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Aug 01, 2025
President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas's congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year's midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this "unprecedented" Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that "limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse." The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.
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Aug 01, 2025
President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas's congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year's midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this "unprecedented" Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that "limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse." The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.
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Aug 01, 2025
We're joined by a mother-daughter duo from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley." Roishetta and Kamea Ozane are part of a group of environmental activists on a national tour to confront the financial backers of destructive natural gas projects that have devastated their community. The "Toxic Billionaire Tour" is targeting the offices of major banks and the homes of executives, who "sit here in New York and in offices in D.C. [and] make decisions for our community, decisions that are killing our children, decisions that are harming our air, our water and our life." Roishetta Ozane is the founder and director of environmental justice organization The Vessel Project. Her 12-year-old daughter Kamea, like many residents of "Cancer Alley," lives with asthma that is exacerbated by the polluted air and water around her home. "Right as soon as you walk outside of my house, if you look over, you can see the industries from right outside of my front yard, and from the industries you can see the bulging fires, and you can smell this really toxic air."
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Aug 01, 2025
We're joined by a mother-daughter duo from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley." Roishetta and Kamea Ozane are part of a group of environmental activists on a national tour to confront the financial backers of destructive natural gas projects that have devastated their community. The "Toxic Billionaire Tour" is targeting the offices of major banks and the homes of executives, who "sit here in New York and in offices in D.C. [and] make decisions for our community, decisions that are killing our children, decisions that are harming our air, our water and our life." Roishetta Ozane is the founder and director of environmental justice organization The Vessel Project. Her 12-year-old daughter Kamea, like many residents of "Cancer Alley," lives with asthma that is exacerbated by the polluted air and water around her home. "Right as soon as you walk outside of my house, if you look over, you can see the industries from right outside of my front yard, and from the industries you can see the bulging fires, and you can smell this really toxic air."
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Aug 01, 2025
We're joined by a mother-daughter duo from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley." Roishetta and Kamea Ozane are part of a group of environmental activists on a national tour to confront the financial backers of destructive natural gas projects that have devastated their community. The "Toxic Billionaire Tour" is targeting the offices of major banks and the homes of executives, who "sit here in New York and in offices in D.C. [and] make decisions for our community, decisions that are killing our children, decisions that are harming our air, our water and our life." Roishetta Ozane is the founder and director of environmental justice organization The Vessel Project. Her 12-year-old daughter Kamea, like many residents of "Cancer Alley," lives with asthma that is exacerbated by the polluted air and water around her home. "Right as soon as you walk outside of my house, if you look over, you can see the industries from right outside of my front yard, and from the industries you can see the bulging fires, and you can smell this really toxic air."
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Aug 01, 2025
The Trump administration is attempting to revoke a landmark rule that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants and other sources under the authority of the Clean Air Act. For over a decade, what is known as the "endangerment finding" has been one of the most important legal underpinnings in the federal effort to combat climate change. Since it was instituted, says David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, "we've made a lot of progress" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "But now [EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin is attempting, against the science, to revoke the determination that this stuff is dangerous." This comes as communities across the United States deal with the effects of increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters, from floods to heat waves to major storms. "What we're seeing play out, these extreme weather events, are a demonstration that carbon emissions do pose a danger to our health — in fact, to the health of the planet," says climate scientist Michael Mann.
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Aug 01, 2025
The Trump administration is attempting to revoke a landmark rule that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants and other sources under the authority of the Clean Air Act. For over a decade, what is known as the "endangerment finding" has been one of the most important legal underpinnings in the federal effort to combat climate change. Since it was instituted, says David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, "we've made a lot of progress" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "But now [EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin is attempting, against the science, to revoke the determination that this stuff is dangerous." This comes as communities across the United States deal with the effects of increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters, from floods to heat waves to major storms. "What we're seeing play out, these extreme weather events, are a demonstration that carbon emissions do pose a danger to our health — in fact, to the health of the planet," says climate scientist Michael Mann.
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Aug 01, 2025
Two More Palestinians Starve to Death Amid Israel's Siege of Gaza, Trump's Mideast Envoy Tours Militarized Gaza Aid Site as Israel Continues to Attack Aid Seekers, "I Am Here to Refuse the Genocide": Two Israeli Teens Get Prison Terms for Draft Resistance, Palestinian Citizens of Israel Bang Pots and Pans to Protest Starvation of Gaza, Israel Escalates Attacks on Lebanon, Citing Hezbollah's Weapons, Russian Attacks on Kyiv Kill 31 as U.S. Lawmakers Propose $55B Aid Package to Ukraine, President Trump Announces New Tariffs on Dozens of Countries, ICE Launches Major Recruitment Drive Offering $50K Signing Bonuses and Student Loan Forgiveness, Kerr County Emergency Management Officials Testify They Were Asleep During Devastating Texas Floods, 10 Sudan's RSF Announces Parallel Government as Internally Displaced People Face Famine and Disease, U.N. Says Rwanda-Backed M23 Rebels Killed 169 People in Eastern DRC Last Month, El Salvador's Nayib Bukele Could Seek Third Term After Lawmakers End Presidential Term Limits, Florida Prison Officials Execute a Prisoner for the Ninth Time This Year, Setting a New Record, Smithsonian Removes Explicit References to Trump's Impeachments from Exhibit, Virginia Giuffre's Family Urges President Trump Not to Pardon Ghislaine Maxwell
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Jul 31, 2025
President Donald Trump is standing by his August 1 deadline for other countries to reach new trade agreements with the United States or face steep new tariffs on their exports. The administration has announced a slew of deals, including with the U.K., Japan and the European Union, even as Trump has issued new tariff threats against India, Brazil and others.
"You've got total, random chaos," says policy expert Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project and host of the podcast Rethinking Trade with Lori Wallach. "What the Trump administration is doing, basically, is an abuse of the tariff tool … to threaten countries based on foreign policy whims."
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Jul 31, 2025
Canada became the latest Western country this week to announce it will recognize the state of Palestine, joining the United Kingdom and France, as well as over 147 other countries that already recognize Palestinian statehood. Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada says that while the recent moves are "largely symbolic" and filled with caveats and loopholes, it shows that global opinion is rapidly shifting. He says that despite Israel's growing diplomatic isolation over its starvation of Gaza, the only thing that will stop the genocide is if the United States uses its leverage.
"Netanyahu and the Israeli government are terrified of Trump. They don't want to anger him," says Shehada. "The only thing it would take is Trump making a phone call to Netanyahu and saying, 'End this now.'"
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Jul 31, 2025
Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip continue to kill and injure hundreds of Palestinians each day, including many people seeking aid amid deepening starvation across the territory. Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that there is "no starvation" in Gaza, a U.S. doctor who just returned from Gaza says the reality is undeniable. "It was evident to me, in my firsthand experience, that what I was seeing was malnourishment in my patients," says Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, a urogynecologist and the executive director of the International Medical Response Foundation based in New York. "We also saw it in our hospital staff. … Everybody would sit and talk about how hungry they were."
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Jul 31, 2025
We speak with Juliette Touma, director of communications at UNRWA, about deepening starvation in Gaza. Israel has accused the United Nations agency of failing to distribute aid in Gaza, but Touma says Israel continues to block most supplies from entering the territory. Touma notes that there are 6,000 trucks filled with food, medical supplies and other necessities ready to enter Gaza. "We've been waiting for a green light to start the wheels of those trucks for nearly five months now," she says.
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Jul 31, 2025
51 Palestinians Seeking Aid Massacred at Zikim Crossing in Gaza, Canada Becomes the Latest Country to Announce Plans to Recognize a Palestinian State, U.K. High Court Rules Co-Founder of Palestine Action Can Challenge Group's Ban, More Than Half of Democratic Caucus Votes to Block U.S. Arms Sales to Israel, U.S. Sanctions Brazilian Supreme Court Judge in Charge of Criminal Case of Fmr. President Jair Bolsonaro, Trump Announces 25% Tariff on India and 15% Tariff on South Korea, Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Convicted of Witness Tampering and Bribery, GOP State Lawmakers Introduce Plan to Redraw Texas's Congressional Districts, Treasury Secretary Admits Plan to Create Savings Accounts for Newborns Is Actually a Backdoor to Privatize Social Security, Federal Reserve Votes to Hold Interest Rates Steady, with Two Rare Dissenting Votes, Senate Committee Advances Bill Banning Stock Trading by Congress, the President and the Vice President, Brown University Accedes to Trump Administration's Demands as Harvard Mulls $500M Settlement, CBP Detains Green Card Holder for Over a Week Without Access to Lawyer, Court Rejects Trump Administration's Bid to Rearrest Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil, Zohran Mamdani Meets Family of Slain NYPD Officer, Calls for Assault Weapons Ban, Russian Attacks on Kyiv Kill 8; Lawmakers Restore Independence of Ukraine's Anti-Graft Agencies, Israel Releases U.S. Labor Activist Chris Smalls After Abduction from Gaza-Bound Aid Ship
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Jul 30, 2025
Family and friends are reeling after an Israeli settler shot and killed Palestinian activist Odeh Muhammad Hadalin, an athlete, teacher and father of three young children. Hadalin helped produce the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, which follows Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta as they struggle to stay on their land amid violent attacks by Jewish settlers. Hadalin's cousin Alaa calls him an exceptionally "humane" and "peaceful" person in an interview with 972 Magazine and Local Call reporter Oren Ziv, who joins us from Tel Aviv.
In January, the Trump administration lifted Biden-era sanctions on Hadalin's alleged killer, Yinon Levi, who has been released on house arrest. Meanwhile, multiple members of Hadalin's family are still imprisoned and awaiting hearings in Israel's military court after they were arrested by Israeli soldiers following the shooting. Ziv describes how Israeli soldiers also conducted a raid on a mourning party days after Hadalin died of his injuries. "They forced us out. And even in the entrance to the village, they started to throw stun grenades," Ziv says. "It's important to say it's not only an attack on the family, on his friends. It's an attempt to prevent us, the journalists, [from] investigating the case."
