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Urgent medical alert – Free Mumia
Mumia’s eyesight endangered
Mumia’s eyesight is deteriorating at an alarming rate.
An independent expert ophthalmologist has confirmed the progression of his eye disease by analyzing Mumia’s most recent eye exams. She reports that he needs surgery and medically necessary treatment “immediately” or faces the possibility of “permanent blindness.”
Mumia’s vision has plummeted from 20/30 with glasses in 2024 (near normal) to 20/200 today—legally blind—because the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC) failed to adequately monitor his vision and delayed his urgently necessary medical treatment and surgery. The PA DOC has known since at least March of 2025 that Mumia needed eye surgery. Exams from 2024 – 2025 showed a sharp deterioration, demanding immediate intervention. Despite knowing the urgency, they waited until July to act and then pushed surgery off to an unspecified date in September.
Mumia believes he now suffers from “diabetic retinopathy” stemming from a diabetic coma that he endured after being given an improper and unmonitored dose of steroids for a skin disease in 2015. Mumia asserts that the PA DOC is “slow-walking [him] to blindness” in 2025 – another egregious case of the prison’s medical neglect, medical harm, and inability to treat Mumia’s medical needs.
Court records already document this pattern: (a) negligence in monitoring lab reports that led to the diabetic coma, and (b) deliberate denial and delay of his hepatitis C treatment that left him with cirrhosis.
OUR DEMANDS:
· Release Mumia now – unconditionally – into the care of his own doctors, family, and friends. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) has, once again, shown it cannot monitor or provide the timely, corrective care he urgently needs.
· Schedule Mumia’s eye surgery and medically necessary treatment immediately, under the supervision of his independent ophthalmologist, and have it performed by the nearest outside provider approved by that physician.
· Provide Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, Mumia’s chosen physician, with all the medical reports from the prison and any other outside examiners who have seen him in 2025.
RELEASE AGING PRISONERS:
The following report by Dr. Ricardo Alvarez details a more complete picture of the history of elder abuse by the Prison Industrial Complex – the New Jim Crow – and with particular regard to Mumia Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners:
Parole Elder Abuse article on Mumia Abu-Jamal :
https://paroleelderabuse.org/mumia-institutional-elder-abuse-reports/
What you can do immediately to help:
Call the prison and demand that Mumia immediately receives local expert treatment
Sample script:
“My name is ________and I am calling from ________
I am calling with regard to Mumia Abu-Jamal, also known as Wesley Cook AM8335.
He is suffering from dire vision loss that can be easily treated—or else he will lose his eyesight entirely.
I DEMAND THAT THIS TREATMENT HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY.”
Primary targets:
Bernadette Mason
Superintendent, SCI Mahanoy
Call 570-773-2158
Laurel Hardy
Secretary, PA DOC
Call 717-728-2573
ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov
Central Office, PA DOC
ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
Upcoming Press Conference, Rallies and Marches are being planned so please stay tuned!!
Questions and comments may be sent to: info@freedomarchives.org
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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
——
Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) After Gaza Famine Report, U.S. Is Mostly Silent and Israel Is Defiant
The White House has not commented on a report finding famine in Gaza. Analysts say that absent U.S. pressure, Israel is unlikely to change course.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 23, 2025
A charity kitchen distributing food in Gaza City on Friday. A new U.N.-backed report found that the city and surrounding areas were experiencing famine. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
A report by a panel of food security experts that found famine in parts of Gaza prompted outrage from many European countries, but not from the United States, Israel’s main backer.
The White House has yet to comment on the report, which was released on Friday to international dismay. Compiled by a group of United Nations-backed experts, the report said stringent Israeli restrictions on aid, among other factors, were responsible for the famine.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Friday criticized the report in posts on social media, saying Hamas was to blame for any hunger in Gaza. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, echoed his posts.
“Tons of food has gone into Gaza but Hamas savages stole it, ate lots of it to become corpulent,” Mr. Huckabee wrote on X.
The release of the report capped a week in which the Trump administration backed Mr. Netanyahu ’s government on several issues, or mostly stayed silent, even as many of Israel’s allies condemned its actions in increasingly harsh terms.
Over the past week, the Israeli government approved a settlement project in the central West Bank, which the country’s finance minister said “buries the idea of a Palestinian state.” And defying international calls to end the war, Mr. Netanyahu’s government is pressing ahead with a plan to invade Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of people are sheltering.
American pressure is one of the few levers left that could convince Mr. Netanyahu to change Israel’s conduct in the nearly two-year war against Hamas in Gaza, according to analysts.
Mr. Netanyahu is “clearly more comfortable with the fact that Donald Trump is not going to impose costs or consequences that would constitute real pressure,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat who joined negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians during the 1990s.
At times, Mr. Trump has appeared willing to break with Mr. Netanyahu, cutting a deal with Iranian-backed Houthis to stop attacks on ships and negotiating directly with Hamas for the return of American hostages. In late July, he publicly said he believed that there was starvation in Gaza.
But the two leaders are now increasingly aligned on Gaza, Mr. Miller said, while Mr. Trump’s attention is focused on efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Seven months into Mr. Trump’s administration, ordinary Gazans are facing one of their toughest moments since the war began in October 2023, after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Severe hunger is increasingly widespread, according to aid agencies.
“This is not a crisis of a few isolated children; every child is at risk,” said Tess Ingram, a spokeswoman for UNICEF, the United Nation’s children’s organization.
After months of warnings, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a panel of food security experts backed by the United Nations, said Friday that it had found that Gaza City and its surrounding areas were suffering from famine. The report warned that central and southern Gaza also could also face famine by September.
Israel said it was doing everything possible to deliver food to Gaza, noting that prices in local markets had dropped since Israeli officials began funneling more aid into the enclave in late July. Israeli officials broadly dispute that there is famine in Gaza.
In a statement, Mr. Netanyahu acknowledged that there had been some “temporary shortages” but said they had been swiftly remedied.
Israel and the United States have also backed their own, much-criticized aid initiative in Gaza, in which American security contractors oversee the distribution of boxes of food at sites behind Israeli military lines. Hundreds of people have been killed near the sites, according to Gaza health officials.
Many of Israel’s other traditional allies, including Britain, were skeptical of Israel’s response to the report.
“The Israeli government’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into Gaza has caused this man-made catastrophe,” David Lammy, the British foreign minister, said in a statement on Friday. “This is a moral outrage.”
At the same time, Israel is preparing for a full-scale assault on Gaza City, where the committee said it had found evidence of famine. Aid agencies have warned that the attack could force hundreds of thousands of people to flee, precipitating an even deeper humanitarian crisis.
Mr. Netanyahu argues that the operation is necessary to rout Hamas, which has fought a guerrilla insurgency against Israeli forces. But the Israeli public is divided, with many calling for an immediate cease-fire with Hamas that would free the hostages still held in Gaza.
While U.S. negotiators seek to revive the moribund negotiations for a truce between the two sides, Mr. Trump appeared this week to back Israel’s planned assault in Gaza.
“We will only see the return of the remaining hostages when Hamas is confronted and destroyed!!!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “The sooner this takes place, the better the chances of success will be.”
This week, Israeli authorities also approved the contentious E1 settlement project, which would involve the construction of about 3,400 new housing units in the central West Bank. Roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers live among three million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory.
The E1 project had been delayed for about two decades under U.S. pressure. Critics say it would bisect the West Bank, posing a major challenge for the contiguity of any future Palestinian state.
France, Britain, Australia and more than a dozen other countries immediately denounced the plan as illegal and a violation of international law. The Trump administration, however, stayed largely silent. Mr. Huckabee told Israeli radio that the move was fundamentally Israel’s decision.
Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.
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2) A Muted Homecoming for Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Mr. Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, is keeping a low profile as his lawyers prepare to fight the Trump administration’s proposal to deport him to Uganda.
By Jazmine Ulloa, Published Aug. 23, 2025, Updated Aug. 24, 2025
Jazmine Ulloa reported from Prince George’s County in Maryland. She has been reporting on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s life and the impact of his case on his community since he was deported in March.
When Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia returned home late Friday, he was greeted with flowers, metallic streamers and cheers. In videos circulated by immigrant rights groups, he shared long, tearful embraces with his wife, children and other family members. He expressed his gratitude to the people who had not abandoned him.
“Thank you for everything,” Mr. Abrego Garcia told his older brother, Cesar, as he wept in his arms.
But the celebration of his homecoming has been muted. For Mr. Abrego Garcia, a 30-year-old immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and returned to the United States in June, the odyssey is not over: The federal government has threatened to deport him to Uganda, his lawyers said. So for now, he and his family are keeping a low profile, with Mr. Abrego Garcia required to use an ankle monitor and largely staying out of the limelight.
Mr. Abrego Garcia, who entered the United States without permission, became a defining face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration when he was deported, prompting outrage from immigrant rights advocates and heightening fear and anxiety among other immigrants in the country.
A sheet metal worker, Mr. Abrego Garcia had been living for years in Prince George’s County in Maryland when he was sent to El Salvador, alongside more than 260 detainees, with no due process. He was sent back in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, where he was held in jail until Friday. His lawyers said the Trump administration’s threat to deport him to Uganda was an attempt to “coerce” him into a guilty plea in the smuggling case.
It was not immediately clear exactly why the Trump administration chose Uganda as the place to potentially send Mr. Abrego Garcia. Initially, federal prosecutors had said that if Mr. Abrego Garcia pleaded guilty to his charges and agreed to stay in custody until Monday, they would send him to Costa Rica, where they said he could live safely, after whatever sentence he is given in that case. But after his lawyers did not agree to keeping him in jail beyond Friday, the administration said if he does not accept their plea deal by Monday, they would start the process to deport him to Uganda.
In a statement on his release, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, called him a “monster” — rhetoric the Trump administration has been pushing as it continues to accuse him of being a member of the MS-13 gang. “We will not stop fighting till this Salvadoran man faces justice and is out of our country,” she said.
