Trump Is Losing A Lot In Court. Plus, the First Episode of The Divided Dial (S2).
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The first three months of the Trump administration have seen an avalanche of lawsuits. Harvard is suing the Trump administration. A federal judge blocks the Trump administration. The Supreme Court issued an administrative state. From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Michael Olinger. I asked an expert who's been trying to keep up how

how many cases he's been tracking. That's both a great question that I should know the answer and the fact that I don't tells you as much as you probably need to know. Plus, The Divided Dial is back for a new season all about the short waves.

This week, radio's earliest days. It was the first time that human beings had had it in their power to be heard around the world. And a lot of governments figured out that this could be a really powerful tool for the common good, but also, of course, for the waging of wars. It's all coming up after this.

On the Media is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

From WNYC in New York, this is On The Media. Brooke Gladstone is out this week. I'm Michael Olinger. The first few months of the Trump administration have been defined by the constant stream of executive orders, a battering ram of dubious legal action that's brought mass firings, shuttering of agencies, withholding of allocated funds, detentions and deportations, and an existential test for the American judicial system.

President Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general during his first week in office. Eight have now filed a lawsuit against the administration, arguing that their firings were unlawful. Harvard is suing the Trump administration in federal court today, arguing that the administration's attempts to freeze multiple billions of dollars in federal grants

are unconstitutional. To provoke California into following a lawsuit. California and many other states are challenging the president's executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship. The justices are allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its ban on transgender people from serving in the military pending an appeal. Today, the lead attorneys for Santa Clara County and San Francisco announced they're suing the Trump administration

and Doge, the government department overseen by Elon Musk, claiming President Trump and Musk unlawfully ordered the restructuring and mass firing of federal employees. Federal officials have described Kilmar Abrego Garcia's removal as an administrative error, but have not brought him back despite a court ruling upheld by the Supreme Court that said the administration must facilitate his return.

Some breaking news in a high-profile immigration case. A federal judge in Vermont just ordered the release of detained Tufts doctoral student Ramesa Ozturk. For an administration set on rapidly subverting the separation of powers, the onslaught of storylines is part of the strategy, leaving many news consumers and even legal observers on the back foot.

I called up one longtime judicial reporter and asked him, how many lawsuits are you tracking nowadays? That's both a great question that I should know the answer and the fact that I don't tells you as much as you probably need to know. Chris Geidner, a journalist who has spent most of his career covering the Supreme Court, has been looking for trends as he chronicles all these ongoing legal battles for his website, LawDork.com.

He says that the courts themselves have slowly begun to approach these cases differently from past administrations. Yeah. What we've learned in the first hundred plus days is that, first, district court judges, people appointed by Trump in his first term, have been very skeptical of what

Actions that clearly delve far outside of the norm of what is expected. And even once we get up to the appeals court, it takes them a moment to adapt to how differently this administration is operating. There's a presumption of good faith there.

that courts have toward the executive branch. And what judges are slowly learning is that they don't necessarily get that this time around. Can you give me an example of that? Yeah, where we saw that most clearly was with Kilmar Abrego Garcia's case. He was the Maryland man who the administration admitted was taken in an administrative error to El Salvador.

He had a withholding of removal, which means that he could not legally be sent to El Salvador. As that case first went up toward the Supreme Court, Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson, who is a conservative judge, a Reagan appointee,

He agreed with the district court judge, Judge Zinas, that Abrego Garcia needed to be brought back. But the first time that that case went up to the Fourth Circuit, he wrote separately from his colleagues and said, listen, my colleagues think this is an easy case. I don't. This is a complex issue, but the administration overreached here.

It then goes up to the Supreme Court. We got that ruling where there were no dissenting justices who said, you need to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia. It goes back down to Judge Zinas. She proceeds a little bit and DOJ is

still appealing again because they don't like what she's saying. And this time, when it goes to the Fourth Circuit, not only does Judge Wilkinson agree with his more liberal colleagues, he actually writes the opinion for the court. And this time he says, this is a clear case.

And the administration has absolutely overstepped. And he goes so far as to citing President Eisenhower's implementation of Brown versus Board of Education to essentially say it is the president's obligation in our constitutional system to implement Supreme Court orders.

