Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
TOP PRESS
October 24, 2025
The Guardian
I asked Rosenberg what outcome she was hoping for. “My ideal outcome is honestly just whatever is best for the animals,” she said. “An acquittal wouldn’t set an actual legal precedent, but it would set a social precedent, to some extent, and send an important message.”
TOP PRESS
October 24, 2025
The Guardian
PRESS
November 23, 2023
Countercurrents
The conviction of Hsuing could be a flashpoint in this “next frontier.” Because it shows just how broken the legal system is, his story could help advance the development of a grassroots movement to liberate nonhuman animals. It also presents us with a choice: Live in a system where the government ignores animal cruelty laws—or save the animals those laws were meant to protect.
PRESS
November 23, 2023
Countercurrents
PRESS
November 22, 2023
The New Republic
Virtually all turkeys raised in the United States come from crowded concentrated feeding operations—CAFOs, or factory farms. Investigations by animal rights groups like Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, have shown that the same farms that provide the well-groomed, handsome birds for White House events raise the rest of their animals in hellish conditions.
PRESS
November 22, 2023
The New Republic
PRESS
November 22, 2023
Common Dreams
I hate seeing Wayne go through this. I’m tired of the legal maneuverings by those with power to maintain a world that hurts the most vulnerable.
PRESS
November 22, 2023
Common Dreams
PRESS
November 16, 2023
Plant-Based News
“Open rescue is one of the most powerful tools that we have to challenge animal cruelty," [said animal rescuer Zoe Rosenberg]. “When you look into a factory farm and you see thousands of animals suffering, it’s so easy to desensitize yourself and get lost in the numbers and the immeasurable suffering. But when you identify an individual and connect with them, it’s life changing. Every single one of those animals in those facilities is an individual.”
PRESS
November 16, 2023
Plant-Based News
PRESS
November 13, 2023
Democracy Now!
“If you or I tortured an individual dog, we would clearly be subject to the criminal laws of the state of California. Yet, when a factory farm does this on massive scale, on a scale a million times larger than an individual person abusing a single animal, it’s seen as industry standard, and therefore completely immune from prosecution.”
PRESS
November 13, 2023
Democracy Now!
PRESS
November 10, 2023
Petaluma Argus Courier
We can work together to start the transition away from these destructive factory farms and use our collective power to build a better world.
PRESS
November 10, 2023
Petaluma Argus Courier
TOP PRESS
November 9, 2023
Vox
Hsiung’s trial and conviction show the extraordinary difficulty of trying to discuss what happens to animals on factory farms in a legal system that only sees them as property. At both factory farms in this case, DxE had documented gruesome conditions prior to their open rescue actions and had submitted animal cruelty complaints to authorities (though no action was taken by legal officials, King said). Yet it was the activists, not the farm owners, who were criminally charged and had to explain themselves to a jury.
TOP PRESS
November 9, 2023
Vox
TOP PRESS
November 8, 2023
Wired
For the first time, guerrilla animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere reveals a guide to its investigative tactics and toolkit, from spy cams to night vision and drones. Bernier says that DxE decided to publicly release its guide, even in the wake of Hsiung’s conviction, to help activists who are already committed to carrying out covert investigations do their work more safely and effectively.
TOP PRESS
November 8, 2023
Wired
PRESS
November 6, 2023
Berkeleyside
The proposed ordinance states, “CAFOs are a leading cause of environmental destruction, pose grave risks to public health, abuse and kill nonhuman animals, and often create dangerous and exploitative conditions for workers.”
PRESS
November 6, 2023
Berkeleyside
TOP PRESS
June 13, 2023
The Intercept
In conjunction with the release of an undercover investigation on the factory farm, the group DxE mounted an “open rescue” of birds from a slaughterhouse.
TOP PRESS
March 30, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
If government agencies were taking these [investigative] reports seriously and protecting animals from cruelty, there would be no need for bills like this. But certain Utah legislators have decided that the real problem with sick, suffering animals is the potential for negative publicity for the industry and so it is the industry, not the animals, that need protection.