On Saturday afternoon, his relatives declined multiple interview requests from reporters who arrived at their door in Prince George’s County. Inside, some of them were huddled with members of his legal team, as Mr. Abrego Garcia is expected at an early check-in with immigration authorities on Monday.
Speaking from their front yard later, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers, said federal officials were targeting his client because he had spoken out against his unlawful deportation and had said he had been tortured at the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in El Salvador.
“The government has decided to use the immigration system to punish him,” Mr. Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding, “He and his family have suffered enough.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation and dramatic legal fight with the Trump administration has been closely followed in Prince George’s County, which has a big Latino immigrant population.
Since his release, local elected officials, union leaders and immigrant rights activists have continued to rally behind his case, saying Mr. Abrego Garcia’s plight has been but one example of the Trump administration’s constitutional overreach.
“This is a matter that’s greater than just this one case or one man,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat. “If one person’s rights are denied, then the rights of all of us are at risk.” Mr. Van Hollen helped provide the first public glimpses of Mr. Abrego Garcia since his detainment when he met with him in San Salvador in April.
The case has resonated with Latino residents in the area. Some said on Saturday that their anxiety has grown in recent weeks as National Guard troops and agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies combed the streets of Washington, where many of them work.
Near Mr. Abrego Garcia’s home, Ana Ventura, 64, an El Salvador native and naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in the area for 30 years, said she was shocked when he was picked up in March because he had appeared to work hard and keep to himself. She said that even if the criminal charges against him were serious, he should have been given a chance to defend himself before he was sent away.
Her eyes widened when she learned he might now be deported to Uganda. “That does not seem fair to me,” she said.
Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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3) The War in Israel Over Serving in War
Ultra-Orthodox Israelis, exempt for decades from military service, are now being drafted. Their rage is dividing Israel and threatening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
By Elisabeth Bumiller, Natan Odenheimer and Johnatan Reiss, Aug. 24, 2025
The journalists reported from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Bat Yam, Israel.
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man being carried by Israeli security forces during a protest against conscription last week in Kfar Yona. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
It was 11 p.m. in Jerusalem, and one of the city’s most insular ultra-Orthodox communities was in a furor.
Hundreds of men in black suits and black hats of the Edah Haredit sect grew agitated as a top rabbi, shouting in Yiddish from a balcony, denounced the Israeli government for drafting the ultra-Orthodox. They had been exempt from military service to focus on religious study since the founding of Israel, but now they were needed for the war in Gaza.
A large fire blazed in the street, set by ultra-Orthodox protesters who had ignited a dumpster. Police officers on horseback tried to keep order as water cannons on trucks sprayed “skunk water,” a vile-smelling liquid, to disperse the crowd.
Outside the nearby Mir Yeshiva, one of the largest and most prestigious religious schools in the country, Haim Bamberger, 23, said he was studying the Torah, as, he said, God wanted. It was Mr. Bamberger’s way of defending Israel, rather than through military service. “When we do what he wants, he protects us,” he said.
The Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed nearly 1,200 people and led to the taking of roughly 250 hostages, Mr. Bamberger said, “was partly because many people in this country are not doing what God wants.”
Mr. Bamberger said he had been drafted but was ignoring his notice and risking jail. He grew more animated as he spoke. “In this country I’m considered a criminal,” he said, “because I want to study Torah.”
Days later, the Israeli military police began arresting ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers. Only a few have been detained so far, according to multiple Israeli news reports, but on Aug. 14, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox protested and clashed with the police outside a prison where the Ynet Hebrew news site reported that seven were held.
For now, at a time of rage among the ultra-Orthodox and building tension between the military and the government over Gaza, the military is holding off on mass arrests.
A Political Crisis
Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, both men and women. The exemption for the ultra-Orthodox, known in Hebrew as Haredim, has long been resented by the rest of the Jewish population. But the nearly two-year war in Gaza has turned an irritant into a political crisis that is deepening divisions in Israeli society and imperiling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile coalition.
Last month, two ultra-Orthodox parties crucial to Mr. Netanyahu’s majority in Parliament withdrew from the government after it did not pass legislation exempting the ultra-Orthodox from the draft. Their move could lead to the collapse of the prime minister’s coalition and early elections, although Mr. Netanyahu has survived far worse political threats.
“The war has pushed everything to an extreme,” said Nechumi Yaffe, a professor of public policy at Tel Aviv University who is ultra-Orthodox. Secular Israelis are asking, she said, “Why should our children die and your children are just sitting drinking coffee and learning?”
Professor Yaffe said she had polling that showed 25 percent of Haredi men would enlist if they were not ostracized by their communities for doing so, as many are, and another 25 percent would enlist with some encouragement. She said attitudes were softening within less extreme ultra-Orthodox sects, although many rabbis are resisting change.
“The rabbis are feeling like they’re losing control,” she said.
The policy dates to Israel’s beginnings in 1948, when David Ben-Gurion, the nation’s founding prime minister, granted the exemption to the 400 yeshiva students in the country at the time. Ben-Gurion envisioned their Torah study — which they believed would safeguard Israel from its enemies — as part of a revitalization of Jewish religious scholarship lost in the Holocaust.
But as the ultra-Orthodox population grew, the policy was extended, setting off backlash and legal challenges over many years. It did not help that the most extreme ultra-Orthodox sects were anti-Zionists who do not recognize the state of Israel because, they say, it was founded by secular Jews and not for a divine purpose.
In June 2024, the Israeli Supreme Court finally ruled in a landmark decision that without a formal law there was no legal basis for the exemption, and ordered the military to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men.
The military says it urgently needs 12,000 new recruits for a force exhausted by Gaza. More than 450 Israeli soldiers have died in the enclave, suicides are on the rise and fewer Israeli reservists, the bulk of the fighters, are reporting for duty. Many have spent more than 400 days in service since the war began.
Others are questioning the government’s goals in a campaign that has killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. A group of experts who monitor food security declared on Friday that Gaza City and the surrounding territory are suffering from famine, a situation that has drawn global condemnation. The Israeli security agency that oversees aid deliveries in the enclave rejected the finding.
Mr. Netanyahu, at odds with top generals, is now moving forward with plans to take over Gaza City.
The Israeli military announced Aug. 20 that 60,000 new reservists would be called to duty and that 20,000 would have their orders extended, bringing the total number of reservists to serve across all fronts in Israel to roughly 120,000, according to a senior military official who requested anonymity under military ground rules.
The Israeli military says that 80,000 ultra-Orthodox men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for service and that almost all were sent draft notices in the past year. So far, only 2,940 have enlisted, although there is time for others to sign up before a series of deadlines. Most of the 2,940 will not be ready to go to war now, but will be able to do so after the Israeli military’s six months of training.
Their number is still far off the military’s target of 4,800 ultra-Orthodox enlistees for the year, “and even further from the army’s needs,” Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, who is in charge of military personnel, told a committee in Parliament on Aug. 12.
The future promises more strains. The number of ultra-Orthodox in Israel has exploded to about one million today — roughly 13 percent of the population — from 40,000 in 1948. Some 22 percent of 6-year-olds were Haredi in 2024. By 2035, their numbers are projected to reach 30 percent.
Any exemption for them is seen as unsustainable. “This is the math talking,” said Inbar Harush Gity, the Defense Ministry’s former head of recruitment of the ultra-Orthodox into the Israeli military.
The ultra-Orthodox are unmoved.
“It may be that the circumstances have changed and the times have changed,” Motti Babchik, the powerful political adviser to one of the ultra-Orthodox parties that left the government, said in an interview. “But the basic agreement between the Haredis and the state of Israel remains the same.”
‘Is Their Blood More Red?’
Rabbi Tamir Granot’s son Capt. Amitai Granot, 24, was killed by a Hezbollah missile on the border with Lebanon in October 2023, eight days after the Hamas-led attack on Israel. The following March, Rabbi Granot delivered an impassioned speech, widely shared on YouTube, calling on the ultra-Orthodox to serve and share in the pain.
“Was Amitai wrong?” his father asked. “Is it for naught that he now lies under clumps of earth beneath Mount Herzl, he and all his comrades who lie there with him, and other cemeteries around Israel? Should they have stayed in yeshiva and left the army and self-sacrifice to secularists only?”
Rabbi Granot is part of a different stream of Orthodox Judaism, religious Zionism, which is an integral part of Israeli society and sends large numbers of its yeshiva students to the military. In an interview at his Tel Aviv yeshiva, Rabbi Granot recounted how he went to the homes of ultra-Orthodox religious leaders after his son’s death and tried to reason with them. He told them, he said, that he had students in his yeshiva — he called them his children — and, like his son, they knew they had to serve.
He posed a question to the Haredi leaders: “So why are your children better than them? Is their blood more red than our blood?”
Some leaders agreed that the ultra-Orthodox should serve, he said, but none would say so publicly. “One of the biggest told me, ‘I can’t do it.’ I asked him why. He told me, ‘If I will do it, I will not exist.’”
In other words, Rabbi Granot said, “he will lose his status in society and everyone else from the leadership would say he’s not a rabbi.”
The issue has only intensified since then. Last month, in a video made public of an emergency meeting about the Haredi draft, Hillel Hirsch, a leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi, unequivocally told a small group of colleagues that most Haredi yeshiva students do not want to serve. “They never dreamed of it; they don’t dream of it now,” he said.
Another rabbi, Yoel Shapira, spoke up and offered a reality check. “But this is becoming a conversation everywhere,” he said. “In all the yeshivas it’s becoming a topic.” In one of the most important yeshivas, he said, referring to a military intelligence corps, “boys are saying that so-and-so has a brother in Unit 8200 and he doesn’t feel uncomfortable that he has such a brother.”
Many young Haredim use “kosher phones” similar to the old flip-tops, but some also secretly keep smartphones, which have given them access to the outside world and, particularly, to secular Israel, where service in the Israeli military is seen as an entry into adulthood and the collective defense of the nation.