Again, Judge Wilkinson, one of the most conservative judges out of the Reagan years, wrote this in his opinion.

Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody, there is nothing that can be done. He went on. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear. This was a warning to the Trump administration. It was also a notice to all of his judicial colleagues across the country.

We've heard the term constitutional crisis invoked by commentators many times over the past couple months. And there's some debate about whether or not we're in one, we're on the verge of one, what it means if the executive branch just completely ignores the judicial system. How do you feel about that term? Do you think we're in one yet? Where's the line?

Does it matter? I get really nervous about the use of the term constitutional crisis because you could define constitutional crisis down to the point that we've been in a constitutional crisis every day since January 20th.

If your definition of constitutional crisis is the executive taking actions that they have reason to believe will be declared unconstitutional, we've been there.

But you could also go too far in the other direction and say, until there is a contempt order and the executive still refuses to adhere, then we're in a constitutional crisis. But by the time we get there, the horse has left the barn. The right way of looking at it is we have a president who isn't so concerned about adhering to the Constitution.

You've said that the so-called administrative error that led to Kilmar Obrega-Garcia's deportation, the arrest of Milwaukee's Judge Hannah Dugan, and the deportation of a two-year-old U.S. citizen are part of a plan. Why, in your mind, is it important to use that word, plan?

Because this is what they want. When you look at Steve Bannon's chaos, all cylinders running strategy, when you look at what Stephen Miller has said in the Oval Office that day when El Salvador's president was there with Trump. No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador. That is the president of El Salvador. Your questions about it per the court can only be directed to him.

They want people to have to challenge every action while they are doing things. And the goal of the administration is to see what the Supreme Court lets them get away with. And that makes challenging every action important. Do you think any of these legal challenges are working? I think legal challenges are doing incredible. We've

We saw with the sort of flip-a-switch removal of status for students, there were sort of these college-by-college reports one Friday of four or five students having their status changed in the system that they wouldn't be allowed to stay going to college in America. Politico reported it led to literally more than 100 lawsuits.

And the administration had done this clearly illegally. Every judge to get those cases sided with the students, started issuing orders. And finally, one Friday morning in court, the Justice Department had announced that they were reversing all of those.

That's just one very crisp, solid example of why fighting back does matter and why the courts can hold and can lead to policy changes. Yeah, I want to ask you about the national coverage issue.

We talked a little bit about how judges are getting wiser and they're starting to approach the intent and the legal arguments coming from the Trump administration with a bit more clarity. How do you think the national legal press is doing at covering the Trump administration's legal rationales for their actions? Um, yeah.

How mean do I want to be? Be mean. Come on. You're like, I love it.

I think that there is a reality that institutions protect institutions. Because if one institution is fallible, maybe all institutions are fallible. The reality is that it took some of these institutions a bit more time to figure out that this time was going to be a little different even than the first administration.

I'll give some examples. The way that people have approached the various executive orders targeting law firms. The New York Times has done stories about like, and then this head of this firm traveled down to Washington to meet with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. And like, yes, what you're reporting is fact, but like,

Let's be clear about what's happening. One of the wealthiest heads of one of the wealthiest law firms in America is trying to protect their financial bottom line at the cost of the rule of law. It's wild to me that you can see these executive orders targeting law firms as anything other than a fundamental attack on the rule of law.

How well do you think the Trump administration is faring in its legal battles? Is it fair to say they're losing more than they're winning, at least compared to what the average news consumer might perceive? I think they are. They're doing very poorly in court. They are so overwhelmed with challenges. We're going through this process of seeing very skeptical district court judges issuing very strong rulings.

Once you get up to the appeals courts and the Supreme Court, it is frankly more difficult because those are more ideological judges and justices. And especially when you get up to the Supreme Court, they are conservative. The Trump administration hopes that at the end of the day, the Supreme Court goes along with them.

We have seen some signs that the Supreme Court does have limits. When we had this follow-up round of litigation surrounding the Alien Enemies Act, the Supreme Court actually issued an order that was an injunction stopping removals from the Northern District of Texas while they are considering the issue. That's a sharp ruling from the Supreme Court. ♪

We've seen some signs that at some excesses, to use a phrase that Chief Justice Roberts used in a speech on May 7th, they are willing to rein in some of those excesses. The real question that I have is whether it will be enough. Chris Geidner covers the Supreme Court and our legal system for his platform, Lawdork. Chris, thank you so much. Thank you.

