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Jun 13, 2025
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered the termination of all remaining overseas employees of USAID to complete the dismantling of the six-decade-old agency. USAID was an early target of Elon Musk and DOGE. We look at the dismantling of USAID and what it means for people around the world to lose this lifeline, as detailed in a new Amnesty International report. "We talked to somebody who actually saw IVs being ripped out of arms when the stop-work order came down," says Amnesty's Amanda Klasing, who describes the consequences of the U.S.'s retraction of critical aid to countries in the Global South and refutes the Trump administration's claims that no deaths can be traced to the cuts. Now, lacking funding from the wealthiest country in the world, aid workers like Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council are turning to other countries' governments to bridge the gap. Egeland says, "The U.S. is leaving international solidarity and compassion completely," even though, as Klasing notes, "It's been the leader of humanitarian aid, and it should remain so."
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Jun 13, 2025
Democratic Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota joins Democracy Now! to discuss the increasing authoritarianism of the Trump administration, including its crackdown on anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles, targeting of pro-Palestine students on college campuses and plans for a massive military parade coinciding with Trump's birthday on June 14. "We are in the midst of the creation of a police state," says Omar. "It will be a dark day if we do not stand up for ourselves, for our Constitution and for our republic."
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Jun 13, 2025
Israel has launched a large-scale military attack on Iran, killing top military officials, nuclear scientists and civilians in the deadliest attack on the country in decades. Iran has launched drones at Israel in response. The unprovoked attack, which Israel described as a "preemptive strike," comes just days before scheduled nuclear talks between Iran and the United States. Iranian-born analyst Trita Parsi says the Trump administration appears to have been coordinating with Israel for "negotiating leverage" in an attempt to force Iran to "capitulate" on nuclear disarmament. Whether this gambit will succeed remains to be seen, though Parsi and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is betting it does not. Netanyahu has long indicated a willingness to wage war with Iran and likely hopes to draw the United States into a major regional conflict. "This was the project of his life," says Levy.
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Jun 13, 2025
Israel Launches Major Unprovoked Attack on Iran, Stoking Fears of All-Out War, UNGA Adopts Gaza Ceasefire Resolution; Internet Blackout Adds to Misery in Gaza, "The World Must Rise": Freedom Flotilla Activist Implores Int'l Community to Help Stop Gaza Genocide, Appeals Court Keeps Nat'l Guard Under Trump's Control in L.A. Amid Ongoing ICE Raids and Protests, "We Will Kill You": Florida Sheriff Threatens Protesters Ahead of Nationwide Anti-Trump Demos, Federal Agents Handcuff, Forcibly Remove CA Sen. Alex Padilla from Kristi Noem Presser, DHS Orders 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to "Self-Deport" or Face Arrest, Harvard Scientist Kseniia Petrova Released on Bail After 4 Months Locked Up, SCOTUS Rules Atlanta Family Can Sue Gov't in Wrongful Raid Case, One Man Survived the Air India Boeing Crash That Killed 290 Others, Nairobi Protests Condemn Police Brutality, Impunity After In-Custody Death of Blogger, RFK Jr. Appoints Vaccine Skeptics to CDC Advisory Panel After Abrupt Firing Last Week, Senate Confirms Scandal-Ridden Billy Long to Head the IRS, an Agency He Once Tried to Dismantle, House Approves Trump Request to Rescind $9.4B for Foreign Aid and Public Media, Judge Declares Mistrial in Third Rape Charge of Harvey Weinstein's NYC Retrial
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Jun 12, 2025
We go to Los Angeles, where immigrant workers and families are feeling the impact of ICE raids on worksites like Home Depot. While hundreds have been detained, countless others are left to wonder whether they can safely go to work or school, fearing for their families. "The life of an immigrant in Los Angeles and across this country … is full of uncertainties," says Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. "Families don't know whether they're going to see their parents when they leave in the morning to go to work."
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Jun 12, 2025
As immigrant rights protests spread to Chicago, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez, who is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and married to a DACA recipient and recently called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign. She responds to President Trump's threat to deploy troops in more major cities to quell protests. "What you are seeing is the beginning of fascism," says Ramirez, who represents parts of Chicago. "For fascists, they select a public enemy. And today, it's an immigrant. … Tomorrow, it's anyone they find undesirable."
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Jun 12, 2025
Nearly two dozen congressmembers are backing legislation, the Block the Bombs Act, that would withhold offensive weapons from Israel that violate international law and humanitarian norms. "What Bibi Netanyahu wants is to continue to escalate this ground invasion and starvation of Palestinians, to absolutely take over Gaza and destroy Palestinian life," says Congressmember Delia Ramirez, one of the co-sponsors.
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Jun 12, 2025
Activists from around the world are arriving in Egypt ahead of the Global March to Gaza, set to launch June 15, when thousands plan to march to the Rafah border to call for an end to Israel's genocide against Palestinians and its blockade of the territory. Dozens who flew to Cairo for the march have reportedly been detained, interrogated and deported by Egyptian security forces, but organizers say the event will proceed as planned. Former U.S. diplomat Hala Rharrit, who is taking part in the march, spoke with Democracy Now! earlier this week and said she could not turn a "blind eye" to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. "What type of world are we going to be allowing our children to grow up in, if we stand by while an entire civilian population is forcibly starved?" Rharrit asks.
Rharrit was the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department before she resigned in 2024 to protest the Biden administration's Gaza policy. She accuses her former colleague Matthew Miller of "careerism" after he recently admitted on a podcast that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, even though he regularly denied that while serving as a spokesperson for the State Department under Biden.
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Jun 12, 2025
No Survivors Expected After Air India Aircraft Carrying at Least 242 People Crashes, U.S. Pulls Iraq Embassy Personnel Amid Mounting Fears of Israeli Attack on Iran, More Gazans Seeking Aid Amid the 120 Palestinians Killed by Israel Over Past Day, 11-Year-Old Adam al-Najjar Evacuated to Italy for Treatment After Israel Killed Father and 9 Siblings, Israeli Forces Continue Raids on Occupied West Bank, Killing 3 Palestinians Over Past 2 Days, California Seeks to Limit Marine and Nat'l Guard Authority in L.A. Amid Ongoing ICE Protests and Raids, Anguished Families Have Not Heard from Loved Ones Since Abductions by ICE, Prosecutor Charges 2 L.A. Protesters, Warns Gov't Will Pursue Others as Protests Spread Across U.S., "We Will Not Be Intimidated": CHIRLA Responds After Hawley Accuses It of "Bankrolling" L.A. Unrest, GOP Lawmakers to Probe 200 Immigration Nonprofits over Manufactured Border "Crisis", China and U.S. Reportedly Reach Trade Deal, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro Says He Discussed "Alternatives" for Staying in Power After Election Loss, Khartoum Could Soon Face Famine as Devastating Sudanese War Grinds On, Immigrants in Northern Ireland Targeted in Spate of Race Riots, Judge Rules Mahmoud Khalil Can't Be Detained for Political Expression, Paving Way for Possible Release, CUNY Students End Hunger Strike for Gaza, Call for Supporters to Fight for Summer of Liberation, 200 New Yorkers Occupy Maersk Building, Demanding End to Its Participation in Gaza Genocide, EPA Moves to Repeal Limits on Power Plant Emissions, Mercury, DNC Forces Out 25-Year-Old Activist David Hogg over His Campaign to Back Progressive Insurgents, House Voting on Defunding of Public Media, NYC Jury Convicts Harvey Weinstein on Sex Crime Charge, Again, as Further Deliberations Continue
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Jun 11, 2025
Israel continues to detain eight individuals who were captured Monday when Israeli Navy commandos intercepted a Gaza-bound boat carrying humanitarian aid. Four other passengers on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla have been deported, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. We get an update from Sergio Toribio, one of the 12 on board the Madleen, who has just been deported back to his home country of Spain. He describes how Israeli commandos boarded the ship in international waters and held them on the boat for over 24 hours while towing them to Israel. "They kidnapped us," he says.
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Jun 11, 2025
Condemnation is growing of President Trump's travel ban that went into effect Monday, banning citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and the Republic of Congo. It also imposes heightened restrictions on people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. President Trump is "destroying what this nation stands for," says Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. "Immigration in the U.S. is an American value." Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, called on communities to "fight to make sure that people have the right to migrate." The administration is "literally separating families," says Jozef.
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Jun 11, 2025
A nationwide "No Kings" movement plans to hold over 1,800 anti-Trump rallies across the United States on June 14, the same day as President Trump's military parade in Washington, D.C., as he celebrates his 79th birthday. Organizers are protesting President Trump's mass deportations, militarized crackdown against protesters, defiance of court orders, and attacks on civil rights. "We're going to show him on June 14 that real power lies in the people," says Leah Greenberg?, co-founder and co-executive director of ?Indivisible. Tanks and other armored vehicles are being transported to Washington, D.C., for the parade, which Marine Corps veteran JoJo Sweatt calls an "egregious overspend." President Trump threatened heavy force would be used on anyone who protests at the parade in D.C.
