A new poll finds that 66% of Americans want a NATO-U.S. push for a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine War and less than 24% believe that weapons and aid should be given to Israel unconditionally in its war on Gaza.
But interestingly, not Ukraine, Gaza, or even China, are the biggest foreign policy issues on the minds of Americans this election season, at least according to a new survey by the Institute of Global Affairs (IGA). In fact, ahead of those hot button conflicts and global pressure points, immigration (39%), climate change (34%), and terrorism (32%) are ranked among respondents’ top three concerns. Israel’s war in Gaza (18%), the rise of China (16%), and the Ukraine war (13%) were far down in the list.
But that doesn’t mean Americans don’t have strong opinions — many along partisan lines — about the U.S. role in the world, its military footprint, and who they trust to do a better job as the next president.
IGA and YouGov polled a national sample of 1,835 voting-age Americans between August 15 and 22 with over-samples in swing states in the Rust Belt (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) and the Sun Belt (Georgia, Arizona and Nevada) regions. Questions covered an array of foreign policy topics from ongoing wars and conflicts to more general issues of militarism, immigration and soft power.
The poll found that a slight majority of voters on a national level (53%) trust Harris more to represent America’s interest on the global stage. However, voters in swing states trust Trump more not only in this category (53%), but also in his ability to reform immigration (56%), end the Ukraine and Gaza Wars (58%), and respond effectively to a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan (58%).
Also according to other results, 58% of Harris supporters stated that the U.S. should maintain or increase its number of overseas troops, while 58% of Trump supporters think that number should decrease. Some 75% of Americans agreed that the president should be required to obtain congressional approval before ordering any military action overseas, a check required by the Constitution but increasingly ignored in the post-9/11 era.
Another point of agreement among most Americans across party lines centers on the U.S. and NATO pushing for a negotiated settlement as a means to end the war in Ukraine. 70% of Republicans, 71% of Independents and 60% of Democrats marked support for this approach.
Stark ideological divides made themselves clear, however, regarding the situation in the Middle East. A strong majority of Democrats said the U.S. should either stop supporting Israel’s war efforts entirely or make that support conditional on a ceasefire (67%) — compared to just 41% of Republicans. While only 23% support unconditional aid to Israel, this too split along partisan lines, with only 8% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans agreeing with the idea.
Age also came in as a factor, with twice as many voters under 30 as those above 65 (23% vs. 11%) thinking the U.S. must stop supporting Israel’s war in Gaza altogether.
Opinions on President Joe Biden’s foreign policy record as he exits office are mixed. Americans cited NATO expansion and the release of American prisoners from Russia as key successes, with addressing climate change being the top choice among Democrats specifically. Republicans and Democrats saw immigration as Biden’s top foreign policy failure, and Democrats pointed most often to his administration’s handling of the war in Gaza as a key failure. Republicans widely see Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and bringing the troops home as his biggest failure next to immigration.
On China, a majority of those polled (58%) say the U.S. should prepare for a Cold War, including 52% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans. As far as Taiwan goes, 40% say the U.S. should defend the island if militarily attacked by China, though 39 percent say they have “no opinion.”
The rights of journalists and publishers within Europe are “seriously threatened” by “transnational repression,” declared WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “The criminalization of newsgathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere.”
Assange further stated, “I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe. The fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Journalism is not a crime; it is a pillar of a free and informed society.”
He urged the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s (PACE) Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights to act now to protect journalists, publishers, and others from the attacks on freedom of expression that have fueled a climate of censorship.
It was Assange’s first public remarks about the United States Justice Department’s prosecution since his release from the Belmarsh high-security prison in London, where he was detained for a little more than five years. The world had not heard him speak in this manner for at least six or seven years, and certainly not as a free man.
Assange was invited to speak to the PACE committee as part of its inquiry into his detention and conviction and the chilling effect that it has had broadly on human rights. The next day the committee planned to vote on whether to designate Assange as a political prisoner.