Coming up, the radio waves are being politicized, but it was ever thus. This is On The Media. The digital world feels more chaotic than ever. Huge data breaches, AI-threatening jobs, foreign meddling, that creeping feeling of obsolescence. It's information overload. I'm Dena Temple Rustin, host of Click Here, from PRX and Recorded Future News. Want to understand how we got here and how you can get ahead of it all?

Listen to Click Here. We can help you make sense of all the noise, wherever you get your podcasts. This is On the Media. I'm Michael Loewinger. Speaking of lawsuits, there's one pending right now filed by Voice of America journalists who argue that the administration's actions in shutting down the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees the VOA, were unlawful and violated congressional mandates.

It's been a turbulent time for the roughly 1,300 staff members at the VOA who were put on forced leave when their new boss, twice-failed Arizona Senate and gubernatorial candidate and Trump booster Carrie Lake, was nominated to lead the organization in February. We are going to be slimming this agency down.

This week, Carrie Lake posted a long message on X announcing her plan to quote-unquote save the service that broadcasts to some 350 million people around the world. One America News Network, OAN for short,

will now provide free content for Voice of America and other government-funded international broadcasters. One America News is a far-right pro-Trump outlet. It's the golden age, and self-deporters are getting a $1,000 bonus. It's all next on The Matt Gaetz Show. Let's do this.

It's unlikely that Carrie Lake's threats to run OAN content on the VOA will actually happen, but it wouldn't be the first time the VOA has been explicitly politicized. I mean, Ronald Reagan did it back in the 80s. In fact, radio has played a vital role in much of the soft power efforts the U.S. has engaged in over the last century.

That story and so much more is all coming up in the rest of the hour in episode one of The Divided Dial season two. You'll remember that the first season, hosted by reporter, rocker, and Minneapolis native Katie Thornton, told the story of the right-wing takeover of talk radio. The

The series focused on a company called Salem Media Group and its ultra-conservative lineup. It turned out to be even more relevant than we'd expected when Donald Trump won the election last year and Salem hosts like Charlie Kirk are now regulars at the White House.

For this newest season, which will air on the show over the next three weeks, Katie is still exploring her favorite medium. But this time, it's not the AM and FM bands. It's the short waves. Because like everything else these days, the short waves are facing threats both existential and financial. But as Katie will make the case, they are very much worth paying attention to. I'll let Katie take it from here.

Zeta trans-oceanics. This is such a cool radio with the little... Last summer, I met up with a journalist and radio fan named David Gorin. These are like beautiful radios for a few people. I went to his house in Brooklyn, New York, so that we could listen to the radio together. Here we go.

Not any old radio, not AM or FM, nothing you can pick up in your car. But shortwave radio, the little-known cousin of AM and FM, with fuzzy stations that can reach insanely far distances. David's been listening to shortwave since he was a kid in the 70s, when his uncle gave him a radio. And I turn it on, and it's like the radio leapt out of my hand with the North American service of Radio Moscow.

Suddenly, the world was all within reach, available to him right there in this box. In the seventh grade, I became the expert on the next five-year plan in the Soviet Union, you know, the economic plan. Today, he's part of the Library of Congress' Radio Preservation Task Force. And together, on a sweaty Thursday afternoon last July...

We sat down to hear what we could find on the shortwave dial today. Just like when David was a kid, we heard lots of government-run stations, like Radio Martí. The U.S. broadcasting news and information to Cuba. Voice of Islamic Republic of Iran. China Radio International, broadcasting in Spanish.

Is there anything else strong? On other days, David has picked up English language shows from North Korea. They have very strident, you know, military stuff. And news from Cuba. This is Radio Rebelde, Radio Rebel. And it goes back to the revolution. On the short waves, the global tussle for influence plays out 24-7. But we didn't just hear news and propaganda.

Well, let's just go up to the dance. Let's hope I hear some worse code. There were beeps and bloops. Here we go. Coded messages sent between amateur radio operators or between government officials who used the short waves to send military data or secret instructions. Let's see what else we have. And some of what we heard just sounded like normal radio with lots of music.