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Jul 30, 2025
In Gaza, "the situation is beyond atrocious." Aid worker Arwa Damon, a former CNN journalist and the founder of INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza, describes the deadly lack of access to food, water and medicine in the besieged territory. The situation on the ground conflicts with the claims of Israeli officials, who are denying the existence of starvation conditions. "If anyone goes into Gaza, within 15 minutes, the vast majority of what Israel is claiming just unravels before your very eyes," says Damon. She is currently helping to facilitate aid access from outside of Gaza, which she and many other humanitarian workers have been barred from accessing since February.
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Jul 30, 2025
People with disabilities are among those most heavily impacted by Trump's cuts to Medicaid. "I know so many people like me, disabled adults living and thriving now, who were able to get to adulthood because Medicaid existed," says Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. We feature additional testimonies from disabled members of the advocacy group Caring Across Generations, and speak to Town, who says she fears "so many kids [will] not get a chance to make it to adulthood," while countless adults "will not be able to live into old age because of these cuts."
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Jul 30, 2025
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid — and nearly one month since President Trump's federal budget slashed nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid to extend tax cuts for the rich. The cuts could lead to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths every year. "Medicaid has been a lifeline. And without it, people will die," says Ai-jen Poo, co-founder of Caring Across Generations and the Domestic Workers Alliance, which helped organize a 60-hour vigil last week ahead of the anniversary as part of a broader campaign to fight back against Trump's cuts. She highlights the role of immigrants, who make up a third of the caregiving sector, and says Trump's crackdown on immigration hastens the dwindling of care available to the aging and elderly. "We should be adding a trillion dollars in investments in healthcare in this country and in caregiving services in this country," says Poo. "We need to strengthen these systems and programs for the 22nd century, not gut them."
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Jul 30, 2025
Gaza's Hunger-Related Death Toll Reaches 154; 89 Children Among the Dead, Keir Starmer Says U.K. Will Recognize Palestine Unless Israel Stops Starving Gaza, New Report Finds Canada Continued to Arm Israel Despite Pledging to Halt Arms Shipments, 44 Senate Democrats Urge Trump to Stop Funding Shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Over Two Dozen Rabbis Arrested on Capitol Hill Protesting Israeli Blockade of Gaza, 8.8 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Russia's Far East, Sending Tsunami Waves Across Pacific, Senate Confirms Trump's Former Lawyer Emil Bove as a Federal Appellate Judge, Justice Department Removes Two Top Officials from Antitrust Division, EPA Proposes to End Finding That Greenhouse Gas Emissions Endanger Public Health, Millions Across U.S. Face Heat Advisories; Turkey Records Highest-Ever Temperature, House Oversight Committee Rejects Ghislaine Maxwell's Request for Immunity, Donald Trump Says Jeffrey Epstein "Stole" Mar-a-Lago Workers, Including Virginia Giuffre, "Please Study Brain for CTE": Manhattan Mass Shooter's Suicide Note Blames NFL for Brain Trauma, Palestinian American Student Sereen Haddad Wins Diploma Withheld by VCU over Peaceful Protests
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Jul 29, 2025
For the first time, two leading Israeli human rights groups — B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel — have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. B'Tselem's report, "Our Genocide," says, "Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip." We speak with B'Tselem's outreach director, Sarit Michaeli, in Tel Aviv, who says Israel's actions in Gaza are "the textbook definition of genocide."
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Jul 29, 2025
The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the largest independent aid organizations in Gaza, says it has been unable to bring new supplies into the territory as starvation grows more dire for Palestinians. Democracy Now! speaks with Jan Egeland, NRC's secretary general, who says Western powers who have been complicit in Israel's blockade of Gaza have their "fingerprints … all over a crime scene, and history will judge."
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Jul 29, 2025
As more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed seeking aid at militarized aid distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a former GHF security contractor tells Democracy Now! he saw U.S. mercenaries and Israeli forces commit war crimes by indiscriminately shooting at starving Palestinians waiting for aid. "What I witnessed in Gaza, I can only describe as a dystopian, post-apocalyptic wasteland," says Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. soldier who worked as a subcontractor with UG Solutions in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid delivery operation. "We, the United States, are complicit. We are involved, hand in hand, in the atrocities and the genocide that is currently undergoing in Gaza."
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Jul 29, 2025
Global Hunger Monitor Warns Israel's Siege on Gaza Has Led to "Worst-Case Scenario of Famine", Trump Breaks from Netanyahu to Acknowledge "Real Starvation" of Palestinians, Netanyahu Proposes Annexing Parts of Gaza Strip, Trump Administration Blasts France's Moves to Recognize Palestinian State, Protesters in Greece Scuffle with Riot Police as Israeli Cruise Ship Docks, Palestinian Activist and Teacher Odeh Muhammed Hadalin Killed by Israeli Settler in Masafer Yatta, Russian Airstrikes Hit Prison in Ukraine, Killing 17 People, Gunman Kills 5 People in Midtown Manhattan Skyscraper, Including Himself, Federal Judge Rules Trump Admin Cannot Block Medicaid Payments to Planned Parenthood, Epstein Co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell Urges SCOTUS to Overturn Conviction, Oklahoma Schools Chief Faces Scrutiny for Screening Explicit Images of Nude Women in His Office, Third Whistleblower Claims Emil Bove Lied During Senate Confirmation Last Month, Federal Judges in Albany Reject Trump's Appointment of John Sarcone III as U.S. Attorney, New Jersey Federal Courts Face Chaos as Trump Seeks to Install Alina Habba as U.S. Attorney, Rights Groups Blast Christopher Nolan for Filming in Moroccan-Occupied Western Sahara
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Jul 28, 2025
As controversy over President Donald Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein continues to dog his administration, we speak with investigative journalist Vicky Ward, who has spent decades reporting on the deceased sexual predator, his rich and powerful associates, and the impact of his crimes. Much of Trump's political base is in an uproar after federal officials declined to release government files about Epstein and his serial sexual abuse of women and girls, with Trump himself reportedly named in the documents.
"They were friends. They hung out with each other," Ward says of Trump and Epstein.
Ward was among the first journalists to investigate Epstein when she profiled him for Vanity Fair in 2003. The magazine's editor at the time, Graydon Carter, cut out the testimonies of two young women who had spoken on the record about Epstein's abuse. Ward's podcast and TV series of the same name is Chasing Ghislaine: The Untold Story of the Woman in Epstein's Shadow, focusing on Ghislaine Maxwell's role as a facilitator for Epstein's crimes.
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Jul 28, 2025
For the second time in as many months, Israel has raided a civilian ship in international waters to stop it from reaching Gaza to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid. The Handala was sailing toward the besieged Palestinian territory with baby formula, diapers, food and medicine on board when Israeli forces boarded it on Saturday and detained 21 crew and passengers. "Their blockade is, by all international standards, unlawful," says Palestinian American human rights attorney Huwaida Arraf, who was among the activists on board and was just released from Israeli detention. She calls on the international community to hold Israel accountable and says the Freedom Flotilla Coalition will continue organizing aid ships to break the blockade of Gaza.
"Why is it that we had to be at sea in international waters, in a small boat, going to confront one of the most brutal militaries in the world? It is because … our countries are allowing Israel to deliberately starve Palestinians as part of this genocidal campaign that it has been carrying out," says Arraf.
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Jul 28, 2025
We speak with Eyad Amawi, an aid coordinator in Gaza, who tells Democracy Now! about the "rapid deterioration" inside the besieged territory as Israel's blockade causes mass starvation. Health officials in Gaza say at least 14 Palestinians have starved to death over the past day, bringing the total to at least 147, including 88 children. Israel has allowed some additional aid into the territory, including by airdrops, but the United Nations says it's still just a "drop in the ocean" of what is needed. Israel also said it would pause attacks for periods of the day in parts of Gaza, but the death toll has kept rising, with Israeli forces continuing to fire on unarmed civilians seeking aid. Two leading Israeli human rights groups, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, issued reports on Monday accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, joining a growing international consensus.
"We have no time to wait," says Amawi, who calls Israel's restrictions on food, water, medicine and other essentials "collective punishment."
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Jul 28, 2025
147 Palestinians Starve to Death; Netanyahu Denies Starvation in Gaza, Israeli Forces Raid Handala Aid Ship to Gaza, Pentagon Kills Senior Islamic State Leader in Syria, U.S. and EU Announce Trade Deal; U.S. to Impose 15% Tariff on EU Imports, Anti-Trump Protests Held in Scotland During Trump's Visit, Federal Judge Dismisses Trump Administration Lawsuit Against Chicago over Sanctuary Policies, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche Holds Second Day of Meetings with Ghislaine Maxwell, Thailand and Cambodia Agree to Ceasefire, Doctors Without Borders: 652 Children Have Died of Malnutrition in Nigeria, Islamic State Rebels Kill 38 People at a Church in Eastern Congo, Ukraine and Russia Trade Drone Attacks, Killing 5 People, Trump Admin. Tries to Keep Secret Renovation Costs for Qatari Luxury Jet Gifted to Trump, Darren Beattie, Who Spoke at White Nationalist Gathering, Now Head of U.S. Institute of Peace, Trump Administration Releases $5B in Frozen Education Funding for Public Schools, 11 Disability Activists Arrested at Trump Tower Protest; Thousands Protest Medicaid Cuts Across U.S.
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Jul 25, 2025
Democratic Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, responds to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla's latest attempt to break the Israeli siege on Gaza, the lethal beating of a U.S. citizen by Israeli civilians in the occupied West Bank and the Trump administration's attempt to conceal information related to the federal criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein.
On the killings of Palestinian American Sayfollah "Saif" Musallet and Palestinian Mohammad Razek Hussein Al-Shalabi by settlers, Tlaib excoriates both the U.S. government, for "doing absolutely nothing, as per usual," and the Israeli government, for sanctioning daily settler violence. "The goal here is, and the Knesset told us," says Tlaib, referencing a recent motion passed by the Israeli legislature to annex the West Bank, "to ethnically cleanse anyone who is Palestinian."
