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Sep 12, 2025
Following massive, youth-led anti-corruption demonstrations in Nepal, the country's former Chief Justice Sushila Karki looks set to become interim prime minister. This week, protesters set fire to the Parliament and other government buildings, and at least 21 people were killed in a police crackdown. The protests continued even after the government lifted its ban on social media platforms and Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned.
"We don't really know what is happening at the moment … since most of our state institutions have been either destroyed or are nonfunctional," says Pranaya Rana, a writer and journalist based in Kathmandu. "We really are counting on the new generation, the Gen Z, who led the protests, to take us forward."
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Sep 12, 2025
Brazil's Supreme Court has sentenced former President Jair Bolsonaro to more than 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup and seeking to "annihilate" democracy in Brazil following his election defeat in 2022. The sentencing marks the first time a former Brazilian head of state is brought to trial and convicted for attempting to overthrow the government. Bolsonaro and his co-conspirators, who were also sentenced to prison, hatched a plan that involved using armed forces to assassinate the President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
The decision was made amid political pressure from the Trump administration to drop the case against Bolsonaro. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged that the U.S. would "respond accordingly," calling the ruling a witch hunt. "Latin American countries need to be united and have a very strong position to defend democracy and to defend our sovereignty and independence," says Maria Luísa Mendonça, director of the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights in Brazil.
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Sep 12, 2025
Democracy Now! speaks with Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo, about Israel's recent move to expand settlements in the West Bank in an effort to erase the possibility of a Palestinian state. "They are doing everything in their power to make sure that a two-state solution can never happen," says Hasan.
Hasan also comments on the deadly U.S. attack on a boat off the coast of Venezuela. "There's no scenario in which you can say it was an imminent threat to the U.S.," he says.
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Sep 12, 2025
President Trump announced on Friday that a suspect was in custody for the killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. Although the motive has not yet been established, Trump has escalated his attacks on the political left, saying, "We just have to beat the hell out of them." Democracy Now! speaks with Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo, who says that the right is using Kirk's killing to smear the left.
"There's a real rewriting of history going on. It's what far-right regimes do after tragedies like this: They try and weaponize them to go after their enemies," says Hasan. "None of us should celebrate political violence, because it's a threat to all of us," he adds.
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Sep 12, 2025
Israel's Deadly Attacks on Gaza City Have Left 50,000 Palestinians Without Shelter, Israeli Forces Arrest 1,500 Palestinians, Including Children, in Mass Raid on Tulkarem, Netanyahu Approves New West Bank Settlements, Warning "There Won't Be a Palestinian State", U.N. Security Council Condemns Israeli Strike on Qatar, Sens. Van Hollen and Merkley Say U.S. Is Complicit in Israel's Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians, Trump Announces Suspect in Charlie Kirk's Murder in Custody, State Department Threatens Action Against Immigrants Who Praise Killing of Charlie Kirk, Trump to Honor Charlie Kirk with Posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, Politicians Cancel Public Events, Citing Security Concerns in Wake of Charlie Kirk Killing, Several HBCU Campuses Put on Lockdown After Receiving Threats in the Wake of Kirk's Murder, Brazil's Supreme Court Sentences Ex-President Bolsonaro to Prison for Coup Attempt, Michigan Judge Dismisses Criminal Charges Against "Fake Electors", Senate Republicans Vote to Fast-Track Confirmation of Trump's Judicial Nominees, Federal Appeals Courts Allows Trump Admin to Cut Off Medicaid Funds to Planned Parenthood, California Approves Bill Allowing Providers to Omit Names of Patients from Abortion Pill Bottles, Trump Suggests Russia Sent Drones into Poland by "Mistake", Belarus Frees 52 Political Prisoners to Lithuania as U.S. Eases Sanctions
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Sep 11, 2025
We speak to two activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla as it prepares to set sail for Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade. In recent days, two drone attacks on the flotilla ships, which are docked in Tunisia, have been reported. "We know who has interest in stopping these flotillas," says Mariana Mortágua, a Portuguese parliamentarian who has joined the Global Sumud Flotilla and suspects the strikes were the work of the Israeli military. Mortágua says she has joined the flotilla because it's "my duty to be here and to help in any way I can … to show people that Gaza is a real place. It's not an abstract location. Gaza exists. It's there. Real people are living there and are living under attack."
We also hear from Saif Abukeshek, a Palestinian activist based in Barcelona and a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla steering committee. "There is no one mission or campaign that will have a direct outcome impact. But I believe solidarity work is an accumulative process that we have to build in," says Abukeshek. "We have to mobilize people around the world. We have to get pressure on governments, because that's the only way that Israel will listen and will stop their crimes."
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Sep 11, 2025
Is President Trump working to build his own personal army? Investigative reporter Radley Balko responds to Trump's new executive order for a "standing National Guard quick reaction force" that the president can deploy at will. Trump has "always expressed envy for dictators and authoritarians overseas who have forces that they can deploy to do their own sort of personal bidding, whether it's putting down protests or going after political opponents," says Balko, who calls the order "a really dangerous development."
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Sep 11, 2025
The conservative activist Charlie Kirk, founder of right-wing student organization Turning Point USA, was assassinated Wednesday as he spoke before a crowd at Utah Valley University on the first stop of a fall campus tour. Kirk was 31 years old and founded Turning Point when he was just 18. A major cheerleader for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, he was killed by a single shot fired from a roof as he was responding to a question from an audience member about mass shootings. No suspect has been identified. Kirk transformed politics in the U.S., says journalist Jeff Sharlet, by organizing conservative youth around cultural issues including opposition to immigration and civil rights for LGBTQ people, people of color and women. Sharlet, who has written extensively about right-wing and white nationalist movements in the United States, says Kirk's "big issue was singular: It was whiteness." He discusses Kirk's legacy and the implications of this latest high-profile instance of political violence.
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Sep 11, 2025
Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk Assassinated in Utah, Two Students Injured in Attack at Colorado High School, Israeli Airstrikes Hit Yemen, Killing 35 People and Injuring 131, Qatar's Prime Minister Says Israeli Strike on Doha "Killed Any Hope" for Hostages, Families of Hostages March on Israeli Military HQ to Demand End to Gaza Assault, Israeli Forces Killed 22 Palestinians in Gaza Since Dawn, Global Sumud Flotilla Vows to Break Israel's Siege of Gaza, Israeli President Herzog Receives Tough Reception in U.K., Poland Invokes NATO Article 4 After Russian Drones Fly Deep into Polish Territory, Trump Administration Reportedly Considers Military Strikes on Venezuela, U.K. Ambassador Peter Mandelson Fired over Epstein Ties, House Oversight Chair Rejects Call for Analysis of Trump's Signature on Epstein Letter, Fired FBI Officials Sue Director Kash Patel, Alleging "Campaign of Retribution" by White House, El Paso DACA Recipient Remains in ICE Jail After Judge Ends Deportation Proceedings, Workers Arrested by ICE at Georgia Hyundai Plant Depart for South Korea, "Game Over Greed": NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Calls on FIFA to Abandon Price Gouging
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Sep 10, 2025
As the Trump administration grows increasingly hostile to renewable energy, we speak with acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben about his new book, Here Comes the Sun, in which he lays out a hopeful vision for the future that includes avoiding climate catastrophe, reshaping the economy and saving democracy. He says the key to unlock that future is fully embracing renewable energy over the fierce opposition of the fossil fuel industry and its political enablers. He notes that solar and wind are already the cheapest and fastest-growing power sources in history, with more green energy coming online every year.