The WikiLeaks founder defied the justifiable paranoia or reservations that may have discouraged him from leaving his home country of Australia. As Assange said in his statement [full transcript here], “The gravity of this occasion and the weight of the issues at hand” compelled him to speak to parliamentarians directly.
On his left sat WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and on his right sat his wife Stella Assange. Their presence helped guide him and put him at ease as he dealt with nervousness compounded by over a decade of trauma and harassment from lawfare (in addition to constant demonization in the Western press).
Assange wore spectacles that accentuated the fragility of a former prisoner still in recovery. “The transition from years of confinement in a maximum security prison to being here before the representatives of 46 nations and 700 million people is a profound and a surreal shift. The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey. It strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence.”
“I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured, the relentless struggle to stay alive physically and mentally, nor can I speak about the deaths by hanging, murder, and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.”
Indeed, Assange avoided offering any detailed account of the horrors and tragedies that he had observed and personally survived in Belmarsh, even though they were relevant to the PACE committee’s inquiry.
Assange was honest and open about his vulnerability. “I apologize in advance if my words falter or if my presentation the polish you might expect from such a distinguished forum. Isolation has taken its toll, which I am trying to unwind, and expressing myself in this setting is a challenge.”
While delivering a prepared statement, Assange cleared his throat repeatedly. It was as if the anxiety of the moment was bearing its weight down upon him, and he was fighting reflux that was making it difficult for him to speak. Yet he powered through the discomfort, and the reaction of parliamentarians at the meeting suggests that his statement had a profound impact.
The statement from Assange covered a range of issues that are familiar to anyone who closely followed his case (or regularly read this newsletter), but now, he could speak for himself instead of through his lawyers.
On the CIA’s war on WikiLeaks, Assange shared, “We felt that something was going on at the time [in Ecuador’s London embassy]. There were many small signs that came together. But having an ominous feeling and some subtly put tips from a whistleblower in one of the security contractors that the CIA had contracted didn’t give a full and disturbing picture, which later emerged.”
Just as he did when pleading guilty to violating the Espionage Act in a U.S. territorial court in the Northern Mariana Islands in June, Assange spoke about being convicted for engaging in journalism.
“I am not free today because the system worked,” Assange proclaimed. “I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism. I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else.”
“As I emerge from the dungeon at Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible. And I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period, how expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth, and more self-censorship.”
“It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government’s prosecution of me—its crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism to the chilled climate for freedom of expression that exists now.”
‘Now Every Day There Are Livestreamed Horrors’
After Assange concluded his statement, parliamentarians asked him questions, and several of them seemed rather supportive if not sympathetic to his plight. He was much more relaxed, and his responses to their questions were fluid and detailed and showed that he is still capable of holding the floor in a room of esteemed individuals. He even demonstrated that his sense of humor was intact as he made a joke about his mother-in-law that made parliamentarians laugh.
The Israeli military, with the full support of the U.S. government, invaded Lebanon hours before Assange’s testimony. He displayed a keen awareness of the global issues of peace and human rights that are presently the focus of PACE and similar assemblies throughout the world.
Assange said, “Where [WikiLeaks] once released important war crimes videos that stirred public debate, now every day there are livestreamed horrors from the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. Hundreds of journalists have been killed in Gaza and Ukraine combined. The impunity seems to mount, and it is still uncertain what we can do about it.”
Especially because the PACE committee has taken an interest in the application of the dangerous application of the Espionage Act to punish him, Assange spoke about what became clear in the final months of the case during his appeal.
“In my case, the U.S. government asserted a dangerous new global legal position: only U.S. citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights. But the U.S. claims its Espionage Act still applies to them regardless of where they are.”
“So Europeans in Europe must obey U.S. secrecy law with no defenses at all as far as the U.S. government is concerned. An American in Paris can talk about what the U.S. government is up to, perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime with no defense, and he may be extradited just like me,” Assange added.
The role of the United Kingdom, a PACE member state, in his persecution was given attention. “There was an attempt to extradite me without any charge from the United Kingdom by Sweden. The U.K. government subsequently changed the law to prevent extradition without charge, but in its amendment to the extradition legislation, it included a rider to make sure that it didn’t apply to me.”
