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Aug 20, 2025
We speak with ACLU lawyer Eunice Cho about a new federal lawsuit brought on behalf of immigrants held at the detention center in the Florida Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz." The detainees allege being routinely subjected to human rights abuses, denied due process and access to legal counsel, while families have complained of being unable to find their loved ones "disappeared" into the facility. "These are basic constitutional rights that are afforded to anybody that is held in government custody. And what was happening at Alligator Alcatraz is simply unprecedented and not normal," says Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU National Prison Project.
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Aug 20, 2025
"How much is Trump pocketing off the presidency?" That's the question driving a major new investigation by journalist David D. Kirkpatrick in The New Yorker, which finds that the first family has been leveraging its place atop U.S. politics to rake in billions. According to Kirkpatrick, Donald Trump and his immediate family have made $3.4 billion from his time in the White House, including more than $2.3 billion from various cryptocurrency ventures alone.
"What really surprised me about all this is just how fast they're making this money. They seem to turn down no opportunity," says Kirkpatrick. "It really sharpens the question of what a buyer, so to speak, might be getting for that."
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Aug 20, 2025
Six Republican-led states have now pledged National Guard troops to the Trump administration's takeover of Washington, D.C., where it has assumed control of policing under the claim of tackling crime. Along with the D.C. National Guard that Trump already controlled, this brings the total number of troops in the streets of the capital to more than 2,000. The federal takeover comes even as violent crime in the capital is at a 30-year low — numbers the Trump administration now disputes, with the Justice Department launching an investigation into whether those crime statistics were manipulated by city officials.
"What we're seeing is lawlessness, but it's all coming from the White House," says community activist Keya Chatterjee, the executive director of the group Free DC.
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Aug 20, 2025
Three More Palestinians Starve to Death in Gaza as Israeli Attacks Kill 56 in a Day, Israeli Hostages' Families Lead Protests in Tel Aviv to Demand Gaza Ceasefire Deal, A Record 383 Humanitarian Workers Were Killed Last Year, Led by Israeli Attacks in Gaza, Venezuela Mobilizes 4.5 Million Soldiers as Trump Deploys U.S. Marines to Caribbean, Mexican President Denies Trump Administration's Claims She's Collaborating with DEA, Advocates Rally in Support of 18-Year-Old L.A. High School Student Abducted by ICE, Video Shows CBP Officers in California Firing Bullets at Family After Stopping Their Vehicle, Boston Mayor Rejects DOJ Ultimatum to End Sanctuary City Policies, U.S. Attorney in D.C. Seeks to Maximize Charges Against Arrestees, with Exemptions for Firearms, Trump Says Smithsonian Museums Should Not Focus on "How Bad Slavery Was", Judge Orders Mississippi to Redraw Supreme Court Districts That Diluted Black Voters' Power, DOJ Set to Begin Releasing Epstein-Related Files to Congress, Minnesota Court Overturns Conviction of Water Protector Who Opposed Enbridge Pipeline
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Aug 19, 2025
Amanda Trebach, a member of the immigrant rights' group Unión del Barrio and an ICU nurse, was monitoring ICE operations in the Los Angeles area when she was targeted and arrested herself. Video of the scene shows masked agents in plainclothes forcing her to the ground and briefly kneeling on her head. "They took me into an unmarked vehicle. They did not read me my rights. They didn't tell me where I was going," says Trebach, who was detained overnight before being released without charges the following evening after an outpouring of community support. She recounts her experience and explains why she will continue to fight for her immigrant neighbors in the face of the ongoing danger to her community.
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Aug 19, 2025
President Trump says he is working on a "deal" to end the Russia-Ukraine war by hosting a series of meetings between the U.S., European Union, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin is insisting Russia keep areas of Ukraine that it has seized, including the long-contested Donbas region, while Zelensky is asking the U.S. for security guarantees to prevent future invasion by its powerful neighbor. We host a conversation with two political scientists, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Ukrainian democratic socialist Denys Pilash, about the likely outcome of the talks and the roots of the conflict. Mearsheimer says "the sides remain so far apart" when it comes to the possibility of a ceasefire during peace negotiations that "the best outcome would be to settle this war now." Pilash, on the other hand, says there are still measures that can be taken to pressure Russia to agree to a ceasefire and to secure more favorable postwar terms for Ukraine.
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Aug 19, 2025
As European Leaders Gather at White House, Trump Says He'll Arrange Zelensky-Putin Meeting, Tens of Thousands Flee Gaza City as Israel Steps Up Bombings Ahead of Planned Invasion, Hamas Agrees to 60-Day Ceasefire Plan That's "Almost Identical" to U.S. Proposal, ISIL-Backed Rebels Kill 52 in Eastern Congo; M23 Suspends Peace Talks with DRC, Texas Democrat Locked in House Chamber for Refusing Round-the-Clock Surveillance by State Troopers, Trump Says He'll Ban Mail-In Ballots and Voting Machines, Citing Advice from Vladimir Putin, Newsmax Will Pay Dominion Voting Systems $67 Million to Settle Lawsuit over 2020 Election Lies, More National Guard Troops Deploy to D.C. as White House Social Media Teams Join FBI Raids, Mourners in Monrovia, California, Honor Guatemalan Immigrant Killed While Fleeing ICE Raid, 10,000 Unionized Flight Attendants End Strike After Reaching Tentative Deal with Air Canada
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Aug 18, 2025
The White House has called for a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions in order to ensure they align with President Trump's interpretation of U.S. history. "The idea that the Smithsonian — which was created as an independent entity — should reflect any administration's vision of history, and not the vision of the historians and the researchers and the other people who devote their lives to studying these things, is more than problematic," says Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of history at Harvard University, president of the Organization of American Historians and an award-winning author.