"It's not that we're going to stop global warming. It's too late for that. It's that we really have a chance to reboot the way the world and its economy and its geopolitics works right now," says McKibben.
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Sep 10, 2025
As the Trump administration grows increasingly hostile to renewable energy, we speak with acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben about his new book, Here Comes the Sun, in which he lays out a hopeful vision for the future that includes avoiding climate catastrophe, reshaping the economy and saving democracy. He says the key to unlock that future is fully embracing renewable energy over the fierce opposition of the fossil fuel industry and its political enablers. He notes that solar and wind are already the cheapest and fastest-growing power sources in history, with more green energy coming online every year.
"It's not that we're going to stop global warming. It's too late for that. It's that we really have a chance to reboot the way the world and its economy and its geopolitics works right now," says McKibben.
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Sep 10, 2025
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has reportedly ordered authorities to reexamine the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah and six others on humanitarian grounds. Abd El-Fattah, who came to national prominence during the so-called Arab Spring protests of 2011, has been imprisoned for years on charges of "spreading false news," but his family and supporters say he has been targeted for his pro-democracy activism.
"The attempt to crush the spirit of Alaa Abd El-Fattah has failed," says journalist Jeremy Scahill. "All people who believe in the struggle for liberation, not just in Egypt but that whole region, hold Alaa Abd El-Fattah close to their hearts and hope for the moment that they see him walk out of that prison cell."
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Sep 10, 2025
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has reportedly ordered authorities to reexamine the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah and six others on humanitarian grounds. Abd El-Fattah, who came to national prominence during the so-called Arab Spring protests of 2011, has been imprisoned for years on charges of "spreading false news," but his family and supporters say he has been targeted for his pro-democracy activism.
"The attempt to crush the spirit of Alaa Abd El-Fattah has failed," says journalist Jeremy Scahill. "All people who believe in the struggle for liberation, not just in Egypt but that whole region, hold Alaa Abd El-Fattah close to their hearts and hope for the moment that they see him walk out of that prison cell."
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Sep 10, 2025
Global condemnation is mounting after Israel bombed Qatar's capital Doha, attempting to take out senior Hamas leaders who had gathered to consider a U.S. proposal for a Gaza ceasefire. Hamas leadership survived the strike, which killed six. We speak with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, who has reported extensively on Gaza ceasefire negotiations and is one of the few Western journalists to be in regular contact with senior members of Hamas. He reacts to Tuesday's unprecedented strike.
"The very Palestinians who are trying to negotiate some form of a truce with Israel, Israel then targets them and kills them," says Scahill, who also questions claims by the Trump administration that it was uninvolved in the planning of the bombing. "At the end of the day, Americans should be asking themselves: Is all of this worth the cost, that America is bankrolling this, arming this, supporting this, encouraging this?"
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Sep 10, 2025
Global condemnation is mounting after Israel bombed Qatar's capital Doha, attempting to take out senior Hamas leaders who had gathered to consider a U.S. proposal for a Gaza ceasefire. Hamas leadership survived the strike, which killed six. We speak with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, who has reported extensively on Gaza ceasefire negotiations and is one of the few Western journalists to be in regular contact with senior members of Hamas. He reacts to Tuesday's unprecedented strike.
"The very Palestinians who are trying to negotiate some form of a truce with Israel, Israel then targets them and kills them," says Scahill, who also questions claims by the Trump administration that it was uninvolved in the planning of the bombing. "At the end of the day, Americans should be asking themselves: Is all of this worth the cost, that America is bankrolling this, arming this, supporting this, encouraging this?"
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Sep 10, 2025
Israel Strikes Qatar, Targeting Senior Hamas Leadership, Killing 6 People, Israel Continues to Bombard Gaza City, Ordering Full Evacuation, Israel Orders Demolition of the Homes of Two Palestinian Gunmen Responsible for Jerusalem Shooting, Organizers of Global Sumud Flotilla Say Another Ship Was Attacked by a Suspected Drone, CodePink Disrupts Trump's Visit to a D.C. Restaurant, At Least 22 People Dead in Nepal as Anti-Government Protests Continue, More Than 250 People Arrested in French Anti-Government Protests, Poland Says It Shot Down Russian Drones Entering Its Airspace, Calling It an "Act of Aggression", Opposition Lawmakers in Turkey Block Police from Entering Party Headquarters, DRC Military Opens Fire on Protesters, Killing Three People, SCOTUS Allows Trump Admin to Withhold Over $4 Billion in Foreign Aid, SCOTUS Agrees to Hear Case on Trump's Tariffs, Federal Judge Blocks Trump's Firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Georgia Judge Throws Out Racketeering Charges Against All 61 Defendants Accused of Blocking "Cop City", ICE Agents Halt Raid After Local Residents Protest in Rochester, New York
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Sep 09, 2025
Just days after President Trump threatened to wage war on the city of Chicago, ICE launched what it called "Operation Midway Blitz," and President Trump claimed the city was "about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR" — a reference to his order to rename the Department of Defense. On Monday, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration raids in Los Angeles. "Donald Trump is targeting Los Angeles and California because this is a city and a state in which multiculturalism and ethnic diversity have worked," says Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He also discusses Trump's use of the term "Chipocalypse Now," a reference to the epic Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now, and discusses how his Vietnamese heritage led him to support Palestinian liberation. "I identified strongly with the plight of Palestinians, because one of the first things that one of the Israeli ministers said after October 7 was that they were fighting human animals — by which he meant Palestinians — and that idea of reducing other people to being less than human is one of the key narrative acts that justifies genocide," he says.
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Sep 09, 2025
Amid growing pressure for the Trump administration to release the full Jeffrey Epstein files, a New York Times investigation reveals how the country's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, enabled Epstein's sex-trafficking operation and profited from its ties to him. The exposé is based on more than 13,000 pages of legal and financial records. The Times reports JPMorgan processed more than 4,700 transactions for Epstein totaling more than $1.1 billion, including payments to some of the women who were sexually trafficked. The bank "arranged for Epstein to be able to pay those victims, both in the U.S. and in Eastern European countries and in Russia," says David Enrich, deputy investigations editor for The New York Times. Epstein "operated in large part because he had unfettered access to the global financial system. And for many years, it was JPMorgan that was providing him with that access."
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Sep 09, 2025
Israeli PM Warns Nearly 1 Million Palestinians in Gaza City to "Leave Now", Israeli Forces Kill Two 14-Year-Old Palestinians Amid Stepped-Up Raids Across West Bank, Gaza Flotilla Activists Blame Israel for Apparent Drone Strike on Aid Vessel in Tunisian Port, Activists Sabotage Equipment in German Weapons Factory That Supplies Arms to Israel, Israel Attacks Lebanon and Syria; Yemen's Houthis Strike Israeli Airport, Nepal's Prime Minister Steps Down as 19 Are Killed in Crackdown on Anti-Corruption Protests, Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Allow It to Freeze $4 Billion in Foreign Aid, SCOTUS Allows Federal Agents to Make Immigration Stops in Los Angeles, ICE Launches "Operation Midway Blitz" in Chicago to Ramp Up Mass Deportations, Prominent Sahrawi Activist Jamal Fadel Detained by ICE, Trump Downplays Domestic Violence During Remarks at the Museum of the Bible, House Oversight Committee Releases Trump's Sexually Suggestive Birthday Note to Epstein, Federal Appeals Court Rejects Trump's Attempt to Overturn $83.3 Million E. Jean Carroll Verdict
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Sep 08, 2025
The celebrated psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton has died at the age of 99. His studies on the effects of nuclear war, terrorism and genocide, including the books Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, shaped psychological understandings of the effects of mass violence. He appeared on Democracy Now! several times, including in 2017 to discuss Trump during his first term. "With Trump, of course, malignant normality becomes the rule," says Lifton, "because he's president, and what a president does tends to normalize potentially bad, evil or destructive behavior."
