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The Bay Area Demo Legal Collab and friends are hosting a Grand Jury education and training event. Join us for a political history of how Grand Juries are used for political repression, hear from Grand Jury resisters and learn how to plan for repression for yourself and your community.
In the Bay Area there have been recent FBI visits, Grand Jury subpoenas and investigations into our political movements. If you are contacted by the feds or other law enforcement agencies you should exercise your rights and reach out to legal support:
· You do not have to open your door or let FBI or other agents into your home without a warrant.
· You have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney: you do not have to talk to FBI or other agents or answer their questions. It can be dangerous to do so. Say, "I do not want to answer questions without my lawyer. Please slip your card under the door and my lawyer will call you."
· For legal help, call the Bay Area Federal Defense Line, 415-285-1041 and someone will return your call within 48 hours.
The Bay Area Federal Defense line can help connect you to a lawyer if you are contacted by agents related to progressive political activism. It is sponsored by the Bay Area Demo Legal Support Collaborative- a joint effort of Legal Solidarity Bay Area, NLG-SF, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Anti-Repression Committee, and Oaklaw.
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
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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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols 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 auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
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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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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Articles
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1) Netanyahu Rejects Trump’s Plan to Disarm Hamas
President Trump’s Board of Peace announced an agreement last month that aimed at Hamas giving up its weapons alongside an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Tel Aviv, Aug. 9, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel last month in Jerusalem. Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
The Israeli government has rejected a 15-point plan backed by the Trump administration aimed at disarming the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
President Trump announced the agreement between his Board of Peace and Hamas late last month, calling it a major breakthrough. Mr. Netanyahu’s office had expressed reservations, saying that the framework did “not reflect Israel’s positions,” but stopped short of outright rejecting it.
The U.S.-backed proposal envisions a phased process in which Hamas would hand over its weapons to a new Palestinian administration in Gaza in stages. In exchange, Israel would gradually withdraw from the more than half of Gaza that it still controls.
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu openly dismissed the plan, saying that Israeli forces “would not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed.” It was a rare public break with Mr. Trump, with whom Mr. Netanyahu has had a dizzying and often unpredictable partnership.
“I want to be clear here — Israel is ruling out the 15-point plan,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a meeting of government ministers, according to a readout from his office, adding that Israel had conveyed its concerns to the Trump administration.
The Israeli prime minister — who faces a tough re-election campaign this fall — promised “absolute victory” over Hamas after the group led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war in Gaza. But nearly three years later, Hamas still controls parts of the territory that it has dominated for nearly two decades.
Israel and Hamas agreed to an initial U.S.-backed cease-fire in Gaza last October, and mediators hoped that would end the war. But the truce put off many of the most difficult questions — like Hamas’s control of the enclave — for later.
Mr. Trump’s peace plan for Gaza stipulated that Hamas would give up its weapons, a core Israeli demand. But armed resistance to Israel is a central tenet for the group, making it a major sticking point.
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2) Iran, Holding Firm to Strait, Steers Trump Back to June Deal
The Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s best leverage to get Washington to release Iran’s frozen assets, lift economic sanctions and end its naval blockade.
By Steven Erlanger, Aug. 9, 2026
Steven Erlanger, based in Berlin, has written about Iran and the Middle East since the Iranian Revolution.
Iran’s demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, as laid out in a statement on Saturday, are largely what President Trump had already agreed to do in the memorandum of understanding he signed on June 17. But Iran sees control over the strait as its best chance of getting Mr. Trump to deliver on those promises — and is not willing to give it up just yet.
For Iran, analysts suggest, denying Mr. Trump the ability to claim victory over the strait is the most efficient lever to persuade him to recommit to those agreements and to implement them. Keeping the strait largely closed keeps energy prices high and is also a way to ensure that Persian Gulf states, which depend on the strait for exports, will also encourage Washington to return to the memorandum.
The level of mistrust between Iran and the United States is so high that Tehran wants to ensure it gets the economic relief it has been promised, to enable reconstruction, before it gives up even partial control over the strait, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a think tank focused on economic diplomacy.