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Jul 25, 2025
A second group of international activists with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition are en route to Gaza to challenge Israel's blockade. Their ship, named the Handala, launched from Italy five days ago carrying humanitarian aid desperately needed by Gaza's starving population. The Freedom Flotilla's most recent attempt to deliver aid was prevented by the Israeli military when their ship was raided and seized in international waters. Seven out of the 21 volunteers aboard the Handala are U.S. citizens, including our guest, the Palestinian American human rights attorney Huwaida Arraf. Arraf has participated in Freedom Flotilla missions for over a decade, and was a member of the 2010 sailing in which 10 activists were killed during a raid on their boat by Israeli forces. Ahead of the current mission, crew members reported two instances of suspected sabotage. "But that did not stop us," she says. "The blockade was illegal at 2008; it is illegal and deadly and part of a genocide now. … The entire world is allowing Israel — has allowed Israel to turn Gaza into an extermination camp."
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Jul 25, 2025
Dr. Nick Maynard, a surgeon who has just returned from volunteering in Gaza for the past month, describes a pattern reminiscent of "target practice" visible in the injuries medical staff are treating in Gaza. As evidence grows of deliberate massacres of Palestinians seeking aid at the U.S.- and Israeli-backed aid sites, Maynard says the pattern of injuries suggests that Israeli military forces and other security contractors staffing the sites are "playing some sort of game" in their targeting of civilians, shooting at the head one day, "the abdomen tomorrow, the testicles the day after that." Because of Israel's blockade on food and medicine outside of the sparse supplies available at these dangerous aid sites, Maynard continues, normally survivable injuries have become fatal. "Because they're so malnourished, their tissues don't heal. Their immune systems are suppressed. … They often end up breaking down, causing terrible infections inside the body, and frequently these patients die."
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Jul 25, 2025
We speak to civil rights lawyer Ben Crump about the ongoing epidemic of anti-Black police violence and impunity for law enforcement in the United States. Crump first comments on the sentencing of Brett Hankison, a former Louisville police officer who fired 10 bullets into Breonna Taylor's home in 2020 during a botched raid, to 33 months in prison for use of excessive force. Although Hankison's actions were "a violation of [Taylor's] Fourth Amendment rights," the Trump Justice Department had recommended only one day in prison for his sentencing. In court, "there was nobody advocating for Breonna," says Crump.
We then discuss the announcement of no charges against the officers who assaulted William Anthony McNeil Jr., a Black man who was violently arrested and beaten during a traffic stop in Florida, as well as the death of 18-year-old Saniyah Cheatham in NYPD custody. Crump says, "For many minorities in America, it is a constant threat for us, especially Black people, this constant racial profiling."
Finally, Crump continues to call for the public release of FBI files concerning the assassination of Malcolm X. If the government "wants to be transparent," he says, referring to the release this year of files on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., "then they need to be consistent across the board."
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Jul 25, 2025
Israeli Attacks Kill 62 Palestinians Across Gaza as Malnutrition Cases Soar, U.N.: Over 1,000 Palestinians Killed Trying to Access Food, France to Formally Recognize Palestine as a State, Cambodia Claims Thailand Is Committing War Crimes in Border Clashes, Venezuelan Immigrant Sent to CECOT Sues U.S. for $1.3M, WaPo: ICE Directs Agents to Increase Use of GPS Ankle Monitors, CBP Says Immigrants Should Carry Green Cards and Proof of Immigration Status, Senate Advances Nomination of Emil Bove to Lifetime Appointment on Federal Court, Trump Signs Rescission Bill Clawing Back $9B for Foreign Aid and Public Broadcasting, Trump Administration Approves $8B Merger Between Paramount and Skydance
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Jul 24, 2025
In a landmark decision, the International Court of Justice found that polluting countries are now legally obligated to address global warming. In a unanimous ruling by a panel of 15 judges, the court said high-emitting countries do have legal obligations under international law to address the "urgent and existential threat" of climate change. The case was brought forward by the island nation Vanuatu, which has faced the brunt of the climate crisis with extreme weather events and rising sea levels. "Countries in the Pacific, communities in the Pacific, are suffering from something which they did not cause," says Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu's minister for climate change. "It's been caused by private actors that are being regulated by states in the West." Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, which supported Vanuatu in its case, agrees. He says, "What we really need is to end an era of impunity and just actually rely on existing legal principles to hold polluters accountable, whether they are corporate or governmental."
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Jul 24, 2025
The BBC, Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse have all called on Israel to allow journalists in and out of Gaza as starvation there becomes imminent. In a statement, the news outlets said, "We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families." We speak with Afeef Nessouli, a journalist who just returned from Gaza, where he volunteered as an aid worker. "It has been an incredibly awful experience to see people sort of become sicker and sicker from hunger," says Nessouli, who describes visiting community kitchens in Gaza that have run out of food. "Many of us would just have one meal a day," he says of his seven weeks in Gaza. Now his colleagues who remain in Gaza "are having one meal every three days."
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Jul 24, 2025
As Gazans face mass starvation due to Israel's blockade, more than 100 humanitarian organizations are demanding action to end Israel's siege of Gaza. Their warning comes as the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced the number of starvation-related deaths in Gaza has climbed to at least 113 people. We go to Gaza City for an update from Mahmoud Alsaqqa, Oxfam's emergency food security and livelihoods lead. "We are really exhausted, and we've become unable to bear the situation any longer," says Alsaqqa, who adds he has lost nearly 15 pounds since the Israeli blockade began.
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Jul 24, 2025
WHO Warns Gaza Is Suffering Man-Made Mass Starvation, Israel's Knesset Approves Motion to Annex Occupied West Bank, World Court Rules States Have Obligation to Cut Emissions, Trump Administration to Strip EPA of Power to Combat Climate Crisis, WSJ: DOJ Informed Trump His Name Appears in Epstein Files, Columbia Agrees to Pay $221M in Settlements to Trump Administration, Education Department to Probe Universities That Gave Scholarships to DACA Recipients, Federal Appeals Court Rules Trump's Attempt to End Birthright Citizenship Is Unconstitutional, Venezuela to Probe Salvadoran Officials over Mistreatment of Venezuelans in CECOT Prison, Federal Judge Rules Kilmar Abrego Garcia Should Be Freed from Criminal Detention, Trump Administration to Spend $1.2B Building Largest U.S. Immigration Jail in Texas, 12 Killed in Border Clashes Between Thailand and Cambodia, State Department Plans to Shut Down HIV/AIDS Relief Program That Has Saved Millions, Trump Signs Executive Orders Deregulating AI Industry, SCOTUS Allows Trump to Fire Democrats from Consumer Product Safety Commission
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Jul 23, 2025
The top-ranked show on late-night television, CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, has been canceled, just days after Colbert skewered Paramount, the parent company of CBS, for settling a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump. The lawsuit accused another CBS show, 60 Minutes, of biased editing in an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 election. Its settlement comes as Paramount works to finalize a lucrative merger with Skydance Media that must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. On his show, Colbert called the settlement "a big fat bribe."
"So many media conglomerates had already given thinly disguised bribes to Trump to settle lawsuits they could not possibly lose in court," explains Jeff Cohen, co-founder of the online action group RootsAction and the media watch group FAIR, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Cohen says he suspects Paramount agreed to cancel Colbert's show — and will likely remove other programming critical of Trump — as part of a deal with the administration to win favorable conditions for its merger. But Cohen emphasizes that the erosion of a free press did not start under Trump. "Over a period of several decades, both Democratic and Republican administrations have placed our media and information system in the hands of giant media conglomerates who have only one value. It's not freedom of press. It's not free flow of information. It's profit maximization."
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Jul 23, 2025
"The world needs to impose wide-scale sanctions against the state of Israel to force it to end the starvation and genocide of civilians." More than 100 humanitarian organizations are demanding action to end Israel's siege of Gaza, warning mass starvation is spreading across the Palestinian territory. Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, says Israel's 78-day-long extreme blockade of Gaza constitutes "the fastest starvation campaign we've seen in modern history." Fakhri says the mass suffering has been both "preventable" and "predictable," thanks to the impunity Israel has received from the international community, and calls on the United Nations to impose sanctions on Israel and ensure humanitarian aid delivery into Gaza.
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Jul 23, 2025
Virginia Commonwealth University is withholding the diploma of a Palestinian American student because of her campus activism. In a hearing Tuesday, officials examined the case of VCU student Sereen Haddad, who was told she would not receive her diploma at her graduation this year because of her participation in a peaceful memorial commemorating violent police arrests at a student encampment for Palestine in 2024. Sereen Haddad is the daughter of Tariq Haddad, a cardiologist who grew up in Gaza. Dr. Haddad made headlines last year for rejecting an invitation to meet with then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken because of the Biden administration's support for Israel's actions in Gaza. The Haddads have lost more than 200 members of their extended family in the nearly two-year-long assault.
We speak to the duo about the repression and retaliation that Sereen has faced for her student activism as she awaits a final decision by the university on the conferral of her degree. "Whatever VCU decides, I have made peace with the fact that I don't need a university who is materially invested in a genocide's approval," she tells Democracy Now! "I am on the right side of history, and I don't need a university to tell me that."