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Sep 08, 2025
This weekend marked the first anniversary of the killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces as she took part in a weekly nonviolent protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Her death is being investigated by the Turkish government, but despite requests from Eygi's family, the U.S. has refused to conduct its own independent investigation. Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 10 U.S. citizens since 2022, including at least two in the year since Eygi's death. No criminal charges have been brought in any of the cases. "There has been no forward motion, really no communication, no political will, … no meaningful pursuit of justice and accountability for my sister," says Eygi's sister Ozden Bennett. She calls her sister's killing "easily the most horrible, unbelievable moment of my life."
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Sep 08, 2025
"There's no real safe zone in Gaza [City] and all of the Gaza Strip," says Eyad Amawi, who joins us for an update from Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces move deeper into Gaza City to forcibly evict 1 million residents. The local aid coordinator describes relentless bombardment, water shortages, infectious diseases and worsening famine. "All of these things must end now. As a human being, the most priority is the life of the civilians here."
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Sep 08, 2025
We get an update on the largest-ever single-site immigration raid in U.S. history that unfolded Thursday when federal agents arrested nearly 500 workers at a Hyundai facility in Georgia. Most workers were Korean nationals who were building an electric vehicle battery plant. Hyundai is investing over $12 billion in a record-setting economic development deal with the state, and the South Korean government recently agreed to invest hundreds of billions more in the U.S. in exchange for lower tariffs. The two countries' relationship is now uncertain, as South Korean politicians lambasted the raid and sent a charter plane to repatriate the Korean workers who are being detained at a GEO Group-run Georgia ICE jail that ICE recently found in violation of federal safety standards. None of the detained workers have been charged; many reportedly hold valid U.S. work permits.
"The circumstances of the raid were just absolutely abusive, not only in their scope and just the sheer size of it, but the way that the folks at the Hyundai plant were treated by law enforcement," says Meredyth Yoon of the Atlanta chapter of the civil rights organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Witnesses describe heavily armed federal agents who threatened and even tear-gassed workers. "It is disturbing to see hundreds of people arrested, shackled at their waist and ankles, and loaded into buses and taken to an abusive detention center."
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Sep 08, 2025
Israeli Military Blows Up Three High-Rise Residential Buildings in Gaza City, Save the Children: Israel Has Killed on Average a Child Every Hour for Past 23 Months, Six People Killed in Shooting in Occupied East Jerusalem, Nearly 900 Arrested at Palestine Action Protest in the U.K., Thousands Greet Gaza Protest Flotilla in Tunisia, "Chipocalypse Now": Trump Threatens Again to Send Troops to Chicago, Thousands March in Washington, D.C., Against Trump's Deployment of National Guard Troops, South Korea Negotiates Release of Its Citizens Detained in ICE Raid at Hyundai Plant, Trump Admin Threatens to Send Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Eswatini, Federal Immigration Board Rules Millions of Undocumented Immigrants Ineligible for Bond Hearings, Russia Launches Largest Drone Strike Against Ukraine, Hitting Government Building, Trump Admin Orders Deployment of F-35 Fighter Jets to Puerto Rico, NYT: U.S. Navy SEALs Killed Civilians in Botched 2019 North Korean Raid, U.S. Added Just 22,000 Jobs in August, Bernie Sanders Campaigns with Zohran Mamdani in NYC, Civil Rights Activist Joseph McNeil, 83, Dies; Took Part in Greensboro Sit-in in 1960, Acclaimed Psychiatrist and Author Robert Jay Lifton Dead at 99
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Sep 05, 2025
Authorities in Indonesia have launched a brutal crackdown on nationwide protests, sparked by outrage over generous housing allowances and other perks for politicians amid a deepening cost-of-living crisis. The protests were further inflamed after video showed a police vehicle running over a motorcycle taxi gig worker, who later died from his injuries. Security forces have detained more than 3,000 people since late August.
"The underlying issue is economic inequality," Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch, says of the protests. The taxi driver's killing in particular "symbolized the difficulties that many Indonesians had faced" as many people have been forced to take on gig work for extra income.
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Sep 05, 2025
Acclaimed historian Greg Grandin joins Democracy Now! to discuss the Trump administration's attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in international waters, which killed 11 people earlier this week. President Trump and other senior officials have claimed without evidence that the boat was carrying narcotics from Venezuela to the United States and was operated by the gang Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization. "It was pure murder," says Grandin. "In many ways, it's bringing the logic of Gaza into the Caribbean, in terms of unaccountability, impunity and an expansive notion of national defense to justify what is, in effect, just extrajudicial killing."
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Sep 05, 2025
Both Democratic and Republican senators grilled Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday in a contentious hearing on his policies and anti-vaccine misinformation. RFK fired the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week, causing turmoil at the agency, and this week 1,000 current and former HHS employees sent a letter to Congress demanding his resignation. "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a 20-year history of being an anti-vaccine propagandist, science denialist and conspiracy theorist," says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and a physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit was removed from the Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee last week without explanation and says Kennedy's undermining of public health is "causing children to die unnecessarily."
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Sep 05, 2025
Israeli Attacks Kill Dozens of Palestinians as Army Claims to Control 40% of Gaza City, Hamas Releases Video Showing Two Israeli Hostages in Gaza City, U.S. Sanctions Palestinian Human Rights Groups for Backing ICC War Crimes Probe, Third Earthquake Strikes Afghanistan as Death Toll Passes 2,200, Indonesian Officer Fired over Killing of Delivery Driver as Anti-Government Protests Spread, Senators Grill HHS Secretary RFK Jr. over Vaccines and Turmoil at Public Health Agencies, Federal Reserve Nominee Plans to Keep His Job as White House Adviser, DOJ Launches Mortgage Fraud Probe of Federal Reserve Governor Targeted by Trump, Justice Department Considers Banning Transgender Americans from Owning Guns, Washington, D.C., Sues Trump Admin for Deploying National Guard, Northwestern University President Resigns After Trump Administration Freezes Research Funds, Federal Appeals Court Rules "Alligator Alcatraz" Can Continue Operating, Trump to Sign Executive Order Renaming Department of Defense as Department of War, Pentagon Says Two Venezuelan Fighter Jets Buzzed U.S. Navy Vessel, Eric Adams Considers Dropping Out of NYC Mayoral Race After Meeting with Trump Adviser
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Sep 04, 2025
The Trump administration is facing growing criticism for suspending visas for Palestinian passport holders, including for Palestinian officials set to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly this month. When the U.S. denied a visa to Yasser Arafat to address the U.N. in 1988, the General Assembly was moved to Geneva — the U.N. faces similar calls now. The move by the U.S. is "an indication of the unprecedented degree to which the U.S. government has handed the levers of its foreign policy over to the Israeli regime," says Craig Mokhiber, an international human rights lawyer who formerly served as the director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He resigned in October 2023 over the U.N.'s failure to adequately address large-scale atrocities in Palestine and Israel.
