Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired Magazine
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America’s agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI.
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired Magazine
PRESS
October 19, 2023
Sentient Media
Perhaps the most well-known case of open rescue involves two piglets, Lily and Lizzie. Ill and underweight when they were found by activists at a Smithfield-owned (the largest pork producer in the U.S.) facility in Utah, Circle Four Farms, the pigs were rescued by activists and relocated to animal sanctuaries, which the FBI then raided in search of the pigs’ DNA.
PRESS
October 12, 2023
Press Democrat
An image of a chicken with an eye injury and that was believed to be too frail to flee humans was indicative of the chicken population at a poultry farm just outside Petaluma where activists held a protest in 2018, one of them told a jury Thursday.
PRESS
October 12, 2023
Press Democrat
PRESS
October 11, 2023
Daily Californian
A similar group of deaths occurred at Golden Gate Fields in November 2021, when four horses died over the course of a week. “This type of pattern is common for horse racing,” said Samantha Faye, lead organizer of Stop Blood Sports and spokesperson for DxE.
PRESS
October 6, 2023
Press Democrat
[Direct Action Everywhere/DxE] argues they believed the animals were being mistreated. Referencing California’s animal cruelty laws, they contend they had the right to rescue animals in distress.
PRESS
October 6, 2023
Press Democrat
PRESS
October 6, 2023
Davis Vanguard
In Deputy District Attorney Robert Waner’s opening statement, the prosecutor told jurors Hsiung and DxE activists believe that compassion should be extended to all animals.
PRESS
October 6, 2023
UnchainedTV
The judge in the Sonoma rescue trial of animal rights activist Wayne Hsiung has ruled against allowing him to show videos of suffering ducks and chickens to the jury.
PRESS
October 5, 2023
North Bay Business Journal
Hsiung told jurors Thursday the activists support transparency and their ultimate goal is to expose mistreatment of animals. “You cannot fight a shadow with more shadows. You fight a shadow with light,” he said.
PRESS
October 5, 2023
North Bay Business Journal
PRESS
October 4, 2023
The Daily Illini
Open rescue doesn’t just win legal victories — it raises larger societal questions about how animals ought to be treated. If animals have a right to be rescued, should we even allow them to be exploited or killed in the first place?
PRESS
October 4, 2023
The Daily Illini
PRESS
October 3, 2023
KTVU/Fox 2
"It's tragic, but it's not that surprising," [activist] Paul Darwin Picklesimer said. "The deaths are just simply inherent. No matter what they do, there are always going to be deaths."
PRESS
October 3, 2023
KTVU/Fox 2
TOP PRESS
February 2, 2023
New York Times
“It was horrible cruelty to the pigs inside the chambers,” Jim Reynolds told me. “It’s a violation of federal law.” Reynolds is one of 90 veterinarians who signed an open letter saying that the process shown in the videos probably violates federal law on humane slaughter.
TOP PRESS
January 18, 2023
Wired
Animal rights activists have captured the first hidden-camera video from inside a carbon dioxide “stunning chamber” in a US meatpacking plant.
TOP PRESS
October 25, 2022
Vox
The pigs’ essentially zero value is baked into the meat industry’s business model... 15 percent of piglets die before they’re finished weaning. The pork industry may slaughter over 125 million pigs a year, but they breed far more, knowing many will die from disease and injury.
TOP PRESS
October 18, 2022
New York Times
During the closing statements in the trial, in which I represented myself, I told jurors that a not-guilty verdict would encourage corporations to treat animals under their care with more compassion and make governments more open to animal cruelty complaints.
TOP PRESS
October 11, 2022
Democracy Now!
In a major victory for animal rights, a jury in Utah has acquitted two animal rights activists who each faced up to five and a half years of prison time for rescuing two sick piglets from Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms, one of the world’s largest pig farms.
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
The Intercept
“Whenever I think about the condition Lily was in and the desperation we felt when we saw her there, struggling and so small and so sick, a little baby in such a horrible, awful, brutal place,” Hsiung said in a video posted to Instagram, “we just wanted to get her out.” Animal rescue “is not the worst part of us as human beings. It’s the best of us.”