On the matter of support from news media publications, journalist unions, and freedom of expression organizations, Assange said, “Many of them went with their geopolitical alignment. So it was easy to gain support from media organizations in neutral states and obviously states hostile to the United States. Allies of the United States took longer.”
“Media organizations within the United States, the journalists there—not the lawyers, but the journalists—took longer still. It is a concern, and I can see a similar phenomenon happening with the journalists being killed in Gaza and Ukraine. That the political and geopolitical alignment of media organizations causes them to not cover those victims or cover only certain victims. This is a breach of journalistic solidarity.”
“We all need to stick together to hold the line. A journalist censored anywhere spreads censorship which can then affect us all. Similarly, journalists being killed or targeted by intelligence agencies need our firm commitment in writing or in broadcast.”
Then Assange addressed the persistent idea that journalists must not be activists and remain neutral.
“I understand that debate. I have tried in my work to be rigorously accurate. I believe accuracy is everything. Primary sources are everything. But there is one area where I am an activist, and all journalists must be an activist,” Assange stated. “Journalists must be activists for the truth. Journalists must be activists for the ability to convey the truth, and that means standing up for each other and making no apologies about it.”
Assange testified, as he noted, before the same assembly that produced a report on CIA’s secret detention centers in Europe and the renditions and torture that violated human rights and international law.
His presence before this group of European parliamentarians, who gave him a standing ovation, made it even more clear that his freedom was a defeat for the U.S. national security state that failed to obtain his extradition. The meeting offered a glimmer of the potential for European leaders to abandon the deference that they routinely show to the U.S. government when prioritizing American interests over peace, justice, and freedom.
For 50 minutes, Assange smoothly fieldedquestions before he felt exhausted and the chair of the committee informed him that he could end his testimony with a few closing remarks.
“I would just like to thank all of the people who have fought for my liberation and who have understood, importantly, that my liberation was coupled with their own liberation. That the basic, fundamental liberties which sustain us all, have to be fought for and that when one of us falls through the cracks soon enough those cracks will widen and take the rest of us down,” Assange concluded.
Below is video of Julian Assange’s full testimony and his responses to European parliamentarians.
In the lead-up to the 2024 elections, the Biden administration has taken aim at several Russian information operations. Earlier in September, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against two employees of RT, a Russian state-backed news network formerly known as Russia Today. At the heart of the indictment was Tenet Media, a company promoting content from right-wing influencers. RT, prosecutors say, largely funded Tenet, and its employees “edited, posted, and directed” content. (The individual influencers deny they knew about the company’s ties to Russia.)
Last week, Meta announced that it would ban RT and other media outlets backed by the Russian state from its platforms. Meanwhile, YouTube said it removed more than 230 channels with connections to Russian-backed media. Those decisions followed the US State Department imposing sanctions on Russian state media, saying that in addition to spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine, RT was supporting a crowdfunding effort to support the Russian military’s invasion and had developed operations directly tied to Russia’s intelligence agencies.
“These Kremlin-backed media outlets are not only playing this covert influence role to undermine democracy in the United States, but also to meddle in the sovereign affairs of countries around the world,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the time. “As part of RT’s expanded capabilities, the Russian government embedded within RT a unit with cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence. RT’s leadership had direct, witting knowledge of this enterprise.”
“Meta’s ban of RT and other Russian state media stings a lot because that has been a core channel for the spread of Russian propaganda,” says Samuel Woolley, associate professor and founder of the Propaganda Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh.
In the US, RT pulled in former war reporter Chris Hedges and late night host Larry King before it lost most of its broadcast access following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But while the sanctions and deplatforming are certainly a blow to propaganda efforts directed at the US—Russian state media has seen some real success on social media—experts who spoke to WIRED say that it by no means will cap the outlets’ reach. RT is well regarded in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Latin America, and Spanish language speakers make up the outlet’s largest market outside Russia. It has also invested heavily in old school television infrastructure, with offices in Havana, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Delhi, Algiers, and many other locations that will likely continue to operate unhindered, and offers services in French, German, and Arabic, in addition to English.