“Living in Israel, not being in the army, it’s a situation that you’re always going to be apologizing for,” said Nechemia Steinberger, a Haredi lecturer and rabbi in Jerusalem who enlisted in the military in 2021 at 37. “I felt, even though it’s a later stage in life, ‘I’ve got to do it.’”
‘Brother, We’re the Same People’
Rabbi Arie Amit, a member of the Chabad Lubavitch sect, which is more inclined than other ultra-Orthodox groups to engage with the outside world, was among the first Haredim in Israel to enlist. It was 2001, he was soon to be 18, and the second intifada, a mass uprising of Palestinians against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, had started the year before.
“I saw in the newspapers that people were blowing up in the streets, and I didn’t see myself studying Torah all day,” he said in an interview in a cafe in the city of Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv. “So I thought I could contribute to my people much better in the military.”
He now handles logistics at a temporary base just inside the Gaza border, and said he understood why so many Israelis were upset with the ultra-Orthodox.
“People are being killed, or people are serving many, many months,” he said. “It’s like: Brother, we’re the same people. Why aren’t you contributing to the burden that we’re carrying?”
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4) In Washington Crackdown, Making a Federal Case Out of Low-Level Arrests
A single afternoon in court illustrated the new ways in which laws are being enforced after President Trump’s takeover of the city’s police.
By Devlin Barrett, Reporting from Washington, Aug. 24, 2025
As President Trump posed triumphantly for photos with police officers, government agents and members of the National Guard in Southeast Washington last week, lawyers across town in federal court grappled with his new brand of justice.
The stream of defendants who shuffled through a federal courtroom on Thursday afternoon illustrated the new ways in which laws are being enforced in the nation’s capital after the president’s takeover of the city’s police. They were appearing before a magistrate judge on charges that would typically be handled at the local court level, if they were filed at all.
One man had been arrested over an open container of alcohol. Another had been charged with threatening the president after delivering a drunken outburst following his arrest on vandalism. And one defendant’s gun case so alarmed prosecutors that they intend to drop the case.
Mr. Trump has cast his crackdown on crime as a success, and suggested on Friday that it was a blueprint he would seek to apply to other cities, including Chicago. To defense lawyers and even some prosecutors, though, many of the cases that have landed in court have raised concerns that the takeover seems intended to artificially inflate its effect because government lawyers have been instructed to file the most serious federal charges, no matter how minor the incident.
One of the recipients of Mr. Trump’s show of force was Mark Bigelow, 28, a part-time delivery driver for Amazon.
After midnight on Aug. 19, Mr. Bigelow was sitting in the middle row of a van parked on a street in Northeast Washington with its doors open, according to court papers. Two other men were in the front when a full complement of law enforcement officials — from the Metropolitan Police Department, the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service — stopped and saw what appeared to be an open container of alcohol in the front seat.
As law enforcement questioned and searched the two other passengers, Mr. Bigelow left the van and started to walk away, until other agents stopped him, according to the charging document. Peering into the van, an officer spotted “a second cup containing an alcoholic beverage in the middle row seat,” at which point Mr. Bigelow was arrested on charges of possession of an open container, a misdemeanor.
As he was placed in a vehicle, the handcuffed Mr. Bigelow became belligerent, twisting his body and yelling, “Get off me! Y’all too little, bro!” at an ICE agent, according to a court filing, which described how Mr. Bigelow made “physical contact” by kicking an agent in the hand and another in the leg.
As a result, Mr. Bigelow was charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison.
The charges follow a directive by the U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, to prosecutors to charge the most serious crimes possible in each case and to do so in federal court, where sentences tend to run much longer.
A federal public defender representing Mr. Bigelow, Elizabeth Mullin, told the U.S. magistrate judge, Moxila A. Upadhyaya, that he would never have been arrested, let alone charged with a federal felony, but for the president’s crackdown. “He was caught up in this federal occupation of D.C.,” she said. “This was a case created by federal law enforcement.”
Next up was Torez Riley, 37, who was arrested at a Trader Joe’s grocery store for what the police said was possession of two handguns in his bag.
Mr. Riley’s case has been a point of contention inside the U.S. attorney’s office, where a number of prosecutors concluded that officers unlawfully searched Mr. Riley when they stopped him, violating the Fourth Amendment, according to people familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Before Mr. Trump’s crackdown, prosecutors in Ms. Pirro’s office would have been likely to dismiss a case like Mr. Riley’s after an initial review of the facts of the arrest, according to the people, who were familiar with the instructions.
Those people said that after Mr. Riley’s arrest, Ms. Pirro pushed her subordinates to charge the case despite those concerns. One person familiar with the matter disputed that characterization, saying that the prosecutors handling the case did not have a full command of the facts, and that when she saw the police body camera footage of the arrest on Friday, she ordered them to dismiss the gun charges against Mr. Riley. A detention hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday.
In a statement, Ms. Pirro said: “My job is to prosecute crime in what was one of the most violent cities in the world. In so doing, I will always act with integrity and responsibility. Under my watch prosecutors will be aggressive in getting guns off the street and arguing cases to judges, who make final determinations, but they will do so consistent with the law and the facts.”
The argument for dropping such a case is not simply a question of being tough or soft on crime, or constitutional rights. Prosecutors have to worry, particularly in Washington, that an appeals court could, in throwing out a case like Mr. Riley’s, issue a decision that makes it harder for officers to search people on the street. Such an adverse ruling, they reasoned, could hamper crime-fighting efforts for years to come.
That was the primary concern of the prosecutors who argued against pursuing the Riley case, these people said.
Mr. Riley made his first appearance in court on Thursday about the same time that Ms. Pirro stood in the sun with Mr. Trump in Southeast Washington.
“I am making sure that we back the blue to the hilt,” she told officers and agents crowded around the president. “Every arrest you make, we’re going the longest way to make sure that we charge in those cases.”
The next defendant was Edward Dana, 30, who is accused of threatening the president’s life, which carries a potential five-year prison sentence.
Mr. Dana, who has a history of mental illness and arrests, was stopped around 10 p.m. on Aug. 17, after the police received complaints that he had damaged a light outside a restaurant in Northwest Washington.
A group of police officers and federal agents arrested him for property destruction. As he settled into the back of a police car, he asserted that he was drunk after having consumed seven drinks. An officer’s body camera captured his comments. He became irate, yelling at the officer driving the vehicle that he would return to the restaurant and beat up someone.
“I’m not going to tolerate fascism,” he declared, vowing to “protect the Constitution by any means necessary. And that means killing you, Officer, killing the president, killing anyone who stands in the way of our Constitution.”
The officer immediately radioed his dispatcher to “notify Secret Service — he just made threats to kill the president.”
Not long afterward, Mr. Dana began to sing. A Secret Service agent reviewed the video of his comments and filed a charging affidavit against him.
“He is not a danger,” his lawyer, Ms. Mullin, told the judge. “The danger here is having federal agents roaming the streets.”
Judge Upadhyaya urged the two sides to reach an agreement on conditions for his release, but as the hearing wore on, she began to lose patience with the prosecutor, Conor Mulroe. Mr. Dana was a menace, he argued, insisting that his mental health problems should not be an excuse to allow him to keep harassing people and businesses.
Mr. Mulroe added that given Mr. Dana’s long history of “quite erratic behavior,” he should remain in jail while awaiting trial.
As the hearing continued, Judge Upadhyaya became exasperated with Mr. Mulroe.
“I know what you’re doing and I just have no tolerance for it,” she snapped. “There has to be a common-sense application of the law.”
Her last case of the day involved a man who had been arrested in Washington based on a warrant in nearby Virginia. Finding no one else able to transport him at night from one jail to another, she persuaded Ms. Mullin, the defense lawyer, to do it.
“The time and resources of the court are stretched beyond belief,” the judge said. “It’s been like this all week.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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5) National Guard patrols begin carrying weapons in D.C.
By Bernard Mokam and Helene Cooper, Bernard Mokam reported from Washington. Helene Cooper covers the Pentagon, Aug. 24, 2025
National Guard troops on duty in President Trump’s crackdown in Washington, D.C., began carrying weapons in the capital Sunday evening, according to a spokesman for the National Guard task force.
Several members of the Guard from South Carolina were seen late Sunday outside Washington’s Union Station with firearms holstered to their hips.
In a statement, Maj. Michael A. Maxwell said that the change was directed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. On Friday, officials said Mr. Hegseth authorized Guard members to carry their weapons, though without giving specifics on how often members would be armed as they walked through the city.
Major Maxwell emphasized that service members would operate under established rules for the use of force, employing it “only as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm.”
He said that more than 2,200 Guard troops were deployed in Washington as of Sunday, including about 900 D.C. members and others from Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Mr. Trump ordered the deployment of troops in Washington two weeks ago, saying that they would help an array of federal agents crack down on crime in the city. But their mission remains vague, and much of the overall federal law enforcement effort has focused on low-level crimes and detention of undocumented immigrants.
Major Maxwell said Guard members would assist in surveying for “community restoration” projects and aid the D.C. police in staffing at public transit stops as the school year began.
Outside Union Station, as travelers waited quietly with their luggage to be picked up, several protesters jeered the half-dozen armed Guard members patrolling the area. One demonstrator, Nadine Seiler, heckled the troops while carrying a sign reading “Free D.C. Release the Epstein Files”; her partner in an orange vest banged a cowbell.
Ms. Seiler, 60, who is from Trinidad and Tobago, called the rollout of the troops in Washington a “manufactured crisis” by Mr. Trump.
She added, “As somebody who bought into American ideals and America’s vaunted Constitution, I can’t articulate how disappointed I am in lawmakers and the American people,” who she said were idle in a time of crisis.
Abbey Schneider, 51, a former Washington resident who was in town visiting family, said near the station that Sunday was the first time she and her daughter had seen Guard members armed after spotting them while out at night last week. “I have a visceral reaction to it,” Ms. Schneider said. “I feel it is unnecessary and a little bit scary. It feels like an escalation.”
Greg Jaffe contributed reporting.
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6) Kilmar Abrego Garcia is detained again, three days after being freed from custody.