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
New York Times
Many animal welfare advocates viewed the trial as a display of corporate power, and a test of whether the meat industry can legally prevent the public from seeing the sometimes unsavory aspects of modern mass food production.
TOP PRESS
October 3, 2022
Fox 13 Salt Lake City
“They did a nonviolent action, and they saved the lives of two piglets who would have been discarded by the industry anyway.”
TOP PRESS
September 19, 2022
Harper's Magazine
Most readers care about humans, not pigs. What gets us going is a compelling main character facing many years in prison, not several million pigs spending a lifetime in circumstances that make prison look comparatively relaxing.
BLOG
April 17, 2025
The resistance of 2025 might not look like the resistance of 2017. That’s okay. In fact, sociologist Doug McAdam has demonstrated that tactical innovation was critical for the continued success of the civil rights movement. As organizers introduced new tactics, movement activity (‘insurgency’) rose dramatically.
BLOG
April 5, 2025
Perdue's legal complaint is riddled with false accusations meant to malign nonviolent activists and keep the attention off its abuse of animals.
BLOG
March 6, 2025
We have already begun to develop a large, trained, and coordinated network of chapters across the state, and to create a factory farm map and resource guide that will become the go-to source for information about industrialized animal agriculture in California.
BLOG
December 29, 2024
The silver lining of repression is that it gives movements the opportunity to prove how strong they are. While the past year has been hard, I feel incredibly grateful for all of the ways the animal rights movement has grown and persevered.
BLOG
December 12, 2024
“Do we have factory farms in Berkeley?” was a common response I got when collecting signatures. I explain that we want to prevent another animal gambling operation from opening up in Golden Gate Fields’ absence. Plus, Berkeley can be the first municipality to ban CAFOs and set a precedent that other places can follow. Berkeley voters understood. They signed the petition, and this November, they voted yes. Measure DD passed with 62% “YES” votes, making history for animal and environmental protection.
BLOG
September 10, 2024
If people do not believe that they can change a situation, they will never act to do so. If we do not believe that animal liberation is possible and that we can make it happen, it never will. In fact, animal agriculture and other unjust systems rely on our hopelessness and cynicism.
BLOG
April 29, 2024
My findings show that “No Antibiotics Ever” just means that the chickens are still experiencing severe infection but they aren’t receiving the medication they desperately need. In one barn at a Petaluma Poultry factory farm in Santa Rosa, more than 10% of the chickens died by the time they reached 5 weeks. That is more than double the accepted industry mortality rate.
BLOG
December 26, 2023
The Sonoma County Court's actions didn't stop me but, instead, spurred me to further action just as it did for many others.
BLOG
December 2, 2023
Whether I lose my freedom for days, weeks, months, or even years, it is worth it to give even one or two animals a chance to experience freedom for the first time in their entire lives.
PRESS RELEASE
March 5, 2021
Following exposé with workers cutting the throats of fully-conscious cows, demonstrators demand moratorium banning new factory farms and slaughterhouses
PRESS RELEASE
March 3, 2021
4 Bay Area residents locked down at Berkeley’s Golden Gate Fields horse racing facility, using heavily-weighted PVC pipes in a direct action maneuver called a “sleeping dragon.”
PRESS RELEASE
March 2, 2021
Graphic hidden-camera footage DxE investigators obtained inside Harris Beef in Selma, CA reveals cows systematically restrained and killed with a slice to the throat while fully conscious.
PRESS RELEASE
February 14, 2021
The activists said they are drawing attention to Smithfield's heartless attitude
PRESS RELEASE
January 28, 2021
Grundy County Attorney Cites Iowa Select Farms’ refusal to testify as cause for dismissal
PRESS RELEASE
January 11, 2021
Group that hoaxed Fox News on live TV last month also behind today’s demonstration
PRESS RELEASE
January 10, 2021
Grundy County Attorney Cites Iowa Select Farms’ refusal to testify as cause for dismissal
PRESS RELEASE
December 22, 2020
Imposter cites animal agriculture’s role in creating and spreading pandemics, and harms to the environment and animals
PRESS RELEASE
December 10, 2020
Activists with Direct Action Everywhere are calling for a statewide moratorium on factory farms and slaughterhouses, citing animal and worker abuse