The Trump administration and the Department of Education are also currently partnering with PragerU, a controversial conservative media company, to make educational materials. "This is a whitewashing of history under the guise of making white children feel better about themselves," says Gordon-Reed. PragerU content has already been approved for use in public schools in 10 states across the country.
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Aug 18, 2025
Massive protests have erupted in Israel, with about 500,000 people marching in Tel Aviv Sunday to demand an end to the war in Gaza. Organizers say 1 million took part in demonstrations across the entire country. Most of the Israelis who were out on the streets "blame Netanyahu" for prioritizing his political survival over an end to the war, says Oren Ziv, reporter and photographer for 972 Magazine. Ziv notes that most Israelis are "not speaking directly on the suffering in Gaza, on the killings, on the children, on the starvation," but instead focus on the survival of the hostages held in Gaza.
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Aug 18, 2025
President Trump is meeting today at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several other European leaders. This comes three days after Trump's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska failed to secure a peace agreement. Ahead of the Alaska talks, Trump had vowed Russia would face "very severe consequences" if Putin did not agree to stop the war, but Trump then dropped his call for a ceasefire. Democracy Now! speaks with Katrina vanden Heuvel, Russia expert and publisher of The Nation magazine, on what's next as peace talks continue.
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Aug 18, 2025
Trump to Host Zelensky at White House After Alaska Summit with Putin Fails to Secure Peace Deal, State Dept. Halts Visas for Children in Gaza Seeking Urgent Medical Care, Amnesty Accuses Israel of Waging "Deliberate Campaign of Starvation" in Gaza, Ex-Israel Military Intel Chief: Palestinians "Need a Nakba Every Now and Then to Feel the Price", Over a Million Protest in Israel Calling for End to War and Hostage Deal, Three States to Send National Guard to D.C. as Trump Expands Takeover of City, ICE Detains 7-Year-Old Student in NYC, Report: U.S. Deploys 4,000 Marines & Sailors to Southern Caribbean as Trump Eyes Attacking Drug Cartels, CBO Confirms GOP Budget Law Will Trigger $500 Billion in Medicare Cuts, Pakistan: Over 300 Killed in Climate Changed-Induced Flooding, Bolivia: Right-Wing Candidates to Face Off in Presidential Runoff in October, El Salvador Extends Mass Detention Without Trial Until 2027, Florida Radio and TV Host Rob Lorei Dies, Helped Start WMNF
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Aug 15, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska for a high-stakes summit to discuss a possible ceasefire in Ukraine, we host a debate between two foreign policy thinkers about the war, its causes and how it could be brought to a conclusion.
John Mearsheimer is an international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, known for his realist perspective. He has long argued that Western policies are the main cause of the Ukraine crisis. "There's overwhelming evidence that it was NATO expansion into Ukraine that drove this train," says Mearsheimer.
Matt Duss is executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and the former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. He says that despite Western missteps, Russia is ultimately the main cause of the current war, which Putin started in 2022 with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "Putin has made clear that he has a pretty grandiose historical conception of what he sees as a kind of renewed Russian empire," he says.
Both Mearsheimer and Duss say Ukraine's war effort is flagging and that the best way out is to "make the best peace they can," even if it means conceding territory to Russia.
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Aug 15, 2025
President Trump says his takeover of policing in Washington, D.C., will serve as an example of policies he hopes to enact in other major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. All the cities on his target list are led by Black mayors, and most have "sanctuary" policies limiting local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Responding to Trump's threats, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson tells Democracy Now! that his city will not "cower or bend or be intimidated by these attempts to divide and conquer our communities." He says that unlike Trump's militarized approach, Chicago has been investing in mental health services, raising wages and building affordable housing as part of a larger campaign to improve quality of life. Contrary to Trump's claims, violent crime is down in Chicago.
"We're building the safest, most affordable big city in America, the most pro-worker city in America, and we're doing it in a very collective way," says Johnson.
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Aug 15, 2025
Sewage Floods Gaza Hospital After Israeli Strike, as Childhood Malnutrition Soars, Israeli Plan to Expand Settlements and "Bury" Palestinian State Draws International Condemnation, Trump Predicts Ukraine's Zelensky Will Join Follow-Up Summit to Meeting with Russia's Putin, Erik Prince Reaches Agreement with Haiti's Interim Gov't to Deploy Nearly 200 Mercenaries, Texas Democrats Prepare to End Two-Week Walkout over GOP's Gerrymandered Maps, California Democrats Rally in Support of Ballot Measure to Redraw Congressional Maps, D.C. Leaders Reject Pam Bondi's Order Installing DEA Administrator as Chief of Police, D.C. Police Submit to White House Demands They Assist Federal Immigration Agents, D.C.'s Unhoused Residents Ordered to Leave Encampments or Face Fines and Jail Time, Lawsuit Accuses ICE of Unlawfully Deporting U.S. Citizen Children, Including Boy with Cancer, Florida Plans "Deportation Depot" to Operate Alongside "Alligator Alcatraz" ICE Jail, ACLU Sues Michigan City and Officer for Brutalizing Black Man in Mental Health Crisis, Global Plastic Pollution Treaty Talks Fail as U.S. and Other Oil Producers Reject Production Limits, NYC Council Speaker Promises to Override Mayor's Veto of Bills Raising Delivery Workers' Wages
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Aug 14, 2025
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe was recently sentenced to 12 years of house arrest after he was found guilty of bribing imprisoned members of paramilitary groups to coax them into retracting damaging testimony exposing Uribe's ties to U.S.-backed, right-wing paramilitary groups. Uribe was a staunch U.S. ally who ruled Colombia from 2002 to 2010, during which time there were thousands of extrajudicial killings of civilians, who were then purposely mislabeled as rebel fighters in what became known as the "false positives" scandal. "Álvaro Uribe is a very powerful figure. He is the leading figure of the far right in Colombia and, I would say, a leading figure of the far right in the Americas," says leftist Colombian Senator Iván Cepeda. His own father, leading leftist politician Manuel Cepeda, was assassinated in 1994 by right-wing paramilitaries working with the government.
