace her is at least as dedicated to sending ICE and Border Patrol to terrorize our cities. Markwayne Mullin’s Senate confirmation hearings begin on Wednesday. Tell your senators to hold Mullin’s feet to the fire and when his confirmation vote comes around, to vote NO.
   
3. Tell Congress: Our right to vote is non-negotiable! The Senate votes this week on the “SAVE America” Act, a bill that could disenfranchise millions of Americans through burdensome voting requirements that would disproportionately impact married people who’ve changed their names, trans Americans, students, and voters of color. Tell your senators to vote NO!
   
4. Email Your Members of Congress: Americans reject ICE’s plan to warehouse people. DHS is buying up warehouses to retrofit into concentration camps — but several grassroots campaigns to halt such sales have been successful! Members of Congress must do all they can to block the warehousing of human beings.
   
5. Sign the open letter from alumni across the country calling on college presidents to keep their campuses free from ICE terror. Students, faculty, and staff at our institutions of higher education deserve safe environments in which to learn, teach, and work, without any threat of ICE violence.
   
6. Calling all Courage Collectives members (and potential future members): Join our infosession on leveraging No Kings to advance noncooperation work! (Wed, 7pm ET/ 4pm PT). Autocrats need the support of society’s most influential sectors – business, academia, civil service, etc — to succeed. But when courageous people within those sectors join forces and refuse to cooperate, the “pillars” that prop the regime up start cracking. Join the call to learn more!

Posted in Politics and Movements: US

‘Serious threat to the First Amendment’ as Trump admin wins first antifa terror charge

“A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protest,” one legal advocate said.

by Olivia Rosane March 16, 2026 (therealnews.com)

Signs supporting protesters charged with domestic terrorism over an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest are seen outside the courtroom in Fort Worth, Texas on March 11, 2026. Photo via DFW Support Committee/X

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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Mar. 15, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to “antifa,” which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups.

A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent.

“A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them kind of intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities then will think twice over protesting,” Suzanne Adely, interim president of the National Lawyers Guild, told The Associated Press.

The administration promised it would be the first such case of many.

“The US lost today with this verdict.”

“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities—not under President Trump,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Friday. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”

The trial revolved around a nighttime protest at which participants planned to set off fireworks in solidarity with the around 1,000 migrants detained inside the Prarieland ICE facility. Some participants brought guns, which is legal in Texas, as The Intercept reported.

Sam Levine explained in The Guardian what happened next:

Shortly after arriving at the facility, two or three of the protesters broke away from the larger group and began spray painting cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van, and broke a security camera. Two ICE detention guards came out and told the protesters to stop. A police officer arrived on the scene shortly after and drew his weapon at one of the people allegedly doing vandalism. One of the protesters was standing in the woods with an AR-15 and hit him in the shoulder. The officer would survive.

At first, the federal government charged those arrested after the event with “attempted murder of a police officer,” according to NOTUS.

However, that changed after Trump’s designation of antifa as a terror group in September and the release of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which directs federal law enforcement to target left-leaning groups and activities. The next month, the government’s case expanded to include terrorism charges.

“This wouldn’t be a terrorism case if it weren’t for that memo,” one defense lawyer told NOTUS on background.

The prosecution argued that the fact that the protesters wore black clothes to the protest was enough to convict them of material support for terrorism.

“Providing your body as camouflage for others to do the enumerated acts is providing support,” Assistant US Attorney Shawn Smith said during closing arguments, as The Intercept reported on Thursday. “It’s impossible to tell who is doing what. That’s the point.”

The defense, meanwhile, warned the jury about the free speech implications of the charge.

“The government is asking you to put protesters in prison as terrorists. You are the only people who can stop that,” Blake Burns, an attorney for defendant Elizabeth Soto, said, according to The Guardian.

“When the villain is a made-up boogeyman then the target becomes ‘anyone who disagrees with Trump’—and this is the result.”

Ultimately, the jury decided to convict eight defendants of material support for terrorism as well as riot, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and use and carry of an explosive. However, they dismissed attempts by the state to argue that the protest constituted a pre-planned ambush and charge four people who had not shot at the police officer with attempted murder and discharging a firearm during a crime. Only Benjamin Song, the alleged shooter, was charged with one count of attempted murder and three counts of discharging a firearm.

The jury also convicted a ninth defendant, Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada, of conspiracy to conceal documents. Sanchez Estrada, who was not at the protest, had simply moved a box of zines out of his wife’s home after she was arrested for the protest, according to The Intercept.

“The US lost today with this verdict,” Sanchez Estrada’s attorney, Christopher Weinbel, said, as AP reported.

