VIDEO: FDD's online harassment against critics of Trump’s State Department | Responsible Statecraft

Follow us on social

google cta

Analysis | Reporting | Middle East

google cta

google cta

Earlier this month, Responsible Statecraft reported — based on recently obtained documents via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — that the hawkish DC think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies was at the center of an online harassment campaign funded by the State Department that targeted Americans, including journalists, and human rights advocates, because of their opposition to Donald Trump's Middle East policy. Quincy Institute Multimedia Producer Khody Akhavi breaks the story down:

Analysis | Reporting | Middle East

Trump will be sore when Cuba domino refuses to fall

Top photo credit: President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at White House meeting oof oil executives in wake of the Venezuela invasion Jan. 9, 2026 (Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein); A man carries a photo of Fidel Castro in Revolution Square , Havana, the day after his death in 2016 (Shutterstock/Yandry_kw)

Trump will be sore when Cuba domino refuses to fall

Of the 100 or more people killed in the U.S. military operation that abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, 32 were Cuban security officers, most of them part of Maduro’s personal security detail who died “in direct combat against the attackers,” according to Havana.

How did Cubans come to be the Praetorian Guard for Venezuela’s president, and what does the decapitation of the Venezuelan government mean for Cuba?

keep readingShow less

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Top photo credit: UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan receives Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Presidential Airport in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates November 27, 2019. WAM/Handout via REUTERS

Is the Saudi-UAE rivalry heading for more violence?

On January 7, Saudi-backed forces established control over much of the former South Yemen, including Aden, its capital, reversing gains made by the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) in early December.

Meanwhile, the head of the STC, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, failed to board a flight to Riyadh for a meeting with other separatists: he seems to have fled to Somaliland and then to Abu Dhabi. The STC is a secessionist movement pushing for the former South Yemen to regain independence. The latest turn of events marks a major setback to the UAE’s regional ambitions.

keep readingShow less

Monroe Doctrine

Top photo credit: Political cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as a large rooster protecting smaller roosters—Latin American countries—and Europe “cooped up” by the Monroe Doctrine. Library of Congress, Artist J.S. Pugh 1901

Nostalgia isn't strategy: Stop the Monroe revisionism and listen

“[T]herefore you may rest assured that if the Nicaraguan activities were brought to light, they would furnish one of the largest scandals in the history of the country.”

Such was the concluding line of a letter from Marine Corps Sergeant Harry Boyle to Idaho Senator William Borah on April 23, 1930. Boyle’s warning was not merely an artifact of a bygone intervention, but a caution against imperial hubris — one newly relevant in the wake of “Operation Absolute Resolve" in Venezuela.

keep readingShow less

google cta

Want more of our stories on Google?
Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

LATEST

QIOSK