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Jul 23, 2025
Over 100 NGOs Demand End to Gaza Siege, Warning of Mass Starvation, WHO Calls for Release of Staff Member Abducted by Israel, Thousands of Antiwar Protesters March in Tel Aviv, Columbia University Punishes Student Activists over Gaza Protests, Trump Warns U.S. Could Attack Iran Again, Bedouins Evacuated from Syria's Suwayda Describe Massacres, Ukraine and Russia to Begin Third Round of Peace Talks, U.S. and Japan Announce Trade Deal; Far-Right Party Makes Gains, U.S. and Philippines Strike Trade Deal, Announce Expanded Military Ties, House Speaker Mike Johnson Announces Early Recess to Avoid Vote on Epstein Files, Trump Claims Obama Committed "Treason", Family Demands Justice for Saniyah Cheatham, Found Hanged to Death in NYPD Holding Cell, Videos Show Inhumane Conditions at Manhattan ICE Detention Center, Chicago Tenant Union Continues Rent Strike to Fight Evictions
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Jul 22, 2025
As the federal government begins to implement some $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts called for in President Trump's budget bill passed by the Republican-led Congress, a new investigative documentary, Life After, examines the moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying that could increasingly confront members of the disabled community. Reid Davenport, who directed the film, notes the "film is not about suicide. It is about the phenomenon that leaves disabled people desperate to find their place in a world that perpetually rejects them." People with disabilities "already experience huge health disparities," adds Colleen Cassingham, who produced the film. "When you introduce a policy like assisted suicide, it takes a group of people who are already incredibly marginalized by our system and gives the institutions and the people with power a profit motive for denying those people care." Life After is now screening in person at select theaters and virtually online.
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Jul 22, 2025
A new report titled "You Feel Like Your Life Is Over" details the dangerous and abusive conditions faced by immigrants held at three ICE jails in Miami, Florida, since Trump returned to office. One testimony describes how detention officers made men eat while shackled with their hands behind their backs. One man said, "We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs." The report describes how detained immigrants are also routinely denied access to legal counsel and critical medical attention, while some have been held incommunicado in solitary confinement as an apparent punishment for seeking mental healthcare. Democracy Now! spoke with Belkis Wille, associate director in Human Rights Watch's Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division. The immigration "system is abusive and is treating immigrants in detention in a dehumanizing manner," she says.
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Jul 22, 2025
ICE is reportedly racing to build more detention tent camps nationwide after Congress allocated an unprecedented $45 billion in new funding over the next four years to lock up immigrants, as part of Trump's massive tax and spending package. The Department of Homeland Security is also preparing to start detaining immigrants at more military bases, including in New Jersey and Indiana, as well as to transfer more immigrants to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to NPR. This comes as the Trump administration is moving to revoke access to bond hearings for people who entered the U.S. through "non-approved channels." The new policy could potentially impact millions of undocumented people and orders officers to detain immigrants for the length of their removal proceedings — a process which can take months or even years. "This administration is using every tool that it has to target the immigrant community, to scare the immigrant community," says Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. Orozco notes that most immigrants will likely never get the chance to fight their case before a judge under Trump's aggressive deportation policies.
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Jul 22, 2025
As Congress approved some $45 billion to expand ICE's immigration detention capacity, including the jailing of families and children, we look at the case of one family. In May, plainclothes ICE agents detained a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who has acute lymphoblastic leukemia, along with his 9-year old sister and their mother, as they left their immigration court hearing in Los Angeles. In detention, the boy missed a key doctor's appointment, and the family said his sister cried every night. As pressure grew over their conditions, the family was released on July 2. "The little boy doesn't want to leave his home. He's terrified. He sobs, cries and screams when his mother takes him out of the house," says attorney Elora Mukherjee, who represents the boy and his family and is director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She says the young children are traumatized after their month in ICE detention.
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Jul 22, 2025
As Congress approved some $45 billion to expand ICE's immigration detention capacity, including the jailing of families and children, we look at the case of one family. In May, plainclothes ICE agents detained a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who has acute lymphoblastic leukemia, along with his 9-year old sister and their mother, as they left their immigration court hearing in Los Angeles. In detention, the boy missed a key doctor's appointment, and the family said his sister cried every night. As pressure grew over their conditions, the family was released on July 2. "The little boy doesn't want to leave his home. He's terrified. He sobs, cries and screams when his mother takes him out of the house," says attorney Elora Mukherjee, who represents the boy and his family and is director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She says the young children are traumatized after their month in ICE detention.
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Jul 22, 2025
15 More Palestinians Die of Malnutrition as Gaza's Starvation Crisis Deepens, 28 Countries Call for Immediate End to Israel's Assault on Gaza, Ex-Officer in Breonna Taylor Killing Sentenced to 33 Months in Prison, Officers Caught on Camera Beating Black Motorist Will Not Face Charges, Pentagon to Withdraw 700 Marines from Los Angeles, ICE Detains Former Haitian Presidential Candidate in Florida, 21 Attorneys General Sue Trump Admin over Federal Benefits to Undocumented immigrants, CBO: Trump's Tax and Spending Bill to Add $3.4T to National Debt, Speaker Mike Johnson Backtracks on Call for DOJ to Release Epstein Files, Trump Admin Releases Over 240K Pages of FBI Records on Martin Luther King Jr., Judge Hears Harvard's Challenge to Trump Admin's $2.6 Billion Cuts to Research Funds
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Jul 21, 2025
A new audio series published by the group Federal Workers Against DOGE looks at the plight of fired federal workers whose jobs and careers were cut short by the Trump administration's systematic defunding of government services in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy and the reallotment of resources to anti-immigration enforcement. I Do Solemnly Swear, co-created and directed by filmmaker Laura Nix, features interviews with current and former employees of federal agencies including the FAA, CDC, EPA, IRS and more. "I felt it was very important to focus on not just the illegality of the firings, but the impact on Americans," says Nix. "We've depended for a very long time [on] these benefits, the safety of our highways, our water, our airspace, [but] we're learning that these are all being taken away."
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Jul 21, 2025
The Trump administration has shuttered the Environmental Protection Agency's scientific arm, the EPA Office of Research and Development. Hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists will lose their jobs under the administration's plan to aggressively tear down environmental regulations and defund the EPA. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, a former top administrator in the Office of Research and Development, says the loss of the division means the loss of essential services like air and water quality monitoring that protects public health. "We are losing a treasure trove of historical knowledge, of scientific expertise, and really it's going to limit what information, what science would be available for the agency to consider in protecting our health and our environment," she says.
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Jul 21, 2025
The independent news outlets 972 Magazine and Local Call are reporting that Israel is increasingly using grenade-firing drones to enforce evacuation orders. Israeli soldiers have admitted that they deliberately target civilians and likened their use of the weapons to a "video game." Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport explains how soldiers are instructed to initiate strikes on all residents, not just belligerent targets. "Once a commander defines an imaginary red line that no one is allowed to cross, anyone who does is marked for death," says Rapoport.
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Jul 21, 2025
The starvation crisis in Gaza is deepening under Israel's brutal blockade and amid regular massacres of civilians attempting to secure aid at the only officially sanctioned aid sites, run by Israeli troops and American mercenaries. The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the onset of famine are the subjects of a new report by analysts Davide Piscitelli and Alex de Waal for the research organization Forensic Architecture on the "architecture of genocidal starvation" in Gaza. "I've been working on this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today," says de Waal, who is also the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
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Jul 21, 2025
Israeli Tanks & Snipers Kill 79 Palestinians at Aid Site in Northern Gaza, At Least 19 Palestinians Starve to Death as U.N. Warns Gaza Has "Reached New Levels of Desperation", Pope Leo Calls for End to "Barbarity of War" After Israeli Fatal Attack on Gaza Church, U.K. Police Arrest Another 100 for Supporting Banned Group Palestine Action, Gaza-Bound Freedom Flotilla Ship Sets Sail for Gaza, Syrian Gov't Announces New Ceasefire in Suwayda After 1,000 Killed, U.S.-Venezuelan Prisoner Swap Frees 250 Men Held in El Salvador, Human Rights Watch Exposes Abuse at Krome Immigration Jail in Florida, 82-Year-Old Torture Survivor Secretly Sent from Pennsylvania to Guatemala After Losing Green Card, Queens High School Student Reunites with Family After Month in ICE Detention, Journalist Mario Guevara Still Faces Deportation Even After Charges Were Dropped Against Him, "Don't You Dare Ever Say That Again": DHS Secretary Kristin Noem Denies ICE Is Racially Profiling Latinos, DRC and M23 Fighters Sign Deal to End Fighting in Eastern Congo, Brazilian Police Raid Home of Bolsonaro; Court Orders Ankle Bracelet for Ex-President Charged with Coup Plot, EPA to Shut Down Scientific Research Arm, Trump Calls on Washington Commanders & Cleveland Guardians to Resume Using Old Team Names, Trump Signs Cryptocurrency Bill to Regulate Stablecoins, Trump Sues Murdoch over WSJ Report About Trump Letter to Jeffrey Epstein, Writers Guild Calls for Probe of Paramount's Cancellation of Stephen Colbert Show, Democrats Endorse Omar Fateh to Be Next Mayor of Minneapolis
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Jul 18, 2025
We speak to Loris Taylor, president of Native Public Media, about the Trump administration's drastic defunding of public media and its impact on tribal nations. Fifty-nine tribal radio stations and one tribal television station that depend on federal funding will be among the first to face possible closure, putting some of the essential services that public broadcasting provides, including warning systems for missing Indigenous women and girls, at risk. Taylor shares how Native-led public media helps preserve Indigenous languages and helped keep communities informed during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. She fears that without these same resources and "with the climate crisis increasing, [we] are going to be operating on the margins of information and are not going to have real lifesaving information available to our citizens when they need it most."
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Jul 18, 2025
We speak with Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna about his bipartisan bill calling for the full release of federal documents pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein's criminal charges for sexual trafficking and abuse, which is also currently backed by nine Republicans and every House Democrat. Khanna explains why he's calling for transparency and accountability regarding the Epstein case, and how Trump is working to prevent the same.
Ro Khanna also discusses the massive loss to public media and local news as the Trump administration has successfully stripped $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds over 1,500 NPR and PBS stations across the country. The major cut to funding is possible thanks to the rare process of rescission, which allows the president to request Congress to rescind already-allocated federal funding. Trump's OMB Director Russell Vought has indicated that the administration intends to expand its use of rescission in future legislative sessions. "It's a devastating blow to the education of our children in America and to our democracy," says Khanna, who notes that the cut to public media comes just one week after Republicans voted to pass Trump's deficit-enlarging budget bill. "It's just not true that this has anything to do with fiscal responsibility," Khanna adds.