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Jun 11, 2025
Newsom Slams Trump for Sending Troops to L.A.: "Democracy Is Under Assault Before Our Eyes", Trump Claims Anti-ICE Protests in L.A. Are Part of "Foreign Invasion", Curfew Enacted in Downtown L.A. as Protests Continue, Pentagon: Troop Deployment to L.A. Will Cost $134 Million, Texas Gov. Abbott Deploys National Guard as Anti-ICE Protests Grow, As Tanks Arrive in D.C., Trump Says "Very Heavy Force" Will Be Used on Protesters at Military Parade, 31 More Palestinians Killed Near Aid Distribution Site in Gaza, U.K. & Allies Impose Sanctions on Israeli Officials Smotrich & Ben-Gvir for Inciting Violence, Greta Thunberg Returns Home to Sweden After Gaza-Bound Aid Ship Is Seized, Argentina Supreme Court Upholds Prison Sentence for Ex-President Kirchner, Record 1.3 Million People Displaced in Haiti as Violence Escalates, Terry Moran Out at ABC News After Calling Stephen Miller a "World-Class Hater", Rep. Sherrill and Ciattarelli to Face Off in NJ Gubernatorial Race, Rubio Orders Termination of Remaining USAID Overseas Staff
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Jun 10, 2025
Activists from around the world are planning a Global March to Gaza on June 15 in support of Palestinians enduring the Israeli blockade. The first Biden State Department diplomat to publicly resign over Gaza policy, Hala Rharrit, plans to attend the march along with thousands of others who will walk from Cairo to the Rafah border. "Silence does not ensure that we will be OK," says Rharrit. "It's quite the opposite. Silence ensures the injustice spreads." Rharrit had served as the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department. She joins us from Dubai as she prepares for the march.
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Jun 10, 2025
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father who was wrongfully sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in March, is now in federal custody in Tennessee after being returned to the United States over the weekend. He now faces federal criminal charges that he was illegally transporting undocumented immigrants within the U.S. "He's still far away from what we want, which is for him to be freed and returned to his family," says Chris Newman, a lawyer for Abrego Garcia's family and legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Newman draws connections between the L.A. anti-ICE protests and Abrego Garcia's first encounter with law enforcement in 2019 at a Home Depot, where a now-fired Maryland police officer accused him of being a potential MS-13 gang member and handed him over to ICE.
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Jun 10, 2025
The Trump administration is sending 700 marines and an additional 2,000 members of the National Guard into Los Angeles following four days of protests against militarized immigration raids. Rob Bonta, attorney general of California, sued to block the use of National Guard troops on Monday. "Unfortunately, I think [Trump] wants conflict," said Bonta. "He wants something to erupt so that that provides the basis for him to try to grasp and seize additional power." Bonta's office is pursuing more than two dozen lawsuits against the Trump administration.
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Jun 10, 2025
President Trump has inflamed tensions over immigration raids in Los Angeles, which his top adviser Stephen Miller described as an insurrection. "They want protesters to react violently to distract from what is really happening, which is that families are being separated, our communities are being devastated, and the people of Los Angeles are standing up to say, 'We will not stand for this,'" says Jean Guerrero, New York Times contributing opinion writer and author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. Meanwhile, she notes Trump's budget bill would fund a massive expansion of federal immigration enforcement and turn it into a threat to the civil rights of everyone.
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Jun 10, 2025
Trump Sends U.S. Marines into L.A., Doubles National Guard Presence Amid Anti-ICE Protests, Union Leader David Huerta Charged and Released on Bond After ICE Arrest, Australia Condemns LAPD Shooting of Reporter, One of Many Attacks on Reporters Covering L.A. Protests, Democratic Reps. Barred from Visiting ICE Detention Facilities, Israeli Attacks Kill 60 People in Gaza, Including More Palestinians Awaiting Aid, Israeli Attack Kills 3 Paramedics, Another Journalist During Gaza Rescue Operation, Israel Launches Strikes on Yemen's Hodeidah, Israel Deports 4 Freedom Flotilla Activists; Another 8 Refused Voluntary Deportation, Global March to Gaza, Tunisian Convoy Head Toward Rafah Crossing to Break Siege, RFK Jr. Fires Entire CDC Vaccination Panel, Hundreds of NIH Employees "Dissent" to Challenge Agency Firings, Termination of Grants and Contracts, Shooter Kills at Least 9 People in Austria High School Shooting, Jair Bolsonaro's Attempted Coup Trial Kicks Off in Brazil
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Jun 09, 2025
Eleven peace activists and one journalist on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship, the Madleen, were detained by Israeli soldiers as their ship carrying vital humanitarian aid for starving Palestinians approached Gaza. The ship was intercepted by Israeli forces in the middle of the night in international waters. Its supplies were seized and communications jammed. The unarmed activists will likely be transported to Israeli detention or "immediately deported," says Ann Wright, a U.S. military veteran who has participated in four Freedom Flotilla journeys and now serves on the steering committee of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. She calls on citizens of countries around the world to push for the activists' release and an end to Israel's war on Gaza.
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Jun 09, 2025
As protests against ICE raids spread across the city, President Trump has deployed the California National Guard to Los Angeles, the first time in decades that a president has deployed the National Guard without a governor's request. Trump's border "czar" Tom Homan threatened to arrest California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, while Newsom says he plans to sue. "This is absolutely unprecedented. It's extremely dangerous," says legal expert Elizabeth Goitein. "It's going to escalate tensions rather than deescalating them."
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Jun 09, 2025
In Los Angeles, mass street protests have broken out in response to immigration raids. Local police and Border Patrol are cracking down on protesters, while the Trump administration has called in the California National Guard. "They shot thousands of rounds of tear gas, flashbang grenades, all kinds of repressive instruments," says Ron Gochez, community organizer with Union del Barrio who helped organize some of the protests. He notes many of the protests have also been successful at turning back immigration agents, preventing ICE arrests and detention. "If we organize ourselves, if we resist, we can defend our communities from ICE terror, from the Border Patrol or from any federal agency that wishes to separate our families."
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Jun 09, 2025
Trump Deploys National Guard to L.A. as Protests Continue over Militarized ICE Raids, Officers in L.A. Fire Rubber Bullets, Flashbang Grenades & Tear Gas at ICE Protesters & Journalists, Federal Agents Detain SEIU Labor Leader David Huerta in Los Angeles, Israel Intercepts Gaza-Bound Flotilla Carrying Greta Thunberg & Other Activists, More Palestinians Fatally Shot Attempting to Get Aid in Gaza, Russia Escalates Attacks on Ukraine After Trump Likened War to Playground Fight, New Trump Travel Ban Goes into Effect, Bars Citizens from 12 Nations, Kilmar Abrego Garcia Back Brought Back to U.S. to Face Newly Unsealed Charges, Supreme Court OKs DOGE Access to Social Security Records of Millions, Supreme Court Tosses Mexico Lawsuit Against U.S. Gun Manufacturers, Colombian Senator Shot During Campaign Rally in Bogotá, Another Critic of Bukele Is Arrested in Escalating Crackdown on Dissent, "Open Borders, Break Down Walls": Pope Leo Warns Against Nationalist Political Movements, U.N. Ocean Conference Opens in France as Momentum Grows to Ratify High Seas Treaty, NOAA: Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Reaches Highest Level in Millions of Years
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Jun 06, 2025
We speak with Dr. Rupa Marya, a physician, activist, author and composer, who this week filed two free speech complaints against her former employer, the University of California, San Francisco. The school fired her last month after a lengthy suspension over her criticism of Israel's war on Gaza and its impact on healthcare in the Palestinian territory. "I didn't expect that my career-ending move would be to say 'stop bombing hospitals,' for expressing support for Palestinian liberation and for criticizing the U.S.-backed genocide," says Marya. She was named one of the top 20 most influential women in biomedicine by Nature and served on multiple national advisory boards. Since her firing, over 1,000 healthcare workers and students have signed open letters demanding her reinstatement and denouncing UCSF's suppression of political expression.
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Jun 06, 2025
We get an update from the Madleen, the Freedom Flotilla ship sailing to Gaza with vital humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, one of 12 people on the ship, says "spirits are high" despite the constant presence of drones overhead and threats from the Israeli government. "Palestine is now the strategic place for all peoples to unite and fight against oppression, exploitation and the destruction of nature," says Ávila. "People's power is the ultimate power, and love and solidarity can beat any hateful, racist and supremacist ideology, like Zionism." Earlier this week, the ship made a detour to respond to a mayday call to help dozens of migrants aboard a deflating vessel. The Madleen is expected to reach Gaza on Monday, though Israeli officials have said they will not allow it to land.
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Jun 06, 2025
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has filed a federal lawsuit, after he was arrested by masked federal agents outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail in Newark. "They arrested me without any evidence," says Baraka of his decision to sue. "They humiliated me. They cuffed me. They dragged me in the car, took me to the cell. … It was completely unwarranted." President Trump's Justice Department is also suing Newark over its sanctuary policies, along with three other New Jersey cities, including Jersey City, where the mayor, Steve Fulop, is running for governor. Baraka is also running for governor in the primary election this Tuesday, June 10.
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Jun 06, 2025
President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" now before the Senate could result in over 51,000 preventable deaths each year in the United States. That's according to public health experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, who sent a letter warning about the bill's impact to the Senate Finance Committee. An estimated 16 million people stand to lose their health coverage as a result of the changes in the bill, which "imposes onerous paperwork and fails to safeguard healthcare tax credits," says Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling at Yale and one of the signatories to the letter. She also notes universal healthcare would have the opposite effect and save tens of thousands of lives each year. "There are a lot of ways we can improve how expensive our healthcare is, but taking healthcare away from people is not how to do it," says Galvani.