Mokhiber also says there is more the U.N. could do to stop the genocide in Gaza. The General Assembly has the ability to circumvent the Security Council with a "United for Peace" resolution that could force "concrete action" in Gaza.
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Sep 04, 2025
The Trump administration is facing growing criticism for suspending visas for Palestinian passport holders, including for Palestinian officials set to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly this month. When the U.S. denied a visa to Yasser Arafat to address the U.N. in 1988, the General Assembly was moved to Geneva — the U.N. faces similar calls now. The move by the U.S. is "an indication of the unprecedented degree to which the U.S. government has handed the levers of its foreign policy over to the Israeli regime," says Craig Mokhiber, an international human rights lawyer who formerly served as the director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He resigned in October 2023 over the U.N.'s failure to adequately address large-scale atrocities in Palestine and Israel.
Mokhiber also says there is more the U.N. could do to stop the genocide in Gaza. The General Assembly has the ability to circumvent the Security Council with a "United for Peace" resolution that could force "concrete action" in Gaza.
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Sep 04, 2025
As Congress returned to Washington Tuesday, the controversy over files related to convicted serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has picked back up, with bipartisan pressure to make files related to the federal investigation into Epstein public. Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna of California has co-authored a bipartisan measure that could compel the Justice Department to release the files. The measure was filed by Congressmember Thomas Massie, a conservative who has clashed with President Trump, and lawmakers will begin collecting signatures for their Epstein resolution starting Tuesday. "We need 218 signatures," says Khanna. "We have 216. We have to get two more Republicans on the bill, and we're in talks with at least 10 who are strongly considering it."
Khanna also discusses attempts by congressmembers to recognize a Palestinian state and enact an arms embargo on Israel. Military support for Israel is "a moral stain on the United States because of our complicity," says Khanna.
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Sep 04, 2025
Jeffrey Epstein survivors rallied in front of Congress on Wednesday, detailing their experiences of abuse and calling for the release of all Epstein files. "We cannot heal without justice," says one Epstein survivor, Chauntae Davies. "We cannot protect the future if we refuse to confront the past." Survivors also announced that some victims would work to confidentially compile their own list of individuals implicated in Epstein's crimes. This comes as lawmakers seek to force a House floor vote compelling the Justice Department to release all the files from the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Lauren Hersh, the national director of the anti-trafficking organization World Without Exploitation, is a former sex-trafficking prosecutor in New York who joined survivors for their press conference just steps from the Capitol on Wednesday. "Courage is contagious," says Hersh, adding that "we were approached by several other Epstein survivors who we didn't even know."
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Sep 04, 2025
Israeli Forces Kill 84 Palestinians in a Day as Troops Push Deeper into Gaza City, Israeli Minister Proposes Annexing 82% of Occupied West Bank, WaPo: White House Plan Envisions U.S. Control of Gaza Strip, Relocation of Entire Population, Scotland Halts Funding to Weapons Makers Who Supply Israel, Army Veterans Disrupt Senate Hearing to Accuse Members of Complicity in Gaza Genocide, Democratic Senators Urge Trump Admin to Reveal Details About GHF Funding, Epstein Survivors Call on Congress to Release More Files as Trump Claims "Democrat Hoax", Trump to Ask SCOTUS to Overturn $5 Million Verdict in E. Jean Carroll Sex Abuse Case, Florida Plans to End All Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren, Over 1,000 Current and Former Workers at HHS Call on RFK Jr. to Resign, Federal Judge Rules Trump Admin Illegally Blocked Research Funding from Harvard, Secretary of State Rubio Promises More Strikes on Boats Allegedly Carrying Drugs from Venezuela, "The Voice of Hind Rajab" Receives Record 22-Minute Standing Ovation at Venice Film Festival
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Sep 03, 2025
A 35-year-old former U.S. Army sergeant, Bajun "Baji" Mavalwalla II, faces up to six years in prison for protesting against ICE deportations in what legal experts are calling a test case for the Trump administration's attempts to criminalize and punish dissent. Mavalwalla was arrested and charged with "conspiracy to impede or injure officers" after he was identified in a video taken at the protest and shared on Instagram. Mavalwalla, who survived a roadside bomb blast while serving in Afghanistan, was also injured by a rubber bullet at the protest. "This whole event has been staged by the Trump administration," says Mavalwalla's father, Bajun Ray Mavalwalla, who witnessed and filmed his son's arrest at their home in Spokane, Washington. "It's unconscionable." We speak to the elder Mavalwalla, also a U.S. Army veteran who served in Afghanistan and as part of the National Guard, and to journalist Aaron Glantz, who has been reporting on this story for The Guardian.
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Sep 03, 2025
We speak to journalist Jean Guerrero about the Trump administration's ongoing anti-immigrant crackdown and the bipartisan roots of "anti-immigrant cruelty" in the United States. Guerrero's latest opinion piece in The New York Times is titled "The Border Is Invading America" and traces the development of U.S. border policies since the Clinton administration. "The brute force that the border once unleashed out of sight, in the desert or behind the locked doors of detention centers, is now erupting on our streets," says Guerrero. "We desperately need a reckoning with the structural abuses embedded in our immigration system and with how both parties have played a role in sustaining them, because, otherwise, the border is going to continue to coil inward and to destroy our collective rights."
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Sep 03, 2025
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, recaps and responds to the latest legal news on the Trump administration's ongoing immigration crackdown. We cover judicial decisions that the Trump administration cannot deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process, that it broke the law by sending National Guard troops to put down protests in Los Angeles, as well as its attempts to deport hundreds of Guatemalan children currently in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and deputize military lawyers with no experience in immigration law to serve as immigration judges, and more.
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Sep 03, 2025
President Trump is preparing to send National Guard troops into Chicago and Baltimore, right after a judge in California ruled that he broke the law by deploying troops to Los Angeles against anti-ICE protesters. "This is not about public safety, and it's not about law and order. It's a show of force meant to intimidate, to create fear and send troops to occupy cities, because people in those cities largely and overwhelmingly oppose Donald Trump and his policies," says Jesús "Chuy" García, who grew up in Chicago and now represents the Chicagoland area in Congress.
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Sep 03, 2025
Israel Kills 113 More Palestinians in Gaza, Including 33 People Seeking Aid, Israel Mobilizes 60,000 Reservists for Gaza City Offensive, Belgium to Recognize Palestinian State at the U.N. General Assembly, Maduro Warns U.S. Seeking Regime Change in Venezuela as U.S. Attacks Boat, Killing 11, U.S. Federal Appeals Court Blocks Trump's Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans, Federal Judge Rules Trump Admin Broke the Law When Deploying Troops to Los Angeles, Bloomberg: ICE to Receive Access to Israeli Spyware Program, Pentagon Authorizes 600 Military Lawyers to Serve as Immigration Judges, House Oversight Committee Releases Thousands of Epstein-Related Documents, Chinese President Xi Jinping Hosts Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un at Military Parade, Coup Trial of Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Enters Final Phase, Judge Rules Google Does Not Need to Sell Chrome in Antitrust Case, WaPo: Trump's BLS Nominee Discussed Gender Differences in IQ Scores with Interns
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Sep 02, 2025
In Gaza, Israeli attacks since dawn have killed at least 54 Palestinians, including people seeking food. The attacks came as Gaza health officials recorded another 13 deaths due to starvation — three of them children. That brings the number of hunger-related deaths in Gaza to more than 360. According to a leading global monitor, more than half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are suffering "catastrophic" levels of hunger due to Israel's blockade. This comes as the world's leading genocide scholars' association has approved a resolution establishing that Israel's policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide as found in the Genocide Convention, constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri says the declaration shows "even conservative scholars" now consider Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide. But, he adds, the question is, "Will any of the major Western powers take action?"