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Jul 18, 2025
We speak to a survivor of sexual abuse perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein and enabled by his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. Teresa Helm was sexually assaulted by Epstein at what she was told was a job interview in the early 2000s. She now works as the survivor services coordinator for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation and joins many voices calling for the release of federal documents pertaining to Epstein's criminal case, though Helm emphasizes that the goal of their release must be to promote accountability and justice for victims, not as a form of political score-settling. "I really urge everyone to focus their commitment, their intention, all this time, effort and energy onto … these survivors and their healing," says Helm. "We're talking about people's lives, and it should not be weaponized either way, in any administration."
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Jul 18, 2025
A major rift has formed within Donald Trump's MAGA base over his reversal of a campaign promise to release the "Epstein files" to the public. Many supporters see his denials of the existence of a "client list" belonging to Jeffrey Epstein, the powerful and well-connected investor who was charged with the sexual trafficking and assault of numerous teenage girls and young women before his death, as a betrayal of Trump's promises to "drain the swamp" and expose what many supporters believe is proof of criminal corruption among primarily Democratic "elites." Trump's insistence that his supporters drop their fixation on Epstein-related "conspiracy theories that his people have long nurtured" is "making it exceedingly difficult for some of his biggest supporters and boosters to not start at least suspecting that he has something to hide," says Rolling Stone's Asawin Suebsaeng, who has been reporting on the fallout from Trump and his Attorney General Pam Bondi's handling of the Epstein case.
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Jul 18, 2025
White House Poised to Claw Back $9B in Foreign Aid, Public Media Funding After House Vote, 14 Members of Gazan Family Die as Israel Bombs Their Home and Attacks Rescue Efforts, UNICEF: Israel Has Killed Over 17,000 Children in Gaza and Injured 33,000 Others, Christian Leaders in West Bank Call for Accountability and End to Israeli Settler Violence, Sectarian Fighting Resumes in Syria's Suwayda After Latest Ceasefire Effort, Trump Moves to Release Some Epstein Documents But Fails to Allay MAGA Revolt, Senate Republicans Cut Off Debate to Advance Judicial Nomination of Trump Loyalist Emil Bove, ICE Will Have Access to Personal Medicaid Data, Immigrant Rights Groups Sue over ICE Courthouse Arrests, ICE Targets Sex Workers in Mounting Raids, Anti-Corruption Watchdog Flees El Salvador Amid Crackdown, French Troops Withdraw from Senegal, Ending Permanent Presence, DOJ Requests One-Day Sentence for Louisville Cop Convicted over Breonna Taylor's Killing, Judge Lifts Domestic Travel Restrictions on Columbia Student Activist Mohsen Mahdawi, CBS Cancels "The Late Show" After Stephen Colbert Skewers $16 Million Settlement with Trump
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Jul 17, 2025
Israel launched airstrikes that destroyed part of the Syrian Defense Ministry and a facility near the presidential palace in Damascus on Wednesday, killing three people. This comes weeks after Israel launched unprovoked strikes on Iran, which led to a brief war that killed over 900 Iranians and 29 people in Israel. Adam Shatz, U.S. editor at the London Review of Books, says Israel's motivation in the Middle East is to "settle accounts with any force in the region that might challenge its domination." He also notes violent language around foreign policy has become "banal" in many Western countries. "It's not simply Trump and the far right who speak blithely about overthrowing foreign governments, about bombing other foreign populations. It's people who have a reputation … for being liberals and moderates," says Shatz.
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Jul 17, 2025
We speak with leading Israeli American historian Omer Bartov about his latest essay for The New York Times, headlined "I'm a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It." Bartov cites the United Nations definition of "genocide," which includes an intent to destroy a group of people that makes it impossible for the group to reconstitute itself. "This is precisely what Israel is trying to do," he says. "Israel is trying to concentrate the population of Gaza in the southernmost parts of the strip, to enclose them and to enforce, eventually, either that they would just die out there or that they would be removed from the Gaza Strip altogether."
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Jul 17, 2025
Israeli Forces Kill More Palestinians Sheltering in Gaza Schools, Fire on Church, Killing 2 Women, "This Aid Is a Trap": Crowd Crush Kills 21 Palestinians Waiting for Supplies from GHF, "Israel Is Seeking Endless Chaos": Al-Sharaa Condemns Israel's Attacks on Syria, Two Ultra-Orthodox Parties Leave Netanyahu's Government Coalition, Coalition of Nations Announces Steps to "End Israel's Era of Impunity" After Global Summit, Senate Approves Bill Clawing Back $9 Billion in Foreign Aid and Public Broadcasting, U.S. to Impose 19% Tariff on Indonesian Goods in Lopsided Trade Deal, Trump Pushes Texas GOP to Gerrymander Congressional Maps Ahead of 2026 Midterms, U.S. Expels Five Immigrants to Eswatini, Where They Have No Ties, California Landscaper Beaten by Federal Agents Released on Bond After Three Weeks in ICE Jail, Disabled Army Vet and U.S. Citizen Demands "Full Investigation" into His 3-Day Detention by ICE, Trump Administration Fires Maurene Comey, Who Prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein, "I Don't Want Their Support Any More!": Trump Blasts MAGA Base over Calls to Release Epstein Files, Federal Court Blocks Rule to Scrub Medical Debt from Credit Reports, Writers Against the War on Gaza Lays Out New York Times's Ties to Israeli Occupation, Gaza Genocide, At Least 69 Die as Fire Consumes Newly Opened Shopping Mall in Iraqi City of al-Kut, "Good Trouble Lives On": Protests Across U.S. to Target Trump's Rollback of Civil Rights
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Jul 16, 2025
The Trump administration's mass deportation machine continues to shatter families and communities with violent, indiscriminate raids on schools, homes and workplaces. Farms are a particular target of its brutal, racist crackdown; around two-thirds of U.S. farmworkers are immigrants, largely from Mexico. Earlier this month, a raid on a farm in California turned fatal when 57-year-old Jaime Alanís died after falling from the roof of a greenhouse. Dozens of his fellow workers were rounded up and loaded onto buses destined for a detention center. Many of the targeted farmworkers are members of the United Farm Workers, the nation's oldest farmworkers' union. Its president, Teresa Romero, a longtime labor leader who is the first Latina and first immigrant to head the organization, says "farmworkers are terrified." She says that "replacing people who are experienced, who are professional, who have been in agriculture, working sometimes for decades, [is] not how we should repay them for the sacrifice and hard work," and adds that "sooner or later, the agriculture industry is going to suffer."
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Jul 16, 2025
On July 16, 1945, the United States carried out the Trinity test, the world's first nuclear detonation. Today, 80 years later, the University of Chicago — the site of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction — is host to the Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an event that brings Nobel laureates and nuclear experts together to confront the growing global risk of nuclear war. The event features a performance by the award-winning string ensemble Kronos Quartet, who have spearheaded two new renditions of Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" featuring nearly 50 more artists from around the world. Titled "Hard Rain" and "Hard Rain (Drone)," the new pieces aim to raise awareness of the ongoing threat of nuclear war.
As the global political situation becomes increasingly unstable, says professor Daniel Holz, chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and one of the organizers of the assembly, "the likelihood that we'll sort of stumble into a nuclear war and the end of civilization … has gone way up." Holz joins Democracy Now! alongside violinist, artistic director and founder of the Kronos Quartet, David Harrington, to share what inspired them to commission and create "Hard Rain," which debuts today. "We need everyone in the world to know how dangerous and how awful this is for all of us. And if music and musicians can step up and project those kinds of concerns about all of our futures, then music is doing its job," says Harrington.
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Jul 16, 2025
In a major new New York Times exposé on health insurance behemoth UnitedHealth, deputy investigations editor David Enrich reveals how the largest insurer in the country works to intimidate and silence critics of its often predatory and exploitative treatment of patients. While "companies do this kind of stuff all the time," Enrich says, UnitedHealth's lawyers "were really going after some fairly obscure stuff, and that suggested to me that this was a campaign of desperation." Enrich's investigation found instances of this "very aggressive campaign to shut down criticism and scrutiny" from even before the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. UnitedHealthcare is one of two main subsidiaries, alongside Optum, of UnitedHealth. Enrich discusses the experiences of some of these critics, from doctors on TikTok to newspaper reporters like himself.
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Jul 16, 2025
21 Killed as Guards at Gaza "Humanitarian" Site Fire Tear Gas, Triggering Stampede, Huckabee Calls on Israel to Probe Killing of U.S. Citizen as Settlers Continue Attacks on Palestinians, Israel Bombs Syrian Army HQ in Damascus, Steps Up Attacks on Suwayda, U.N. Rapporteur Urges Nations to Cut Ties to Israel to Stop "Genocide" in Gaza, Senate Advances Bill to Claw Back $9 Billion in Funds for Foreign Aid and Public Broadcasting, Pentagon to Withdraw Half of 4,000 National Guard Troops Deployed to Los Angeles, 22-Year-Old Palestinian Released After 9-Day Immigration Detention at Houston Airport, Farm Labor Organizer Alfredo Juarez Zeferino Ends Deportation Fight After 4 Months in ICE Jail, Federal Agents Arrest 9 over Spokane ICE Protests, Including Former City Council President, Trump's Nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Grilled over "Signalgate" Scandal, AG Bondi Deflects Questions About Convicted Sex Trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Wired: Nearly 3 Minutes Were Cut from FBI's "Raw" Surveillance Video of Epstein's Cell, Adelita Grijalva Wins Democratic Primary in Arizona to Replace Her Late Father in Congress
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Jul 15, 2025
Protesters across the United States targeted Palantir Monday in a day of action focused on the technology company's work with ICE, facilitating President Trump's expanding immigration crackdown, and work with the Israeli military. New York police arrested at least four people Monday after demonstrators blocked the entrance to the company's Manhattan offices. Democracy Now! spoke to protesters, including some who work in the technology sector, about the "Purge Palantir" campaign and how Palantir's data mining, surveillance and automation tools are being weaponized against vulnerable communities. We speak with Wired senior writer Makena Kelly, who has been covering Palantir and says many Silicon Valley firms are "trying to find opportunity in this chaos" as the Trump administration slashes government services and pursues mass deportations.