TOP PRESS
March 21, 2023
Vox
DxE’s theory — that when you show a jury of ordinary citizens what happens to animals in the meat industry, they’ll agree that they deserve rescue — turned out to be true, challenging the idea that the animal rights agenda is radical or unpopular.
TOP PRESS
March 20, 2023
LA Times
“This is a victory for [the chickens] Ethan, Jax, and all other living beings subjected to abuse by corporations like Foster Farms,” Santurio said in a news release from Direct Action Everywhere. “I have so much love for the chickens in my family and I want all animals to experience that safety and respect.”
TOP PRESS
March 9, 2023
LA Times
“We published this video within an hour with both my name and Alicia Santurio’s name attached to it because we believe what we’re doing is legal and morally right,” Paul said in an interview with The Times.
TOP PRESS
February 14, 2023
New York Times
In any context other than factory farming, treating animals the way we see chickens treated in the Foster Farms slaughterhouse videos would be considered blatant cruelty. Many would also consider it cruel to stand by while someone else handled animals this way. “If there’s someone in my neighborhood watching me boil birds alive, we’d say this is monstrous behavior,” Wayne Hsiung, a founder of DxE, told me.
TOP PRESS
February 9, 2023
San Francisco Chronicle
The message the pigs conveyed in the gas chamber footage is clear: They are in extreme pain, and they want to live. You don’t need the Agriculture Department to tell you that. You can see and hear it for yourself.
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.
BLOG
October 27, 2025
Updates and summaries from Week 7 of the Perdue Rescue Trial
BLOG
October 20, 2025
Updates and summaries from Week 6 of the Perdue Rescue Trial
BLOG
October 13, 2025
Updates and summaries from Week 5 of the Perdue Rescue Trial
BLOG
October 6, 2025
Updates and summaries from Week 4 of the Perdue Rescue Trial
BLOG
September 29, 2025
Updates and summaries from Week 3 of the Perdue Rescue Trial
BLOG
September 22, 2025
Updates and summaries from Week 2 of the Perdue Rescue Trial
BLOG
September 15, 2025
Updates and summaries from Week 1 of the Perdue Rescue Trial
BLOG
September 12, 2025
The Perdue Rescue Trial begins on Monday, September 15th at the Sonoma County Superior Court in Santa Rosa, California.
BLOG
July 31, 2025
Trader Joe’s is known as “America’s most reputable brand,” and I’m learning firsthand that this might be because they relentlessly silence their critics and go to great lengths to protect their image from public scrutiny.
PRESS RELEASE
October 3, 2022
Two men face 10+ years in prison in a case decried by legal experts as unconstitutional retaliation for exposing abusive conditions
PRESS RELEASE
September 24, 2022
The demonstration is the kickoff for a week of action dedicated to promoting Rose’s Law, an animal bill of rights that DxE says is their ultimate vision of a kind and just world for animals.
PRESS RELEASE
September 9, 2022
"This is really about inverting the truth: making peaceful activists look dangerous, when the real danger is Smithfield and other companies that systematically torture millions of innocent sentient beings while destroying our environment."
PRESS RELEASE
September 8, 2022
Emek Echo and Katia Shokrai ran across the field holding up red smoke flares and wearing shirts with “RIGHTTORESCUE.COM” text.
PRESS RELEASE
August 20, 2022
Judge Wilcox repeatedly expressed concerns about advocates potentially intimidating local residents. This is contrary to recent footage and a lawsuit in which it is canvassers supporting Hsiung and Picklesimer who faced death threats and were forced to stop talking to sidewalk pedestrians.
PRESS RELEASE
July 31, 2022
PRESS RELEASE
July 14, 2022
Animal rights advocates gathered to mark the two-year anniversary of the release of Unseen, an undercover mini-documentary exposing extreme cruelty inside this facility, and to bear witness and spread compassion for its victims.
PRESS RELEASE
July 4, 2022
Investigators with same animal rights group face felony trial in September after rescuing piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory pig farm
PRESS RELEASE
June 18, 2022
Over 70 activists, including two Bay Area residents facing felony charges for rescuing piglets from a Smithfield factory farm in Milford, Utah, marched through the streets of San Francisco Saturday.