By Alan Feuer, Jazmine Ulloa and Chris Cameron, August 25, 2025
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in March and then brought back to face criminal charges, was detained again on Monday after the administration indicated that it planned to re-deport him to Uganda, his lawyer said.
The detention unfolded after Mr. Abrego Garcia arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore and came only three days after he was freed from custody in the criminal case that was filed against him in Federal District Court in Nashville.
Outside the office, a lawyer for Mr. Abrego Garcia, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said that the stated intention of the meeting with ICE was for an interview. “Clearly, that was false,” he said, adding that the immigration authorities did not say why Mr. Abrego Garcia was being detained or even where he would be taken.
The crowd of supporters descended into chants of “boos” and “shame” to the news, and immigrant rights volunteers in yellow vests shielded Mr. Abrego Garcia’s family members as they left the building.
Shortly after, Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed a legal action known as a habeas petition in Federal District Court in Maryland seeking to stop his removal to Uganda. The petition claimed that the Trump administration had re-arrested him without first giving him the opportunity to express “fears of persecution and torture in that country.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia should have a grace period of two business days from being deported again under a standing order issued in May by the chief federal judge in Maryland. The order automatically stopped the government from following through on expulsions of immigrants for 48 hours after they filed habeas petitions.
Over the weekend, his lawyers had accused the Trump administration of seeking to “coerce” a guilty plea from him on the charges of human smuggling that were brought against him in an indictment in June.
The lawyers said the administration had promised to send Mr. Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica, where he could live freely as a legal resident, if he pleaded to the charges and agreed to serve whatever prison sentence he eventually received. Otherwise, the lawyers said, Trump officials said they would deport Mr. Abrego Garcia “halfway across the world” to Uganda, where, the lawyers said, “his safety and liberty would be under threat.”
“The government now seeks to deport Mr. Abrego to Uganda as punishment, notwithstanding that Costa Rica is willing to take him in as a refugee,” one of the lawyers, Sean Hecker, said after the detention. “The government’s campaign of retribution continues because Mr. Abrego refuses to be coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never have been brought.”
The arrest in Baltimore was the latest twist in a long-running saga that began this spring, when the Trump administration removed Mr. Abrego Garcia to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador, despite a court order that expressly barred him from being sent to the country. Then, after weeks of complaining that they were powerless to bring him back to U.S. soil, Trump officials did exactly that — not merely to correct their own mistake but to file criminal charges against him.
As he arrived for his immigration check-in, Mr. Abrego Garcia was greeted by the cheers of dozens of supporters. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and his brother, Cesar, were by his side. Speaking to the crowd, he thanked the people who had stood with him and delivered an emotional plea to immigrants and the immigrant rights community to keep up the fight and not lose hope.
“Brothers and sisters, my name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” he said. “And I always want you to remember that today, I can say with pride, that I am free and have been reunited with my family.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia, dressed in jeans, sneakers and a black, gray and white polo, appeared nervous when he first arrived. His eyes shifted from reporters to rally goers, and he took a deep breath. His voice broke as he spoke about how the memories of his family and playing with his children on a trampoline had sustained him while he was detained at the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.
But he held back his tears and finished his statement with resolve. He said those moments would continue to fuel him as he continued his legal battles and reminded the audience that his case was not about one immigrant family but the many targeted under the Trump administration’s crackdown.
“To all of the families who have also suffered separations or who live under the constant threat of being separated,” he said, “I want to tell you that even though this injustice is hurting us hard, we must not lose hope.”
He continued: “God is with us, and God will never leave us. God will bring justice to all of the injustice.”
As he climbed the steps to the federal building, with immigration agents around, the scene turned chaotic. Mr. Abrego Garcia bowed his head as he slowly walked into the building. The crowd chanted “ICE go home” and “Si se puede,” or “yes you can” in Spanish.
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7) Tiny Patch of West Bank Land Fuels Dreams of Greater Israel
Israel’s approval of a settlement project delayed for decades shows how far Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone in dashing Palestinian aspirations.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Aug. 25, 2025
A view of the E1 area near an Israeli settlement, Maale Adumim, on Friday. Amir Levy/Getty Images
A wall separating an Arab neighborhood from E1. Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
The plans for Israeli settlement construction in an area known as E1, a small but strategic patch of land in the occupied West Bank, were laid before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first came to power nearly three decades ago.
Actually breaking ground there was long taboo, since the land is considered critical to any future Palestinian state, but building may now begin soon.
Israel’s final approval for the settlement project, granted last week, shows how far Mr. Netanyahu and his hard-right government have gone in bucking the internationally accepted parameters for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the devastating war in Gaza, Mr. Netanyahu, with the apparent backing of President Trump and his administration, seems to have dropped any semblance of accepting a form of Palestinian statehood, however limited, in favor of a greater Israel — one that extends beyond the boundaries of the original Jewish state founded in 1948.
Experts say Mr. Netanyahu also appears to have given up on his vision of forging relations with an outer circle of moderate Arab states, which he used to argue would help squeeze the Palestinians into territorial compromise.
Instead, he is etching the contours of indefinite dominance over the lands Israel conquered in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, dismantling the scaffolding of a future Palestinian state.
On a recent visit to Ofra, a West Bank settlement, for the 50th anniversary of its establishment, Mr. Netanyahu remarked, “I stood here half a century ago and said that we would do everything to ensure our continued hold on the land of Israel, that we would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and that we would thwart all attempts to uproot us from here.”
Over the years, Mr. Netanyahu has paid lip service to the idea of the two-state solution, but on that visit to Ofra, he declared, “Thank God we kept our promise.”
In an interview this month with a right-leaning Israeli news channel, Mr. Netanyahu said that he was on a “historic and spiritual mission” and that he identified with the interviewer’s vision of the “whole land of Israel.”
The establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is widely viewed as the only practical possible solution to the century-old conflict, and foreign and domestic peace builders have long held that building in E1 would complicate the prospects of a viable, contiguous Palestinian heartland.
Until now, every American administration had vehemently opposed Israeli housing construction there to preserve the option of a negotiated peace agreement, and the approval granted last week prompted strong international condemnation from many of Israel’s traditional allies.
Support for a two-state solution dwindled among the Israeli public after a spate of deadly Palestinian suicide bombings in the early 2000s and even more so since the Oct. 7 attack. Even left-leaning Israeli politicians avoid mentioning the old land-for-peace formula, speaking only of leaving open a pathway for a future separation from the Palestinians.
The prospects of a two-state solution have also receded as West Bank land has been eaten away by the settlement expansion championed by the far-right coalition partners Mr. Netanyahu relies on to stay in power, among them Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister.
About 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, amid about three million Palestinians. Most of the world considers Israeli settlements there to be a violation of international law.
“It’s Smotrich’s government now,” said Daniel B. Shapiro, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington, and former American ambassador to Israel. He said, “Netanyahu can’t resist him, and Trump shows no appetite to push back.”
Mike Huckabee, the current U.S. ambassador to Israel, said in a radio interview that large-scale development in E1 was “a decision for the government of Israel to make, and so we would not try to evaluate the good or the bad of that.”
For Mr. Smotrich, precluding any possibility of a future Palestinian state is precisely the point. He has described each new settlement and housing unit as “a nail in the coffin of that dangerous idea.”
Much of E1 consists of steep inclines and deep ravines that make construction difficult, but about 3,400 housing units are planned to go up on two plateaus.
“Construction in E1 may or may not block a future Palestinian state; there are conceivable workarounds,” Mr. Shapiro said. But what it will do, he said, is end any near-term prospect of formal diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region and increase Israel’s international isolation, coming as the Israeli government plans to expand its military occupation of Gaza.
Location of the Proposed Israeli Settlement in the West Bank
An abbreviation of East 1 (as it was marked on old maps), E1 sits on roughly 4.6 square miles of rugged desert terrain at the cinched waist of the kidney-shaped West Bank, connecting the northern and southern halves of the territory. It is one of the last open areas for development between the West Bank and predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem.
Israeli settlement there would reduce the link between the two halves of the West Bank to a series of roads and bridges, and to a narrow land corridor farther east, in the direction of the Jordanian border.
Successive Israeli governments have coveted E1 — if quietly — to create a different kind of contiguity, one that would connect Jerusalem and the large Israeli urban settlement of Maale Adumim, just east of E1, and to seal Israel’s control of the high ground around its contested capital.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin formally included E1 within the jurisdiction of Maale Adumim in 1994, a year before he was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, but with the first of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements known as the Oslo Accords in play, he did not promote building there.
The series of prime ministers who followed him, Mr. Netanyahu included, tried to advance construction plans but bowed to American objections. Other than roads and basic infrastructure, the only building there is an Israeli police station that went up about two decades ago and could be easily removed, unlike a populated neighborhood.
Around that time, Mr. Netanyahu, who was out of office, went to E1 to kick off a campaign to regain leadership of the Likud party.
When he once again won the premiership in 2009, he delivered a landmark speech, under international pressure, essentially endorsing the two-state solution. He pledged to work for peace and laid out terms for “a demilitarized Palestinian state” alongside the Jewish state of Israel.
He has since suggested that Israel should maintain security control over all the West Bank and has spoken of a Palestinian “state minus” with limited powers.
Even during Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Netanyahu held off approving construction in E1 as the administration in Washington worked on an ultimately unsuccessful Middle East peace plan.
But the region looks very different now. The West Bank is undergoing transformation, and the future of the Gaza Strip is in limbo. Israel has recently fought wars with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and has been fighting in Syria, too.
The significance of E1 appears to have shrunk to a tiny, beige square on the map.
“If you look at the grand picture, E1 is a very minor detail, hardly worth looking at,” said Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security and resident of East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu, he said, is on a mission “to re-engineer and redesign the geography, demography, history and ideology of the entire region.”
Still, it remains unclear whether the E1 decision truly buries the two-state solution or whether the idea might still be salvageable.
Shaul Arieli, head of the T-Politography research group, which provides data to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said it would take months for building to start.
The approval came ahead of elections scheduled for next year, he noted, adding that the outcome of the elections would determine the results on the ground.