Support the Prarieland Defendants said in a statement, “Everything about this trial from beginning to end has proven what we have said all along: This is a sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top.”

However, the group commended the solidarity that had sprung up among the defendants and their allies and vowed to continue to support them.

“We have a long journey ahead of us to continue fighting these charges along with the state level charges,” they said. “What happens here sets the tone for what’s to come. We are here and we won’t give up.”

Outside observers warned about the implication for the right to protest under Trump.

“Remember all the people who dismissed the alarm over NSPM-7 because ‘ANTIFA isn’t even a real organization’? We told you that didn’t matter. When the villain is a made-up boogeyman then the target becomes ‘anyone who disagrees with Trump’—and this is the result,” said Cory Archibald, the co-founder of Track AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee].

Content creator Austin MacNamara said: “The Prairieland trial was given almost zero media coverage because of the blatant lies by DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and Police. This verdict now sets a precedent for criminalization of dissent across the board. Noise demos, Black-Bloc, pamphlets/zines/red cards, all of this can be used to imprison you.”

Academic Nathan Goodman wrote that convicting people of terrorism based on clothing was a “serious threat to the First Amendment.”

The verdict gives new poignancy to what defendant Meagan Morris told NOTUS ahead of the jury’s decision: “If we win, I think it shows that Trump’s mandate is not working, that the people understand that you can’t criminalize, you know, First and Second Amendment-protected activities. And I think if we lose, then… a lot of the country is OK with what’s going on. And it will be a much darker time, it’ll just signify a much increased crackdown on political opposition and free speech.”

Olivia Rosane

Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.More by Olivia Rosane

People participate in a “No Kings” national day of protest in Washington, DC, on October 18, 2025.

 (Photo by Amid Farahi/AFP via Getty Images)

“Our data on the USA goes back to 1789. What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country.”

Brad Reed

Mar 17, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

A report released on Tuesday by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden has found that President Donald Trump and his administration are dismantling democracy in the US at a speed that “is unprecedented in modern history.”

In its report, V-Dem categorizes the first year of Trump’s second term as “a rapid and aggressive concentration of powers in the presidency.”

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In fact, V-Dem says that the Trump administration has accomplished in just one year what most budding autocracies take a decade to achieve, adding that “the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d´état.”

Of particular concern is the failure of the legislative branch of the US government to apply any kind of oversight or check upon the executive branch, the report explains.

“The Republican-controlled Congress seems to have abdicated its constitutional role in favor of the executive branch, ceding significant legislative, fiscal, and oversight powers during 2025,” the report says. “The Trump administration has de facto repeatedly taken over the Congressional ‘power of the purse’—enshrined in the Constitution and in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act—unilaterally cancelling or reallocating federal funding.”

The report also points fingers at the US Senate for repeatedly rolling over and confirming unqualified Trump nominees, which it says is tantamount to letting the White House “sideline” the upper chamber’s authority altogether.

V-Dem goes on to document the administration’s repeated assaults on the judicial branch and the rule of law in general during his second term, starting when Trump issued a mass pardon to more than 1,500 alleged or convicted criminals who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Since then, the administration has waged a pressure campaign against judges who rule against it consisting of “impeachment resolutions and misconduct complaints,” while also using executive orders to punish major law firms simply for representing the president’s political enemies in court.

The lone bright spot in US democracy, says V-Dem, is that the administration has not yet been able to attack states’ powers to administer their own elections, although not for lack of effort.

“Actions taken in 2025 raise concerns regarding the integrity of the 2026 midterms,” the report warns. “This primarily concerns attempts to assert federal control over election processes, which must be decentralized and state-run, according to the Constitution.”

The report notes that Trump has issued an executive order that attempts to override states’ election laws by restricting mail-in voting and mandating voter IDs at polling places nationwide, but adds that “many provisions of this order have been blocked and others are still being challenged in federal court.”

In an interview with The Guardian, V-Dem founder Staffan Lindberg used historical context to explain why Trump’s assault on US democracy is truly without precedent.

“Our data on the USA goes back to 1789,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country.”

He also said that other authoritarian leaders have taken much more time in ripping down their states’ democratic institutions than Trump has.

“For Orbán in Hungary, it took about four years,” Lindberg said, “for Vučić in Serbia, it took eight years, and for Erdoğan in Turkey and Modi in India, it took about 10 years to accomplish the suppression of democratic institutions that Trump has achieved in only one year.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Brad Reed

Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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US Attorney General Pam Bondi attends a Women’s History Month event in the East Room of the White House on March 12, 2026 in Washington, DC. 