And preaching. It was hidden just to hide the meaning and the power of the divine name. It is inherent in the name of Yah. That's an end times ministry that also preaches that the earth is flat. Which is very interesting because surely radio wouldn't propagate in a flat earth, you know. But details, details. Yeah.

In just about an hour of surfing the short waves, we heard prayer and propaganda, news and conspiracy theories, so many languages, and some really decent jams from all over the globe. I felt like I had been welcomed into a club that was somehow secret and yet right there for anyone to join.

And I know it's cliche, but there was something magical about tuning into the world, training my ear to listen through the crackle, hearing the distance. As it turns out, this practice of scanning the dial, finding out what you can hear and from how far away, is a century-old art.

It was popular among radio's early adopters. These early distance fiends, as they were known, uncovered something very strange about how radio waves traveled through space. And what broadcasters did with that information completely altered the trajectory of the 20th century. ♪♪

This is season two of The Divided Dial. I'm your host, Katie Thorne. I've worked in radio since I was a teenager, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes behind the mic. In season one, I investigated how right-wing talk took over AM and FM radio. But in all my years of radio research, I'd never really learned about shortwave radio before. And

And listen, I'm not going to tell you that shortwave radio is as influential today as the AM and FM talk radio we covered in season one. It's not. But I, and I think you, love the medium of radio. So this season, we're diving into the often failed promise of a medium that was once ubiquitous, connecting people around the world long before the internet ever did.

But like the internet, shortwave also took a turn for the chaotic. Over the next four episodes, I'm going to explain how shortwave radio became a propaganda tool for governments at war.

And then a propaganda tool for American right-wing extremists and cults. And we'll explore what a little-known battle playing out on the short waves right now between radio fanatics and Wall Street can tell us about what happens when we cede control of our public airwaves. That's all coming up on this season of The Divided Dial. But let's get back to the story.

Radio broadcasting, as in from one to many, it didn't start on shortwave. It started on AM, taking off around 1920. And AM was inherently local. Van Alarston and Mrs. Lester Alarston.

Signals reached up to 50, maybe 75 miles. But at night, those listening at home noticed something strange.

As the sun set, more stations emerged from the static. And they weren't coming from down the street or the next town over. Sometimes listeners in New York would hear stations from Chicago, a

A listener in Kansas might hear an opera or a boxing match from the East Coast. After dark, it was like the world cracked open and distance stations faded in and out on ghostly, mysterious winds. Most people had never heard a faraway voice, period. Moments.

Long-distance telephone calls were the costly domain of dignitaries and government officials. And even those were fed across long, scratchy copper lines. A disembodied voice, without a wire, without a fee, from hundreds of miles away? That awed and baffled people. Even scientists, some of whom believed that radio, perhaps, could be used to communicate with the dead. But, of course, there was an explanation for these voices in the nights.

Here's what was happening. The way AM normally works is that radio waves get shot from the top of a tall tower, which is often on top of a tall hill. The waves travel over the ground, basically line of sight, from the tower to you.

It's called a ground wave, and it's the thing that fades out a few dozen miles from the tower. But when you shoot out an AM signal, there's another thing that happens, almost a byproduct. Radio waves are set out in all directions. It's called a sky wave, and the sky wave goes up into the atmosphere.

Susan Douglas is a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan. She says that these lower layers of the atmosphere are made up of ions that get all charged up by the sun.

And in the daylight, those layers are where radio waves go to die. But at night, when the sun sets, these layers disappear, and the ones above them, they combine to form a dense layer, and it acts like a mirror to sky waves.

At night, these sky waves, the sort of byproduct of AM transmission, they keep going until they bounce off this other layer of the ionosphere. And they come back down to Earth vast distances away. When these waves strike the antenna of a receiving set, this entire process is reversed. We hear sound originating at that very moment, hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

That's what these late-night AM radio listeners were hearing, a radio wave that had ricocheted off the ionosphere to get to them. And it rocked their world. Long-distance channel surfing became a fad called fishing in the night, with listeners casting out into the ether and seeing what they could catch. They had a map on the wall with map tacks that said,

And every time they reeled in a station, they would put a map tack on where that broadcast emanated from. Was it Kansas City? Was it Washington, D.C.? Wherever. Radio manufacturers ran ads with slogans like, concerts from 14 cities in one evening. In newspaper editorials, distressed housewives and sometimes husbands lamented that their significant other was spending every evening out in their radio shack.