Mr. Arieli, a map expert who helped prepare Israel’s official negotiating teams in the past, believes that it is still feasible to create a Palestinian state and redraw the borders, with land swaps, in a way that would allow 80 percent of the Israeli settlers to live under Israeli sovereignty.
Construction in E1 would make things more difficult, he acknowledged, but he said that every peace proposal up until now called for Israel to give up on dozens of settlements.
“It could always evacuate that one,” he said.
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8) Five Journalists Among Those Killed in Israeli Strikes on Gaza Hospital
The five Gaza-based reporters had worked for various international media outlets, their employers said. The Israeli military confirmed its forces had struck the hospital area, without saying why.
By Isabel Kershner, Aaron Boxerman and Ameera Harouda, Aug. 25, 2025
Isabel Kershner and Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem and Ameera Harouda from Doha, Qatar.
Palestinian medics helping an injured man at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Monday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Two Israeli strikes hit a hospital in southern Gaza on Monday, killing five Palestinian journalists and at least 15 more people, according to local health officials, in one of the deadliest attacks for journalists covering the nearly two-year war in the enclave.
The Gaza health ministry put the death toll at 20, also including medical staff, rescue workers and patients, and said dozens more had been injured. The five journalists had worked for media outlets including Reuters, The Associated Press and Al Jazeera, according to their employers.
The Israeli military said it had carried out a strike in the area of Nasser Hospital, without saying what the target was. The statement said the military regretted “any harm to uninvolved individuals,” adding that its chief of staff had ordered an immediate inquiry.
The war in Gaza that began nearly two years ago has been one of the deadliest conflicts anywhere for journalists, with at least 192 killed since the start, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering Gaza to freely report throughout the war. That has left much of the world relying on Palestinian journalists — reporting amid bombardment and hunger — to understand the situation in Gaza.
The Gaza health ministry and hospital officials said that the first Israeli strike hit the fourth floor of Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. It was followed by a second attack as ambulance crews arrived to retrieve the dead and wounded, the ministry said in a statement.
A live video feed from Al-Ghad TV, a pan-Arab broadcaster based in Cairo,captured the aftermath of a blast on the southeastern facade of Nasser hospital. The video, which was verified by The New York Times, showed emergency responders and others moving a white body bag on a staircase. Shortly after, a second strike is captured live on camera, leaving a cloud of dust and smoke.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions as to whether its forces had conducted a “double tap” strike, meaning a double strike at the same location. Rights groups have deplored such attacks, which can put rescue workers and other civilians gathering to help the wounded in danger.
Another video shared by a witness on social media shows about a dozen bodies, covered in dust and blood and apparently lifeless, piled along a staircase between the third and fourth floors of Nasser Hospital. The footage, verified by The Times, also shows men in civilian clothes inspecting the bodies after the second strike.
Gaza’s Civil Defense rescue service said one of its crew had been killed and seven other crew members were injured.
Hamas, the Palestinian group which seized full control of Gaza in 2007, named the five killed journalists as Hussam al-Masri, Mohammed Salama, Mariam Dagga, Moaz Abu Taha and Ahmad Abu Aziz.
The Reuters news agency confirmed that Mr. al-Masri was a contractor for Reuters and said a second contractor, photographer Hatem Khaled, had been injured in the attack.
Reuters added in a statement that Mr. Abu Taha was a freelance journalist whose work had been occasionally published by the agency. Reuters said it was “devastated” to learn of the losses, adding that it was “seeking more information from Israeli authorities about these latest strikes.”
Al Jazeera said that Mr. Salama, a cameraman, was one of its journalists. The Qatari-owned channel, which has frequently clashed with Israel, accused the Israeli military of killing its reporters as part of a “systematic campaign to silence the truth.”
The online outlet Middle East Eye identified Mr. Abu Aziz as a contributor to “dozens of reports” since the Gaza war began in late 2023.
The Israeli military said in its statement that it “does not target journalists as such.”
The Associated Press said that Ms. Dagga, 33, was a visual-media journalist who had freelanced for the agency, as well as other news outlets, throughout the war in Gaza, which was set off by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The agency said it was “shocked and saddened to learn” of her death, along with several other journalists, and added that her 12-year-old son had been evacuated from Gaza earlier in the war.
The Associated Press added that Ms. Dagga “frequently based herself at Nasser Hospital, most recently reporting on doctors struggling to save children with no prior health issues who were wasting away from starvation.”
The Foreign Press Association in Israel, which represents journalists working for the international media in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, said the strikes hit an exterior staircase of the hospital where journalists frequently stationed themselves with their cameras, and that the strikes came with no warning. The association said in a statement that it was “outraged and in shock.”
Israel has argued in the past that it struck medical facilities and hospital compounds in Gaza because Hamas routinely uses them for military purposes. Hamas has denied these claims.
Mohammad Saqer, a Gaza health official at Nasser Hospital, said the first of the two strikes hit the fourth floor of a hospital building, prompting first-responders and medical workers to rush to the scene. The second strike came several minutes later, killing and wounding some of them, he said.
“We are trying to preserve this hospital,” Mr. Saqer said. “If the Israelis think there’s been any violation here, they should talk to us, and we can solve the problem,” he said.
“Instead, they’re bombing,” he added.
Ayat Al-Haj, the hospital’s public relations coordinator, described a scene of choking smoke and dust. “We couldn’t see anything,” she said in trembling voice, speaking by phone from her office after the strikes. “All we could hear were screams.”
Aritz Parra, Abu Bakr Bashir and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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9) Wilted Lettuce. Rotten Strawberries. Here’s What Happens When You Round Up Farmworkers.
By Robert Rivas and Shannon Douglass, Aug. 25, 2025
Mr. Rivas is the speaker of the California State Assembly. Ms. Douglass is the president of the California Farm Bureau.
California is by far the largest food producer in the United States. In 2023, our state’s agricultural economy was worth nearly $60 billion. The state’s roughly 63,000 farms grow over a third of all vegetables and around three-quarters of the fruits and nuts produced nationwide.
The lettuce and tomato on your hamburger very likely came from California. The almonds and pistachios you snack on as well. There’s a good chance the olive oil on your pasta is from California. Did you pair that with a glass of wine? Probably California, too.
This bounty all depends on a reliable, skilled and experienced labor force that is overwhelmingly made up of immigrants: Over 80 percent of California’s hired farmworkers surveyed between 2015 and 2019 were from Mexico, and more than half were undocumented. Nationwide, an estimated 80 percent of farmworkers were born outside of the United States, and around half are undocumented.
These immigrants are nothing less than the backbone of America’s food supply, doing jobs that few native-born Americans seek. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting them now will have real consequences for all Americans, very likely including higher grocery prices and fewer options in the produce aisle.
Scaring immigrant farmworkers and depleting the agricultural work force will weaken an industry that has been one of our nation’s strengths since its founding.
These workers are not strangers, and they’re not a burden on California or the nation. They are part of the fabric of our communities. Many have lived and worked here for decades. Our kids go to school together. We live in the same neighborhoods. We worship in the same churches and shop in the same stores.
They raise children who are American citizens — like one of us, who grew up in farmworker housing, the grandson of immigrant farmworkers. The other of us is a granddaughter of immigrants and a first-generation farm owner who helps lead our state’s largest organization of farmers and ranchers.
What our immigration enforcement agencies are doing now, in many instances — treating hard-working, law-abiding immigrant workers as if they are violent criminals — is a mistake. Prior administrations, both Democratic and Republican, focused immigration enforcement on serious or violent criminals, with success. That’s a critical distinction that should also guide policy today. And it’s what most Americans want: In a July Fox News poll, 59 percent of voters said the government should deport only undocumented immigrants who’ve been charged with crimes.
In our state, we know that fear of immigration enforcement is keeping farmworkers away from the fields. Several weeks ago, ICE officers raided farms and fields in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties that grow a large portion of the state’s strawberries. Similar raids have taken place at packing houses — locations where picked produce is boxed and shipped. These raids cause confusion and concern among farmworkers and farm owners alike. Lisa Tate, a Ventura County farmer, recently told Reuters that about 70 percent of the workers in the fields around her are no longer showing up. We have heard similar reports from farmers and ranchers across California.
In response, the California Farm Bureau is educating farm employees and employers about their rights when responding to immigration enforcement actions, and it is working with the California Farmworker Foundation to support farmers and farmworkers. The California Legislature is working on several bills to further protect the farmworker community and vulnerable immigrants, and maintain the strength of our agricultural economy.
When workers don’t show up, crops aren’t picked. To prevent rotting in the field, ripe strawberries must be harvested within a tight time frame. The same goes for grapes and leafy greens such as lettuce and spinach.
Nearly every crop has a precise window for optimal harvest. When that window is missed, crops become undesirable to retailers, resulting in food waste and higher costs. This month, CNN reported on a cherry farm in Oregon (our state’s next-door neighbor) with 30 acres of unpicked, rotting fruit. The farmer estimated a loss upward of a quarter-million dollars as a result.
For Americans already struggling with high prices, anything that can add to their grocery bill will be felt, but the impact of immigration enforcement doesn’t stop at the supermarket checkout line. Farms and ranches support hundreds of thousands of American jobs in food processing, packing, transportation, logistics, equipment supply and more. In 2023 alone, California’s farmers and farmworkers generated some $22 billion in agricultural exports.
Bottom line, it isn’t easy for farmers and ranchers to replace farmworkers if they’re deported or don’t show up. These positions require experience, endurance and specialized knowledge; as anyone who has worked on a farm will tell you, farm work is not unskilled labor.
In June, President Trump said on social media, “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
Exactly.
There have been reports that Mr. Trump is at least considering policy options that would create new avenues for undocumented migrant farmworkers to live and work in America. We urge him to make this a priority and to work with Congress to find a humane, practical and bipartisan solution that ensures a stable farm work force and protects farmworker families and the future of American agriculture.