“Iranian officials are concerned that if the strait opens, Trump would walk away from this conflict without feeling the need to resolve it,” he said. “They want to use the strait as a commitment mechanism to ensure Trump implements the various provisions of the MOU.”
Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, compared the strait to a “sword of Damocles over Trump.”
“Iran wants to front-load benefits without surrendering its main leverage, which is Hormuz,” Mr. Vaez said.
Iran’s demands were listed on Saturday by Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. He called for the United States to lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran’s oil and petrochemical exports, withdraw the U.S. military from around Iran, pay war reparations and release frozen Iranian assets, as well as end attacks on Iran’s allies in the region, including Lebanon, and threats against the country.
All those demands, except for reparations, are spelled out in the June memorandum. The demand for reparations is also a familiar one, and Iranian officials have said in local media that the issue is a bargaining chip to get as much sanctions relief from Washington as possible, Mr. Vaez said.
Iran’s negotiations with Oman on how traffic would move through the strait once it is open are essentially done, Mr. Vaez said. But Iran wants to tie the strait to the restoration of the memorandum, which would require further talks with the United States, he said. Any talks on the future of Iran’s nuclear program, which is one of the main reasons Mr. Trump said he began this war, are dependent on a restoration of the memorandum.
On Sunday, speaking to journalists, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of Iran said, “Talks with Oman on the Strait of Hormuz are progressing well and in final stages as experts are working on maps.”
He continued, “However, an agreement with Oman does not mean reopening the strait, which remains dependent on fulfilling conditions conveyed through mediators.”
Part of the confusion stems from divisions within the Iranian system about how to proceed, which has led to the emphasizing of these demands, said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, the London think tank.
Some officials see diplomacy as the best path to economic reconstruction, she said. While others, the hard-liners, “are so skeptical and paranoid that they would prefer to hold on to their leverage rather than think of the economy,” gambling that Mr. Trump will not resume the war.
But the Iranians also see Washington as divided, she said, with some officials pushing for diplomacy and others for more bombing, and Mr. Trump “blowing one way or another.” There are also those in Washington who believe that once the strait is open, Mr. Trump would be tempted to walk away from the whole issue and leave Iran’s highly enriched uranium buried in the ground.
The Iranians “don’t want to do this for free,” Ms. Vakil said. “The strait is not about fees, it’s about control and leverage for the rest of the package.”
And it is about trust, Mr. Batmanghelidj said. Iran could have made more extreme demands, he said, but has chosen to try to return to the memorandum as the basis for a permanent end to the war. “What matters less is the particular figure or amount or concession, but what the U.S. can do to prove to Iran that it can make good on any of these commitments.”
The memorandum of understanding “is the floor from which everyone will try to build a structure for a deal,” Ms. Vakil said. “But we’re far away from that.”
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3) Inside the War on Hezbollah’s Finances
Israel and the United States aren’t just targeting the Lebanese militant group’s weapons. They’re going after its money.
By Euan Ward, Eric Schmitt, Ronen Bergman and Hwaida Saad, Aug. 9, 2026
Euan Ward reviewed internal banking documents and emails and, with the reporting team, spoke with dozens of Lebanese, U.S., Israeli and Hezbollah officials.
The aftermath of a strike in March on a building in Beirut that Israel asserted was linked to Hezbollah’s financial arm. Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
When Israel launched its latest war against Hezbollah in March, the first targets the military warned it would strike were not weapons depots or underground command centers.
They were banks.
Israeli fighter jets leveled more than a dozen branches of a shadowy financial institution known as Al-Qard al-Hassan, long accused of operating as Hezbollah’s bank in Lebanon. More airstrikes followed on exchange shops that Iran used to funnel money to Hezbollah, its Lebanese proxy, and on gas stations that generated revenue for the group.
With these strikes, Israel was sending a clear message: Hezbollah’s money, not only its arsenal, was in the cross hairs.
The bombings capped the most aggressive campaign yet by Israel, the Trump administration and Lebanon’s own government to squeeze Hezbollah financially by disrupting the group’s funding channels, particularly from Iran.