But while AM broadcast listeners burned the midnight oil to marvel at all the faraway stations, there was one group of people who weren't so surprised by radio's ability to go long. They were the amateur radio operators, what you might know as ham radio. Basically, guys who weren't broadcasting but were tinkering with radio equipment just to chat one-to-one, like long-distance walkie-talkies.

Back in the days before broadcasting, almost all radio transmission was one-to-one. The radio waves were mostly used by ship captains or the military and the hams, who were just having fun.

But in World War I, the U.S. government got worried about interference on those AM airwaves. So they eventually assigned specific frequencies for ships, for the military, and for those meddling amateurs. They were kicked down to the waves that were thought utterly worthless, short waves. Back then, people thought the short waves with short wavelengths, picture a really tight squiggly line, just wouldn't go very far.

Even Guglielmo Marconi, the father of radio, thought that longer wavelengths would mean longer distances. But the amateurs weren't put off. They began experimenting with them. And as it turned out, the short waves weren't the short end of the stick. They were getting really far. They were getting stations in Australia, New Zealand, or stations in England and France. For the most part, reception was clearer at night, but it didn't have to be dark to go the distance.

Amateurs reported spanning distances as great as 10,000 miles, which was unthinkable. Australia and New Zealand were described in the fall of 1923 as a bedlam of Yankee signals. The amateurs proved something huge. Shortwave could do round-the-clock what AM could only do at night. It could use the ionosphere as a springboard.

And this changed the game for AM broadcasters who wanted their station to reach more people. In 1923, Pittsburgh's KDKA, the country's first commercial radio station, they got their station on shortwave and reached as far as South Africa. New shortwave stations started up in Switzerland and Japan and Venezuela.

And with the scars of World War I still fresh, this burgeoning international medium was a source of hope. There was a lot of utopian discourse around radio that, you know, having allowed people to communicate across all these borders, you know, would there be no more wars? Michelle Helms is a retired professor of media studies who has written a lot about radio.

It would solve all kinds of problems. Just a huge enthusiasm over the possibilities of shortwave as a medium.

Entire magazines were devoted to helping people discover new shows on international radio. Listeners would write to far-flung stations, and the stations would reply with these beautifully decorated cards branded with the station name, and maybe some imagery that evoked the national culture of wherever they were broadcasting from. They're called QSL cards. It's international code for I Confirm Receipt of Your Transmission.

Shortwave listeners around the world amassed collections of these ornate cards, tangible evidence of their part in an ethereal global community. By the late 1930s, almost all home radio sets had AM and shortwave settings.

But the peacenik aspirations for shortwave didn't last. It was the first time that human beings had had it in their power to be heard around the world. And a lot of governments figured out that this could be a really powerful tool for the common good, but also, of course, for the waging of wars.

Lots of the world's governments had taken to the short waves by the 1930s, but no nation used them quite like Germany. This is Germany calling. We are going to present tonight a regal play entitled Visions of Invasion. Zeeson, Germany's state-run shortwave service, had spent years building a large following in America and around the world, playing things like orchestral music.

But in time, they started pushing out Nazi propaganda, tailored for specific countries in 12 different languages. And with its own festering Nazi movement, the U.S. was a key target. You had people like Axis Sally. This is Berlin calling. And I'd just like to say it's a friend of Berlin call. It pays to listen.

She was an American living in Berlin. She became the first American woman to be convicted of treason after the war that she was broadcasting into the United States on shortwave. Women of America waiting for the one you love. Thinking of the husband who has been sacrificed by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

You might have heard of a person called Lord Ha Ha. The great exodus from Britain is well underway. He was a British man named William Joyce who was working in Germany broadcasting on their shortwave service. The rich and affluent are removing themselves of their valuable homes.

as fast as they can. There was also a big band called Charlie and His Orchestra, run by the German Ministry of Propaganda. They'd take popular big band and swing songs and add or change lyrics to berate Roosevelt or denigrate Jewish people. All the Jewish family has a brand new air. He's their joy, heaven's end. And they proudly present Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones. Yes, sir.