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Sep 02, 2025
Thousands of mourners attended a funeral for 12 senior Houthi figures in Yemen's capital of Sana'a on Monday after they were killed by Israel in an airstrike last week. The dead included the Houthi prime minister, Ahmed Ghaleb al-Rahawi. The Houthis have ruled the capital and much of northern Yemen for over a decade. For the last two years, Houthi fighters have regularly launched missiles at Israel and attacked ships in the Red Sea in what they described as actions in solidarity with Gaza.
The killing of the Houthi leaders is meant "to signal to the Yemenis and everybody else in the region that Israel will keep attacking anybody, will kill senior people — they don't care about any laws or reprisals," says Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri, who warns that Israel is fueling an "endless war" in the Middle East.
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Sep 02, 2025
A federal judge stopped the Trump administration from illegally deporting as many as 700 Guatemalan children over the Labor Day weekend, ordering a last-minute block on their removals even as some children had already been boarded onto planes. The National Immigration Law Center filed an emergency request to stop the deportation flights, arguing that the children would face harm and abuse if they were returned to Guatemala. The children arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors, and many are now living in shelters or foster care. The Trump administration insists it is acting at the request of the children's families and the government of Guatemala.
"There are protections for unaccompanied minors that provide how a child can be released from custody, to whom, and the process if they want to go back to their country," says Efrén Olivares, an attorney representing Guatemalan unaccompanied minors. "If this were a benign repatriation to send children back to their parents, it wouldn't be happening at midnight on Sunday of Labor Day weekend."
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Sep 02, 2025
A federal appeals court struck down most of President Trump's sweeping tariffs Friday, saying they have no legal basis. The decision could undo many of Trump's tariffs from "Liberation Day" in April, as well as earlier tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China. In its ruling, the appeals court called levying tariffs "a core Congressional power," but the White House had argued the president has authority to impose tariffs without Congress based on the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The tariffs will remain in effect until October, giving the Trump administration time to bring the case to the Supreme Court. The decision encompasses two different cases that had challenged the tariffs: one brought by a group of U.S. states, led by Oregon, and the other brought by a group of businesses.
"It's a sweeping decision that unequivocally rebukes President Trump's idea that he can impose tariffs on American consumers on his own without the approval of the Congress," says attorney Neal Katyal, who represents the businesses that initiated the tariff lawsuit.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield says his state challenged the tariffs because of their economic impact since "about 70% to 80%" of the costs are paid by U.S. consumers. "I really think we have to start calling them regressive taxes," Rayfield says.
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Sep 02, 2025
Appellate Court Rules Most of Trump's Tariffs Were Unlawfully Imposed, Landslide Kills Over 1,000 in Darfur Mountains Where Many Sought Refuge from Civil War, Afghans Appeal for International Help as Earthquake Death Toll Tops 1,400, Amid Famine and Israeli Attacks, Gaza's Children Face Third Consecutive Year Without Education, International Scholars' Association Declares Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza, Dozens of Ships Set Sail for Gaza Carrying Humanitarian Aid, Seeking to Break Israel's Siege, Thousands Gather in Yemen's Capital for Funeral of Houthi Leaders Killed in Israeli Strike, Judge Rules Over 600 Unaccompanied Guatemalan Children Can Stay in the U.S., Texas Governor Greg Abbott Signs New Congressional Map into Law, Xi Jinping Warmly Greets Putin and Modi at Security Summit, Russia Blamed for Jamming Navigation System of Plane Carrying EU Chief, Seven Dead in Anti-Government Protests in Indonesia, Over 1,000 Demonstrations Held Across the U.S. for Labor Day
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Sep 01, 2025
In 1980, historian Howard Zinn published his classic work, A People's History of the United States. The book would go on to sell over a million copies and change the way many look at history in America. We begin today's special with highlights from a production of Howard Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States, where Zinn introduced dramatic readings from history. Alfre Woodard reads the words of labor activist Mother Jones; Howard's son Jeff Zinn reads the words of IWW poet and organizer Arturo Giovannitti; Marisa Tomei reads the words of the women's suffrage leader Harriet Hanson; and James Earl Jones reads from Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
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Sep 01, 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 and 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 29, 2025
Twenty years ago today, on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in southeastern Louisiana, tearing through the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force and gushing winds, driving a massive storm surge toward New Orleans. Thousands were abandoned by state and federal officials, left to fight for survival in the rising floodwaters — many stranded on the rooftops of their sinking homes without water, food or medical care. The storm and its aftermath are the focus of the acclaimed new documentary series, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. It offers an historical record of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath and examines how it was a catalyst that revealed preexisting systemic failures. Democracy Now! speaks with the film's Academy Award-nominated director, Traci A. Curry.
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Aug 29, 2025
A new documentary, Steal This Story, Please!, which tells the personal story of Amy Goodman and her decadeslong career as an independent journalist, is premiering this Sunday at the Telluride Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado. The film highlights some of the monumental stories Democracy Now! has covered throughout the years and the importance of independent journalism.
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Aug 29, 2025
A new documentary, Steal This Story, Please!, which tells the personal story of Amy Goodman and her decadeslong career as an independent journalist, is premiering this Sunday at the Telluride Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado. The film highlights some of the monumental stories Democracy Now! has covered throughout the years and the importance of independent journalism.
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Aug 29, 2025
As Israel pushes deeper into Gaza City, President Donald Trump met Wednesday to discuss plans for a postwar Gaza with his son-in-law and former Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This comes as Israeli business leaders are reportedly involved in developing a postwar Gaza plan that includes the creation of a "Trump Riviera" and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk, using financial models developed by the U.S. firm Boston Consulting Group.
Former State Department official Josh Paul says the Trump administration, alongside the Israeli government, is attempting to "transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate" colonialism. The move would "exploit incredible suffering for economic gain," he adds. Paul was director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department and resigned in protest of the push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. He's now a director at A New Policy, the lobbying organization he co-founded with fellow resignee Tariq Habash to press for a change in U.S. policy on Palestine and Israel. Paul also worked with Tony Blair when Blair was Quartet special envoy for Middle East peace and Paul was an adviser for the U.S. security coordinator.