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Jul 15, 2025
Florida Democratic Congressmember Maxwell Frost joins us to discuss how he observed horrific conditions in Florida's new immigration detention jail in the Everglades, known as "Alligator Alcatraz," when he joined other lawmakers in a visit. "I saw myself in those cages. It was a lot of people my age that looked like me," says Frost. "The administration is essentially trying to ethnically cleanse the country." We also speak with a reporter at the Miami Herald, which reports hundreds of detainees at the Everglades immigration prison have no criminal records or charges, contradicting claims by the Trump administration. The newspaper recently published a list of people detained or believed to be detained at the facility, helping families locate their loved ones.
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Jul 15, 2025
We go to the occupied West Bank for an update on how the family of a 20-year-old Palestinian American from Florida, Sayfollah "Saif" Musallet, is demanding justice after he was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Musallet and another Palestinian, 23-year-old Mohammad al-Shalabi, were attacked by a group of Israeli settlers on Friday in the town of Sinjil, northeast of Ramallah, where their families own farmland. Eyewitnesses say the settlers brutally beat Musallet and fatally shot al-Shalabi, then prevented ambulances from reaching their victims for hours. Musallet was pronounced dead before he could reach a hospital.
"The settlers and the military don't only work hand in hand," says anti-Zionist activist Jonathan Pollak, who was injured in the same protest. "They are part and parcel of implementing the same policy … of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank."
"Palestinians here have zero rights," adds Nizar Milbes, a distant relative and close friend of the Musallet family, who says settlers have been encroaching on Palestinian lands even more aggressively since October 7, 2023.
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Jul 15, 2025
We go to the occupied West Bank for an update on how the family of a 20-year-old Palestinian American from Florida, Sayfollah "Saif" Musallet, is demanding justice after he was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Musallet and another Palestinian, 23-year-old Mohammad al-Shalabi, were attacked by a group of Israeli settlers on Friday in the town of Sinjil, northeast of Ramallah, where their families own farmland. Eyewitnesses say the settlers brutally beat Musallet and fatally shot al-Shalabi, then prevented ambulances from reaching their victims for hours. Musallet was pronounced dead before he could reach a hospital.
"The settlers and the military don't only work hand in hand," says anti-Zionist activist Jonathan Pollak, who was injured in the same protest. "They are part and parcel of implementing the same policy … of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank."
"Palestinians here have zero rights," adds Nizar Milbes, a distant relative and close friend of the Musallet family, who says settlers have been encroaching on Palestinian lands even more aggressively since October 7, 2023.
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Jul 15, 2025
SCOTUS Greenlights Dismantling of Education Department, "Unleashing Untold Harm", 24 States and D.C. Sue Trump Admin over $7 Billion in Frozen Education Funds, WaPo: Trump Admin Denies Bond Hearings to Immigrants Who Entered Without Approval, Trump Admin to Ramp Up Transfer of Immigrants to Third Countries Without Due Process, Court Delays Termination of TPS for 12,000 Afghan as Both Sides Asked to Submit Arguments, U.N. Warns "Lifelines Will Vanish" for Entire Gaza Population Without Immediate Access to Fuel, "Like a Video Game": Israeli Forces Targeting Forcibly Evacuated Palestinians with Drones, Israel Strikes Syria as Ceasefire Is Announced in Suwayda Province, Israel Bombs Lebanon's Beqaa Valley in Ongoing Ceasefire Violation, Trump Announces Plan to Send Arms to Ukraine via NATO Amid Growing Ire with Putin, Sudan's RSF Accused of Killing 300 People, Burning Villages Amid Ongoing Civil War, Pam Bondi Fires DOJ's Top Ethics Lawyer and 20 Staffers in Political Purge, Elon Musk's xAI Gets $200M Contract with Pentagon, Activists in NY, CA, CO and WA Protest Palantir's Role in Fueling ICE, Gaza Genocide, "Largest Transfer of Wealth Since Slavery": Faith Leaders, Community Members Protest Trump Budget, NYT: UnitedHealth Systematically Silencing Critics After CEO Killing, Cuomo Announces Third-Party Run for NYC Mayor After Crushing Primary Defeat by Zohran Mamdani
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Jul 14, 2025
An immigration raid in Camarillo, California, on Thursday led to an hourslong standoff between protesters and federal border agents, who blocked the roads with military-style vehicles and tear-gassed community members, including children, as crowds attempted to protect dozens of farmworkers from arrest.
The Department of Homeland Security said over 300 immigrants were detained in dual raids on cannabis farms and agricultural fields in Camarillo and the coastal city of Carpinteria. One farmworker fell from the roof of a greenhouse during the immigration raid and later died of his injuries. Jaime Alanís, 57, had worked at the farm in Camarillo for 10 years and provided for his wife and daughter who live in Mexico. Alanís is the first known person to die during an immigration raid since President Trump returned to office.
"It was almost unlike anything that we had ever seen before," says Angelmarie Taylor, a
student and volunteer with 805 Immigrant Coalition who was present during the raid in Camarillo.
"We're talking about human beings. We're talking about parents, just like the gentleman that passed because of the chaotic actions of ICE," says Luis McArthur, mayor of nearby Oxnard.
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Jul 14, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected ceasefire deals and other chances to deescalate the devastating war in Gaza and beyond, all to remain in power and avoid corruption charges, according to a new investigation in The New York Times Magazine. "Netanyahu put the integrity of the coalition, the safety of his continuous rule of the government and the state … as a first priority ahead of any other priority," says Ronen Bergman, Pulitzer Prize-winning Israeli investigative reporter.
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Jul 14, 2025
The official death toll in Gaza has topped 58,000, with Israeli forces continuing to shoot at Palestinians seeking aid and talks over a ceasefire agreement stalled in Doha. This morning's injured were taken to Nasser Hospital, the largest functioning hospital in Gaza, facing fuel shortages and a widening Israeli offensive in the area. Democracy Now! spoke with Dr. Tarek Loubani, an emergency room medical doctor who has been volunteering in Nasser Hospital in Gaza since June, live from Gaza.
"Every day seems to be a new exercise in the depths of human depravity in terms of targeting men, boys, women and children, especially in terms of the youngest children," says Loubani. "I think every doctor who operates and works in Palestine will tell you that that's the most jarring, the most terrible part of our job, is just the war on children on every level."
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Jul 14, 2025
Israel Kills 200 Palestinians over Another Deadly Weekend as Gaza Genocide Death Toll Tops 58,000, Israeli Settlers Kill 20-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Visiting Family in Palestine, The Handala Ship Sets Sail with International Crew in Hopes of Breaking the Siege on Gaza, U.K. Police Arrest Another 71 People for Supporting Activist Group Palestine Action, California Farmworker Who Fell from Roof in ICE Raid Dies from Injuries, U.S. Judge Blocks Mass Raids in Los Angeles Area, Says Detainees Must Get Access to Lawyers, Dems Slam Inhumane Conditions at Everglades "Internment Camp" Known as "Alligator Alcatraz", Two Arizona Samaritans Who Help Asylum Seekers at Border Seek Damages for Mistreatment by DHS, Judge Orders Release of Two Vermont Immigrant Justice Leaders, FEMA Only Answered 16% of Calls 2 Days After Catastrophic Texas Floods That Killed 132 People, Wildfires Burn at Grand Canyon, Razing Historic Lodge, Trump Says He'll Send Patriot Missiles to Ukraine as He Ramps Up Criticism of Putin, Iranian President Pezeshkian Suffered Minor Injury During Israeli Attack in June, U.N.: Nearly 5,000 Haitians Killed over Nine Months Amid Ongoing Gang Violence, "A Catastrophic Blow to Our National Interests": State Dept. Fires Over 1,300 Staff, Trump Threatens Mexico, EU with 30% Tariffs, White House Handling of Epstein Files Leads to Fracture in Trump's MAGA Base, Trump Threatens to Take Away Rosie O'Donnell's U.S. Citizenship, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerian Coup Leader Turned Democratically Elected President, Dies at 82
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Jul 11, 2025
Democracy Now! recently interviewed U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk in Geneva, Switzerland. The wide-ranging conversation touched on immigration policy in the United States, climate change around the world, the global fight to preserve human rights and more.
See Part 1 of our conversation with Türk, including his response to Israel's brutal war on Gaza.
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Jul 11, 2025
A federal judge in New Hampshire has issued a nationwide injunction against President Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States since February 20. In a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of immigrant parents, the ACLU argued that the order would leave children born to undocumented parents "effectively stateless." We speak to ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt about the case, which he calls "cruel" and without merit, as well as new evidence that the Trump administration is lying about its power over people it has expelled to the Salvadoran mega-prison CECOT.
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Jul 11, 2025
Rescue teams in central Texas are still searching for about 160 people who went missing in the catastrophic flash floods on July 4. The official death toll has climbed to at least 121 victims. State policymakers are now in the spotlight, as questions swirl around Texas's lack of emergency precautions and the climate denialism of Republican political leaders. "Many of those lost lives could have been saved if links in our disaster response chain hadn't been broken," says Monica Medina, a former official at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal administration that, among other tasks, monitors extreme weather. NOAA has been hit by major cuts to funding and staffing under Trump, despite the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters from climate change. Medina is among many climate and policy experts sounding the alarm on the defunding of NOAA and other meteorological and disaster preparedness services. "We are firing the people. We're stopping taking in the data. We're ending the research. We're turning off the satellites. We're doing everything we possibly can to put our heads in the sand in the midst of what is increasingly dangerous weather."