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Aug 14, 2025
As President Trump threatens to use U.S. special forces against drug cartels abroad, a new book, The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, reveals some of the most secretive and elite special forces in the Army are heavily involved in narcotrafficking themselves. "There's at least 14 cases that I'm tracking of Fort Bragg-trained soldiers who have been either arrested, apprehended or killed in the course of trafficking drugs in the last five years or so," says author Seth Harp. The book also looks at "how U.S. military intervention often stimulates drug production," including in Afghanistan, which he says became the biggest narco-state in the world during the 20-year U.S. occupation. "Most of the drug trafficking and drug production was being carried out and done by warlords, police chiefs, militia commanders, who were on the U.S. payroll in a corrupt structure," says Harp.
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Aug 14, 2025
Israel Kills Over 100 Palestinians in a Day and Presses South Sudan to Resettle Gaza's Population, Protests Worldwide Decry Israel's Assassination of Journalists, New Zealand Parliament Ejects MP Who Called Out Colleagues' "Spineless" Inaction on Gaza, "Bury the Idea of a Palestinian State": Israeli Minister Announces Plan for New Settlements, U.N. Secretary-General Warns Israel over Sexual Violence Committed by Its Armed Forces, Trump Warns Russia of "Severe Consequences" Unless Putin Agrees to Ukraine Ceasefire, Trump Plans "Long-Term" Takeover of Washington, D.C., Police Department, The New Yorker: Trump Family Has Made $3.4 Billion from Presidency, U.N. Security Council Rejects RSF's Declaration of Rival Government in Sudan, Peru's President Grants Blanket Amnesty to Police and Soldiers Accused of Human Rights Abuses, Trump Administration Revokes Visas of Doctors Tied to Cuban Charity, 27 Dead, Dozens Missing as Ships Carrying Asylum Seekers Sink Off Italian Coast, Spain Asks for Help Battling Raging Wildfires, 400 Die Amid Arizona Heat Wave; Melting Glacier Brings Floodwaters to Alaska's Capital, 5 Chicago Officers Involved in Fatal Shooting of Dexter Reed Won't Face Charges, Nations Struggle to Forge Plastic Pollution Treaty Amid Opposition by Chemical Industry and U.S.
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Aug 13, 2025
We speak with Rachel Griffin Accurso, the educator known to millions around the world as Ms. Rachel, who has become a leading advocate for children in Gaza. Her YouTube channel for young children became wildly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic and today has more than 16 million subscribers. Since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, Accurso has used her social media reach to speak out for Palestinian children facing hunger, disease, injury and death. She has been hailed as the heir to Mister Rogers, the legendary PBS children's entertainer who also used his position in families' living rooms to speak out on social issues.
"I see all children as precious and equal. My deep care for children doesn't stop at any border," Accurso tells Democracy Now! in a wide-ranging interview.
We also speak with Tareq Hailat, director of the Treatment Abroad Program for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, who helped connect Accurso with a 3-year-old girl from Gaza named Rahaf who lost both her legs in an Israeli airstrike. Accurso and Rahaf filmed a video, in which they sing a dance together.
Hailat describes Accurso as "one of the most significant, if not the most significant, voices for Palestinian human rights" in the world. "Her advocacy has touched the hearts of people that never would have ever heard about Gaza or the Palestinian children, and that's why her voice is so vital," he says.
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Aug 13, 2025
We speak with Rachel Griffin Accurso, the educator known to millions around the world as Ms. Rachel, who has become a leading advocate for children in Gaza. Her YouTube channel for young children became wildly popular during the COVID-19 pandemic and today has more than 16 million subscribers. Since the start of Israel's war on Gaza, Accurso has used her social media reach to speak out for Palestinian children facing hunger, disease, injury and death. She has been hailed as the heir to Mister Rogers, the legendary PBS children's entertainer who also used his position in families' living rooms to speak out on social issues.
"I see all children as precious and equal. My deep care for children doesn't stop at any border," Accurso tells Democracy Now! in a wide-ranging interview.
We also speak with Tareq Hailat, director of the Treatment Abroad Program for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, who helped connect Accurso with a 3-year-old girl from Gaza named Rahaf who lost both her legs in an Israeli airstrike. Accurso and Rahaf filmed a video, in which they sing a dance together.
Hailat describes Accurso as "one of the most significant, if not the most significant, voices for Palestinian human rights" in the world. "Her advocacy has touched the hearts of people that never would have ever heard about Gaza or the Palestinian children, and that's why her voice is so vital," he says.