They were trying to persuade Americans that the Germans had the right side in the war and that it was crazy for them to fight. Non-intervention, how he shows it.

His decision to send troops along. The U.S. government had banned all editorializing on domestic radio stations during the war, making it illegal for Americans to promote the Nazi cause on the AM airwaves. But the feds didn't have any control over shortwave broadcasts beaming in from Germany. So the content was still there for the many Americans who wanted to listen.

Journalists at CBS and NBC launched counteroffensives. The networks had what were called shortwave listening posts in New York. Susan Douglas again. And they had people who were fluent in foreign languages monitoring international shortwave broadcasts. And then they turned their findings into entertainment.

Like the hit CBS radio series hosted by a popular detective novelist named Rex Stout. It was called Our Secret Weapon. The truth is a weapon that isn't secret in our country, but it's a big secret to the people who live in Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Our enemies don't have this weapon. They don't dare let their people know the truth. Every week, radio sleuth Stout debunked enemy shortwave propaganda. First a broadcast of the official German news agency on August 2nd. The meeting between Churchill and Stalin was very excited and hysterical. On August 8th, being that England... This morning, Churchill shook hands with Stalin at the Kremlin. As we now know, Churchill actually arrived in Moscow on August 12th.

You can't beat that for a scoop. The rest of the Allies were also busy fighting Germany's shortwave radio propaganda. It was during World War II that the BBC ramped up what would come to be known as the World Service on shortwave. This is London calling in the overseas service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. They broadcast news to the world with just a bit of pro-Ally spin. The Danes have already had a taste of what German protection means. A better

A better word for it would be plunder, for the Germans are seizing goods and property at will. And in early 1942, the U.S. followed suit. The federal government debuted its shortwave radio service, The Voice of America, with an in-language broadcast to Germany. This is a voice speaking from America. Our voices are coming to you from New York, across the Atlantic Ocean to London.

The Voice of America started as a government-run radio show, and they partnered with networks like NBC and CBS to get it out worldwide. NBC and CBS were already broadcasting overseas via shortwave. ♪

But shortwave quickly proved so central to the war effort that the U.S. government did something unprecedented. They nationalized all the roughly one dozen shortwave stations broadcasting from U.S. soil, filling the international airwaves with approved broadcasts. Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war.

The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth. And for the most part, they did that, if a bit selectively. Michelle Hilmes. They were walking a fine line between willful propaganda and sort of putting a good spin on things. As the U.S. sent more troops into battle, it used shortwave to boost morale. They began to transmit entertainment programming via shortwave to

Susan Douglas again. And this was so important during holidays like Christmas and New Year's when there you are, freezing and alone and scared. They had programs that would allow troops to speak to people back at home, you know, oh, here's mailbag and we have letters from soldiers and they would read them aloud. Dear Mother, tonight I'm very lonely. I've never written that before and maybe it's a shock to you.

And then again, maybe you've read between the lines and have known it all along. There was a very popular program called G.I. Jive with Jill. Here's Jill and the G.I. Jive. Hi, you fellas. This is G.I. Jill with G.I. Jive. You know, the World Series. The 1942 World Series broadcast. You've got to have the World Series. The Yankees are out in front five to nothing.

The Voice of America was very highly respected, and many people think that it, you know, did a great deal to help us win the war. By the end of the Second World War, the Voice of America blanketed much of the world. It ran in about 40 languages. But they were about to get lots of company on the airwaves. Because in the Cold War, the short waves exploded. That's coming up after the break. This is the Divided Dial from On the Media. ♪

The digital world feels more chaotic than ever. Huge data breaches, AI-threatening jobs, foreign meddling, that creeping feeling of obsolescence. It's information overload. I'm Dena Temple Rustin, host of Click Here, from PRX and Recorded Future News. Want to understand how we got here and how you can get ahead of it all? Listen to Click Here. We can help you make sense of all the noise, wherever you get your podcasts.

This is On The Media. I'm Katie Thornton, host of OTM's Divided Dial series. We're right in the middle of episode one of our second season.