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Jul 11, 2025
U.N.: Israel Has Killed 800 Palestinians Seeking Aid in Gaza, Many at U.S. "Aid" Operation GHF, Israel Kills 16 Palestinians, Including 8 Children, Waiting for Nutritional Supplements, Gaza Doctors Using Incubators for Four Babies at Once Amid Israel's Blockade, Trump Ramps Up Tariff Threat on Canada as Brazil Vows to Impose Reciprocal 50% Tariff on U.S., U.S. Judge Blocks Trump's Birthright Ban, Allows Class-Action Lawsuit to Proceed, Protesters Confront Feds in Camarillo, CA, as Agents Target Farmworkers, CPJ Calls for Release of Journalist Mario Guevara, Trump Admin Withdraws Head Start Services for Undocumented Children, Gutting of State Department Resumes Following SCOTUS Ruling, Kristi Noem Blames FEMA for "Slow" Response in Texas — FEMA Says Delay Caused by Noem Rule, Texas Flood Death Toll Reaches 121; 160 People Still Missing, Texas Dems Slam Gov. Abbott Gerrymander Attempt in Wake of Flooding Disaster, 4 Million People Could Perish in HIV-Related Deaths in Next Four Years Due to U.S. Aid Cuts, U.S. Cuts Aid to Somalia But Continues to Bomb It, "Illegal and Inhumane": Rights Groups Condemn Greece for Halting Processing of Asylum Claims, Iranian Lawyer Says 100 Transgender Prisoners Died in Israeli Bombing of Evin Prison, CUNY Targets Pro-Palestinian Students and Staff in Latest Crackdown, Grok to Be Installed in Teslas Days After "MechaHitler" Scandal, Video Game Actors Sign New Contract After Yearlong Strike
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Jul 10, 2025
We speak with United Nations expert Francesca Albanese, one day after the Trump administration announced it is imposing sanctions on her over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. Albanese has served as the U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2022. She recently released a report highlighting dozens of companies aiding Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and fueling its genocidal war machine in Gaza, including U.S. tech giants. Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized Albanese's work as "political and economic warfare" against the United States and its allies.
"It seems that this administration is quite allergic to justice," says Albanese, speaking to Democracy Now! from Slovenia. "It's trying to distract us from where our focus should be: What's happening to the Palestinians in the little that remains of their tormented land, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem."
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Jul 10, 2025
Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa's latest documentary, Apocalypse in the Tropics, explores the impact of evangelical Christianity on Brazil's political landscape. Once a small minority, evangelicals now constitute about 30% of Brazil's population and played a key role in the rise of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. "It's one of the fastest-growing religious shifts in the history of mankind," Costa tells Democracy Now! She says right-wing evangelicalism in Brazil is largely a U.S. import, after Washington sought to undermine the influence of left-wing Catholic teachings during the Cold War.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to impose 50% tariffs on Brazil, partly as retribution for what he calls the "witch hunt" against Bolsonaro, now facing trial in Brazil for an alleged coup attempt following his defeat in the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Apocalypse in the Tropics is available on Netflix starting July 14. Costa's previous film, The Edge of Democracy, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
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Jul 10, 2025
The Trump administration's immigration crackdown is sowing fear and chaos in communities across the United States, as heavily armed and masked agents descend on workplaces, schools and public spaces. In Los Angeles, dozens of federal agents, including some on horseback, swept MacArthur Park, located in a predominantly immigrant and working-class part of the city. "It felt like an occupation of L.A.," says Vladimir Carrasco, who works with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA.
Meanwhile, community leaders in Chicago are expressing outrage after federal immigration forces showed up at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture and refused to identify themselves. Although Homeland Security later claimed the agents were at the museum on an unrelated matter, "We know that they were there to intimidate us," says Veronica Ocasio, director of education and programming at the organization. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.
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Jul 10, 2025
Gaza's Doctors Warn Hospitals "Will Become Graveyards" as Fuel Supplies Dwindle, Israel's Netanyahu Leaves D.C. Without Ceasefire Deal and with Carte Blanche to Continue Genocide, Trump Admin Sanctions U.N. Expert Albanese for Exposing Companies Profiting from Gaza Genocide, Four Dead, 11 Missing in Wake of Houthi Attack on Red Sea Vessel, New Gaza Freedom Flotilla Ship "Handala" to Set Sail from Italy, Trump Threatens 50% Levy on Brazil, Citing Bolsonaro "Witch Hunt," in Latest Wave of Tariffs, Trump Praises Liberian President Boakai for His English, Liberia's Official Language, Russia Attacks Ukraine as New Audio Reveals Candidate Trump Told Putin He'd Bomb Moscow, SoCal Bishop Tells Worshipers to Skip Mass over ICE Raid Fears, Advocates Warn Arizona Woman Could Die of Cancer If She's Not Released from ICE Jail, Outrage in Chicago After Immigration Agents Show Up at Puerto Rican Museum , Supreme Court Won't Allow Florida to Enforce Law Criminalizing Undocumented Immigrants, June Heat Wave Killed 2,300 People Across 12 European Cities, "Shoot Their Legs": Kenyan President Orders Police to Further Crack Down After Deadliest Protest Day
, Imprisoned Kurdish Leader Announces End to 40-Year Armed Struggle Against Turkey
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Jul 09, 2025
The largest municipal workers' strike in decades in the city of Philadelphia has ended after 9,000 members of AFSCME District Council 33, who are primarily sanitation workers, walked off the job a week ago. Growing piles of trash on the streets of Philadelphia brought the strike into clear view for city residents. Labor historian Francis Ryan says the workers won "the hearts of a lot of Philadelphians" with a popular social media campaign. "What I saw on the picket lines last week was a spark of social justice unionism," says Ryan. The average sanitation worker salary in Philadelphia is currently $46,000 a year, which the union has argued is not a living wage for workers required to live within the city limits.
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Jul 09, 2025
The first trial in a case challenging the Trump administration's policy of detaining and deporting international students and professors who participate in pro-Palestinian activism is underway in Boston. The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association brought the lawsuit. Government lawyers tried to get it dismissed, but U.S. District Judge William Young, an 84-year-old Ronald Reagan nominee, ordered a trial, saying it was the "best way to get at truth."
"Students and faculty all over the country are quite literally terrified about the possibility that their advocacy and expression will lead to detention," says Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and one of the lawyers challenging the Trump administration. "They are terrified that ICE agents will show up at their door any day and take them away."
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Jul 09, 2025
Ukraine's Air Force says Russia launched its largest aerial attack overnight since its 2022 full-scale invasion, firing a record 741 drones and missiles, most of them targeting the city of Lutsk in western Ukraine. The barrage prompted Poland to activate its air defenses and scramble fighter jets. Russia's attack came after President Trump on Tuesday sharply criticized Vladimir Putin in his latest in a series of U-turns on Ukraine policy. We speak with Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, on the latest developments. Trump is "learning that it's actually not that easy," he says. "And it's not that easy because Vladimir Putin is not interested in a peace deal."
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Jul 09, 2025
President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House for a second straight day Tuesday, as Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, claimed Israel and Hamas were nearing a breakthrough on a ceasefire agreement. Israeli media are reporting Netanyahu is under "extreme" pressure to reach a 60-day ceasefire deal, but Netanyahu's "interests and the interests of his government remain to make this a perpetual, ongoing war," says Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. The U.S.-Israeli proposal would see 10 living Israeli hostages released, along with the bodies of deceased hostages, in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Hamas negotiators are also seeking the withdrawal of Israeli forces, guarantees for an end to the war, the resumption of humanitarian aid shipments overseen by the U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and an end to the operations of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
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Jul 09, 2025
Netanyahu and Trump Meet at the White House for Second Day Amid Gaza Ceasefire Talks , Starving Palestinians Move South in Search of Food as GHF Closes Central Gaza Aid Site, Gaza Fuel Shortage Reaches "Critical Point" as Israeli Attacks Kill 100 Palestinians in a Day, Israel Once Again Breaches Lebanon Ceasefire with Deadly Strikes, Houthis Sink Cargo Ship in Red Sea, Killing 3 Sailors, Supreme Court OKs Trump's Mass Firings and Elimination of Federal Agencies, Three Killed in New Mexico Flash Foods; Texas Flood Death Toll Rises, with 170 Still Missing , Russia Launches Massive Aerial Attack on Western Ukraine as Trump Blasts Putin , ICC Seeks Arrest of Taliban Leaders for Persecution of Women and Girls, El Salvador Says U.S. Controls Fate of Venezuelans Transferred to Notorious Mega-Prison, Immigrants Describe Torturous Conditions at "Alligator Alcatraz" ICE Detention Camp, Democrats Demand Release of Trump-Related Epstein Files as AG Bondi Says No Client List Exists, First-Ever Treatment for Malaria in Infants and Children Wins Regulatory Approval, Doctors and Public Health Groups Sue RFK Jr. for Ending COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendations
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Jul 08, 2025
What is MAGA imperialism? Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster says that, despite its feints toward anti-imperialist isolationism, President Donald Trump's foreign policy has coalesced into a "hyper-nationalist" form of populism that rejects the U.S.'s post-WWII adherence to liberal internationalism and promotes dominance over other countries via military power rather than through economic globalization. Foster explains that this "Trump doctrine is opposed to multi-ethnic empires and multi-ethnic nations," operating under a "racial definition of foreign policy, with the notion that the United States is a white country and other ethnicities don't belong." And while some analyses of the Trump coalition locate its base in the "white working class," in reality this ideology is rooted in the lower middle class, which owns more property and is less opposed to the wealthy capitalist class. "If you go back to the 1930s, to Italy and Germany, it's the same constituency that drove the fascist movement, but it's a result of an alliance between big capital … and the lower middle class."