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Aug 13, 2025
Israeli Forces Kill 123 Palestinians in a Day Amid Campaign to Seize Gaza City, Protesters Demand Justice for Anas al-Sharif and Other Journalists Assassinated by Israel, Israeli Peace Activists Demand Closure of Notorious Gaza Aid Group, Foreign Ministers of 26 Nations Demand Israel Restore Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Sudan's Rapid Support Forces Kill 40 in Camp for Displaced People in Darfur, Zelensky and European Leaders to Hold Call with Trump Ahead of Putin Summit, Pentagon Readies Rapid Deployment Force for U.S. Cities, State Department Scrubs Reporting on Human Rights Abuses Committed by Trump's Allies, Federal Appeals Court Grants DOGE Access to Sensitive Personal Data of Millions, White House Orders Smithsonian to Align Exhibitions with Trump's Views, Federal Judge Orders ICE to Improve Conditions at Notorious Manhattan Detention Site, L.A. Immigrant Advocates Hold Boycotts to Protest Corporate Collusion with ICE
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Aug 12, 2025
Global condemnation is mounting over the assassination of one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with four of his colleagues at the network and a sixth journalist — the freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khalidi.
The killing of al-Sharif and his colleagues is "really murder," says Irene Khan, U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. "It is not killing in the context of war. It is a deliberate strategy to stop independent voices reporting."
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an independent investigation of the journalists who were killed in the targeted Israeli strike.
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Aug 12, 2025
President Trump secretly signed a directive approving the Pentagon's use of military force on foreign soil to target Latin American drug cartels, according to a New York Times report. The order gives the Pentagon authority to direct military operations at sea and on foreign soil against cartels designated by the Trump administration to be terrorist organizations. "I think it's directed mostly in Venezuela," says Alexander Aviña, associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University. The U.S. "has used the war on drugs as another way to advance the U.S. imperial geopolitical designs in the Western Hemisphere."
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Aug 12, 2025
After announcing the federal takeover of law enforcement in D.C. in the White House briefing room, President Trump painted a grim picture of the capital — including "roving mobs of wild youth" — that contrasts with crime figures showing D.C. reached a 30-year low in violent crime last January. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of African American studies and public affairs at Princeton University, says the move is an extension of Trump's "use of racist rhetoric, racist ideas, and the use of policing to enact a domestic policy agenda."
"This is a man who has consistently scapegoated Black and Brown people to either gain celebrity or political capital. And now as president the second time, he is enacting an authoritarian agenda," says Muhammad.
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Aug 12, 2025
President Trump announced Monday that he is taking "historic action" to "take the capital back" by deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and federalizing the city's police department to "re-establish law and order," and threatened the homeless population with jail time if they do not leave the city. Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, says there are legal limitations for the federal takeover of police forces. "He has to do it for an emergency, for a limited period of time and for federal purposes," says Hopkins. "The president has made up these blatant pretextual emergencies to justify calling out the National Guard … to essentially take over cities in blatant disregard for our democracy."
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Aug 12, 2025
Five More Palestinians Starve to Death in Gaza as Israeli Attacks Kill 89 in a Day, World Leaders Condemn Israel's Assassination of Journalists in Gaza, Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund Divests from Israeli Companies, Citing Gaza Humanitarian Crisis, Trump Takes Control of Washington, D.C., Police Force and Deploys National Guard, Federal Court Hears Arguments Trump Violated Posse Comitatus Act by Deploying Troops to L.A., Advocates Call for Closure of Pennsylvania ICE Jail After Death of Immigrant, Advocates in El Paso Demand ICE Release DACA Recipient Catalina "Xóchitl" Santiago, CDC Workers Demand RFK Jr.'s Ouster Following Rampage by Gunman with Anti-Vaccine Views, Journal Rejects RFK Jr.'s Call to Retract Study Showing No Health Risk of Aluminum in Vaccines, Federal Judge Denies Government's Request to Unseal Ghislaine Maxwell Grand Jury Transcripts, Middle East and Europe Swelter Under Record Heat, Trump Delays Plans to Raise Tariffs on China, Congressional Budget Office: "Big Beautiful Bill" Will Further Widen Wealth Gap, Trump Names New BLS Commissioner Who Questioned Agency's Data and Methods, Two Dead, 10 Injured in Pennsylvania Steel Plant Explosion
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Aug 11, 2025
As immigration raids and arrests continue to terrorize communities across the United States, we look at grassroots efforts to fight back. ICE has faced widespread backlash over the arrest of community advocates swept up while documenting raids across the country, many of them U.S. citizens. In Los Angeles, nurse and community activist Amanda Trebach was released from federal custody this weekend without criminal charges, after she was violently arrested early Friday morning while recording the operations of federal immigration agents in the area. Trebach, who is part of the community group Unión del Barrio, was released Saturday after intense community pressure.
"This is just another example of the Trump administration and their fascist ICE agents — or whoever they are, because they're unidentified — violating the rights and breaking the law that they're supposed to protect," says Ron Gochez, an organizer with Unión del Barrio.
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Aug 11, 2025
We speak with California Attorney General Rob Bonta ahead of the start of California's court case challenging the Trump administration's move to federalize the state's National Guard to support immigration raids. Bonta argues the use of the military for civilian law enforcement in Los Angeles clearly violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. "This is something that is deeply rooted in our history and our law as something that is prohibited, and Mr. Trump is blatantly engaged in this unlawful conduct," says Bonta. The case is one of dozens of lawsuits Bonta's office has filed against Trump, with some wins already.