Before the break, we heard about how groups like the VOA dominated the short waves at the end of World War II. But during the Cold War, short wave would become so much more. Radio, this is Tehran, Radio Iran. You are tuned to the North American service of Radio Moscow.

The VOA, the BBC, the Soviet Union, China, Egypt, Iran, Argentina, and so many others were on shortwave, broadcasting their national identity to the world in stories and song. They were joined by newly decolonized nations like Libya and Ghana, whose leaders saw the shortwaves as a way to promote their independence and to fuel an international anti-colonial movement.

But the global superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, were two of the most dominant voices on shortwave. And shortwave became one of the most ferocious battlegrounds of the Cold War. At bat for the Soviet Union was Radio Moscow.

Founded in 1929, the USSR's government-run network broadcast in over 70 languages. With news, propaganda, and human interest stories, it offered a Soviet alternative to the BBC and the VOA. America hit a new high in crime, and according to FBI reports to the president, nearly half of the criminals were young people.

The causes of this menacing situation are well known. The pornographic pictures distributed among adolescents and the exhibitions of abstract paintings and statues that say nothing to either the heart or the mind. The BBC and the VOA were expanding too, sending more and more coverage over the Iron Curtain. But the United States government wanted to reach people in Eastern Europe with messages that weren't so obviously propaganda as the literal Voice of America.

So they lied. Radio Free Europe gets through with the truth every day. Debuting in 1950, Radio Free Europe was a flame-throwing anti-communist shortwave network. Into the closed communist countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania go the facts. The people are not allowed to hear the truth.

The truth that helps them hold on to the will and the drive. It was portrayed as grassroots, run by emigres and exiles, and it did employ those folks. But secretly, it was funded by the CIA, which was busy meddling in global politics and supporting pro-capitalist coups during these Cold War years. The voice of free Czechoslovakia is calling. Radio Free Europe. The voice of free Czechoslovakia is calling.

Staff at Radio Free Europe launched weather balloons into the Eastern Bloc and airdropped over 300 million leaflets, instructing listeners on how to tune in. The Soviet Union did not like any of this. They spent tons of money trying to drown out Western broadcasts. They'd flood the short waves with ear-splitting noises that listeners recalled sounding like a buzzsaw or a machine gun.

Sometimes the battle went beyond the airwaves, like when a Czechoslovakian double agent poisoned the salt shakers at Radio Free Europe's Munich office. That plot was foiled before any of the 1,200-plus employees sat down for lunch. Years later, a Radio Free Europe journalist died after allegedly being stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella.

But these U.S.-run shortwave stations weren't just beaming out journalism. Willis Conover speaking. This is the Voice of America Jazz Hour. The music of jazz parallels the freedom that we have in America, something that not every country has.

In the 1950s and 60s, music, especially jazz, was a key component in the U.S. government's shortwave campaign. This is the voice of America. The federal government ran a jazz ambassador program that sent musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington on tours around the world. They focused on countries that the Soviet Union was also hoping to win over.

All the while, though, many of these very same musicians faced racism and segregation at home.

And on the short waves, Radio Moscow and others were ready to exploit this contradiction. The revolutionary people of Cuba sympathize with all people who struggle for social justice. In the early 1960s, Cuba's government-run service, Radio Havana, regularly beamed this show, Radio Free Dixie, up to the United States. It is in this spirit that we proudly allocate the following hour in an act of solidarity, peace, and friendship with our oppressed North American brothers. ♪

Radio Free Dixie invites you to listen to the free voice of the South. Radio Free Dixie was hosted by U.S. Black power activist Robert F. Williams. He was on the lam in Cuba fleeing drummed-up charges that were later dropped. And he broadcast a perspective that couldn't be found in the mainstream U.S. media. One Negro goes to the White House as a member of the president's cabinet.

while another is gunned down like a wild dog for using a white folks toilet. It should be more than clear to us that if we are ever going to be free, we must liberate ourselves. Outlets like Radio Moscow and Radio Havana want followers around the world with their mix of propaganda and just factual reporting on civil rights abuses in the U.S.,

Governments saw winning people over on shortwave as a key path to winning the Cold War. So even after the CIA's secretive role at Radio Free Europe was revealed in the early 70s, not much changed. In fact, Congress increased its budget. And they kept pumping out news and tunes. Increasingly, they played the defiant and oh-so-American sound of rock music, which was heavily censored in the USSR and Eastern Bloc. ♪

On the U.S.'s government-run, taxpayer-funded shortwave stations, they broadcast groups like Metallica and Motley Crue to listeners around the world. By the early 1980s, the U.S. government's shortwave stations reached an estimated 80 million people each week. It took tons of manpower, and it was a huge infrastructure project, too. The government had miles upon miles of fields filled with antennas.