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Jun 06, 2025
Is the Donald Trump-Elon Musk bromance finally over? President Trump is threatening to cut off billions of dollars in federal contracts with Musk after the two billionaires engaged in a dramatic online feud just days after Musk called Trump's budget bill a "disgusting abomination." Musk appeared to back the impeachment of Trump and claimed the president is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files. "They are people who always have their eye on the bottom line, but they also are, obviously, titanically sized egos," says author Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at Boston University, who is working on a new book about Elon Musk. "This is just a sign of how dangerous it is to put … the whole future of the American economy and the political scene in the hands of two sole human beings."
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Jun 06, 2025
Trump and Musk Trade Threats and Insults as Deepening Rift Threatens Trump's Signature Bill, Netanyahu Acknowledges Israel Armed Gangs Accused of Looting Humanitarian Aid , Israel Attacks Beirut's Suburbs and Southern Lebanon in Latest Ceasefire Violation, French Stevedores Refuse to Move Military Cargo Bound for Israel, House Progressives' "Block the Bombs Act" Would End Transfer of Offensive Arms to Israel, State Department Sanctions ICC Judges over War Crimes Investigations, Trump Withdraws Nomination of Elon Musk Ally to Lead NASA, Trump Administration Waives Environmental Laws to Speed Border Wall Construction, ICE Agents and Their Prisoners Left Stranded in Shipping Container in Djibouti, Judge Grants Release to Massachusetts High School Student After 6 Days in ICE Custody, Trump Administration Returns Wrongly Deported Guatemalan Immigrant, Lawsuit Alleges Jared Polis Collaborated with ICE to Share Residents' Personal Data , Judge Halts Deportation of Family of Egyptian Man Charged in Boulder Attack, Ethics Complaint Accuses Attorney General Pam Bondi of "Serious Professional Misconduct"
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Jun 05, 2025
We're joined by award-winning investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who in 2018 exposed the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal and is now taking on what she terms the "broligarchy," the billionaire Silicon Valley businessmen who now wield major influence in U.S. government and society. "This is a new type of power, and the world hasn't seen this before, in which you have state power now with this enormous surveillance engine machine," says Cadwalladr. She warns that the increasing authoritarianism of the Trump administration is being facilitated by unregulated surveillance technology. "People should be freaked out. … They want as much information about the population as possible, so that they can surveil them, they can control them, they can search out their enemies, they can target them, and they can punish them, and they can silence them."
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Jun 05, 2025
We speak to political scientist Neve Gordon and medical anthropologist Guy Shalev about their new article, "The Shame of Israeli Medicine," which looks at the "complicity of the Israeli medical establishment with Israel's egregious violations of international law." The article's third author, Osama Tanous, is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and has not been able to make media appearances for fear of reprisal by the Israeli government. "The Israeli medical establishment in general identifies with Israel's colonial project and puts the colonial project over the most basic ethical principles of their profession," says Gordon, who previously served as the inaugural director of the organization Physicians for Human Rights Israel. Shalev, the current executive director of the group, connects the Israeli military's targeting of healthcare workers and infrastructure in Gaza with its silencing of the great number of Palestinians who make up the medical workforce in Israel. The authors call for an international boycott of Israeli medical institutions, until "Israel stops its colonial project, [and] after the Palestinians receive liberation and self-determination."
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Jun 05, 2025
A group of veterans and their allies have entered their third week of a "Fast for Gaza" outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City. The group is calling for an end to arms sales to Israel and of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. We hear from multiple hunger strikers on their decisions to join the planned 40-day action and why they are pressuring the U.N. in particular. "We wake up each morning, and we don't worry about whether or not our children have been buried under rubble overnight. We're not drinking poisoned water. We're not surrounded by rubble. We're not dealing with the horrible traumas that people in Palestine and Gaza are dealing with," says peace activist Kathy Kelly, who started her hunger strike two weeks ago. "What would make us stop? Well, certainly, if there were a permanent, unconditional, immediate ceasefire."
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Jun 05, 2025
We get an update on the case of former Columbia University student protest negotiator Mahmoud Khalil from Baher Azmy, a member of Khalil's legal team at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Khalil has been detained in Louisiana for nearly three months, in what Azmy calls one of "our immigration gulags." Khalil's legal team is now challenging the State Department's determination that his presence in the United States harms the country's foreign policy interests.
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Jun 05, 2025
President Trump has signed a new travel ban barring citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States. The ban applies to Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and the Republic of Congo. The Trump administration is calling some of the countries "terrorist safe havens" and citing high visa overstay rates for others. Compared to the first Trump administration's sweeping travel bans, which targeted travelers from Muslim-majority countries, this latest iteration is more likely to withstand legal challenges, says Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which challenged the previous bans. However, the new order will be just as "devastating," says Azmy.
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Jun 05, 2025
Trump Signs Travel Ban Targeting Citizens of 12 Countries , United States Vetoes Another U.N. Security Council Resolution Calling for Gaza Ceasefire, Israel Attacks Al-Ahli Hospital, Killing at Least 3 Journalists, Protesters Demand U.S. and U.K. Lawmakers Act to Stop Genocide in Gaza, Deadly Russian Attacks on Ukraine Follow Putin's Threat of Retaliation over Drone Strikes, Iran's Supreme Leader Rejects Trump Administration Demand to End Uranium Enrichment, Human Rights Watch Says U.S. Committed Apparent War Crime in Yemen Port Attack, Trump Targets Columbia's Accreditation and Harvard's International Students, Trump Proposes 90% Cuts to All 37 U.S. Tribal Colleges, Mexico Says It Will Reciprocate After Trump Doubles Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum, CBO Says "Big Beautiful Bill" Would End Health Coverage for 11 Million, Add $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Rep. Jerry Nadler Demands Investigation After DHS Agents Handcuff Staffer, El Salvador Court Orders Prominent Anti-Corruption Lawyer Jailed for 6 Months Ahead of Trial
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Jun 04, 2025
The new book Empire of AI by longtime technology reporter Karen Hao unveils the accruing political and economic power of AI companies — especially Sam Altman's OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along with numerous accounts of the technology's detrimental impact on the environment. "This is an extraordinary type of AI development that is causing a lot of social, labor and environmental harms," says Hao.
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Jun 04, 2025
As Gaza faces over three months of Israeli blockade, a group of 12 activists is sailing to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. The Madleen ship was launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and initially planned to sail from Malta last month, but the group's ship was damaged in a drone attack. The new mission includes the renowned Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who speaks with Democracy Now! live from the Madleen. "We deem the risk of silence and the risk of inaction to be so much more deadly than this mission," says Thunberg.
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Jun 04, 2025
Officials in Gaza say over 100 Palestinians have been killed during recent Israeli attacks on people waiting at aid sites. An additional 500 are wounded. Following the series of deadly attacks, the shadowy U.S.-Israeli humanitarian aid operation is shutting down for a day, and Israel's military warned Palestinians that roads leading to the aid distribution centers will be considered "combat zones." The United Nations has called for a prompt and impartial investigation into each of the attacks. The U.S.-Israeli aid system is "more about the humiliation and the control of the people" than feeding Palestinians, says Mahmoud Alsaqqa, Oxfam's food security and livelihoods coordinator in Gaza, who joins us from Gaza City.
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Jun 04, 2025
Israel Kills 95 Palestinians Across Gaza in a Day; 18 Killed in Bombing of School Turned Shelter, Shadowy Gaza "Humanitarian" Group Suspends Operations After Massacres at Aid Sites, Israel Resumes Attacks on Syrian Military Infrastructure with Daraa Airstrikes, South Korea Liberal Candidate Lee Jae-myung Wins Presidential Election, U.N. Food Delivery Convoy Workers Killed in Darfur as Sudan's Food and Public Health Crises Deepen, Dozens of Civilians Killed in Clashes Between Militias and South Sudan's Army, Trump Asks Congress to Rescind $8.3 Billion in Foreign Assistance, "A Disgusting Abomination": Elon Musk Blasts Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" , Trump Administration Rescinds Biden-Era Protections for Those Needing Emergency Abortions, ICE Detains Wife and Five Children of Man Who Attacked Colorado March for Israeli Hostages, Judge Enjoins Trump Administration from Denying Gender-Affirming Care to Trans Prisoners, Pentagon May Strip Names of Harvey Milk and Other Civil Rights Icons from Navy Ships, White House Seeks to Shutter Independent Agency That Investigates Chemical Hazards and Disasters, Tusla Mayor Announces $105 Million Reparations Package for 1921 Race Massacre
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Jun 03, 2025
The Trump administration has tapped Palantir — the notorious data-mining firm co-founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel — to compile information on people in the United States for a "master database," creating an easy way to cross-reference sensitive data from tax records, immigration records and more. Palantir also has a $30 million contract with ICE to provide almost real-time visibility into immigrants' movements as the agency seeks to arrest 3,000 people a day. Wired reporter Makena Kelly says the company is "becoming an operation system for the entire government," and describes how Palantir's contracts with the Trump administration are an outgrowth of work done by Elon Musk's DOGE which aims to "centralize data all across government."