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Aug 11, 2025
Doctors Without Borders is demanding the closure of Israeli- and U.S.-backed food distribution centers in Gaza run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. About 1,400 Palestinians have been killed trying to get food at GHF sites since May. A new report from Doctors Without Borders — also known as Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF — gathers testimony from its medics and others about the apparently deliberate targeting of Palestinians seeking food.
"The GHF is singularly disorganized, reckless, dangerous, and we cannot help but come to the conclusion that these are deliberately set-up death traps," says Doctors Without Borders CEO Avril Benoît. She stresses that the starvation crisis in Gaza is entirely a result of Israel's ongoing siege of the territory. "People are starving because Israel wants them to," says Benoît.
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Aug 11, 2025
We speak with Al Jazeera managing editor Mohamed Moawad after Israel assassinated five of the network's journalists in Gaza, including veteran correspondent Anas al-Sharif, in an airstrike Sunday on a media tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital. Al Jazeera has condemned the attack as an attempt to silence reporting on Israel's planned seizure and occupation of Gaza. The strike also killed Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Noufal, and came just weeks after the United Nations and press freedom advocates warned al-Sharif's life was at risk following Israeli accusations linking him to Hamas.
"The pattern is clear: degrading, delegitimizing, smearing, and then killing," says Moawad. He says the network, which is one of the few international outlets with local journalists, is now "scrambling" to cover the conflict as Israel prepares a renewed assault and occupation of the territory. "They went after Al Jazeera because we are the only international organization covering the conflict from the frontline."
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Aug 11, 2025
Israeli Military Assassinates Five Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza, U.N. Security Council Holds Emergency Meeting over Israel's Plan to Expand Military Operations in Gaza, As Many As 100,000 People Rally in Tel Aviv to Oppose Netanyahu's Plan to Escalate War in Gaza, Major Protests Held All Over the World Against Israel's Plans to Expand War in Gaza, Footage Shows Palestinian Activist Odeh Hadalin Filmed Moment He Was Fatally Shot by Israeli Settler, Sudan: 63 People Die of Malnutrition in City of El Fasher in Northern Darfur, President Trump and Russian President Putin to Hold Summit in Alaska on Friday, NYT: Trump Secretly Signs Directive Approving Pentagon to Target Drug Cartels, DOJ Launches Probes into New York Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, Peruvian Immigrant Held at NYC ICE Facility Sues Trump Administration, WaPo: Trump Removes IRS Commissioner After a Conflict over Tax Data of Immigrants, Defense Secretary Hegseth Reposts Video of Pastor Saying Women Shouldn't Be Allowed to Vote, President Trump Threatens Homeless People to Immediately Move Out of Washington, Trump Administration Wants to Settle with UCLA for $1 Billion, Armenia and Azerbaijan Sign Agreement Aimed at Ending Decades of Conflict, Colombia Presidential Candidate Miguel Uribe Dies After Being Shot in June, Nagasaki Commemorates 80th Anniversary of U.S. Atomic Bombing
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Aug 08, 2025
Jess Michaels lives with the PTSD from her 1991 assault by the serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She is part of a national chorus of voices calling on the Trump administration to release files related to the federal case against Epstein, who reportedly died by suicide while awaiting trial in 2019. Trump's personal relationship with Epstein has been under heavy scrutiny since he broke a campaign promise to publicize details about the Epstein case and instead moved to cut a new deal with convicted Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. The decision has fractured his right-wing base, but as demands for transparency grow within the MAGA movement, Michaels says survivors are still struggling to be heard. "You never hear the words 'Epstein victim' or 'Epstein survivor' out of this White House," she says, slamming the politicization of survivors' pain and trauma. "The victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have been speaking up for almost two decades," Michaels says. "It is appalling that there is so little justice for this issue."
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Aug 08, 2025
In a major victory for environmental advocates, chemical giant DuPont and its related companies have agreed to pay $2 billion to clean up four industrial sites in New Jersey that are contaminated with "forever chemicals," or PFAS, which have been found to persist in everything from rainwater to human breast milk. It is the third such settlement New Jersey has reached in less than three years, and marks a growing movement against the widespread use of PFAS, a class of chemicals still used to produce countless industrial and consumer goods, even though they have been linked to cancer and birth defects for over half a century. For more, we're joined by investigative journalist Mariah Blake, the author of a new book on PFAS and the fight against them, to discuss the history of the pervasive toxins and the dangers they pose to human health.
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Aug 08, 2025
Israel's security cabinet has announced the approval of a plan to occupy Gaza City, moving its ongoing military offensive north and displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians to camps in central Gaza. Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani emphasizes that the new strategy is simply "the first phase of a larger plan" for the permanent displacement, occupation and annexation of the entire Gaza Strip, as confirmed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a recent interview with Fox News. "We are dealing here with a genocide," says Rabbani, where "Israel is acting in the full confidence that whatever it does, it will enjoy, if not the support, at least the consent of its key sponsors and allies in the West."