For months leading up to the war, Lebanon’s government, under pressure from the Trump administration, worked to choke off the routes that the group used to receive and move money, such as Beirut’s international airport. Washington also pressed the Lebanese central bank to tighten controls over the country’s cash economy, which Hezbollah had long exploited.
Now, Hezbollah is grappling with its most severe economic strain in years, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with Lebanese, U.S. and Israeli officials and Hezbollah insiders. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing confidential intelligence assessments, diplomatic protocol or fear of retribution.
The war that began in March was the second in less than three years between Israel and Hezbollah, one of the world’s most heavily armed militias. In the previous conflict, which began in late 2023, Israel killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with many other top figures in the movement.
Seizing that moment, leaders in Washington and Israel sensed that Hezbollah was vulnerable and coordinated their efforts to clamp down on its funding. They went after the financial networks that had long underpinned the group’s power, while also turning up the pressure on Lebanon’s government to disarm Hezbollah.
While the wars with Hamas in Gaza and Iran have drawn global attention, the financial squeeze on Hezbollah represents a quieter front in a campaign by Washington and Israel aimed at crippling Tehran’s ability to project power through its proxy militias across the Middle East.
Founded in 1982, Hezbollah has long stood as the crown jewel of that network.
The group’s finances are secretive, and the full extent to which the crackdown has affected its vast operations remains unclear. Both Hezbollah and its chief backer, Iran, have also proven resilient in the face of the efforts to weaken them, able to bounce back militarily and to find new ways to keep the money flowing.
Nevertheless, Hezbollah is struggling to finance its sprawling social welfare network, which has long underpinned its support among its Shiite Muslim base in Lebanon. The group has also increasingly prioritized military spending after Israel’s offensives took a heavy toll on its capabilities.
Hezbollah’s chief spokesman, Youssef al-Zein, told The New York Times in May that the group had halted the compensation payments it had pledged to supporters as it struggles to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war.
The State Department estimated before the war that Iran’s funding to Hezbollah was about $700 million per year, providing a majority of the group’s billion-dollar annual budget. Iran has increased its financial support for Hezbollah over the past year, according to Lebanese, U.S. and Israeli officials, but the money is still not enough to cover Hezbollah’s considerable war-related expenses.
“The scale of the battle’s demands and the displacement have placed significant burdens on Hezbollah,” Mr. al-Zein said. As a result, “resources are being managed according to priority,” he added. “There is undoubtedly pressure, but Hezbollah is able to overcome it.”
U.S. Pushes Lebanon to Get Tough
The crackdown on Hezbollah’s finances began in earnest in late 2024. Soon after a U.S.-mediated cease-fire halted the Israel-Hezbollah war, the sudden fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime in neighboring Syria left the group more isolated than ever from Tehran.
Hezbollah had lost a crucial smuggling route at precisely the moment it needed money to rebuild and sustain its operations.
For decades, Hezbollah oversaw a state within a state in Lebanon — one that fed, housed and paid its loyal followers. It built a media network, established hospitals and schools, drew revenue from gas stations and pharmaceutical companies and amassed an arsenal more powerful than the state’s own military with Iran’s financial backing.
But when the Syrian land route into Lebanon was effectively severed, Iran scrambled to find other methods to finance the group, according to U.S. and Israeli officials and people familiar with Hezbollah’s finances.
Iran turned to Beirut’s airport, which for years had effectively operated under Hezbollah’s control and was used to receive Iranian funding and arms, according to a U.S. official and a senior Lebanese official briefed on the matter.
But U.S. and Israeli officials were on that trail.
Early last year, U.S. officials relayed an Israeli warning to Lebanon’s government. Iran was sending suitcases stuffed with U.S. dollars to Hezbollah on civilian flights to Beirut — in some cases carried by Iranian diplomats — according to two Lebanese officials and an Israeli official. U.S. officials declined to comment. The warning led Lebanon to suspend all flights from Iran, a measure that remains in place.