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“We live in a country where we have one reality for everyday people and another for the rich, the well-connected, and the well-protected,” Lee said. “And that cannot continue to be our reality.”

Stephen Prager

Mar 17, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

Democratic Rep. Summer Lee introduced articles of impeachment against US Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday and accused the nation’s top prosecutor of “breaking the law to protect pedophiles” and prosecute President Donald Trump’s “political opponents.”

“We live in a country where we have one reality for everyday people and another for the rich, the well-connected, and the well-protected. And that cannot continue to be our reality,” Lee (D-Pa.) said in a video posted to her social media on Tuesday announcing the articles.

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Two of the five articles pertain to Bondi’s conduct surrounding the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) release of files related to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which the DOJ has been accused of covering up to protect Trump.

One article accuses Bondi of obstruction of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena in July 2025, which required the DOJ to release the full, unredacted files to the House Oversight Committee in August as part of a congressional inquiry.

“The Department of Justice refused to adhere to the subpoena and withheld substantial evidence; evidence logs indicate that amongst the withheld evidence are FBI interviews with a survivor who accused Trump of sexual abuse,” the article reads.

In February, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee announced that they were investigating the DOJ’s handling of an accusation made against Trump to the FBI in 2019. A woman accused the president of having sexually assaulted her at the age of 13 in the 1980s.

Another impeachment article accuses Bondi of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), signed into law in November, which required the DOJ to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” pertaining to the Epstein case without redacting information to protect powerful figures from embarrassment.

The DOJ missed the December 19 deadline to release the files and has since released only about 3 million pages of documents as part of its “final” trove, while millions more remain unavailable.

The pages that have been released, the article says, “were heavily redacted” to scrub the names of Trump and other powerful figures, but sensitive information about many of Epstein’s victims—including identifying details and nude photographs—was released, even though the law said redacting this information was permitted.

Meanwhile, it says the DOJ “continues to withhold documents,” including FBI interviews with the Trump accuser.

Three of four memos detailing the interviews with the accuser were posted to the DOJ website in March. They include the victim’s graphic claims that Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex.

Trump has denied the allegations, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the alleged victim “disturbed.”

Approximately 37 pages of FBI records related to the accusation, including the fourth memo and pages of agent notes, remain unreleased to the public, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

“Pam Bondi is complicit in the most egregious cover-up in American history, hiding documents that reveal a young woman reported being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump when she was just a minor,” said Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), a cosponsor of Lee’s impeachment articles. “Bondi’s actions are not only disgusting and wrong. They are also illegal.”

Another article accuses Bondi of having “abused” the DOJ and FBI’s powers in a partisan fashion—to target Trump’s enemies and shield his friends from accountability. It also cites Bondi’s attempts to criminalize protesters who express anti-Trump viewpoints by designating them as “domestic terrorism threats” and creating secretive lists of organizations and individuals to be targeted.

Bondi is also accused of misleading courts on several occasions—including in the cases against former FBI Director James Comey and the Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García and says she presented “demonstrably false allegations in court to support baseless prosecutions against protesters.”

She is also accused of perjury before Congress during her confirmation hearing, where she pledged not to politicize her office or target journalists. It also accused her of lying during last month’s contentious hearing in which she claimed that there was “no evidence” in the Epstein files “that Donald Trump has committed a crime.”

No US attorney general has ever been impeached by the US House, which requires a simple majority. Trump was impeached twice by a Democratic-controlled House during his first term of office, though neither resulted in a conviction in the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority.

Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had articles of impeachment filed against her in January by more than 80 cosponsors following the shooting of two US citizens by immigration agents.

Earlier this month, Noem became the highest-ranking Trump official to be fired in his second term, and earlier this week, Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees referred her to the DOJ for prosecution, also for perjury.

In addition to Ansari, Lee’s impeachment articles against Bondi are cosponsored by Reps. Valerie Foushee (D-NC), Dave Min (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.). Previous articles of impeachment against Bondi have been introduced by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) earlier this month.

Lee emphasized that while Bondi “deserves to be held accountable,” this “is also about what we want our government to be, and who we want it to work for.”

“This is our chance to get justice,” Lee said, “to hold people accountable who, time and again, have gotten away with screwing us over.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Stephen Prager

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

• Take Action Now: Stop the Republican Attack on Voting Rights
•  Take action: Tell Congress to reject the SAVE Act bills
• Take action: Tell Congress to subpoena Hegseth about the Iran school attack
• Take action: Tell Congress to stop Trump from sending American troops into Iran — and vote no on the draft
•  Take action: Call Congress at (202) 224-3121 today — and every day until the vote — and urge your senators and representative to vote no on Mullins for DHS and NO on the SAVE ACT
• Bonus action: Register to vote, vote in every election, and help your community do the same. Reproductive freedom is won and lost at the ballot box.
• Bonus action: Sign up for the next national No Kings Day of Action and show up in solidarity with everyone whose rights are under attack. The Complete Guide to the No Kings Day of Action is now available.