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Jun 03, 2025
President Donald Trump is pushing Republican senators to back his "big, beautiful bill," which includes new funding to carry out his mass deportation agenda by hiring additional ICE officers and adding detention space. ICE has already signed new agreements with jails around the country for additional capacity, and confirmed nine deaths in custody since Trump took office. "It really feels like a paradigm-shifting moment," says Detention Watch Network executive director Silky Shah. "People are being packed into overcrowded cells. People are not getting medical care. They're in conditions where they're languishing. And they're doing everything they can to expand, expand, expand, both here in the U.S. and also seeing people be now detained in third countries abroad."
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Jun 03, 2025
Protests over ICE raids are continuing across the United States as agents arrest immigrants at courthouses, from their workplaces, on the way to school and more. Immigration and human rights advocate Adriana Jasso with Unión del Barrio describes protests that met a massive raid in San Diego at a popular restaurant, the targeting of farmworkers, and how her organization has been conducting ICE patrols to alert the community.
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Jun 03, 2025
As the Trump administration vows to escalate its targeting of immigrants to 3,000 arrests a day, and the Supreme Court rules it can proceed with stripping some 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela of their legal status, we get an update from Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance. "It is the biggest mass delegalization in modern history of people who followed every single rule that the U.S. government asked of them," says Jozef. "This has been a nightmare."
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Jun 03, 2025
Israeli Forces Again Fire on Crowds Trying to Access Aid in Gaza, Killing Another 27 Palestinians, U.N. Calls for Probe into Israel's Aid Site Massacre That Killed 31 People, UNICEF: Israel Has Killed or Injured Over 50,000 Children in Gaza Since Start of Genocide, Israeli Forces Kill 14-Year-Old West Bank Palestinian as Settler Attacks Soar, Protests Erupt as ICE Arrests High School Students, Avelo Airlines Faces Protests, Boycotts over ICE Deportation Flights, Senate Takes Up Budget Bill to Make Tax Cuts for the Rich Permanent, Advocates for Poor & Disabled Arrested at Capitol Hill Protest Against Social Spending Cuts, Trump Cabinet Officials Seek Oil & Gas Drilling as Trump Ends Alaskan Wilderness Protections, Far-Right Party Withdraws from Netherlands Ruling Coalition, Toppling Government, Boulder Man Who Attacked Israeli Hostage Advocates Charged with Hate Crime, Attempted Murder, Former State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller Now Says Israel Committed War Crimes in Gaza, VA Order Bars Doctors and Researchers from Publishing in Medical Journals, Supreme Court Leaves State Gun Control Laws Intact, for Now, NYC Vigil Supports Laila Soueif Amid Hunger Strike Hospitalization
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Jun 02, 2025
It's graduation season in the United States, and many brave students are taking the opportunity to demonstrate support for Palestinian rights despite an ongoing campus crackdown on pro-Palestine speech. We play excerpts from commencement and graduation addresses at MIT and Harvard and are joined by a student who spoke at Harvard Divinity School's graduation ceremony. Zehra Imam, a Muslim associate chaplain at MIT, recounts the collaborative, interfaith process of writing her speech with Christian and Jewish classmates and explains why she decided to quote students from Gaza in her address. "This is a moment that calls for courage," Imam says.
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Jun 02, 2025
A massacre of dozens of starving Palestinians waiting for aid occurred at a site operated by the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation over the weekend. It is exactly what many observers warned about when they expressed skepticism over the U.S.- and Israel-backed aid scheme. "It's not a real organization," says Eyad Amawi, a coordinator for local NGOs based in Gaza who accuses the Israeli military of using the slow trickle of aid it allows into southern Gaza "as a tool to increase suffering."
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Jun 02, 2025
Health officials and witnesses in Gaza say at least 31 people were killed Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on crowds headed to an Israeli-controlled aid distribution point near Rafah. Over 170 people were wounded. Israel denied responsibility. Dr. Victoria Rose, a volunteer surgeon in Gaza who treated some of the massacre's survivors, decries the ongoing violence of the Israeli military upon the besieged territory's civilian population. "There are hundreds and thousands of children needlessly dying, children being blown up, children being starved and children dying of otherwise preventable illnesses … it's a mass destruction of an entire population, and we can't stand by and let this happen any longer."
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Jun 02, 2025
We get an update on ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel from former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy. The latest proposal, mediated by U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, "walks back the commitment for a permanent ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal and allowing in of humanitarian aid." It's a bad deal for the Palestinians that will allow Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing of Gaza, says Levy. Meanwhile, families of Israeli hostages are protesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's delays in securing a deal as he works toward "permanent war" and the eventual annexation of Gaza. "None of this would be possible if so much of the Israeli media and society was not mobilized in support of this, and none of that would be possible if Israel wasn't treated with impunity." Levy also responds to the latest massacre of Palestinians at an aid site operated by the U.S.-Israeli aid initiative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
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Jun 02, 2025
Russia and Ukraine Hold Talks in Istanbul as Ukraine War Intensifies, Israel Accused of Opening Fire on Palestinians Waiting for Aid in Gaza, Killing at Least 31 People, Israel Demolishes Only Dialysis Facility in Gaza Amid Ongoing Destruction of Health Infrastructure, Hamas Submits Ceasefire Proposal Demanding Complete End to Israel's Attacks, Suspect in Custody over Incendiary Attack on Boulder, Colorado, Event for Israeli Hostages, SCOTUS Allows Trump Admin to Strip Legal Protections for Half a Million Immigrants as Courts Hear Case, Armed ICE Agents Wreak Havoc as They Descend on San Diego Restaurant During Service, Community Outcry in Milford, MA, After ICE Takes Local High School Student Marcelo Gomes, Extreme Flooding in Nigerian Town Kills Over 200 People, Nationalist Karol Nawrocki Defeats Liberal Candidate in Polish Presidential Election, 3 Ex-Paramilitaries in Guatemala Get 40-Year Sentences for Rape of Maya Achi Women, Laila Soueif Hospitalized After Nearly 250 Days on Hunger Strike for Jailed Son Alaa Abd El-Fattah, "We're All Going to Die": Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst Dismisses Constituent Concerns over GOP Medicaid Cuts, PBS Sues Gov't over Funds Withdrawal; WNET Removes Episodes on Trans Identity, Gaza Freedom Flotilla Sets Sail from Italy One Month After First Vessel Came Under Attack, Chilean President Gabriel Boric Backs Arms Embargo, Import Ban on Israel in Address to Congress
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May 30, 2025
President Donald Trump has signed a wave of pardons for people convicted of fraud, including a Virginia sheriff who took tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and a reality TV couple who evaded millions in taxes after defrauding banks. Last month, Trump pardoned a Florida healthcare executive convicted of tax evasion for stealing nearly $11 million in payroll taxes from the paychecks of doctors and nurses. Many of Trump's pardons have gone to supporters of his or those who made political donations to the president.
"These pardons are not indiscriminate," says constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein. "They're targeted to help people who are politically his supporters, raise money for him or otherwise."
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May 30, 2025
President Donald Trump has vowed to go to the Supreme Court to keep his tariffs in place after a whirlwind 24 hours that saw a court temporarily reinstate the measures, soon after two courts blocked most of the tariffs, saying Trump overstepped his presidential authority. Trump has been infuriated by the legal challenges and lashed out on social media against the Federalist Society and conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. We get an update from Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and an expert on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that Trump has invoked to justify his global tariffs. She says the fate of Trump's tariffs remain uncertain, given that the powers available under the IEEPA "have to be used to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States, and they cannot be used for any other reason."
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May 30, 2025
We speak with esteemed historian scholar Ellen Schrecker about the Trump administration's assault on universities and the crackdown on dissent, a climate of fear and censorship she describes as "worse than McCarthyism."
"During the McCarthy period, it was attacking only individual professors and only about their sort of extracurricular political activities on the left. … Today, the repression that's coming out of Washington, D.C., it attacks everything that happens on American campuses," says Schrecker. "The damage that the Trump administration is doing is absolutely beyond the pale and has never, never been equaled in American life with regard to higher education."
Schrecker is the author of many books about the McCarthy era, Cold War politics and right-wing attacks on academic freedom. Her recent piece for The Nation is headlined "Worse Than McCarthyism: Universities in the Age of Trump."
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May 30, 2025
Israel Uses Continued Displacement, Bombing and Starvation in Gaza as Genocide Passes 600 Days, Families Fight to Find Food as Israel's Blockade Starves Children and Babies in Gaza, Ongoing Israeli Strikes, Gunfire on Lebanon Kill Two as Israel Repeatedly Violates Ceasefire, U.S. Flagged Raised Over Embassy in Syria as Countries Move to Reestablish Ties, Saudi Prince to Iran's Leaders: Negotiate New Nuclear Deal with U.S. or Face Israeli Strikes, Federal Appeals Court Reinstates Trump's Power to Impose Sweeping Tariffs, Mexico to Hold First-Ever Judicial Elections on Sunday, Haitian Government Enlists Blackwater Founder Erik Prince to Battle Gangs, Two Canadian Provinces Declare States of Emergency as Wildfires Grow Rapidly, Family of Woman Who Died in Seattle Heat Wave Sues Oil and Gas Companies for Wrongful Death, Supreme Court Sharply Limits Scope of Landmark Environmental Law, EPA Plan Would Eliminate All Limits on Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Power Plants, German Court Ruling Opens Path to Hold Polluters Accountable for Climate Crisis, As Bird Flu Spreads, HHS Cancels $600 Million Contract to Develop Influenza Vaccines, ACLU Sues to Block New Texas Law Requiring Public Schools to Display Ten Commandments, Judge Shields Columbia Student Yunseo Chung from Deportation Ahead of June 5 Hearing, Muckraking New York Journalist Tom Robbins Dies at 76, Texas Observer Founder Ronnie Dugger Dies at 95, Renowned Kenyan Author and Academic Ngugi wa Thiong'o Dies at 87
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May 29, 2025
"The point of this is to lure Palestinians as though they're animals going into a cage, lure them with the bait of promise of aid, and then entrap them in the south of Gaza." As starving Palestinians in Gaza compete for the limited trickle of supplies admitted into the enclave by a new U.S.- and Israeli-backed humanitarian aid scheme, journalist Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News says the sparse aid is actually another Israeli military tactic "meant to serve as part of Netanyahu's war of annihilation. … They're using food as a weapon of war in an effort to further dehumanize Palestinians."