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Aug 29, 2025
Amid Deepening Famine, Israel Declares Gaza City a "Dangerous Combat Zone", Palestinian and Israeli Protesters in West Bank Demand End to Gaza Assault, Flooding Displaces More Than 1 Million in Pakistan, Thai Constitutional Court Removes Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Security Council Votes to Wind Down U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Lebanon, Democrats Demand Assault Weapons Ban in Wake of Minneapolis School Shooting, RFK Jr. Taps Deputy to Lead CDC After White House Fires Director Who Opposed Anti-Vaccine Moves, Fed Governor Lisa Cook Sues to Keep Her Job After Trump Attempts to Fire Her, White House Seeks to Use Chicago Naval Base for Immigration Crackdown, U.S. Air Force to Offer Full Military Honors to January 6 Rioter, Trump Administration Withdraws U.S. from U.N. Review of Human Rights Record, Texas GOP Lawmakers Advance Bill to Expand Abortion Restrictions, Trump Signs Executive Order Banning Unions at Several Government Agencies, NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Joins Rev. Al Sharpton's "March on Wall Street"
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Aug 28, 2025
Independent journalist Jordan Flaherty was in New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina first hit, and both supported and reported on relief efforts in the aftermath of the storm. Flaherty explains how Katrina's devastation to the city's infrastructure accelerated the existing dispossession of its primarily Black residents, how corruption and mismanagement in the years following the storm diverted aid, and how racist media narratives contribute to the ongoing criminalization of Black New Orleanians. "It's devastating," says Flaherty, warning that the aftermath of Katrina is not only reverberating, but amplifying, today. "The support for the oil and gas industry, the heightened climate change, hurricanes getting bigger, hurricanes getting stronger, less land to protect us in the city, less infrastructure to support us, less of a social safety net … less ways to afford to live in the city, in this country."
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Aug 28, 2025
As part of our coverage of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we speak with longtime New Orleans activist Malik Rahim, co-founder of the Common Ground Collective. In the weeks after the storm, we interviewed Rahim in his neighborhood of Algiers. He showed us how a corpse still remained on the street, and we asked soldiers and police why it hadn't been picked up. Twenty years later, we get an update from Rahim, who continues to grapple with Katrina's long-term devastation. "The sad part about it [is] it could happen today," says Rahim. "If a hurricane would happen right now, we are ill-prepared for it, the same way we was ill-prepared 20 years ago."
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Aug 28, 2025
This week marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall in New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf Coast. We revisit Democracy Now!'s initial coverage of the disaster, which killed over 1,800 people, forced over a million to evacuate and stranded tens of thousands of others with limited resources and aid.
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Aug 28, 2025
"Firearms are the number one killer of our kids in America. That's a uniquely American problem." Two children, aged 8 and 10, were killed Wednesday when a former student fired dozens of shots through the stained-glass church windows at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. Seventeen other people were injured. We speak to Kris Brown, president of the gun violence prevention organization Brady, about what she characterizes as the "solvable" issue of mass gun violence and how right-wing policymakers and their pro-gun policies are making "all of us far less safe."
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Aug 28, 2025
Four More Palestinians Starve to Death as Israeli Tanks Advance on Gaza City, U.N. Security Council Members, Except for U.S., Condemn "Man-Made Crisis" in Gaza, Jewish Peace Activists Demand California Senators End Support for Israel's Assault on Gaza, Russian Drones and Missiles Kill 15 in Kyiv as Kremlin Rebuffs Trump's Peace Push, U.S. Officials Discussed Energy Deals with Russia, Including Return of ExxonMobil, Shooter Kills Two Children and Injures 17 People at Minneapolis Catholic School, Public Health Officials Resign in Protest as White House Fires CDC Director, FDA Approves New COVID Vaccines with Access Restrictions, Amid Trump's D.C. Crackdown, Transportation Dept. Plans Takeover of Union Station, California Lawmakers Pass Resolution Phasing Out Crude Oil Imports from Amazon
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Aug 27, 2025
The Trump administration placed some staffers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency on leave Tuesday amid fallout over a letter to Congress signed by more than 180 current and former employees, who warn that budget cuts and mismanagement are putting the agency's work at risk. The dissenting staffers singled out Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson as lacking the qualifications and authority to oversee FEMA's operations and warned that administration policies could result in a disaster on par with 2005's Hurricane Katrina. The letter, titled the "Katrina Declaration," came just days before the 20th anniversary of the hurricane, one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.
Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA spokesperson who signed the letter, lays out their demands and says Katrina is a grim example of "what happens when there are people in charge who don't take the agency's mission seriously."
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Aug 27, 2025
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is suing President Donald Trump to challenge his attempt to fire her from the board of the central bank. A president cannot get rid of Fed officials over policy disagreements, but he can dismiss someone "for cause." In recent days, Trump's allies have accused Cook of misrepresentation on her mortgage forms, which Trump cited Monday when demanding her removal. Trump has also repeatedly threatened to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell as he pushes the central bank to cut interest rates more rapidly.
"The Federal Reserve is meant to be protected from these types of political pressures. It is an independent institution," says Aya Ibrahim, a former senior policy adviser at the White House National Economic Council, where she covered the financial regulation portfolio and supported Cook's confirmation. Ibrahim says Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed's Board of Governors, is an incidental target of Trump's larger "desire to exert control over all parts of government."
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Aug 27, 2025
The divide in the Democratic Party over Gaza came into full view at a meeting Tuesday of the Democratic National Committee, where party members debated rival resolutions on the U.S.-Israel relationship.
We speak with Allison Minnerly, a 26-year-old DNC member from Florida, who introduced a resolution for the party to support an arms embargo on Israel, cut off military aid to the country and recognize Palestinian statehood. The measure was blocked by party leaders who instead backed a rival resolution by DNC Chair Ken Martin, which called for a ceasefire in Gaza, increased humanitarian aid and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Martin ultimately withdrew his resolution amid outrage from rank-and-file members, who had overwhelmingly backed the more expansive proposal, and promised the creation of a task force to study the issue further.
"We need to continue this conversation," Minnerly tells Democracy Now! "Palestinian rights and dignity are just too important to ignore at a time like this, and we want the war in Gaza to end."
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Aug 27, 2025
We speak with the head of pediatrics at Gaza's Nasser Hospital, where Israel killed more than 20 people, including five journalists, Monday in a "double-tap" strike, drawing global condemnation. Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra says Israel's justification of targeting a camera on the roof is "unbelievable," and calls the attack "a calculated trap aimed at targeting rescue teams."
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Aug 27, 2025
Ten Palestinians Starve to Death in Gaza as Israeli Forces Kill 76 in a Day, Reuters Journalist Resigns Over Outlet's Response to Israel's Killing of Journalists at Nasser Hospital, More Than 350,000 Israelis in Tel Aviv Call for Gov't to Accept Ceasefire Deal, Israeli Forces Raid West Bank as Senators Van Hollen and Merkley Visit Church Attacked by Settlers, Rights Groups Urge the Release of Palestinian American Teen Held in Israeli Prison, DNC Rejects Resolution Calling for an Arms Embargo on Israel, Protesters Occupy Microsoft President's Office to Protest Company's Work with Israel, CBS News: U.S. Resumes "Neighborhood Checks" to Vet Citizenship Applicants, Florida Asks Federal Appeals Court to Keep Operating "Alligator Alcatraz", GOP Governors in 19 States Mobilize National Guard to Assist ICE, Trump Calls for Death Penalty in All D.C. Murder Cases, Trump Says U.S. Would Accept Up to 600,000 Chinese Students, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to File Lawsuit Against Trump's Attempt to Fire Her, Lebanese Journalists Demand Apology from U.S. Envoy Over His Demeaning Comments, FEMA Suspends Staff for Signing Letter Criticizing Trump Administration, Whistleblower Claims DOGE Put Americans' Social Security Records at Risk, Denmark Summons Top U.S. Diplomat Over Allegations of Greenland Espionage, Trump's 50% Tariffs on India Take Effect as Penalty for Indian Imports of Russian Oil
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Aug 26, 2025
Among the executive orders President Trump signed Monday are two that aim to eliminate so-called cashless bail. The move threatens to cut federal funding to Washington, D.C., as well as other cities and jurisdictions that continue to implement the economic and racial justice policy. Before cash bail was eliminated, "judges would come up with a number out of thin air, and the decision about whether somebody was released was based upon whether they had a rich grandma or rich aunt or a girlfriend who was willing to put up the money," says Sharone Mitchell, chief of the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender.