Hezbollah-affiliated airport staff were also removed from their roles, and the Lebanese authorities installed security officers who work in coordination with American officials, according to a U.S. official and two Lebanese officials.
When Ali Larijani, Iran’s national security chief, visited Lebanon last August, his meeting with Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, showed just how much had changed inside the country.
“Our message to the Iranians was very clear,” Mr. Salam said in an interview with The Times not long after the visit. “We cannot allow the Iranians to interfere in our domestic affairs,” he added.
“This wasn’t music to their ears,” he said.
Mr. Larijani was killed months later in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran.
Lebanon Tightens Oversight of the Cash Economy
Washington then turned its sights on Lebanon’s central bank, an opaque institution that had long operated with little scrutiny. Lebanon operates on a largely cash-based economy, which the U.S. Treasury Department says Hezbollah has exploited to launder illicit funds and funnel money from Iran.
Last year, the Trump administration worked to influence the appointment of a new Lebanese central bank governor, according to a senior Lebanese official briefed on the process. U.S. administration officials did not respond to requests for comment on their role.
The new governor, Karim Souaid, quickly proved himself willing to move against Hezbollah. He sidelined or fired top bank officials suspected of ties to the group, ordering his office swept for listening devices and refusing to use bank-issued computers amid fears of surveillance, according to a senior central bank official and an internal memo obtained by The Times.
The central bank did not respond to a request for comment.
With the new U.S.-backed governor in place, the central bank started an investigation into the country’s largest money service businesses and their suspected use by Hezbollah to move funds, according to internal documents seen by The Times and the senior central bank official. Since the investigation began, the Lebanese authorities have tightened oversight of money transfers.
“Hezbollah was able to continuously generate substantial amounts of money through the abuse of those networks,” Brian E. Nelson, a former top Treasury official who oversaw sanctions on the group under the Biden administration, said in an interview.
Hezbollah’s media office called the claims that it had exploited Lebanon’s cash-based economy “false and entirely baseless.”
As large money service businesses came under greater scrutiny, Hezbollah continued to rely heavily on a less regulated network of exchange houses, which has rapidly become the primary channel through which Iran finances the group, according to a senior Israeli defense official and another person familiar with Hezbollah’s finances.
The funds move from Iran through the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iraq using hawala, an informal system of broker-to-broker transfers without the underlying cash necessarily crossing borders, these two people said.
When the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Lebanese money exchangers in last November, it said Iran had already funneled around $1 billion to Hezbollah that year, largely through the hawala method.
Hassan Moukalled, an exchanger whom the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on and described as a “key Hezbollah financial adviser,” told The Times that the international pressure had made it harder to move money but that Hezbollah was adapting.
“In a country like Lebanon, where there’s a large amount of cash, there are always possibilities,” he said.
Hezbollah Feels the Pinch
As the crackdown picked up speed, Hezbollah’s welfare system began to show signs of strain. Hezbollah officials and beneficiaries told The Times that while salaries are largely still being paid to its tens of thousands of fighters, some social services have been rolled back as the group triages its spending.
Hezbollah has tried to drum up cash where it can.
In February, weeks before the latest Israel-Hezbollah war began, the Treasury Department said that senior officials from Al-Qard al-Hassan, Hezbollah’s de facto bank, had established a chain of gold-trading companies to raise cash. Ledgers reviewed by The Times and assessments by analysts who track Hezbollah’s cash economy indicated that gold sales have climbed over the past year.
One reason Hezbollah wanted to turn gold into cash was that Israeli airstrikes had destroyed much of Hezbollah’s foreign currency and gold reserves, according to Israeli and U.S. officials.
Last year, Lebanon barred the country’s banks and brokerages from dealing with Al-Qard al-Hassan, further isolating Hezbollah from the formal financial system.
Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people, many of them Hezbollah supporters, rely on Al-Qard al-Hassan for interest-free loans and war-related compensation payments. The organization describes itself as a charitable lending association rather than a bank, and its director has said that Hezbollah maintains separate organizational finances.