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May 29, 2025
Israel has repeatedly claimed without evidence that Hamas endangers civilians by hiding behind human shields. It turns out, however, that Israel has systematically used Palestinians as human shields in violation of both international and Israeli law. A new investigation by the Associated Press joins reports by 972 Magazine, Haaretz and the Red Cross in documenting how Palestinians have been used as human shields to inspect buildings, tunnels and other sites in Gaza and the West Bank. The investigation includes testimony and evidence from both Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians, collected in part by the anti-occupation Israeli veterans' group Breaking the Silence. In what is being called the "mosquito procedure," Israeli soldiers are "ordered by senior officers to grab Palestinians next to them and to use them as human shields," explains Breaking the Silence's executive director, Nadav Weiman. "Dehumanization of Palestinians in Israel [has] become something so common that it also leads to these kind[s] of practices inside the IDF."
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May 29, 2025
The Trump administration is escalating its campaign against international students at U.S. colleges and universities, announcing that it will begin "aggressively" revoking the visas of Chinese students, in addition to freezing visa processing for all foreign-born students as it prepares to require additional social media vetting for every applicant. "It's really just difficult for me to think of any conceivable theory on which this is going to help the United States," says Jameel Jaffer, noting that international students pay a disproportionate share of tuition costs on U.S. campuses. Jaffer is the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, which has previously sued the government over its social media vetting policy for visa applications. The policy, which began as a pilot program during the Obama administration, "is ineffective at identifying national security threats, but it is very effective at chilling free speech," says Jaffer.
Jaffer also comments on the high-profile immigration detention of former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil and Harvard graduate researcher Kseniia Petrova, as well as a case brought by the Knight Institute challenging the constitutionality of the Trump administration's crackdown on campus pro-Palestine protest.
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May 29, 2025
Deliberate Israeli Mismanagement of Desperately Needed Aid Is Killing More Palestinians in Gaza, Israel Kills Journalist Moataz Rajab, at Least the 221st Media Worker Killed in Genocide, Int'l Doctors Barred from Entering Gaza as U.S. Surgeon Testifies "Child Protections in Gaza Are Gone", Israel Approves Largest Settlement Expansion Amid Mounting Raids, Killing of West Bank Palestinians, Federal Trade Court Blocks Most of Trump's Tariffs, Trump Nominates Personal Defense Attorney Emil Bove to Serve as Appellate Judge, Trump Administration to "Aggressively" Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Judge Rules U.S. Efforts to Deport Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil Are Likely Unconstitutional, Police Violently Arrest Protesters Who Rallied to Defend Immigrants Detained at NYC Courthouse, Immigration Judges Toss Over a Dozen Cases Involving Men Expelled to Salvadoran Prison, Federal Judge Weighs Fate of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian Immigrants, Elon Musk Leaves Trump Administration Amid Rift over "Big, Beautiful Bill", Harvard Relinquishes Photos of Enslaved People to Descendants, Capping 15-Year Legal Struggle, Namibia Marks First National Genocide Remembrance Day with Calls for Reparations from Germany
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May 28, 2025
We speak with Robert Weissman of Public Citizen about Donald Trump's various conflicts of interest after Trump hosted a private dinner at his Virginia golf club for the 220 top buyers of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency. The Trump family has also announced it is expanding its holdings in cryptocurrencies, with the Trump tech startup set to raise $2.5 billion to invest in bitcoin. "There's millions of losers for every few winners in the crypto game. Trump is rigging the rules to make sure he's on the winning side, but regular people are going to be hurt," says Weissman, who was among protesters outside Trump's crypto dinner. He adds that the Trump family's crypto business is part of an "overall authoritarian mission" to reward the rich and powerful by skirting the rules while bringing the full weight of the government down on immigrants, protesters and other voices of dissent.
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May 28, 2025
The Trump administration has reached a deal with the aerospace giant Boeing that will allow the company to pay $1.1 billion to avoid criminal prosecution for two deadly crashes of the company's 737 MAX jet in 2018 and 2019, which together killed 346 people. Under the non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department, Boeing would pay fines and fund safety improvements while providing an additional $445 million for crash victims' families, among other measures. The Justice Department says the deal is supported by many victims' relatives, but some, like Nadia Milleron, say they want to keep pushing for a public reckoning in court. "We have a corporate criminal that committed the deadliest crime in U.S. history," says Milleron, whose daughter Samya Rose Stumo was killed when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX, crashed in 2019. "Boeing is continuing to risk people's lives." Robert Weissman, the co-president of the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, says the Trump administration's deal with Boeing is another sign that it's "soft on corporate criminals."
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May 28, 2025
We speak with the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa after she got extraordinary access to an ICE detention center in Colorado, where she interviewed the immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra. The undocumented mother of four was arrested by federal agents in Denver in March after she successfully fought multiple deportation efforts since 2009, including when she took sanctuary in a Denver church with her children in 2017. She received a stay of removal but returned to sanctuary in 2019 when it expired, then received additional stays under the Biden administration that also expired. She now finds herself in the sights of the Trump administration as it seeks to fulfill its goal of mass deportations of immigrants. "I am a political prisoner," Vizguerra told Hinojosa. She "believes that she is not being held in immigrant detention because of her immigration status, but rather she is being held because of her words and because of her activism," says Hinojosa.
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May 28, 2025
As Gaza's Food Crisis Deepens, Israeli Troops Fire on Hungry Palestinians at Aid Distribution Site, "They All Have Names": Protesters Honor Gaza's Dead at 24-Hour Vigil, Cholera Outbreak Leads to 172 Deaths in Sudan Amid Fighting Between Rival Military Factions, U.S. to Stop Issuing Student Visas While It Plans Further Scrutiny of Applicants' Social Media, El Salvador Won't Let Maryland Rep. Meet with Wrongfully Deported Father Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Trump Administration Seeks to Deport 4-Year-Old Who Could Die If She Loses Healthcare, ICE Agents Arrest Bronx High Schooler Outside Routine Immigration Check-In, Trump Pardons Former Reality TV Couple Convicted of Bank Fraud and Tax Evasion, RFK Jr. Orders CDC to Stop Recommending COVID Shots for Children and Pregnant People, Public Radio Stations Sue to Block Trump from Defunding Public Broadcasting, PBS Executive Removed Scene Critical of Trump from "American Masters" Episode, Supreme Court Won't Hear Case by Indigenous Opponents of Arizona Copper Mine, Former New York Rep. Charles Rangel, Who Led Congressional Black Caucus, Dies at 94
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May 27, 2025
A last-minute addition to President Trump's "big, beautiful" budget bill seeks to ban Affordable Care Act healthcare plans from covering abortion, in addition to defunding hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics that provide reproductive healthcare throughout the United States. "Congress is literally walking us into a crisis of forced birth," says Mini Timmaraju, president of the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All, which is launching a series of campaigns targeting key senators ahead of the Senate vote on the GOP-backed budget bill.
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May 27, 2025
A 30-year-old Black woman in Georgia has been kept on life support for three months against her family's wishes because of the state's "fetal heartbeat" anti-abortion law. Adriana Smith was declared legally dead in February after a medical emergency caused her brain function to cease. Smith, a nurse, had been initially turned away when she first sought medical care. She was nine weeks pregnant at the time. But because her medical providers would face legal consequences including jail time if they were to end the pregnancy, Smith's body is still being kept on breathing machines despite the fact that Smith herself can no longer be resuscitated. The case demonstrates once again that "it is deadly to be Black and pregnant," says Monica Simpson of the reproductive justice organization SisterSong.
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May 27, 2025
A court has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's attempt to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students. The move would cause over a quarter of Harvard's student body to lose visas that allow them to study in the United States. One of the students affected is Francesco Anselmetti, a member of the graduate student union, who emphasizes that visa revocations would affect graduate researchers and teaching staff, constituting "the largest threat of vast deportation on a unionized workforce in American history." It is the latest attack by the Trump administration against universities that receive federal funding.
When announcing the revocation order, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of "antisemitism" and "coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party," but Harvard professor Alison Frank Johnson warns that the prestigious university is only a test case for Trump's wider crackdown on knowledge production and academic freedom. "Harvard is not really the target here. It's the independent scholarship that's being produced by universities."