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10) Some Programs for Black Students Become ‘Illegal D.E.I.’ Under Trump
Districts aiming to hire Black teachers, add Black history classes and talk about white privilege are increasingly under scrutiny, raising questions about what is legal, and also what works.
By Dana Goldstein, Aug. 26, 2025
Chicago is a testing ground for some of the left’s biggest ideas about race and education. School systems in the city and nearby suburbs are pushing to hire more Black male teachers, add more Black history and train teachers in concepts like white privilege.
Some of those policies have a strong record of improving student learning, while others lack much track record.
But for the Trump administration, all of it could be against the law.
Now, school districts with programs aimed at lifting up Black students, and others, are finding themselves legally vulnerable. The White House is pursuing a reversal of the federal government’s traditional role on race and schools, going after what it calls “illegal D.E.I.,” or diversity, equity and inclusion. The administration is using the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which was established to protect racial and ethnic minority groups, to try to end programs meant to help some of those same students.
Through executive orders, investigations and threats to cut funding, the government has put what was once a bipartisan movement to address the legacy of slavery and racism on the defensive. Even Republican-leaning states like Florida and Mississippi have teacher recruitment programs intended, in part, to diversify the work force — an idea the administration has called illegal affirmative action.
For 20 years, research has demonstrated that students perform better academically when their teachers share elements of their racial, cultural or linguistic identity. And a broad range of social scientists, policymakers and parents have raised concerns about the lack of diverse male role models, as a response to boys’ struggles with academics and mental health.
But over the past decade, many conservatives began to push more forcefully for colorblind policies. Now, Trump administration lawyers are arguing that when school leaders direct resources to racial groups that remain behind, they discriminate against those that have traditionally been ahead.
Nowhere is the potential impact of this reversal starker than in Illinois. The Education Department has announced civil rights investigations into two of the state’s most prominent school systems, in Chicago and in the nearby college town of Evanston, accusing them of breaking the law by focusing school improvement efforts on nonwhite children.
Conservatives hope the cases against the two districts will set precedents that can reach into schools and other institutions nationally.
Kimberly Hermann, president of Southeastern Legal Foundation, the conservative group that filed a lawsuit and federal complaint against the school district in Evanston, acknowledged that many education leaders believe race-conscious programs will help disadvantaged students.
“Sometimes you can have a noble goal,” she said, “but you can’t implement it in a way that violates laws.”
‘Liberatory’ or ‘Illegal’
This fall, Chicago Public Schools will roll out what it calls the Black Student Success Plan. It calls for doubling the number of Black male teachers hired by 2029, reducing disciplinary actions against Black students, adding more Black history and enrolling more Black children in advanced courses.
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of Defending Education, a conservative legal group that filed a federal complaint against the plan, argued that by focusing so much on Black students, Chicago risked ignoring the needs of other groups, like Hispanic students. Black children make up 34 percent of the district’s students, while Hispanic children account for nearly half.
“I think a lot of these schools are well intentioned but ill advised,” Ms. Perry said. “In their effort to level the playing field for one specific group, they have failed to account for the needs of all students.”
State data suggests Hispanic students score somewhat higher on standardized tests than Black students do, and are more likely to enroll in Advanced Placement classes. But both groups significantly lag Asian and white peers.
In an April statement announcing the investigation, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, said that Chicago was reserving resources for “favored” students, and that the Trump administration “will not allow federal funds, provided for the benefit of all students, to be used in this pernicious and unlawful manner.”
The theory of the Black Student Success Plan is that efforts to assist Black children will help everyone. The district calls this approach “targeted universalism,” saying that “ambitious goals can be achieved by all students if we prioritize those who are furthest from opportunity.” It says the plan requires “liberatory thinking” to “disrupt systemic inequity.”
There is promising research on social studies courses that reflect students’ identities, showing improvements in grades and attendance.
Ashley Harris, a second-grade teacher in Chicago, said that without extra support, many Black students in the district would flounder in schools that remain heavily segregated by race and class.
She has developed lessons on Jackie Robinson and, for a time, offered an after-school mentoring program for Black girls. They discussed how to develop a positive self-identity in a world filled with negative stereotypes about Black women. She rejected Mr. Trump’s idea that her efforts were discriminatory.
“That argument is completely rooted in racism,” Ms. Harris said. She likened racially targeted education programs to the Black Lives Matter movement: “It was not created to say other lives don’t matter. It was created to say, ‘Recognize Black people for being valuable.’”
North of Chicago, District 65, which oversees elementary and middle schools in the diverse suburbs of Evanston and Skokie, has pursued similar racial equity efforts for years. It offers an Afrocentric magnet program and enrolled all students in eighth-grade Algebra I, previously an advanced course where Black and Hispanic students were underrepresented.
But it is a separate set of practices — antiracism training sessions for teachers — that have made the district a target of the Trump administration.
A white drama teacher in the school system, Stacy Deemar, has filed several legal complaints accusing her employer of creating a “racially charged environment,” in part by requiring staff members to participate in training focused on concepts such as white privilege and white fragility, sometimes in “affinity groups” segregated by race.
The Trump administration opened an investigation into the district in response to Dr. Deemar’s complaint. She is represented by the Southeastern Legal Foundation.
Supporters of antiracism training have said it helps white people become aware of discriminatory beliefs and behavior, such as a teacher punishing a Black boy more harshly than a white boy for the same infraction. But some research suggests that the training can arouse white resentment and become counterproductive, sometimes even reinforcing racial stereotypes.
The district has reported a decrease in serious behavioral incidents, by about 50 percent over two years. And since 2021, the percentage of students meeting state standards in math and reading has grown. But there have also been challenges in math, with many of the district’s graduates having to retake algebra in high school.
District 65 declined to answer specific questions about its racial equity programs, saying it could not do so because of the continuing investigation. “The complaint misrepresents our district’s lawful and important professional learning and student-focused initiatives,” it said in a statement.
A Broadening Legal Battle
Regardless of whether racial equity programs work to improve student learning, the White House considers many of them illegal.
The administration cites Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which seeks to prevent discrimination based on race, to argue that discussions of white privilege and structural racism violate the law by creating hostile environments filled with racial stereotypes. It calls single-race or single-sex discussion groups “segregationist activities.”
The administration has also put forth a more novel legal theory: that because the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in college admissions, no educational institution, at any level, may direct benefits toward any specific racial group.
A federal judge rejected many of those arguments in August, noting that there was no language in the 2023 affirmative action decision limiting the public school curriculum. She halted one of the administration’s attempts to withhold funding from schools and colleges with diversity and equity efforts, saying it violated free speech.
But the White House could appeal, and the question of whether public schools can remain race conscious is likely to go before the Supreme Court in the coming years. Several conservative justices have expressed an interest in taking up the subject.
Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School and an expert on how constitutional law applies to schools, said some districts would “decide to just quietly shift what they are doing, rather than mounting lawsuits.” He added, “These issues are going to be in the courts for years to come.”
At least one liberal school district — Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest — chose to recast its Black Student Achievement Plan late last year, after it faced a similar civil rights complaint from Defending Education. To avoid federal action, the district withdrew the plan, but said it would pursue the same goals by directing resources toward the students who need them most, regardless of race.
Chicago Public Schools did not respond to questions about why the system was sticking by its racially targeted approach.
But the politics of education have changed with Mr. Trump in the White House. Democratic Party leaders, including Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, have reveled in confrontation with the president.
“The Trump administration has looked for any excuse to target Democrat-run cities across the country, and, particularly, cities run by Black mayors,” said Mr. Johnson, who has indicated the city would consider legal action if the federal government withheld education funding.
“There is nothing illegal,” he added, “about providing targeted support for Black students.”
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11) Rabbis Emerge as Growing Voice of Criticism of Israel’s Tactics in Gaza
Among the recent public letters was one from dozens of Orthodox rabbis demanding “moral clarity” to what they called a humanitarian crisis.
By Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, Aug. 26, 2025
As Israel’s tactics in Gaza have increasingly provoked international condemnation, rabbis from across the world are taking the unusual step of speaking out against the Israeli government’s conduct in the war, on moral and religious grounds.
Over the past few weeks, as reports of mass killings in Gaza have spread and experts declared the area is officially suffering from famine, a significant number of clergy across the spectrum of Jewish observance and affiliation have signed a series of high-profile, carefully crafted public letters criticizing the Israeli government.
Associations representing Reform congregations and Conservative rabbis — denominations that encompass nearly half of American Jews — have called for Israel to release additional aid, citing Jewish values and what one group called a “moral priority” to feed the hungry. Nearly three dozen rabbis were arrested in demonstrations in New York and Washington last month, calling for more aid to Gaza and for Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to end the war.
Perhaps most notably, the ranks of those raising concerns now also include a small group of Orthodox rabbis, whose communities have broadly not wavered in their staunch support of Israel throughout the war.
Last week about 80 Orthodox rabbis signed an open letter demanding “moral clarity, responsibility, and a Jewish Orthodox response” to what they called a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Signers included chief rabbis of Poland and Norway, and the former chief rabbi of Ireland. Organizers said that more than half of those who signed the letter were from the United States.
“We affirm that Hamas’s sins and crimes do not relieve the government of Israel of its obligations to make whatever efforts are necessary to prevent mass starvation,” the letter said. “Orthodox Jewry, as some of Israel’s most devoted supporters, bears a unique moral responsibility. We must affirm that Judaism’s vision of justice and compassion extends to all human beings.”
A primary organizer was Rabbi Yosef Blau, the former religious leader of Yeshiva University, a Modern Orthodox institution in Manhattan. Mr. Blau said his concerns encompassed not only the Israeli government’s treatment of civilians in Gaza but also reported violence against Palestinians by Orthodox Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
“The responsibility and the lack of concern that Hamas has for the health and welfare of its own people does not free Israel from having responsibility for the destruction that it has caused,” Rabbi Blau said. “It is not a zero-sum game.”
The Jewish community is far from a monolith, and support for the tactics and mission of Israel’s war in Gaza has varied. But until recently, many mainstream Jewish organizations and leaders had defended Israel’s war against Hamas, if with growing unease.