Still, the Trump administration is now pushing Lebanon’s government to shutter it altogether.
Hassan, a taxi driver from southern Lebanon whose daughter was married to a Hezbollah fighter killed during the recent wars, said that although she was still receiving the stipend earmarked for families of slain fighters, the organization is no longer covering some medical procedures. Like thousands of supporters whose homes were destroyed, Hassan said he was still waiting on promised financial support.
After the 2024 war, Hezbollah said Al-Qard al-Hassan would distribute $12,000 to $14,000 per household to families whose homes were destroyed. But those compensation payments, repeatedly delayed, have now been halted entirely, according to the Hezbollah spokesman, Mr. al-Zein.
“They are totally silent,” Hassan said.
Aaron Boxerman, Dayana Iwaza and Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.
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4) One Bus’s Long, Strange Trip, and Why It’s Returning to San Francisco
The psychedelic bus whose passengers hit the road and fueled ’60s counterculture is coming back out. And to its owners, America sure could use it.
By Heather Knight, Visuals by Ricardo Nagaoka, Aug. 9, 2026
Reporting from Pleasant Hill, Ore.
Sixty years ago, the bus symbolized San Francisco’s counterculture revolution, the embrace of psychedelic drugs and the live-out-loud, love-your-neighbor ethos for which the era is remembered.
Among the rolling hills outside Eugene, Ore., down a winding gravel path and inside a big barn sits a school bus built in 1939. Its once-blazing colors have faded. Its roof is crumbling. Its windows are cracked. The only regular occupants these days are insects.
It might look like a hunk of junk, but the muted technicolor splotches tell the story of one of the most exuberant periods of San Francisco history.
Sixty years ago, this bus symbolized the city’s counterculture revolution, the embrace of psychedelic drugs and the live-out-loud, love-your-neighbor ethos for which the era is remembered.
With the nation once again facing war, polarized politics and cultural battles, Zane Kesey thinks some of that old bus magic is needed. And that is why he has agreed to send the bus, the one he helped cover in swirls of Day-Glo paint when he was 3, back to the city that spawned a movement.
“I would love to see it adored again,” he said. “And for people to feel that pure, innocent love that came out of it.”
His father, Ken Kesey, who died in 2001, had just written the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” when he purchased the former school bus that a large Bay Area family had tricked out with beds, benches and a refrigerator for road trips. Mr. Kesey and his free-thinking friends, called the Merry Pranksters, painted the bus in psychedelic colors, cut a sun roof into it, added a powerful sound system and installed a balcony on top.
A sign on the back read, “Caution: Weird Load.” Above the windshield, where a bus typically displays its destination, somebody painted the misspelled word, “Furthur.” And the name for the bus stuck.
The pranksters set out on a cross-country trip, smoking weed, tripping on LSD and spreading the gospel of opening your mind, man.
The journey was documented in Tom Wolfe’s 1968 book, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” hailed by The New York Times back then as not only “the best book on the hippies,” but also “essential.” The bus and its beatnik driver, Neal Cassady, appeared in the Grateful Dead song “The Other One,” which references “Cowboy Neal at the wheel of the bus to never-ever land.”
The bus became part of the landscape of San Francisco’s counterculture movement. In 1967, Mr. Kesey drove it into Golden Gate Park for the Human Be-In, a gathering to protest a California law banning LSD. The event was a precursor to the city’s Summer of Love later that year, during which tens of thousands of young, idealistic people poured into the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and the park to protest the Vietnam War and promote hallucinogenic drugs and free love.
Those days are long gone, and San Francisco is now known more for A.I. than LSD, more for billionaires than beatniks. But Zane Kesey aims to bring some of that old flavor back — with his dad’s bus.
So later this month, it will leave the Kesey family farm in Pleasant Hill, Ore., a short drive from Eugene, for the first time since 1969. A flatbed truck will carry it down Interstate 5 to California, over the Bay Bridge and into the city. In the dead of night, when the streets are quiet, it will trundle into Golden Gate Park and into its Hall of Flowers alongside the botanical gardens.