This comes as Trump has continued to single out D.C., as well as Democratic-led cities like Chicago, engaging in racist and baseless rants about a violent crime wave as he threatens to expand his military occupation. "I'm a lawyer. I would tell you lots of legal arguments. I'm not sure the law matters anymore," says Mitchell.
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Aug 26, 2025
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday that would establish "specialized" National Guard units to be quickly deployed in Washington, D.C., and all 50 states, and again threatened to send troops to Democrat-run cities like Chicago. Officials and grassroots organizers have vowed to fight back. "We are a strong labor city," says Byron Sigcho-Lopez, a Democratic Socialist alderperson of the 25th Ward in Chicago. "We're not going to normalize fascism, and we're prepared to face the dictator head-on." Sigcho-Lopez says the city is planning a mass mobilization effort to take place on Labor Day.
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Aug 26, 2025
Israel's war on Gaza is the deadliest conflict for journalists in recorded history. In an attack on Nasser Hospital in Gaza Monday, Israel killed five more journalists in addition to over a dozen others. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the hospital attack was a "tragic mishap," but just hours later, Israeli forces killed a sixth journalist. "There is a pattern of targeting and killing journalists that lets us think that there is an intention," says Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.
As countries prepare for the U.N. General Assembly, Albanese notes the complicity of Western states in the genocide in Gaza, particularly the United States. "There has been a tolerance of Israel's impunity for decades," says Albanese. "However, the United States is the single most important factor of crisis in the United Nations."
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Aug 26, 2025
Three More Palestinians Starve to Death in Gaza as Israeli Forces Kill 75 in a Day, Thousands of Protesters Block Roads Across Israel During Nationwide "Day of Disruption", Israeli Minister Says Annexation of West Bank Will Begin This Month, Scottish Police Arrest Screenwriter Paul Laverty over T-Shirt Opposing Gaza Genocide, Australia Expels Iranian Ambassador, Accuses Iran of Organizing Antisemitic Attacks, "Absolutely Forbidden": Federal Judge Blocks Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, U.S. Immigrant Population Down by More Than 1 Million Since Trump's Return to Office, Libyan Coast Guard Fires on Rescue Ship Searching for Refugee Boat in Distress, "I Will Not Resign": Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook Rejects Trump's Claim He Fired Her, Trump Orders Creation of "Specialized" National Guard Units to Quell Civil Unrest, FEMA Employees Warn Cuts and Mismanagement Threaten a Catastrophe on Par with Hurricane Katrina, Trump Touts "Great Relationship" with Kim Jong-un at Meeting with South Korean Leader, Trump Executive Order Seeks to Impose Cash Bail on Criminal Suspects, Trump Orders "Vigorous Prosecution" of People Who Burn U.S. Flag, Alex Acosta, Who Gave "Sweetheart Deal" to Jeffrey Epstein, Agrees to Testify to House Panel
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Aug 25, 2025
We speak with George Retes, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen and Army veteran who is taking on the federal government after he was detained by ICE for three days and three nights without explanation. Retes was arrested during a raid in July at a cannabis farm in Camarillo, California, where he worked as a security guard. Retes was driving to work when he encountered a checkpoint, where agents broke his car window, pepper-sprayed him and dragged him out of his vehicle for arrest. While he was jailed without charge, Retes missed his daughter's third birthday.
"They never let me call my family. They never told me what I was charged for. They just kind of threw me in there and didn't care," Retes tells Democracy Now!
"These are basic violations of George's federal constitutional rights and his rights under California law," says his attorney, Marie Miller, who is suing the government over what happened to Retes in the hopes of setting a precedent to stop the same thing from happening to others.
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Aug 25, 2025
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who became a symbol of Trump's anti-immigrant crackdown when the administration illegally sent him to El Salvador earlier this year, is at risk of being deported again — this time to Uganda, a country he has no ties to.
Abrego Garcia was one of hundreds of men sent to El Salvador in March to be jailed in that country's brutal CECOT mega-prison, despite a court order specifically meant to prevent his deportation. After initially claiming no power to return Abrego Garcia, the administration brought him back in June to face human smuggling charges that his legal team has condemned as retaliation. He was released Friday from federal detention in Tennessee and allowed to rejoin his wife and three children in Maryland pending trial, but the administration immediately informed his lawyers of their intention to begin new deportation proceedings to Uganda. Abrego Garcia was taken into custody again Monday morning.
"Clearly, the Trump administration is sort of making this all up as they go along," says Chris Newman, legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and a lawyer for Abrego Garcia's family. He accuses President Trump of using "the highest office in this land to railroad and prosecute and punish an innocent man."
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Aug 25, 2025
We speak with UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram in Gaza City, where the world's top authority on hunger has formally declared a famine. The United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, says the "catastrophic" situation in Gaza's largest urban center puts about half a million Palestinians at risk of starving to death. Many aid agencies have lifesaving supplies sitting in warehouses outside Gaza that they are unable to distribute due to Israeli restrictions. This comes as Israel has escalated its destruction of Gaza City with the intent of forcibly displacing residents further south.
"Hopefully world leaders will take it and use it as a catalyst to finally do something to try and get more aid to these children," Ingram says of the famine declaration. "What we are asking for is for us to be allowed to do our jobs. We are being hampered every step of the way at the moment."
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Aug 25, 2025
Israeli airstrikes on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza killed at least 20 people Monday, including five Palestinian journalists. Eyewitnesses say Israel carried out a "double-tap" strike on the hospital. A drone initially hit the hospital's roof, killing one journalist setting up a live stream, and then another strike hit journalists and rescue workers who were responding to the initial strike. "Israel knew exactly who was there," says Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada. "Israel has killed 244 journalists, by far surpassing all 20 years of the war in Vietnam or all six years of the Second World War."
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Aug 25, 2025
Israeli airstrikes on Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza killed at least 20 people Monday, including five Palestinian journalists. Eyewitnesses say Israel carried out a "double-tap" strike on the hospital. A drone initially hit the hospital's roof, killing one journalist setting up a live stream, and then another strike hit journalists and rescue workers who were responding to the initial strike. "Israel knew exactly who was there," says Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada. "Israel has killed 244 journalists, by far surpassing all 20 years of the war in Vietnam or all six years of the Second World War."