Orthodox Jews, who tend to prioritize support for the Israeli government, and the groups that represent them have largely remained silent on the humanitarian crisis. Many of signatories on Rabbi Blau’s letter came from the liberal edge of Orthodox Jewry. They were organized by an activist and social worker, David Nyer.
The Orthodox Union, the prominent umbrella organization for Orthodox communities, was not affiliated with the letter.
The deteriorating conditions in Gaza and the denial of aid to Palestinian civilians is prompting some who consider themselves ardent supporters of Israel to publicly object to the far-right government’s stewardship of the war, arguing that it crosses a religious and moral line. The Torah and Jewish tradition command Jews to feed the poor and hungry, respect the sanctity of life and show mercy and compassion.
Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland, said he had seen other letters but hadn’t signed one until the Orthodox letter last week.
“Even in the midst of a horrific immoral war started by Hamas, it doesn’t take away from our responsibility to feed and to provide medical care for the civilian population,” he said.
Some of the rabbis’ positions echo the anguished calls of protesters and prominent academics, authors, politicians and retired military leaders in Israel, who are increasingly raising alarms about potential war crimes being carried out by the government in their name.
Ministers in the Netanyahu government who have called for Israeli settlers to expel and replace Palestinians in Gaza have “consistently morally compromised Israel’s actions,” the Union for Reform Judaism said last month.
“No one should spend the bulk of their time arguing technical definitions between starvation and pervasive hunger. The situation is dire, and it is deadly,” the group wrote. “Nor should we accept arguments that because Hamas is the primary reason many Gazans are either starving or on the verge of starving, that the Jewish State is not also culpable in this human disaster.”
The Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis, cited “the Jewish tradition” in calling on the Israeli government to “alleviate civilian suffering” and “do everything in its power” to ensure that food, water and medical supplies reached Gazans.
Even the American Jewish Committee, one of the country’s most solidly pro-Israel organizations, expressed “immense sorrow for the grave toll this war has taken on Palestinian civilians.”
Still, there is no sign of a unified public effort by the largest American Jewish institutions to pressure Israel into ending the war. Many pulpit rabbis have been reticent to speak out given the complexities of leading a congregation.
In the United States, the war has created painful rifts within the Jewish community dividing families, congregations, religious schools and community organizations. Older and more religiously observant Jews have been stauncher defenders of Israel, arguing that the country’s very survival is at stake — as well as the safety of Jews outside Israel.
But as the war has dragged on, younger and more secular Jews have recoiled from images of carnage and destruction in Gaza, seeing Israel and its government as responsible for the war’s continuation and its toll of devastation.
Many rabbis have found themselves caught in the middle. Some have shied away from discussing Israel from the pulpit or making strong public statements. Others have gingerly sought common ground, introducing new prayers reflecting on the war or hosting community conversations. Many have fiercely advocated the release of all the hostages, a position broadly shared across the Jewish world.
Some observant Jews who have felt unable to criticize Israel in their own communities called the recent response heartening.
“There’s a bit of a feedback loop: When rabbis see that more people in their communities feel comfortable speaking up, it gives them permission,” said Esther Sperber, a founder of Smol Emuni — Hebrew for “faithful left” — a group of observant Jews with progressive political views. Since the group was formed in April, nearly 3,000 people have joined its email list.
“I think that is something that many of us have been waiting for a long time for,” she added, “for the American Jewish community to feel comfortable speaking up in that way.”
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12) Israel Faces Growing Pressure Over Hostages and Gaza Offensive
As rallies spread to demand action to free captives, the country’s security cabinet was to meet for the first time since Hamas agreed to a new cease-fire proposal, officials said.
By Lara Jakes, Aug. 26, 2025
Lara Jakes writes frequently about the war in Gaza.
Israel’s security cabinet was preparing to meet on Tuesday to discuss the country’s new military offensive in Gaza, officials said, leaving the fate of a cease-fire proposal in doubt as nationwide protests flared over the intensifying war.
Four officials confirmed the meeting of the security cabinet, which includes senior ministers and is chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Two of the officials said it would focus on the military advance on Gaza City, which Mr. Netanyahu’s office has said is necessary to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas.
It was not clear whether the security cabinet would discuss a cease-fire proposal that Hamas approved last week. The meeting will be the first time the ministers have a chance to formally consider the cease-fire since Hamas backed it, but the security cabinet was not expected to endorse the proposal on Tuesday.
The four Israeli officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The cease-fire proposal, which was negotiated by Qatar and Egypt, has been described as a “partial deal” that would immediately release some of the hostages, who have been held for nearly two years; allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza; and provide a path to discussions to end the war.
Israeli officials are instead pushing ahead with the military offensive in Gaza City and have signaled that they want to negotiate a comprehensive deal that would bring home all hostages at once and disarm Hamas.
Majed al-Ansari, spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, said, “We’re still waiting for there to be an official Israeli response” on the cease-fire proposal.
“The Israeli side should truthfully bring forth its reservations to this text in front of it today,” Mr. al-Ansari told journalists in Doha, the Qatari capital.
Protests across Israel began shortly after dawn on Tuesday, aimed at pressuring Mr. Netanyahu to accept the cease-fire deal.
“Advancing the plan to conquer Gaza while there is an agreement lying on the table for the prime minister’s signature is a stab in the heart of the families and the entire nation,” said Itzik Horn, father of Iair Horn, who was released in February, and of Eitan Horn, who is still held hostage. The brothers were captured in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that started the war.
“Join us today in our collective struggle because only the people will bring them home,” Mr. Horn said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents the relatives of some of the captives.
A government spokesman, David Mencer, stopped short of saying Israel would reject the cease-fire proposal in a briefing with reporters. He added that Israel was assessing whether to work with what he described as “an Egyptian team who’s willing to engage in these negotiations.”
But, Mr. Mencer said, Mr. Netanyahu “has been crystal clear: No more piecemeal elements to a potential cease-fire, humanitarian pause.”
“Our objective is all of the hostages, a full deal,” Mr. Mencer said.
The Israeli security cabinet will meet after another deadly day in Gaza, during which military strikes on a hospital killed at least 20 people, including five journalists. Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the attack was a “tragic mishap,” and the Israeli military said it was investigating.
International humanitarian law forbids attacks on hospitals, but Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals and other protected spaces as “shields.” Hamas has denied the claims.
“We cannot say it loudly enough: STOP attacks on health care. Ceasefire now!” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said on social media. President Trump told journalists on Monday that he was “not happy” about the hospital strike, adding, “We have to end that whole nightmare.”
Mr. Trump added that he believed there were fewer than 20 hostages still alive in Gaza. The Israeli authorities have said that the bodies of 30 other hostages are also being held in Gaza. Many Israelis fear that Hamas will kill the remaining hostages if the military operation goes forward.
About 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others kidnapped during the Hamas-led assault on Israel in 2023. After nearly two years of Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas, the Gaza Strip has been largely leveled, and a famine has been declared in parts of the territory.
More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to the Gazan health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Isabel Kershner, Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
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13) Journalism in Gaza
We look at a deadly strike — and explore the challenges of reporting from the enclave.
By Jodi Rudoren, Aug. 26, 2025
I covered the last two wars in Gaza.
In Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. Credit...Abed Rahim Khatib/Picture-Alliance, via Associated Press
The video footage from Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza is horrifying. You can see rescue workers in orange vests tending to Palestinians injured in an Israeli attack. You can also see a journalist with a boom mic. Another wears a camera around his neck and holds a smartphone in his hand, documenting the scene.
And then, for a moment, you can’t see anything at all. The screen goes black as you hear the loud blast of a second strike. Five journalists were among the 20 people killed in the successive strikes on the hospital yesterday morning. In a rare statement of regret, Israel’s prime minister called it a “tragic mishap.”
Nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza, more than in any other conflict or any single place since the Committee to Protect Journalists began keeping track in the 1990s. All but a handful were Palestinians who had to balance their own families’ displacement and hunger with the mission of bearing witness amid grave danger.
Israel barred international correspondents from Gaza when the war began, except for occasional military embeds. So we’re all relying on locals to tell us what happens there.
Today’s newsletter looks at Monday’s strike on the hospital and the particular challenges of reporting from Gaza now.
‘Tragic mishap’
Israeli officials have not given a reason for the attack. Hospitals are off limits under international law, but Israel points out that Hamas operates from hospitals and other protected sites.
Human rights groups say Israel targets journalists and acts without regard to their presence in the line of fire. Israel denies those claims. Two weeks ago, Israel assassinated Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera correspondent who it said was also a member of Hamas’s armed wing. Five other journalists were killed in that strike, which targeted a press tent in northern Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unusually contrite about yesterday’s attack. He promised to investigate. “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff and all civilians,” he said. “Our war is with Hamas terrorists.” The slain journalists worked for The Associated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye.
There are more than 1,000 journalists working inside Gaza, the International Federation of Journalists estimates. Like nearly all of Gaza’s two million residents, most have slept in tents or the courtyards of hospitals or in their cars. Some have had dozens of relatives killed. Some have isolated themselves from their children because they fear being targeted as journalists.
Movement within Gaza is challenging. Israel does not allow people to cross between north and south. Journalists — like all civilians — struggle to keep up with neighborhood evacuation orders, strike warnings and the routes of aid convoys that frequently erupt in riots. Editors weigh the relative risks of every assignment, often employing security experts to help make the call. When messages go unanswered for hours — or days — everyone worries.
The recent spate of killings has had a chilling effect. “It’s reached the point where I’m scared to report,” one photographer told The Times. Another, who was wounded along with his daughter during a July strike on a nearby home, said: “There’s a lot of fear, and there’s no protection.”
No access
Israeli officials have argued that all Gazan reporters are inherently biased. But in contrast to the Israel-Hamas wars that I covered in 2012 and 2014, international correspondents are not allowed to enter Gaza except under military escort. That makes it extremely difficult to report independently. Without Gazan journalists, “there’s no other source of information from Gaza other than Hamas itself,” said Dan Perry, a longtime A.P. bureau chief in the region.