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Jul 08, 2025
We speak to Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, about changing popular opinion in the U.S. toward Israel and Palestine. "I'm not sure there's any political issue in the United States, perhaps other than gay marriage, over the last couple of decades where public opinion has shifted as fast," he says, citing the surprise victory of pro-Palestinian mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York City's Democratic primary as evidence of a shifting political landscape. We also discuss a recent article in The New York Times that criticizes Mamdani, a Ugandan-born Indian Muslim who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, for self-identifying as both Asian and Black/African American on a college application. Beinart, whose own parents are of European Jewish background and were raised in multiracial South Africa, explains how the limitations of formal racial categories often elide the true complexity of racial, ethnic and national identity. "It's not the case that Zohran Mamdani was trying to pull some sleight of hand to try to take advantage of affirmative action. This was a very deep statement about what he believed it was to have grown up in Uganda," he says.
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Jul 08, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump this week in Washington, D.C. Trump and Netanyahu are discussing Israel's war in Gaza, with Netanyahu suggesting that new plans for the forced relocation of refugees to other countries would give Palestinians the "freedom" to choose. But what Palestinians actually want is "the freedom to return to the places from which their families were expelled," says Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents and the author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. "What kind of freedom is it when you have an area where most of the buildings and the hospitals and the schools and the bakeries and the agriculture have all been destroyed, where you have more child amputees than any other place on Earth?"
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Jul 08, 2025
"The most important thing that we have to do right now is hold the Republicans that voted for this bill accountable for the devastation that they are causing and the lives that will be impacted." Democratic Congressmember Yassamin Ansari of Arizona explains how Trump's new federal budget, which introduces major cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, housing and education, will worsen wealth inequality and the health disparities, while actually increasing the U.S. deficit by trillions of dollars and supercharging spending for immigration and border enforcement. The congressmember shares her recent experience visiting a detention center outside of Phoenix, calling some of the conditions there the most "dehumanizing" she has ever seen. Ansari, the first Iranian American Democrat to serve as a member of Congress, also condemns the Trump administration's strikes on Iran in June. "I do not believe that the president of the United States should be conducting unilateral military action without authorization from Congress," she says.
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Jul 08, 2025
Netanyahu and Trump Promote Plan to Expel Palestinians from Gaza, As Trump Hosts Netanyahu, Protesters Rally at White House Gates to Oppose Gaza Slaughter, Israel Continues Slaughter of Palestinians at Gaza Aid Sites, Homes and Schools, Death Toll from Texas Floods Tops 100 as Hope Fades for Missing Victims, Trump Administration Cancels Protected Status for Honduran and Nicaraguan Immigrants, Armed and Masked Federal Agents Descend on L.A.'s MacArthur Park, "Your Silence Won't Save You": L.A. Activists Urge Communities Nationwide to Rise Up Against Fascism, 11 Killed in Kenya Protests Marking Anniversary of 1990 Pro-Democracy Uprising, Russian Attacks in Ukraine Target Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa, Trump Sending More Weapons to Ukraine Because He's "Not Happy with Putin", Trump Revives Tariffs Threat on 14 Countries Unless They Make a Deal with U.S. by Aug. 1, BRICS Meeting Kicks Off in Rio as Trump Escalates Tariff Threat on Global South Bloc, Judge Temporarily Blocks Ban on Medicaid Funding for Planned Parenthood
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Jul 07, 2025
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House on Monday to discuss a possible new ceasefire in Gaza, we speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about the humanitarian disaster in the Palestinian territory, where Israel has damaged or destroyed much of the health infrastructure since the start of the war in October 2023. Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon in California who volunteered at Nasser Hospital in Gaza. He says Israel's impunity in attacking hospitals across Gaza is "outrageous behavior" that blatantly violates the rules of war. "Literally every attack on a healthcare facility in Gaza has been justified by … a willful misunderstanding of international law or just outright lies."
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Jul 07, 2025
We speak with investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz about how President Trump's major tax and spending bill hurts environmental justice efforts in Louisiana communities affected by the climate crisis and pollution from oil and gas facilities. The Trump administration had already canceled much of the funding for local environmental monitoring and advocacy, and the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill further entrenches the power of the fossil fuel industry. "It's a frontal assault on environmental and climate justice, and it will set us back significantly unless we take action to confront the climate crisis," says Juhasz, who wrote about the bill's impact for Rolling Stone.
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Jul 07, 2025
President Donald Trump and his allies are celebrating the passage of his sweeping tax and spending bill, which he signed into law on July 4 after a monthslong effort to shepherd it through Congress. Ultimately, just three Republicans in the Senate and two in the House voted against the legislation. The so-called Big, Beautiful Bill includes about $1 trillion in federal cuts to Medicaid and could kick 17 million people off their healthcare. It makes the largest-ever cuts to food assistance benefits, could cause the closure of nursing homes and rural hospitals across the country, raises housing and energy costs, and supercharges the Trump crackdown on immigrants — all while delivering massive tax benefits for the wealthiest people in the country. "This is the most massive transfer of wealth upward in American history," says John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation.
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Jul 07, 2025
At least 82 people have died and dozens are still unaccounted for after flash flooding in central Texas over the weekend, when the Guadalupe River rose about 26 feet in less than an hour on Friday amid torrential downpours. At least 10 girls who attended Camp Mystic, a girls' summer camp located on the banks of the river, are among the missing. In Kerr County, the most devastated area, at least 40 adults and 28 children have died. The speed and scale of the natural disaster has raised questions about why officials weren't better prepared, and whether the Trump administration's cuts to scientific positions exacerbated the situation.
"The National Weather Service, like a lot of federal agencies, went through significant loss of staff back in the spring," says retired NOAA meteorologist Alan Gerard, now the CEO of Balanced Weather, which provides critical weather and climate alerts. Gerard says that while it appears there was appropriate staffing ahead of the Texas flood, the impact of current budget cuts and even deeper reductions being considered by the administration are a cause for concern. "We still have all of hurricane season to deal with," he says.
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Jul 07, 2025
Trump Signs Bill to Cut Taxes on the Rich, Gut Social Programs and Speed Mass Deportations, Texas Floods Kill at Least 82 People, with Dozens Still Missing and More Rains Forecast, Amid Grief and Anger, TX Officials Blame Federal Gov't While Trump Deflects Questions on FEMA's Fate, "It's Criminal": Trump Admin Discontinues Publication of Federal Reports on Climate Crisis, MSF's Abdullah Hammad Killed by Israel, the 609th Medical Worker Killed in Gaza Genocide, "Shoot and Ask Questions Later": U.S. Whistleblower Says "Aid" Workers Told to Attack Palestinians, Israel Attacks Yemen Ports, Power Plant as Houthis Continue Attacks on Israel over Gaza Genocide, Netanyahu Visits U.S. Despite ICC Arrest Warrant as Trump Touts Possible Ceasefire, U.K. Police Arrest Activists, Including 83-Year-Old Priest, for Protesting Ban on Palestine Action, Eight Immigrants Expelled from U.S. Transferred to South Sudan After SCOTUS Ruling, 200 U.S. Marines Descend on Florida to Assist in ICE Crackdown on Immigrants, Donald Trump vs. Elon Musk Feud Escalates with Announcement of "America Party", Philadelphia City Workers Have Been on Strike for One Week to Demand Dignified Wages
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Jul 04, 2025
As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. "One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley," says Hao. "The concept of artificial general intelligence is not one that's scientifically grounded."
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Jul 04, 2025
In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of the new book Empire of AI, which 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, in an extended interview.
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Jul 04, 2025
We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" He was addressing the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. The late actor James Earl Jones read the historic address during a performance of Voices of a People's History of the United States, which was co-edited by Howard Zinn.
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Jul 03, 2025
As we broadcast, the House was soon set to vote on the so-called big, beautiful bill before the July 4 deadline imposed by President Trump. Should the House pass the legislation, the bill would be sent to Trump's desk to be signed into law. The bill massively increases funding for ICE, cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade and adds $3.3 trillion to the nation's debt.
"It makes people in the country who are in the bottom 30%, working hard to pay their bills, poorer, because it's stripping away healthcare from them, stripping away food assistance from them. And it is all in the name of giving tax breaks to the wealthiest. … The top 20% in this country get 60% of the benefits," says Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna.
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Jul 03, 2025
In his first live broadcast interview since being released from ICE detention, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil tells Democracy Now! about his experience behind bars, the ongoing threat of deportation that hangs over him and why he continues to speak out against the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza. The Columbia University graduate was the first pro-Palestinian campus protester to be jailed by the Trump administration. Khalil is now reunited with his wife Noor and newborn son Deen, after he was released on bail last month by a federal judge. Khalil says the Trump administration's attempts to silence him are "a distraction from the genocide in Palestine."
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Jul 03, 2025
GOP Leaders Advance to Final House Vote on Bill to Slash Social Programs and Cut Taxes on the Rich, Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill 300 Palestinians in 2 Days, Including Hospital Director, 33 More Palestinians Slaughtered While Seeking Food at Militarized Gaza Aid Sites, U.S. Approves $510 Million Sale of Bomb Guidance Kits to Israel, U.K. Lawmakers Approve Ban on Palestine Action, Adding It to List of "Terrorist" Groups, U.N. Rapporteur Identifies 60 Firms Profiting from Gaza Slaughter and West Bank Occupation, "No God Bombs Children": Peace Activists Protest Gathering of Christian Zionist Lobby Group, "A Hugely Important Decision": Judge Strikes Down Trump's Ban on Asylum Claims at Southern Border, Attorneys Say Kilmar Abrego Garcia Was Brutally Tortured at Salvadoran Prison, Stateless Palestinian Woman Released After 5 Months in Texas ICE Jail, Court Rejects Trump Admin Bid to Rearrest Georgetown Peace Scholar Badar Khan Suri, Elderly Cuban Immigrant Dies in ICE Jail, the 13th Such Death This Year, Sean "Diddy" Combs Acquitted of Sex Trafficking But Found Guilty on Lesser Charges, Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down 176-Year-Old Abortion Ban, Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Who Threatened Cops Takes Job at DOJ "Weaponization" Office, Trump Reduces Tariffs on Vietnam as Trump Organization Looks to Expand Investments
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