But one man didn't think that was enough. We're as far behind the Soviets and their allies in international broadcasting today as we were in space when they launched Sputnik in 1957. On the home front, Ronald Reagan had vetoed public broadcasting budgets and overseen a massive deregulation of the airwaves that allowed for big businesses and conservative and religious broadcasters to dominate AM and FM radio. You know, season one of The Divided Dial.

But on international radio, on shortwave, the great deregulator had no qualms about spending taxpayer dollars. He poured public money into the VOA and Radio Free Europe. I'm pleased to call on Director Wick and Minister Filali to sign this agreement, an important step towards strengthening the signal of the voice of America.

Reagan's administrators wrung their hands over what to do about rock music. Lots of them didn't believe it represented the best of Western culture. But after long internal debates, they decided to keep the rebellious racket going on the short waves. Meanwhile, on the journalism side, Reagan led a shakeup by sidestepping one of the Voice of America's long-held tenets, the idea that a free press is the U.S.'s best advertisement.

Sure, that idea hadn't always been perfectly executed, but Reagan opted instead for more heavy-handed anti-communist propaganda. Reagan's VOA ran explicit editorials on behalf of the administration. Many longtime leaders resigned, replaced by more amenable colleagues, including Richard W. Carlson, father of right-wing bloviator Tucker Carlson.

And it was Reagan who launched a costly new shortwave service targeting Cuba with hardline anti-communist messages. Today I'm appealing to the Congress, help us get the truth through. Support our proposal for a new radio station, Radio Marti, for broadcasting to Cuba. While public broadcasting floundered at home, government-subsidized propaganda and bad hair metal reverberated on shortwave from the U.S. to the world.

In its first seven decades of life, shortwave transformed from an idealistic experiment in global cooperation into a hardened government tool of information warfare. And then, in the late 1980s, much of the medium's reason for being crumbled.

In Eastern Europe, which the Soviets had held by force since World War II, Mikhail Gorbachev said that Moscow would no longer interfere. Serious fighting begins in the early morning, a staccato of machine gun bursts punctuated by cannon fire. In the last weeks and months, we've seen one Communist Party after the other in Eastern Europe knocked off its perch by the people. The Cold War was over.

On this medium that seemed almost tailor-made for propaganda, there was vacancy, airtime for rent. And in the U.S., a particular group of people was ready to snatch it up.

You must form your militia unit. Say no he to the federal government, which is a counterfeit enemy foreign government. Are you a white woman such as myself who is sick of being harassed and tormented? Call Aryan Nations for a whiter, brighter America. We don't want to have to kill you. We hope to not have to kill you. But we can kill you. And if need be, we will kill you. Well, what are a few lives in the grand scheme of liberty?

I'm sure you are now seeing the reports of some things that are regularly said over the airwaves in America today. These stations and the programs grew and they took over. They dominated. What is associated in the public's mind was shortwave. It's no longer the BBC World Service. Now it's the guys who helped Timothy McVeigh bomb a federal building.

Next time on The Divided Dial, it's the shortwave story you've never heard. The private citizens who took over a fringe medium with a fringe message and used it to build a movement that fundamentally changed mainstream U.S. politics.

The Divided Dial is written and reported by me, Katie Thornton, and edited by OTM's executive producer, Katya Rogers. Music and sound design is by Jared Paul. Jennifer Munson is our technical director. Fact-checking by Graham Heysha. This series was made possible with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

On the Media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender, and Candice Wong. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer. On the Media is a production of WNYC Studios. Brook Gladstone is going to be out for a couple more weeks. I'm Michael Loewinger.

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