In restricting access, Israel joins a list of mostly authoritarian countries taking extreme measures to control the narrative around conflicts. Russia passed laws that can make reporting on its Ukraine war an act of treason. The Syrian regime blocked most journalists from entering the country during its civil war, forcing us and other international outlets to rely on social media accounts from inside. Myanmar and South Sudan have also historically prohibited foreign correspondents.
Last week, 28 countries — including Britain, France and Germany — called on Israel to allow “immediate independent” access to Gaza, saying journalists “play an essential role in putting the spotlight on the devastating reality of war.” Their letter followed a petition signed by more than 1,300 journalists that said the press blackout would set a precedent: “that governments and military actors, through censorship, obstruction and force, can shut down access to truth in times of war.”
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14) Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent
It was a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors who were assigned to bring charges against those arrested after President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents to Washington.
By Alan Feuer, Devlin Barrett and William K. Rashbaum, Aug. 27, 2025
Sean C. Dunn, left, who was later arrested, interacting with Border Patrol and F.B.I. agents in Washington this month. Credit...Andrew Leyden/Getty Images
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday were unable to persuade a grand jury to approve a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The grand jury’s rejection of the felony charge was a remarkable failure by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the second time in recent days that a majority of grand jurors refused to vote to indict a person accused of felony assault on a federal agent. It also amounted to a sharp rebuke by a panel of ordinary citizens against the prosecutors assigned to bring charges against people arrested after President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents to fight crime and patrol the city’s streets.
The rejection by grand jurors was particularly noteworthy given the attention paid to the case of the man who threw the sandwich, Sean C. Dunn. Video of the episode went viral on social media, senior officials talked about the case, and the administration posted footage of a large group of heavily armed law enforcement officers going to Mr. Dunn’s apartment.
It remained unclear if prosecutors planned to try again to obtain an indictment against Mr. Dunn, 37, a former Justice Department paralegal. They could also forgo seeking felony charges and refile his case as a misdemeanor, which does not require an indictment to move forward.
Mr. Dunn was initially charged on Aug. 13 in a criminal complaint accusing him of throwing a submarine sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer who was on patrol with other federal agents near the corner of 14th and U Streets in the northwest section of the capital, a popular part of the city filled with bars and restaurants.
Before he threw the sandwich, the complaint asserts, Mr. Dunn stood within inches of the officer, calling him and his colleagues “fascists” and shouting, “I don’t want you in my city!”
Mr. Dunn’s lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, declined to comment.
It is extremely unusual for prosecutors to come out of a grand jury without obtaining an indictment because they are in control of the information that grand jurors hear about a case and defendants are not allowed to have their lawyers in the room as evidence is presented.
But Mr. Trump’s decision to flood the streets of Washington with federal agents and military personnel who are generally not trained in conducting routine police stops has resulted in a flurry of defendants being charged with federal crimes that would typically be handled at the local court level, if they were filed at all.
It has also led to an increasing number of embarrassments for federal prosecutors, who have had to dismiss weak cases or reduce the charges that defendants were facing in recent days.
On Monday, for instance, prosecutors refiled a felony assault charge as a misdemeanor in the case of a woman who was accused of injuring an F.B.I. agent during a protest last month against immigration officials at the local jail in Washington.
The charges were reduced against the woman, Sidney Lori Reid, after prosecutors failed not just once but three times to obtain an indictment in the case.
That same day, at the request of prosecutors, a federal magistrate judge dismissed all charges against a man who was arrested at a Trader Joe’s grocery store last week for what the police said was possession of two handguns in his bag.
At a hearing, the magistrate judge, Zia M. Faruqui, lambasted prosecutors for having charged the man, Torez Riley, in an apparent violation of his constitutional rights.
“Lawlessness cannot come from the government,” Judge Faruqui said, according to HuffPost. “We’re pushing the boundaries here.”
Mr. Dunn is scheduled to appear next week in Federal District Court in Washington for a preliminary hearing where another magistrate judge, G. Michael Harvey, will determine if there is probable cause that a crime was committed during the sandwich-throwing incident.
Prosecutors typically have 30 days to secure an indictment after a defendant is arrested. If they fail to do so within that window, they either have to reduce the charges to a misdemeanor or dismiss the case altogether.
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15) U.S. officials are pushing for a comprehensive truce in Gaza.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, August 27, 2025
President Trump was expected to chair a meeting on Wednesday focusing on plans for postwar Gaza, according to his Middle East envoy, as the United States and Israel seek a comprehensive deal that would end the conflict and return all of the remaining Israeli hostages.
For nearly two years, international mediators have sought to pause the war in Gaza. They managed to achieve partial agreements that freed some hostages and briefly stopped the fighting in Gaza, but they did not ultimately end the war.
On Tuesday, Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, appeared to rule out any piecemeal agreement that would bring home only some of the captives in exchange for a truce.
“We think we’re going to settle this one way or another, certainly before the end of this year,” Mr. Witkoff told Fox News in an interview.
The families of Israeli hostages have long called for a “full deal” to end the war in exchange for releasing the remaining hostages. But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has set exacting conditions for any such agreement that Hamas is unlikely to accept.
Here’s what to know about the latest efforts to reach a cease-fire.
How close are we to a cease-fire in Gaza?
Months of efforts to broker a truce by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt have stalled in recent weeks.
Israel is gearing up for a full-scale offensive to take over Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of people are sheltering. Unless Hamas agrees to Israel’s terms, the Israeli military will launch the new military push in the coming weeks, Israeli officials say.
The war began nearly two years ago after a Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed roughly 1,200 people. The group also took about 250 hostages back to Gaza. Two short-lived cease-fires saw some Israeli hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Israel says 20 living hostages remain in Gaza and that Hamas is still holding the bodies of about 30 more.
But neither truce guaranteed an end to the war in Gaza. In January, Israel and Hamas agreed to a 60-day cease-fire, during which they would negotiate the terms for ending the war. But in March, with talks deadlocked, Israel resumed its military offensive.
More than 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 2023, and more than 10,000 have been killed since Israel ended the cease-fire, according to Palestinian health officials. Their data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but includes thousands of children.
On what terms will Israel end the war?
Israeli leaders have vowed that they will not end the war until they destroy Hamas in Gaza. Any cease-fire that left the group in power or allowed it to rebuild its strength would be unacceptable, they said.
Hamas has refused to release all of the remaining hostages unless Israel ends the war and withdraws its forces, however, and Israeli officials have focused on temporary truces to bring home some of the captives.
Political analysts say that Mr. Netanyahu is concerned that ending the war would destabilize his right-wing coalition, which is stacked with hard-liners who hope to fully conquer Gaza and resettle it with Jewish Israelis. Mr. Netanyahu says he has acted in Israel’s national security interests.
But earlier this month, Mr. Netanyahu laid out Israel’s conditions for an end to the war: Hamas would have to lay down its arms and end its 18-year-rule in Gaza, where Israel would maintain “security control.” He did not say who would rule Gaza instead of Hamas but suggested Israel could hand over control to unnamed “Arab forces.”
Hamas officials have said the group is willing to give up governing Gaza, but they have repeatedly rejected Israeli demands to demilitarize, which the group’s leaders would view, effectively, as surrender.
What deal has Hamas agreed to?
Last week, Hamas said it had broadly agreed to a cease-fire offer presented by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
That deal would not guarantee an end to the war but would pause fighting for 60 days, during which Hamas would release about 10 living hostages and turn over the bodies of 18 others. During the cease-fire, Israel and Hamas would again try to negotiate terms to end the war.
But since Hamas signaled that it would agree to such a deal, the Israeli government has yet to publicly respond.
Mr. Netanyahu’s critics say he has moved the goal posts. When Hamas demanded a full agreement, he focused on a cease-fire. Now that Hamas has more or less accepted a U.S.-backed truce proposal, he says he is focusing on a comprehensive deal.
The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have called for an end to the war in exchange for freeing the hostages. But they have also urged the government to accept the partial agreement to get as many living captives out alive as possible.
Within the Israeli government, Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners have pushed back against the cease-fire proposal accepted by Hamas. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli national security minister, rejected it and called for Israel to “go all the way and destroy Hamas” in Gaza.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
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16) Denmark summons an American official over espionage allegations.
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli, August 27, 2025
ednesday after allegations emerged that three Americans with close ties to President Trump were running “covert influence operations” in Greenland.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to “get” Greenland, a huge, strategically important island, mostly in the Arctic, that is a territory of Denmark.
Within hours of the allegations, published by Denmark’s main public broadcaster on Wednesday morning, the Danish Foreign Ministry summoned the current head of the embassy, the chargé d’affaires, for a meeting.
“We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland,” said Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister, in a statement on Wednesday. “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the kingdom will of course be unacceptable.”
Mr. Rasmussen called the summons a “preventive conversation.”
The allegations followed reports this spring that American intelligence agencies were stepping up spying operations in Greenland, news that had also created a stir in Denmark.
According to the report by the public broadcaster, three unnamed Americans, including two who were said to have previously worked for President Trump, have traveled back and forth to Greenland gathering information and cultivating contacts as part of the “covert influence operations.”
The report relied on anonymous sources within the Danish government, but the summoning of the envoy on Wednesday suggested that Copenhagen was taking the allegations seriously.
There was no immediate response from the Trump administration.
Denmark has repeatedly rejected Mr. Trump’s insistence that the United States take over Greenland. Mr. Trump has been pushing the idea for years, first offering to buy the island from Denmark and then, when that did not work, threatening to get it, “one way or the other,” and refusing to rule out using military force.
Greenland is mostly ice, with a population of fewer than 60,000. Many still hunt seals for food and follow a lifestyle that is part traditional Inuit culture and part modern Scandinavian.
The island is loaded with resources including critical minerals, which have attracted the interest of top officials in the Trump administration. It also served as a base for American military operations during World War II and the Cold War, and there is still a small, remote American installation on the northern side of the island.
Most Greenlanders do not want to join the United States, according to recent polls, though many have voiced aspirations to break off from Denmark and become an independent country.
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