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Aug 08, 2025
Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Plans to Take Over Gaza City, Two Palestinians Killed While Seeking Humanitarian Aid, Palestinian American Medical Student Sues Emory University for Suspending Her over Gaza Remarks, Medford City Council Approves Ordinance Divesting from Human Rights Abusers, Including Israel, GOP Senator Cornyn Says FBI Approved Request to Arrest Texas Democratic Lawmakers, Trump Calls for a New Census Excluding Undocumented Immigrants, DOJ Hires Jan. 6 Rioter Who Encouraged Killing Police Officers, Trump Administration Purges FBI Officials Who Probed Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election, Trump Administration Taps Fort Bliss Army Base to Receive 1,000 Immigrant Detainees, Former "Superman" Actor Says He'll Join ICE in Support of Mass Deportation Campaign, L.A. Activists Call for 24-Hour Boycott of Companies Complicit in ICE Raids, Federal Judge Orders Florida to Halt Construction at "Alligator Alcatraz" ICE Jail, Trump Orders Deployment of Federal Cops in D.C. Amid False Claims of Surging Crime, CNN: Vice President Vance Led Huddle of Top Trump Administration Officials over Jeffrey Epstein, Trump Opens Path for Private Equity and Cryptocurrency Investments in 401(k) Plans, Air Force Will Deny Early Retirement Benefits to Transgender Service Members
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Aug 07, 2025
Negotiations are underway in Geneva on a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty that has been in the works for several years, as the crisis of pollution from plastics worldwide has grown more acute. An estimated 8 billion metric tons of plastic waste now pollute the planet. Without changes, the production of plastic is expected to triple by 2060 — much of it driven by single-use plastics.
This comes as a new report by The Lancet has found that plastics are a "grave threat" to human health. "Waste plastic contains thousands of toxic chemicals that cause human exposure and result in disease and disability and premature death," says Dr. Philip Landrigan, an author of the report and the director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College. He also notes that plastic is especially harmful to children, who are at risk for "decreased IQ, injury to the reproductive organs" and liver damage when exposed to plastics during early development.
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Aug 07, 2025
Israel's security cabinet is considering plans to expand Israel's assault on Gaza toward a full military takeover, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly pushing for a monthslong offensive on Gaza City and central Gaza refugee camps. The cabinet meeting comes as Israel's forced starvation of Gaza claimed at least four new victims over the past 24 hours, according to health officials. "Israeli politicians have really made it no secret that they envision and want to see the mass displacement of Palestinians as southward as possible, if not completely ejected from the Gaza Strip," says Amjad Iraqi, senior Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. Given that Israel's allies have allowed the state to act with impunity, Iraqi adds, "you also cannot separate Gaza and the West Bank." The Israeli government is "deciding that it could actually pursue and replicate many of the same policies in the West Bank."
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Aug 07, 2025
Huge tariffs on more than 90 countries took effect shortly after midnight on Thursday. President Trump slapped one of the highest tariff rates of 50% on India — set to go into effect on August 27 — unless India stops buying Russian oil. Democracy Now! speaks with Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, on the hypocrisy of the tariffs. "There's so many double standards in this particular recent announcement of Trump, because it's not just that other countries, like China, are buying Russian oil," says Ghosh. "The European Union is buying Russian oil. The U.S. is buying various Russian exports."
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Aug 07, 2025
White House officials have confirmed that President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet as early as next week to discuss the war in Ukraine. It would be the first U.S.-Russia summit in more than four years. Trump reportedly plans to follow up that meeting with another three-way meeting between himself, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. We speak with The New York Times opinion columnist M. Gessen, who says Putin is "fully invested in continuing this war forever." The war on Ukraine "is not the kind of thing that you can roll back in a totalitarian state," says Gessen. "It destabilizes the politics, it destabilizes the psychology of the country, and at this point it destabilizes the economy of the country to try to retrofit it back to a civilian economy."
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Aug 07, 2025
4 More Palestinians Starve to Death in Gaza as Israeli Settlers Attack Aid Convoys from Jordan, "This Is Orchestrated Killing": MSF Calls for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Aid Sites to Be Shut Down, Netanyahu Convenes Security Cabinet to Consider Plans for Israeli Military Takeover of Gaza, Israeli Authorities Release Body of Odeh Hadalin as the Israeli Army Blocks People From Attending His Funeral, Report: Microsoft is Storing Vast Trove of Israeli Intelligence Used to Attack Palestinians, U.S. Tariffs on Dozens of Countries Take Effect Today, Trump and Putin Could Meet in the Coming Days to Discuss Ukraine War, Report: U.S. Plans to Weaken Criticism of Human Rights Abuses in El Salvador, Israel, and Russia, Guardian: RSF Attack on Sudan's Zamzam Camp in Darfur May Have Killed More Than 1,500 Civilians, United Nations Says Rwanda-Backed M23 Rebels Killed Over 300 Civilians in Congo Last Month, France, Spain and Portugal Battle Wildfires Amid Heat Wave, New JAMA Study Suggests Los Angeles Fires Led to More Than 400 Additional Deaths, Department of Homeland Security Removes Age Limits for ICE Recruits, Trump Threatens to Federalize D.C. After Former DOGE Staffer Was Assaulted in Attempted Carjacking, 5 Soldiers Shot by Army Sergeant at Fort Stewart Base in Georgia, GOP Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska Angrily Confronted by Crowd During Town Hall, Tucson City Council Votes Unanimously to Reject Project Blue, a Proposed Data Center Linked to Amazon, Stanford Student Newspaper Sues Trump Administration For Revoking Visas Over Protected Speech
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Aug 06, 2025
This week marks 80 years since the first use of nuclear weapons in war, when the United States dropped a pair of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the bombings. Many died instantly, and many others died more slowly from severe burns and radiation sickness. Some estimates put the combined death toll over 250,000 killed. We speak with veteran journalist Greg Mitchell, whose new documentary, streaming at PBS.org and airing on PBS, reexamines a remarkable episode in the U.S. occupation of Japan after the end of World War II, when the U.S. military held an all-star football game in the ruins of Nagasaki, reflecting what Mitchell calls a "careless" and "heartless" U.S. attitude. The Atomic Bowl is "horrifying history" that is worth reexamining, says Mitchell, because "there is not a real taboo on using nuclear weapons, because so many historians, so many in the media continue to support the use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and even Nagasaki."