“English language speakers haven’t been the primary target of RT or Russian media’s propaganda efforts,” says Woolley. “And they’ve been building capacity for nearly two decades across Latin America, portions of Africa, and elsewhere in the world. And that has meant in those places that RT and Sputnik have almost become like a fixture of everyday life.”
In Latin America alone, RT’s channels run 24/7, and reported 18 million viewers in 2018. African Stream, which was also named by the State Department as part of Russian state media’s influence architecture and later removed by YouTube and Meta, garnered 460,000 followers on YouTube in the two years it was up and running. And Woolley notes that in these markets, there is likely less competition for viewership than there is in the saturated US media landscape.
“[Russian media] made headway in limited media ecosystems, where its attempts to control public opinion are arguably much more effective,” he says. Russian media particularly hones in on anticolonial, anti-Western narratives that can feel particularly salient in markets that have been deeply impacted by Western imperialism. The US also has state-funded media that operates in foreign countries, like Voice of America, though according to the organization’s website, the 1994 US International Broadcasting Act “prohibits interference by any US government official in the objective, independent reporting of news.”
Rubi Bledsoe, a research associate at Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that even with Russian state media removed from some social platforms, its messages are still likely to spread in more covert ways, through influencers and smaller publications with which it has cultivated relationships.
“Not only was Russian media good at hiding that they were a Russian government entity, on the side they would seed some of their stories to local newspapers and local media throughout the region,” she says, noting that the large South American broadcasting corporation Telesur would sometimes partner with RT. (Other times, Russia will back local outlets like Cameroon’s Afrique Média). “All of these secondary and tertiary news outlets are a lot smaller, but can talk to parts of the local population,” she says.
Russian media has also helped cultivate local influencers who often align with its messaging. Bledsoe points to Inna Afinogenova, a Russian Spanish-language broadcaster who previously worked for RT but now has her own independent YouTube channel where she has more than 480,000 followers. (Afinogenova left RT after saying she disagreed with the war in Ukraine.)
And Bledsoe says that the ban from the US might actually be a boon for Russian media in the parts of the world where it’s actively trying to cultivate its image as a trusted media brand. “The narratives that were shared through RT and other Russian media and in Iranian media as well, it’s a kind of anti-imperialist dig at the West, and the US,” she says. “Saying the US is the driving force behind this international system and they’re plotting, and they’re out to get you, to impose on other countries’ sovereignty.”
Though Meta was a key avenue for the spread of Russian state media content, it still has a home on other platforms. RT does not appear to have a verified TikTok account, but accounts that exclusively post RT content, like @russian_news_ and @russiatodayfrance have tens of thousands of followers on the app. African Stream’s TikTok is still live with nearly 1 million followers. TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza referred WIRED to the company’s policies on election-related mis- and disinformation.
A post on X from RT’s account on September 18, the day after the ban, linked to its accounts on platforms like right-wing video sharing platform Rumble, X, and Russian YouTube alternative VK. (RT has 3.2 million followers on X and 125,000 on Rumble.) “Meta can ban us all it wants,” the post read. “But you can always find us here.” X did not respond to a request for comment.
Clayton Morris is a former FOX News anchor. Natali Morris is a former anchor and reporter for MSNBC, CNBC and CBS News. On Redacted, the married couple (not brother and sister!) and former mainstream news professionals take an in-depth look at the news the mainstream media largely ignores. They explore the legal, social, financial, and personal issues that matter to you. They want to set the record straight and bring you the stories nobody else tells. Along with the facts and the complete picture, Redacted offers real-world analysis without an agency driven by corporate overloads. With Clayton’s extensive journalism experience, he isn’t afraid to demand the truth from authorities. Redacted is an independent platform, unencumbered by external factors or restrictive policies, on which Clayton and Natali Morris bring you quality information, balanced reporting, constructive debate, and thoughtful narratives.
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