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Aug 25, 2025
Israeli Airstrikes on Nasser Hospital Kills 20 Including 5 Palestinian Journalists, 300,000 Protest in Australia Against Israel's War on Gaza, Israeli Strikes on Yemen Kill at Least 6 People, Injuring Dozens, Russia Downs Ukrainian Drone Near Nuclear Plant, Sparking Fire, Trump Threatens to Send National Guard to Chicago, NYC & Baltimore, Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration from Cutting Federal Funding to Sanctuary Cities, Kilmar Abrego Garcia Taken into ICE Custody Again and Faces Deportation to Uganda, Democratic Lawmakers Slam FBI Raid of Trump's Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, Trump Administration Purges High-Ranking Military and Intel Officials, Egyptian Gov't Employees Filmed Grabbing and Beating Two Egyptian Americans in New York, Virginia Giuffre's Family Says DOJ Gave Maxwell "A Platform to Rewrite History", Texas Senate Approves New Congressional Maps Favoring Republicans, Trump Administration Halts Work on Nearly Completed Wind Farm in Rhode Island, Florida Paints Over Rainbow Crosswalk Honoring the Victims of Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Orlando
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Aug 22, 2025
Family and community members are mourning 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, a father and grandfather from Guatemala who died while attempting to escape an anti-immigrant raid at a Home Depot in California last week. Montoya, a day laborer who had lived and worked in the United States for about three years, was struck and killed by a car while fleeing across a nearby freeway. Democracy Now! speaks with Montoya's wife and daughter, Ana María Vásquez and Ana Victoria Montoya, at their home in Guatemala. "We want people to remember my dad in the same way we will remember him: as a loving, respectful, brave man," says Ana Victoria. "He died because of these injustices, this persecution."
At least two men have now died while attempting to flee the Trump administration's massive expansion of federal immigration enforcement. Authorities have yet to confirm which agencies or groups were behind the raid. "If it was indeed a fact that Roberto Carlos was being chased by an individual into the highway, the community, the family, needs to know the truth. We need to, most of all, bring justice," says Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. NDLON is calling on Home Depot to release any video footage it has, and demanding an immediate and full investigation of the events that led to Montoya's death.
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Aug 22, 2025
Shahed Ghoreishi was fired from his position as a press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the U.S. State Department earlier this week. While no official explanation was given, Ghoreishi was involved in multiple departmental disputes over how to characterize U.S. positions on Israel's forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the killings of Palestinian journalists. In a TV broadcast exclusive, Ghoreishi speaks to Democracy Now! about his firing and what it may tell us about the Trump administration's future policy in Israel and Palestine.
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Aug 22, 2025
Democrats and Republicans are locked in a historic battle over congressional representation as Texas Republicans gerrymander the state's district maps to flip five Democratic seats, at the request of President Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom says he is fighting "fire with fire," signing legislation to hold special elections for the public to approve a new gerrymandered map of their own. David Daley, a voting rights expert and the author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, calls this a "gerrymandering Armageddon" that threatens to spread nationwide. "Donald Trump does not want to have an election fair and square," says Texas state legislator Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat representing San Antonio. "He wants to be the 'commander-in-cheat.' He wants to cheat on America, cheat on democracy, steal these congressional seats."
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Aug 22, 2025
U.N. Declares a Famine in Gaza, Where Over 500,000 Face "Starvation, Destitution and Death", Netanyahu Says He'll Restart Ceasefire Talks While Proceeding with Gaza City Invasion, California to Hold Special Election for Redrawn Maps to Counter Texas GOP Gerrymander, Trump Praises Troops and Officers over Federal Takeover of D.C. Law Enforcement, ICE Agents in D.C. Coordinate with Police to Target Immigrants in Moped Traffic Stops, Federal Judge Halts Expansion of "Alligator Alcatraz" over Environmental Violations, State Department Is Vetting 55 Million U.S. Visa Holders for "Deportable" Offenses, Kremlin Rules Out European Troops in Ukraine, Casts Doubts on Putin-Zelensky Summit, Ukrainian Man Accused of Sabotaging Nord Stream Pipelines Is Arrested in Italy, SCOTUS Clears Path for Trump to Cancel Nearly $800 Million in NIH Research Grants, Trump Administration Ignores Congressional Directive to Fully Fund HIV/AIDS Program, Trump Administration Cancels Grants for Sex Education, English as a Second Language, Court Rules Alina Habba Has Been Unlawfully Serving as U.S. Prosecutor for New Jersey, New York Appeals Court Voids "Excessive" Civil Fraud Judgment Against Trump Organization, Eric Adams Adviser Indicted on Fresh Bribery Charges; Another Adviser Attempts to Bribe Reporter, FBI Raids Home of Trump's Former National Security Adviser John Bolton
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Aug 21, 2025
President Trump said Tuesday the Smithsonian Institution was too narrowly focused on negative aspects of U.S. history, including "how bad slavery was." Trump's social media post minimizing the horrors of chattel slavery came after the White House ordered a far-reaching review of Smithsonian museum exhibitions in order to ensure they align with Trump's interpretation of U.S. history.
In early 2020, Democracy Now! spoke with the newly appointed secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lonnie G. Bunch III, in Washington, D.C. Bunch was previously the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. He shares stories of the work of building the museum and its collections, and the time when President Trump made a visit during his first term. "The museum has become a pilgrimage site, a site of resistance, a site of remembering what America could be and a site to engage new generations," said Bunch.
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Aug 21, 2025
Israel gave final approval Wednesday for a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank, sabotaging efforts at creating a future Palestinian state. The project has been on hold for over 20 years, largely due to pressure from previous U.S. administrations. The "E-1" settlement would see the construction of about 3,400 new housing units and would sever one of the last remaining territorial links between major Palestinian cities like Ramallah in the northern West Bank and southern cities including Bethlehem, as well as cut off East Jerusalem. "The West Bank is nearly 6,000 kilometers squared in size, and it has been the prize for Israel," says Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and journalist based in Ramallah. Barghouti says Israeli officials have blatantly expressed their intent to bury the prospect of a Palestinian state. "Israel is not engaging in just a war on Gaza," she says. "It is engaging in a war of annihilation of Palestinians."
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Aug 21, 2025
Israel's military says it has established a foothold on the outskirts of Gaza City and is calling up an additional 60,000 reservists ahead of a full-scale invasion of Gaza's largest urban area. This follows days of escalating airstrikes and artillery fire that have killed scores of Palestinians in one of the world's most densely populated regions.
Dr. Mimi Syed is an emergency medicine physician who's been on two medical missions in Gaza working in hospitals that were under Israeli siege and was just denied reentry into Gaza, mere hours before she was scheduled to travel there for a third medical mission. Syed was planning to bring in a small amount of aid to the besieged enclave. "As a doctor, I shouldn't have to smuggle in baby formula," she says. "I shouldn't have to smuggle in protein."
Syed also received harrowing voice memos from a Palestinian medical student in Gaza with whom she had become friends. The medical student lives in Gaza City and received evacuation orders as Israeli forces prepare to invade. "I no longer have any hope," said the student in a recorded message.
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Aug 21, 2025
Israel Calls Up 60,000 Reservists as It Begins Gaza City Invasion, Israel Approves Settlement Splitting West Bank in Two and Further Dooming Palestinian State, State Department Fires Officer Who Expressed Condolences for Journalists Killed by Israel in Gaza, State Department Sanctions More ICC Officials for Investigating U.S. and Israeli War Crimes, Russia Escalates Attacks on Ukraine, Casting Doubt on Trump's Call for a Putin-Zelensky Summit, Colombia's President Warns U.S. Against Invading Venezuela, Texas House Approves Congressional Map Gerrymandered to Help GOP in 2026 Midterms, Appeals Court Clears Path for Trump to End TPS for Immigrants from Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua, Trump Administration Officials Visit National Guard Troops in D.C., Drawing Jeers and Protests , Trump Calls on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to Resign, Judge Rejects DOJ Request to Unseal Grand Jury Transcripts Related to Jeffrey Epstein, Missouri Community Defeats Secretive Project to Build Massive AI Data Center, "No Azure for Apartheid": 18 Arrested at Protest of Microsoft's Work with Israel's Military
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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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