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May 27, 2025
Pediatric physician Dr. Alaa al-Najjar had just begun work in the emergency room at Nasser Medical Complex when she was suddenly called to return to her home in Khan Younis. When she arrived, emergency workers were pulling the charred bodies of her children from piles of rubble. An Israeli airstrike had destroyed her home, killing nine of al-Najjar's 10 children and seriously wounding her husband, Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, and their only surviving child, Adam. Adam's arm was amputated, and his father is currently in intensive care with severe brain damage. Democracy Now! reached Graeme Groom, a volunteer doctor from the U.K. who treated Adam al-Najjar after the attack. Dr. Groom also speaks about his Palestinian medical colleagues who have been abducted or killed by the Israeli military.
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May 27, 2025
Israel Bombs Gaza School Sheltering Displaced Palestinians, Killing 36, Including Children , Director of Israel- and U.S.-Backed Gaza NGO Quits to Protest Restrictions on Aid, Israeli Nationalists March Through Occupied East Jerusalem Chanting "Death to Arabs", Russia Unleashes Largest Wave of Drone Strikes Since Invading Ukraine, Advocates Warn of ICE Ambush Arrests at Immigration Courts, Chief Justice Temporarily Blocks Freedom of Information Request for DOGE Records, Lawyer for Families of Boeing Crash Victims Condemns Deal to Drop Prosecutions, CUNY Schools Join Nationwide Student Hunger Strike for Gaza as U. of Oregon, Stanford Continue Fast, Seattle Residents Protest Event by Anti-LGBTQ , Far-Right Christian Group, Venezuela's Maduro Wins Elections Boycotted by Opposition, Asserts Claim Over Guyana's Essequibo, Sebastião Salgado, Renowned Photographer Who Captivated with His Photos, Dies at 81
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May 26, 2025
As part of our Memorial Day special, we continue our interview with Ohio death row inmate Keith LaMar live from the Ohio State Penitentiary, after the release of The Injustice of Justice, a short film about his story that just won the grand prize for best animated short film at the Golden State Film Festival. LaMar talks about his case, conditions in solitary confinement, and his work with musicians and others to raise awareness about his case as he fights to stop his pending execution scheduled in 2027.
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May 26, 2025
As part of our Memorial Day special, we speak with death row inmate Keith LaMar live from the Ohio State Penitentiary, after the release of The Injustice of Justice, a short film about his case that just won the grand prize for best animated short film at the Golden State Film Festival. "I had to find out the hard way that in order for my life to be mine, that I had to stand up and claim it," says LaMar, who has always maintained his innocence. LaMar was sentenced to death for participating in the murder of five fellow prisoners during a 1993 prison uprising. His trial was held in a remote Ohio community before an all-white jury. On January 13, 2027, the state intends to execute him, after subjecting him to three decades in solitary confinement. LaMar's lawyer, Keegan Stephan, says his legal team has "discovered a lot of new evidence supporting Keith's innocence" that should necessitate new legal avenues for LaMar to overturn the conviction.
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May 26, 2025
We begin our Memorial Day special with acclaimed director Ryan Coogler about his latest film Sinners, which is set to be one of the biggest box office hits of the year. Starring Michael B. Jordan, the genre-bending horror film is set in the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow and is a "cinematic gumbo" of various influences and themes, Coogler tells Democracy Now!
"I wanted to make a film that was kind of raging against the concept of genre and making the audience constantly question it, even while they were watching it," he says. In particular, the film celebrates Delta blues, music made by Black artists "living under a back-breaking form of American apartheid," and what Coogler describes as "our country's most important contribution to global popular culture."
Coogler also discusses his family connection to Mississippi, producing the film with his wife Zinzi Coogler, his highly publicized contract with Warner Bros. and more. Coogler's previous films include Black Panther, Creed and Fruitvale Station.
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May 23, 2025
Historian Jeanne Theoharis's new book, King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life of Struggle Outside the South, is a major reexamination of the civil rights leader that offers a different picture of both King's own experiences of police brutality and his sustained critique of police brutality and the criminal legal system in the North as well as the South.
"We've southernized Dr. King. And so, his critique of police brutality outside the South, his long-standing critique of school segregation, of housing segregation, of job discrimination, King sees these as national, not local," says Theoharis, distinguished professor at Brooklyn College.
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May 23, 2025
This Sunday marks five years since George Floyd was murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. In a video that shocked the world and spurred a global movement for racial justice, Chauvin pinned Floyd to the ground with a knee to his neck for eight minutes while Floyd gasped for air. Floyd repeatedly said, "I can't breathe."
Despite the nationwide uprising that followed Floyd's killing, Congress failed to pass legislation that sought to reduce racial profiling and the use of force by law enforcement. The Trump Justice Department dismissed police reform and oversight agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville earlier this week, just days ahead of the fifth anniversary. We speak with Nekima Levy Armstrong, Minneapolis-based civil rights attorney, activist and founder of the Racial Justice Network, on where the movement for racial justice stands today.
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May 23, 2025
Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil testified at his asylum hearing on Thursday, telling an immigration judge in Jena, Louisiana, that his deportation from the United States could lead to his "assassination, kidnapping, torture." Hours before the hearing, Khalil was allowed to meet and hold his 1-month-old son Deen for the first time. The emotional moment came after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration's efforts to keep Khalil behind a plexiglass barrier for a visit with his wife and infant son.
Khalil's legal team has raised concerns about the impartiality of immigration judges overseeing the case. "They serve at the pleasure of the president, and this is a president who has not been shy about firing immigration judges," says Ramzi Kassem, part of the legal team representing Mahmoud Khalil.
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May 23, 2025
Trump's sweeping budget legislation has been described as the biggest Medicaid cut in U.S. history. House Republicans passed the bill early Thursday morning in a 215-214 vote. The legislation would trigger massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years, denying coverage to an estimated 7.6 million Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Food assistance under the federal SNAP program would also see $300 billion in cuts, while adding billions in funding for Trump's mass deportation agenda and giving the wealthiest Americans a tax break.
"The legislation is basically a mugging conducted by the 1% against the rest of us. It represents the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history," says Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation.
Senate Republicans, who have voiced some concerns over the bill, will now have to pass their own version of the budget. With all Democratic senators opposed to the package, Republicans are working to use the reconciliation process to avoid a filibuster.
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May 23, 2025
At Least 29 Die of Starvation in Gaza as Israeli Strike on Jabaliya Home Leaves 50 Dead or Missing, Israel Ramps Up Attacks on Lebanon Despite Ceasefire Agreement , Israeli Opposition Lawmaker Ayman Odeh Removed from Knesset After Protesting Gaza Assault, Trump Administration Bars Harvard from Enrolling International Students , Judge Allows Detained Palestinian Student Mahmoud Khalil to Hold Infant Son for First Time, Columbia Alumni Burn Diplomas to Protest Campus Repression Against Pro-Palestinian Students, U.S. Military Vets and Allies Begin 40-Day Hunger Strike for Gaza, Senate Blocks Landmark California Law Transitioning to Electric Vehicles, SCOTUS Gives Trump Green Light to Fire Heads of Independent Agencies, D.C. Appeals Court OKs Trump Order Gutting Labor Protections for Federal Workers, SCOTUS Says Oklahoma Cannot Use Federal Funds for Religious School, "Mount Everest of Corruption": Protesters Gather Outside Dinner Feting $TRUMP Coin Investors, Gunman Charged in Israeli Embassy Staff Shooting in Washington, D.C., German Troops Deploy to Lithuania as Attacks Between Ukraine and Russia Continue
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May 22, 2025
President Donald Trump staged an extraordinary confrontation in the Oval Office on Wednesday, repeating his false claims about a "white genocide" taking place in South Africa during a meeting with the country's president, Cyril Ramaphosa. At one point, Trump had the lights dimmed and ordered video clips played showing people calling for violence against white farmers in South Africa. The ambush was the latest in the administration's campaign to paint the South African government as racist against Afrikaners, the white minority that ruled the country during apartheid.
South African political economist Lebohang Pheko describes the Oval Office meeting as an "act of aggression" intended to shore up Trump's racist base. Trump "seems to have a great appetite for these spurious white supremacist ideologies [because] they mirror his own extremely skewed worldview," says Pheko.
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May 22, 2025
International criticism of Israel continues to grow as the country's military expands its assault on Gaza, killing scores of Palestinians on a daily basis while blocking food, fuel, medicine and other supplies from reaching the starving population. The U.K. Labour government announced this week it is suspending free trade talks with Israel and imposing sanctions on some Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. The European Union says it will also review its trade ties with Israel.
"There's been an enormous shift in public opinion, and it's caused by utter revulsion at seeing emaciated children starve to death," says Jeremy Corbyn, former U.K. Labour leader who now sits as an independent in the British Parliament.
"We have countries within the EU who are significant weapons providers to the Israeli state. If they wanted this conflict, this war and genocide to end tomorrow, then they need to stop supplying weapons to Israel," says Irish politician Lynn Boylan, a member of Sinn Féin who sits in the European Parliament.
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May 22, 2025
We speak with Dr. Victoria Rose, a British plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has been on three medical missions to Gaza since the start of Israel's war on the territory. She joins us from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where she's been treating patients for over a week, and describes horrific injuries amid Israel's ongoing bombardment, limited medical supplies and widespread malnutrition making it harder for people to heal. "Children are particularly taking the brunt of this," she says. "It's the worst it's ever been."