No Kings Rally 3
March 28, 11:30am–4pm
Embarcadero Center to City Hall
More info

In June 2025, 5 million people took to the streets across 2,100 locations to protest the Trump administration’s policies. By October, 7 million people rallied in all 50 states for No Kings 2.

Since then, we’ve seen more unlawful abductions, invasions, civilian casualties, and countless other abuses of power. We need to make the next rally the largest peaceful demonstration yet to show we resist Trump and the Republican Congress who enables him.

Organized by Indivisible.

posted by SF League of Pissed-Off Voters | theleaguesf.org
March 16, 2026

Our membership voted to endorse the following candidates and ballot measures for the June 2026 election.

San Francisco Offices

US House, Congressional District 11: Connie Chan
US House, Congressional District 15: No Endorsement

Board of Supervisors, District 2: Lori Brooke
Board of Supervisors, District 4: Natalie Gee
SFUSD Board of Education: Virginia Cheung
Superior Court Judge, Seat 16: Alexandra Pray

State Assembly, District 17: No Endorsement
State Assembly, District 19: No Endorsement

Local Propositions

Prop A: $535M Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response Bond: Yes
Prop B: Lifetime Term Limits: No 
Prop C: Decrease Business Taxes: No
Prop D: Excessive CEO Salary Tax: Yes 

Statewide Offices

Governor: Tom Steyer
Lieutenant Governor: Oliver Ma
Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
State Controller: Meghann Adams
State Treasurer: No Endorsement
Attorney General: No Recommendation
Insurance Commissioner: Jane Kim
State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Richard Barrera
Board of Equalization, District 2: Sally Lieber

Stay tuned for our full Pissed Off Voter Guide, coming soon!

US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media on board Air Force One on March 15, 2026.

 (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

US Sen. Ed Markey warned that the Trump administration is engaged in a “blatant attempt to muzzle the free press.”

Jake Johnson

Mar 16, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)

US President Donald Trump late Sunday floated “treason” charges against media outlets that he accused of reporting false information about the Iran war as the human and economic costs of his illegal military assault continued to mount.

In a tirade posted to his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that media outlets he accused of circulating “fake news” should “be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information.” The maximum penalty for treason in the US is death.

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Trump specifically called out the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal for reporting over the weekend that “five US Air Force refueling planes were struck and damaged on the ground at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia.” Citing two unnamed US officials, the Journal noted that “the tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Saudi base,” and that the planes were “damaged but not fully destroyed and are being repaired.”

The US president called the story “false reporting” without substantively refuting its content. Trump wrote that four of the refueling planes are “in service” and one “will soon be flying the skies”—none of which is inconsistent with the Journal’s reporting.

Trump, who regularly uses his social media platform to circulate AI-generated videos and photos, also complained about an AI video purportedly showing the USS Abraham Lincoln on fire. The president claimed the video was “distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets,” without offering any examples. AFP published a fact-check of the video last week, deeming it “fabricated footage.”

Trump’s latest attack on the US media came after his Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, threatened Saturday to pull the broadcasting licenses of media outlets he accused of “running hoaxes and news distortions.” Carr did not provide specific examples.

The US president said Sunday that he was “thrilled to see” Carr’s threat, railing against “Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic” news organizations.

Trump and other administration officials, including Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth, have openly whined in recent days about what they’ve deemed negative coverage of the Iran assault, now in its third week with no end in sight.

Aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump attacked a reporter as “a very obnoxious person” after she asked the president why he’s sending 5,000 US Marines and sailors to the Middle East.

US Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) warned in a letter to Carr on Sunday that the Trump administration is engaged in a “blatant attempt to muzzle the free press” if outlets don’t align their coverage of the Iran war “with Trump’s preferred narrative.”

“Your Saturday post follows that same logic but extends it to the coverage of an active military conflict, where the chilling effect on journalists and the damage to the public’s right to know are most severe,” Markey wrote to Carr.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Jake Johnson

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

Protest art representing President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein near the US Capitol on March 11, 2026. Its plaque satirically commemorates a friendship “seemingly built on luxurious travel, raucous parties and secret nude sketches”. © Jose Luis Magan, AP (from France24.com)