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Aug 06, 2025
We speak with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich about his new memoir, Coming Up Short, which tells his life story alongside the growth of inequality in America. Reich was born in 1946 as part of the baby-boom generation that enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity and social mobility in the decades after World War II. But he says those conditions were squandered as wealth concentration grew worse, labor unions were gutted and wages stagnated — helping to give rise to Donald Trump's brand of authoritarianism. "We allowed big money to take over," says Reich. "We, the baby boomers, although we did a lot of good things, we took for granted what we were given. … And Donald Trump is kind of the essence of what you do when you take your eyes off the prize."
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Aug 06, 2025
We speak to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich about how President Trump's firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after the agency released a weaker-than-expected jobs report, undermines a key agency. Trump claimed, without offering any evidence, that the numbers were "rigged" in order to make him look bad. The BLS report showed just 73,000 jobs were added in July and that far fewer jobs had been created in May and June than previously estimated. Trump's dismissal of Erika McEntarfer is another sign of growing authoritarianism in the United States, says Reich, who served as labor secretary in the Clinton administration. "This is another example of Trump basically riding roughshod over our democratic institutions and truth," says Reich.
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Aug 06, 2025
5 More Palestinians Die of Starvation in Gaza as Israel Continues Deadly Attacks on Aid Seekers, Texas Governor Seeks to Remove Democratic Caucus Chair Amid Lawmakers' Exodus to Block GOP Maps, Rwanda Agrees to Receive "Third Country" Immigrants Deported from the U.S., Cuban Immigrant on Hunger Strike for Over 14 Days to Protest His Detention at ICE Jails, Senate Investigation Finds Hundreds of Human Rights Violations at Immigration Jails, Advocates Launch Protest Camp Outside New York City Immigration Offices, Trump Administration Pilot Program Will Require Some Visa Applicants to Pay $15,000 Bonds, RFK Jr. Cancels $500M in Contracts and Funding for mRNA Vaccines, Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration's Plan to Raid FEMA Disaster Relief Funds, EPA to Terminate $7B in Federal Grants for Rooftop Solar Energy, Top Trump Officials to Huddle at VP Vance's Home to Discuss White House's Epstein Strategy, Tennessee Executes Prisoner with Implanted Heart Device Despite Concerns of Painful Shocks, Trump Administration to Restore Confederate Monuments, Including Statue Toppled by Protesters, U.S. Envoy Meets Putin at Kremlin Ahead of Trump's Deadline for a Ukraine Ceasefire, NASA Plans to Place Nuclear Reactor on the Moon, Japan Marks 80th Anniversary of U.S. Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
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Aug 05, 2025
More than 50 Democrats in the Texas Legislature have left the state to block the passage of a new congressional map, which was gerrymandered to give Republicans five extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The new map would especially harm Latino and Black representation in Congress, but President Trump is pushing for it in order to retain a Republican majority in the 2026 midterm election. "Texas is essentially just going to be the guinea pig. Once Trump is able to get what he needs out of Texas, he's essentially just going to do it in other states, and we cannot allow that," says Texas state Representative Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, who joins us from Illinois. Because Republicans hold the majority in both chambers of the Texas Legislature, state Democrats have fled Texas to other U.S. states to prevent the Legislature from making quorum, or the minimum number of legislators required to conduct a legislative session. The process, known as quorum-breaking, has rarely been used before, but, says Hernandez, "We are in unprecedented times."
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Aug 05, 2025
Former Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls joins us for one of his first interviews since he returned to the United States after he was beaten, arrested and detained by the Israeli military for attempting to bring aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza. Smalls calls Israel's assault and starvation of Gaza a "working-class issue," and was the only Black member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition's latest attempt to break Israel's near-total blockade of Gaza. He describes his assault by Israeli soldiers, who "attacked me out of the 21 volunteers because of the color of my skin." Smalls was later one of the last to be released from Israel's Givon Prison, where he contracted scabies. "I can tell you right now, from my own experience, that Palestinians and people of color are not safe amongst the Israeli government," he says.
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Aug 05, 2025
Police arrested over 40 people outside the Trump International Hotel in New York City as hundreds gathered for a peaceful action led by Jewish leaders calling for the end to Israel's starvation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Democracy Now! was at the demonstration and spoke to some of the protesters, including Motaz Azaiza, renowned photojournalist from Gaza, and Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, who was arrested. "We're here to say, 'Let Gaza live,' to risk everything to say, 'Never again,'" says Fornari.