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May 22, 2025
We speak with Israeli journalist Gideon Levy after a young Israeli couple was shot dead in Washington, D.C. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim both worked at the Israeli Embassy and were killed by a gunman after leaving the Capital Jewish Museum Wednesday night. The couple were dating and about to get engaged, the embassy said. Police identified Elias Rodriguez of Chicago as the suspect in custody. Video shows Rodriguez shouting "Free Palestine" during his arrest, and authorities are investigating the incident as a potential hate crime.
"This incident can be only condemned. Nothing that Israel is doing can justify such a murder," says Levy. He adds that incidents like the Washington killings are adding to a growing sense inside Israel that "because of the war in Gaza, Israel is turning into a pariah state."
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May 22, 2025
Israel Targets Hospitals, Kills 51 More Palestinians as Its Genocide in Gaza Continues, Only 100 Trucks Have Entered Gaza After 11 Weeks of Total Blockade and Imminent Mass Starvation, Israeli Soldiers Fire at International Diplomatic Delegation in Jenin, D.C. Police Arrest Suspect in Shooting Death of Two Israeli Embassy Staff, Trump Confronts South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa with Claims of "White Genocide", Judge Rules Trump Administration Violated Court Order by Expelling Immigrants to South Sudan, House GOP Passes "Big, Beautiful Bill," Slashing Social Programs and Showering Tax Cuts on the Rich, Pentagon Accepts $400M "Flying Palace" from Qatar to Replace Air Force One, "A Gross Usurpation of Power": Federal Judge Reverses Trump's Closure of U.S. Institute for Peace, Pakistan Blames "Indian Terror Proxies" for Attack on School Bus in Balochistan, "Nothing Has Changed": Mother of Jailed Egyptian Activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah Resumes Hunger Strike, DOJ Drops Oversight of Minneapolis and Louisville Cops Ahead of Anniversary of George Floyd's Murder
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May 21, 2025
As President Trump pushes House Republicans to support a sweeping budget bill that gives massive tax breaks to the rich while slashing spending for Medicaid, food stamps and subsidies for clean energy, we look at a new series for The Lever's podcast Lever Time, which covers the history of the Republican anti-tax movement and how their anti-government influence is impacting Trump's attempts to build power. The anti-tax activist wing "has made it impossible for this party to raise taxes, which then makes it very difficult to actually govern when you're the party in power," explains Lever Time co-host Arjun Singh. Singh breaks down the roots of the movement and its impact in the MAGA era.
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May 21, 2025
Cuts by the Trump administration are beginning to "chase" U.S.-based scientists at federal agencies and research institutions out of the country. "We're draining our scientific talent," says environmental journalist Robert Hunziker, who explains how China and European countries are offering positions for scientists laid off, fired or pushed out by Trump and DOGE's mass culling of federal workers and funding. The massive U.S. "brain drain" is a "brain gain" for other countries, adds Hunziker, and comes as the Trump administration also cracks down on university curriculums and targets international students for its mass deportation initiative.
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May 21, 2025
Over two dozen disability rights activists were arrested on Capitol Hill last week when they protested the Trump-backed Republican budget bill and its cuts to Medicaid, affordable housing and more. "We're putting our bodies on the line [because] our bodies are on the line," says Julie Farrar, an activist with ADAPT, which organized the protest. "It is blood on the hands of the GOP and the president and the administration, that they want this big, beautiful bill for billionaires that will kill poor people [and] disabled people."
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May 21, 2025
As a Republican-sponsored budget bill advances through Congress, we hear from Bishop William Barber about how the bill hurts low-income people. "It is about death-dealing and destruction to the poor and the elderly and the youth of our country," says Barber, citing the bill's cuts to essential social services like Medicaid and paralleling those cuts to the government's funding of defense and deportation initiatives. "We have to start talking about this budget as a form of social and political murder." Barber has been arrested with other faith leaders twice in the past month while protesting cuts, including in the Capitol Rotunda.
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May 21, 2025
Gaza Officials Report 326 Malnutrition Deaths as U.N. Says No Aid Has Reached Palestinians, "History Will Judge Them": U.K. Suspends Trade Talks with Israel Amid Starvation Campaign, European Union to Review Israel Ties; Spanish Parliament Urges Arms Embargo on Israel, "A Sane Country Does Not Kill Babies": Israeli Opposition Leader Condemns Gaza Assault, Emerging GOP Budget Bill Would Gut Benefits Including Medicare to Fund Tax Breaks for the Rich, Trump Administration Deports Asian Immigrants to South Sudan in Apparent Violation of Court Order, Report: Over 50 Venezuelans Sent by U.S. to El Salvador Prison Had Pending Asylum Appointments, Marco Rubio Defends Unlawful Deportation of Maryland Father to El Salvador, At Senate Hearing, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Can't Define Habeas Corpus, IRS Commissioner Nominee Refuses to Rule Out Canceling Nonprofit Status of Trump's Opponents, Trump Unveils "Golden Dome" Missile Defense System with 20-Year, $540 Billion Price Tag, Columbia's Acting President Booed at Commencement as Students Demand Mahmoud Khalil's Release, CBS News President Steps Down as Paramount Moves to Settle Trump's $20 Billion "60 Minutes" Lawsuit, Aides to Mexico City's Mayor Assassinated Amid Continuing Cartel Violence
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May 20, 2025
Columbia University activist and student Mohsen Mahdawi graduated on Monday — after he was released from ICE jail late last month. As he crossed the stage, students erupted in thunderous applause. Democracy Now! spoke with Mahdawi after the ceremony. "I am coming here to be in the middle of this fire because I am a peacemaker, because I am a firefighter," says Mahdawi, who plans to attend Columbia University's graduate School of International and Public Affairs in the fall.
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May 20, 2025
A damning new report reveals how Israel is systematically making Gaza unlivable. The independent news outlet 972 Magazine has spoken to Israeli soldiers who describe how they have been using bulldozers and explosives to intentionally flatten Gaza.
In the southern city of Rafah, 73% of buildings are completely destroyed, with only about 4% of the infrastructure remaining undamaged. "The real aim is to make it impossible for the Palestinians to return to these areas," says Meron Rapoport, co-author of the 972 Magazine report.
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May 20, 2025
The U.N.'s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher warned Tuesday that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza over the next 48 hours if more aid does not enter the besieged territory. The warning comes as Israel expands its military assault, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to take control of the entire Gaza Strip. "The suffering is really beyond description," says Mahmoud Alsaqqa, Oxfam's food security and livelihoods coordinator in Gaza, who speaks with Democracy Now! from Gaza City.
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May 20, 2025
U.N. Warns 14,000 Babies on Cusp of Death in Gaza as Food Supplies Start to Trickle In, Israeli Attacks on Gaza's Beleaguered Hospitals Destroy Already Scarce Supplies, Houthi Fighters Launch "Naval Blockade" in Escalating Actions Against Israeli Genocide, SCOTUS Allows Trump to Terminate Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan Immigrants, DOJ Charges NJ Rep. LaMonica McIver over Newark ICE Visit, Lifts Charges Against Mayor Baraka, Trump Reverses Demand for Moscow to Declare Ukraine Ceasefire After Call with Putin, Europe to Lift Sanctions on Syria, United Kingdom and EU Agree to "Reset" Five Years Post-Brexit, Indian Authorities Expelled Rohingya Refugees by Pushing Them into the Sea with Life Jackets, WHO Approves Global Pandemic Treaty, Warns People in 70 Countries Not Getting Medical Care, Billionaire, Trump-Pardoned Real Estate Developer Charles Kushner Confirmed as French Ambassador, Transpo Sec. Sean Duffy, AG Pam Bondi Among Trump Insiders Who Profited from Tariffs Roller Coaster, Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes More Vetoes Bill to Study Reparations, New Orleans Police Used Real-Time Facial Recognition Tracking Despite Ban, Palestinian American Student Denied Diploma After Protesting Israel's Assault on Gaza, Oklahoma Adds False Conspiracy Theories About 2020 Election to High School Curriculum, Trump Administration to Allow Sales of Device That Turns Rifles into Machine Guns, Missouri GOP Moves to Repeal Abortion Rights Enshrined by Voters in November Referendum
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May 19, 2025
On the 100th birthday of Malcolm X, we speak with one of his daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, and civil rights attorney Ben Crump as they continue to press the U.S. government for answers about his assassination. The iconic Black revolutionary was just 39 years old when he was gunned down on February 21, 1965, in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom. In 2023, the family of Malcolm X filed a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against various government bodies, including the FBI, CIA and NYPD, for concealing evidence of their involvement in the assassination. Now his family is calling for President Trump to release more details about the assassination, just as he released thousands of unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and vowed in an executive order to release files on the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"When I think of my father most, he was such a young man. He was in his twenties when the world learned of him, 39 when he was assassinated," says Shabazz.
"We continue to fight for justice for Malcolm X, by any means necessary," says Crump. "We implore the federal government to release all of the FBI papers on Malcolm X."