There, starting Sept. 5, the bus will be on display as part of a show called “Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park,” put on by the Haight Street Art Center, which aims to preserve and showcase art and cultural artifacts from the city’s counterculture movement. The exhibit will also feature Jerry Garcia’s BMW, live performers, puppetry and storytelling.
Kelly Harris, the center’s executive director, visited the farm and said that while the bus looked like a relic now, it still exuded an energy that was “magical and connective.”
Roger McNamee, the chairman of the center’s board, called the bus “the Rosetta stone of San Francisco’s counterculture” and said he hoped that those who view it, including young people who have never heard of it, see parallels to today.
“There is this expectation that we will live in a world dominated by technology, dominated by capital, where everyone is expected to play their role and have very little control over their own futures,” he said in an interview, noting Mr. Kesey and his pranksters had decided not to conform and instead forged their own wild, joyful path.
“If everybody went and sat with this bus for a bit and thought about what it meant, I think they’d be happier,” Mr. McNamee said.
Zane Kesey, 65, sure hopes so. He is the kind of man who offers hugs to strangers, wears tie-dyed shirts and talks about the bus as if it were a person with feelings.
“She’s happy, you can tell,” he said, noting that the crescent-moon-shaped silver bumper, which was restored to its front for the journey to California, resembles a smile. “She’s thrilled to have people talking about her, paying attention to her and all that she meant.”
He has never known life without the bus, he said. He remembers getting blue paint in his hair when the pranksters decorated it. And he recalls riding on its balcony as Mr. Cassady practiced driving it, tearing around the bends a bit too fast.
“Dad was a magician, and the bus was just one of his tools,” Mr. Kesey said. “I didn’t know it was unusual. If you grow up in the circus, the circus is all you know.”
His father grew up in Oregon and moved to the Bay Area for a graduate writing program at Stanford University. As the 1960s wound down, he returned to his family farm to write, teach and raise his four children, and the bus has remained there ever since.
Zane Kesey gave a tour of the farm, including the small cemetery where his father and brother, Jed, are buried. Jed Kesey died at age 20 after a van carrying the University of Oregon wrestling team plunged off a cliff. Ken Kesey died at age 66.
Beyond the cemetery, past a thicket of trees and a now-dry creek bed, is the spot where the bus sat for many years, hidden from view with blackberry vines growing over it, before it was moved into the barn for protection.
According to Stephanie Kesey, Zane Kesey’s wife, the news anchor Walter Cronkite once came to the farm to film a story about the bus, and his cameraman plunged through a rickety wooden bridge and into the creek.
Officials with the Smithsonian have also visited, wanting the bus but leaving instead with a plywood sign that the Merry Pranksters used as a makeshift bulletin board on their bus trip and that was found covered in feathers in a chicken coop.
“A family of foxes occupied the rear seat of Furthur, moldering in a field, so Kesey decided to donate this sign instead of the bus,” reads the museum’s website.
Stephanie Kesey said the idea after the exhibit ends in late October is to store the bus in a Burning Man warehouse in the East Bay while a fund-raising campaign proceeds to restore it and permanently display it in San Francisco.
“I don’t think we’ll ever see it come back to the farm,” she said, adding that it was important for the public to view it again.
“Our need for color right now is very real,” she said. “And peace and love, exploration and kindness.”
Zane Kesey said his father would be a little sad that the bus is leaving the farm but thrilled that it is returning to San Francisco.
“You know San Francisco,” he said. “You leave your heart there.”
Stephanie Kesey grew a little misty and nodded.
“I think it’s going home,” she said.
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5) What to Know About the Tupac Murder, Trial and Suspect
Three decades after the rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas, a man who prosecutors say provided the murder weapon is scheduled to go to trial.
By Jonathan Abrams, Aug. 9, 2026
Tupac Shakur performing in 1994, two years before he was killed at the age of 25. Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
For decades, the identity of Tupac Shakur’s killers was one of hip-hop’s burning questions. A key figure in the East Coast-West Coast rivalry of the 1990s, Mr. Shakur was a hip-hop titan capable of penning sensitive ballads about his mother and visceral odes about his rivals when he was fatally shot in 1996.