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Aug 05, 2025
We get an update from the occupied West Bank, where U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson led a delegation to an illegal settlement amid escalating settler violence against Palestinians. Israel is refusing to release the body of Palestinian activist Odeh Hadalin, who was shot to death by an Israeli settler a week ago. Eyewitness Ty Kavanaugh, a former U.S. Navy medic who is volunteering with Palestinian health organizations in the occupied West Bank, says Israeli soldiers worked with settlers, including the shooter, to identify both Palestinian villagers and international allies to arrest in the aftermath of the shooting. "It seemed like they were trying to pen everybody in just to antagonize people. They want them to throw rocks. … And they were trying to find excuses to arrest international observers or volunteers or the people who happened to be there," says Kavanaugh. Multiple members of Hadalin's family continue to languish in jail, even as the shooter, Yinon Levi, has been released from house arrest and now walks free. Levi owns both an illegal farming outpost in the West Bank and a demolition company that contracts with the Israeli military. "This is not [a] random attack … This is a state policy," says Basel Adra, a close friend of Hadalin's who worked with him on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. He remembers Hadalin as a "voice of the community" who dedicated his life to advocating for Palestinian rights and existence.
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Aug 05, 2025
Eight More Palestinians Starve to Death as Netanyahu Plans to Fully Occupy Gaza Strip, Mike Johnson Visits Illegal West Bank Settlement After Israeli Forces Kill Another U.S. Citizen, Netanyahu's Government Votes Unanimously to Remove Attorney General Prosecuting Corruption, Over 40 Arrested Outside Trump International Hotel in NYC Protesting Israel's Starvation of Gaza, Activists from 44 Countries Plan Largest-Ever Gaza Aid Flotilla in September, Sudan's Army Repels Attack on North Darfur's Capital as Civil War Leads to "Protracted Famine", Over 1 Million Afghans Expelled from Iran Face Torture and Famine Exacerbated by U.S. Aid Cuts, Texas Republicans Approve Arrest Warrants for Democrats Who Fled State to Halt Gerrymandering, "We Are At War": New York Gov. Hochul to Abandon Nonpartisan Redistricting, Purdue Student Yeonsoo Go Released from ICE Custody; L.A. Plaintiff Details Abuse in ICE Jail, Former Prison Guard Sentenced to 15 Years for Fatal Beating of Robert Brooks, "Political Warfare": Jeffrey Epstein Survivors Blast Trump over DOJ Files, Millions Face Air Quality Alerts as Wildfire Smoke Covers Swaths of North America, Global Plastic Pollution Found Responsible for $1.5 Trillion in Damages Annually
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Aug 04, 2025
A new investigation reveals the months of physical and mental abuse Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration endured inside a Salvadoran prison. The men describe beatings, medical neglect and unhygienic conditions in CECOT, where a prison director reportedly told them, "Welcome to Hell, where you enter alive and leave dead." Of the 238 Venezuelan men who were held in El Salvador, at least 197 had not been convicted of any crime. "The administration itself knew, even when they were portraying them as the violent criminals that deserved to be sent to a prison in a country that was not their own, potentially indefinitely — they actually knew that the vast majority did not have convictions in the U.S.," says Perla Trevizo, a reporter with the ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigative unit that worked on the investigation with a team of Venezuelan journalists.
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Aug 04, 2025
As Palestinians face dire starvation caused by the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, at least 181 Palestinians, including 94 children, have now died from hunger-related causes in Gaza. At the same time, in the West Bank, dozens of women are on hunger strike after an Israeli settler killed a Palestinian activist, Odeh Muhammad Hadalin. Israel is now refusing to return Hadalin's body to the family as his alleged killer walks free. Democracy Now! speaks with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, who has family in the West Bank. "I think it's time for this idealized vision of Israel to shatter and for people to come to terms with the fact that we are funding and financing this ethnic cleansing, this genocide, this theft, day by day by day, of people's land in the West Bank," says Khalidi.
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Aug 04, 2025
Rashid Khalidi, the renowned Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, says he is withdrawing from teaching his fall course after the school has agreed to pay a $200 million settlement in a major new deal with President Trump, who accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students during campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and agreed to end the consideration of race in admissions and hiring. Columbia has accepted values that "are dear to people who want to protect Israel from criticism at all costs while it slaughters people by the hundreds daily," says Khalidi. In his piece in The Guardian, he wrote, "The university's draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible."
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Aug 04, 2025
Six More Palestinians Die of Starvation in Gaza; Hamas and Islamic Jihad Release Videos Showing Two Emaciated Hostages, 600 Retired Israeli Security Officials Urge Trump to Pressure Israel to End War in Gaza, 60 Palestinian Women on Hunger Strike, Demanding the Body of Slain Activist Odeh Hadalin, Far-Right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir Leads Prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sparking Outrage, As Many As 300K People March Across Sydney Harbour Bridge to Protest Israel's Genocide, Texas Gov. Abbott Threatens to Remove Democratic State Legislators Who Fled the State to Block GOP Congressional Map, Trump Fires Head of Bureau of Labor Statistics Over Weaker-Than-Expected Jobs Report, Corporation for Public Broadcasting to Shut Down After Trump Clawed Back $1.1B in Funding, At Least 68 Migrants Die, 74 Others Missing After Boat Capsizes Off the Coast of Yemen, Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Sentenced to 12 Years of House Arrest, Office of Special Counsel Launches Investigation into Former Trump Prosecutor Jack Smith, Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration's Deportations of Immigrants with Parole Status, More Than a Dozen States File Lawsuit to Block Trump Admin from Probing Gender-Affirming Care to Minors, Ghislaine Maxwell Transferred to Minimum-Security Prison After Meeting with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Thousands of Boeing Workers Who Build Fighter Jets Begin Strike
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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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