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May 19, 2025
Sunday in New York, Dr. Noor Abdalla accepted a diploma on behalf of her husband, Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, at an alternative graduation ceremony held by the People's University for Palestine. Abdalla gave birth to the couple's first child Deen last month, while Khalil remained imprisoned at a Louisiana ICE detention center over a thousand miles away after he was abducted by ICE from university housing in March. ICE denied Khalil's request to be present at the birth. "You showed up," Abdalla said, reading a statement from Khalil addressed to attendees of the crowd. "You reminded me that while institutions may abandon us, the people never will."
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May 19, 2025
A new report in The New York Times takes a deep dive into Project Esther, a policy blueprint to crush the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States from the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank best known for spearheading Project 2025. Project Esther was formed during the Biden administration and lays out plans for surveilling, silencing and punishing pro-Palestinian activists, including deporting non-U.S. citizens and withholding funds from universities. Many of the Heritage Foundation's proposals appear to have been taken up by the Trump administration.
"Project Esther aims to rebrand all critics of Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters as providing material support for terrorism," says investigative reporter Katie Baker. "They're very explicit that this is what they're doing. … This is all laid out online, and it has been for months."
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May 19, 2025
Palestinians in Gaza are fleeing Khan Younis after the Israeli military issued expulsion orders for the besieged territory's second-largest city. This comes as Israel's bombardment of Gaza intensifies, killing hundreds of Palestinians over the weekend, including at least five journalists. Health facilities have been under constant attack. Israel on Sunday announced the start of a renewed ground invasion it calls Operation Gideon's Chariots. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said Sunday that Israel would allow limited food supplies into Gaza as the population of more than 2 million faces famine after 11 weeks of a total Israeli blockade, but there are few details about when such aid shipments could arrive. Gaza's Health Ministry confirms Israel has killed at least 53,300 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, a death toll believed to be a vast undercount.
"The situation, as anyone who's following the news can see, is thoroughly apocalyptic," says Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani. "There is not only an unprecedented siege, but also an unprecedented intensification of Israel's genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip." Rabbani also stresses that any progress on aid, lifting the siege or reaching a ceasefire is dependent on the Trump administration using its leverage over Israel. "It will take no more than a phone call from Washington," he says.
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May 19, 2025
Israel Kills Hundreds More Palestinians Over the Weekend as It Orders Expulsion from Khan Younis, Israel Says It Will Allow Limited Food into Gaza as Over 2 Million Palestinians Face Famine, Italian Lawmakers Protest Gaza Blockade at Rafah Crossing; 100,000 Dutch Protesters Take to Streets, Joe Biden Diagnosed with Aggressive Cancer Amid Mounting Uproar over His Failed 2024 Candidacy, House Republicans Slash Medicaid, Food Stamps to Give Tax Cuts to the Richest, SCOTUS Blocks Use of Alien Enemies Act to Expel Venezuelan Immigrants, AG Pam Bondi Sold Up to $5 Million in Trump Media Shares as Trump Announced Tariffs, FBI Investigating Perished "Anti-Natalist" Suspect in Palms Springs Fertility Clinic Bombing, Trump and Putin to Speak After Turkey Peace Talks Last Week Yielded Little Progress, Centrist Nicu?or Dan Defeats Far-Right Rival in Romanian Elections, ICC Chief Prosecutor Steps Aside Amid Sexual Misconduct Probe, El Salvador Arrests Prominent Anti-Corruption Lawyer, a Critic of President Bukele, Global Hunger Soared in 2024, Driven by War, Student Hunger Strikes for Gaza Continue; UCLA Activist Hospitalized After 9 Days Without Food, Mahmoud Khalil's Wife and Baby Accept "People's Diploma," Honor Students Who Speak Up for Palestine, Tornadoes Sweep Through Missouri and Kentucky, Killing 28 People, New Jersey Transit Strike Ends After Tentative Deal, Two Mexican Sailors Dead After Navy Ship Crashes into Brooklyn Bridge
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May 16, 2025
The Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in a case challenging Trump's now-halted order to end birthright citizenship. Multiple lower courts have already ruled that the order is unconstitutional. Trump's lawyers are seeking to reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which has guaranteed citizenship to any child born in the United States for over a century. Legal expert Andrea Flores, an immigration lawyer at FWD.us, says the government's weak arguments about implementing the unprecedented anti-immigrant order indicate that "The administration is not prepared to do this. They just want the authority to reinterpret amendments."
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May 16, 2025
House Republicans have successfully pushed forward President Trump's budget proposals to slash Medicaid and food stamps, putting millions of low-income Americans at risk. Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, a healthcare consumer advocacy organization, says the $175 billion reduction is "literally the biggest cut to the Medicaid program in history."
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May 16, 2025
In his first live interview since his release from ICE detention, Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounts the traumatic experience of his arrest and incarceration. Mahdawi, a green card holder who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested in Vermont on April 14 when he appeared for what he was told would be a citizenship interview, and spent more than two weeks in U.S. immigration custody, where he was held in retaliation for his speech in support of Palestinian rights. Mahdawi's detention has led him to reflect on the "interconnectedness between injustices," as multiple members of his family in Palestine have been "unjustly" incarcerated in Israeli jails. "Now I can feel their pain," says Mahdawi. Despite the U.S. government and pro-Israel groups' attempts to silence his calls for an end to genocide in Gaza, he adds, "I share my pain with the world."
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May 16, 2025
Israel Kills 150 Palestininians in Gaza in Bloodiest Day Since It Shattered Ceasefire, Israeli Soldiers Kill Five Palestinians in Occupied West Bank's Tamoun, Rep. Rashida Tlaib Reintroduces Nakba Resolution Amid Israel's Genocide on Gaza, Trump Leaves Gulf Region After Touting Billions in Deals; Democrats Move to Block Some Arms Sales, Trump Says Nuclear Deal Sent to Tehran; Iran Slams U.S. Hypocrisy over Its Arming of Israel's Genocide
, Ukrainian and Russian Delegations Meet in Turkey After Putin Refuses to Take Part in Peace Talks, SCOTUS Hears Case Stemming from Trump's Attack on Birthright Citizenship, DHS Requests 20,000 National Guard to Help Execute Mass Deportations, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka Cheered by Supporters After Pleading Not Guilty to Trespassing at ICE Jail, NYU Withholds Diploma of Commencement Speaker Who Condemned Israel's Genocide in Gaza, Georgia Abortion Ban Forces Family to Keep Brain-Dead Pregnant Woman on Life Support, "Enough Is Enough": New Jersey Transit Workers Strike for Pay Equity
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May 15, 2025
Israel has imposed a complete block on humanitarian aid into Gaza since March 2, with hundreds of trucks with lifesaving aid waiting at the border. Now many of Gaza's kitchens have closed, and Palestinians face mass starvation as rations run low. We speak with Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. "The majority of people in Gaza are facing emergency or catastrophic levels of food insecurity," says de Waal. "Rations are getting low, and the poorest and most vulnerable are beginning to starve and die."
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May 15, 2025
A major new report by U.S. academics analyzes Israel's occupation of Palestine under the legal framework of the crime of apartheid. The report was intentionally released on Nakba Day — the day that marks the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during Israel's violent founding in 1948. Citing dozens of experts, human rights organizations and judicial decisions, it concludes that Israel's treatment of Palestinians "meets the legal threshold of apartheid." Researchers found that Israel imposes "policies that are designed to ensure the perpetual racial subordination of the Palestinian people," says Sandra Babcock, a clinical professor at Cornell Law School who helped author the report.
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May 15, 2025
The Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement for most of the world, but welcomed 59 white South African Afrikaners Monday who were granted refugee status. President Trump claims Afrikaners face racial discrimination — even though South Africa's white minority still own the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid — and claims they are escaping "genocide." This accusation "is a conspiracy theory and a myth that has been floating around echo chambers of right-wing populists and white nationalists for many decades now," says Andile Zulu, political essayist and researcher at the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. We also speak with Herman Wasserman, a South African professor of journalism at Stellenbosch University, who says the Trump administration is using Afrikaners as "pawns, as props in a campaign that purports to promote whiteness."
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May 15, 2025
Israeli Bombing Claims 100 More Lives in Gaza; Israel Expels Sick and Wounded Patients from Al-Shifa, Palestinians Commemorate 77th Nakba Amid Israeli Genocide, HRW on Gaza: "Israel Blockade Is a Tool of Extermination", Taxpayers Against Genocide Deliver Complaint to Human Rights Commission, Trump Boasts Qatar's "Historic" Deal with Boeing, Heads to UAE, Georgetown's Badar Khan Suri Leaves ICE Jail on Bail, Reunites with Family, SCOTUS Hears Birthright Case; Dems Grill Kristi Noem over Mass Deportations, Trump Admin Charges Russian Harvard Scientist Kseniia Petrova with Smuggling, Zelensky Arrives in Turkey for Peace Talks, But Putin Is a No-Show, Two Children Die of Thirst on Stricken Ship Carrying Refugees in Mediterranean, Rival Armed Groups Trade Fire in Libya's Capital, Hours After Declaring a Ceasefire, Ex-Partner of Sean "Diddy" Combs Testifies About Physical and Sexual Abuse, RFK Jr. on Measles Outbreak: "I Don't Think People Should Be Taking Medical Advice from Me", Protesters Disrupt RFK Jr. Senate Hearing to Oppose Medicaid Cuts, RFK Jr. Orders FDA Review of Medication Abortion Drug Mifepristone, House GOP Approves Massive Cuts to Medicaid and Food Assistance in Emerging Budget Bill
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