The mystery faded in recent years as Duane Keith Davis, who goes by Keffe D, repeatedly stated that he was involved in the killing and wrote about it in “Compton Street Legend,” his 2019 memoir about gang life. His comments led the authorities to reopen the case.
Mr. Davis was arrested in September 2023 and has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with the use of a deadly weapon. He is not accused of killing Mr. Shakur, but of providing the gun that was used in the drive-by shooting.
The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday with jury selection that may take up to a week. The prosecution and the defense will then outline their arguments in opening statements.
How did Tupac die?
Shortly after leaving a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas, Mr. Shakur was in a black BMW driven by Suge Knight, a founder of Death Row Records. At about 11:15 p.m., Mr. Knight stopped the car for a red light at an intersection just outside the Strip.
A white Cadillac pulled up next to the BMW and someone began shooting into Mr. Shakur’s vehicle. Four bullets struck the rapper, who died in a hospital six days later. He was 25.
What led to the shooting?
Before the Tyson fight, Mr. Davis had given a football player $4,000 to buy clothes at a mall in Southern California before he headed to college, Denvonta Lee, an affiliate of the South Side Crips, told a grand jury.
The football player was accompanied by Crips-associated gang members, who encountered members of their rival gang, Mob Piru Bloods, which was affiliated with Mr. Knight. The crews fought over a Death Row chain. Witnesses said one of the participants was Orlando Anderson, a nephew of Mr. Davis’s.
Mr. Anderson and Mr. Davis later attended the brief heavyweight bout between Mr. Tyson and Bruce Seldon. Afterward, Mr. Anderson found himself alone near the elevators in the MGM hotel.
Mr. Shakur and other Bloods gang members recognized Mr. Anderson, approached and began punching and kicking him.
The Crips sought immediate revenge. Later that night, according to prosecutors, Mr. Anderson or another man, Deandrae Smith, fired the weapon and killed Mr. Shakur.
“He wasn’t coming back to Compton with nothing being done,” Mr. Lee told the grand jury.
Who is the suspect?
Mr. Davis, 63, is the only person to be charged in connection with Mr. Shakur’s killing. The Cadillac’s three other passengers — Mr. Anderson, Mr. Smith and Terrence Brown — are dead. Mr. Anderson was fatally shot at a Compton carwash in 1998.
In his memoir, Mr. Davis claims to be a descendant of Nat Turner, the enslaved preacher who led a rebellion in 1831. He grew up in Compton, joining the South Side Compton Crips and becoming a key figure among the gang’s hierarchy.
Mr. Davis said in 2014 that he was diagnosed with colon cancer, and has since said that he is in remission. The authorities arrested Mr. Davis on Sept. 29, 2023, outside a home in Henderson, Nev. He told the police that he had moved there because of his wife’s job opening grocery stores in the state.
What is the evidence?
Hotel security footage captures Mr. Shakur and others confronting Mr. Anderson, establishing a motive for Mr. Shakur’s killing. Authorities also recovered items like computers and hard drives from Davis’s home.
However, it is mostly Mr. Davis’s detailed descriptions of how he orchestrated Mr. Shakur’s murder as retaliation for the brawl that will be used as evidence.
In his book, Mr. Davis wrote that Mr. Shakur’s entourage “crossed the line” by beating up Mr. Anderson and that he acted as a “shot caller” who provided a Glock .40. Mr. Davis made similar accounts during recorded interviews with law enforcement and on appearances in documentaries and podcasts.
Judge Carli Kierny has ruled that the book and Mr. Davis’s related statements are admissible evidence. Mr. Davis has since said that he had not written or even read his memoir and that he had made the claims to gain fame and fortune.
“They can’t even place me out here,” Mr. Davis told ABC News in an interview from jail. “They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing.”
Who is on the witness list?
It is not clear who will ultimately be called to testify, but prosecutors have filed a long list of potential witnesses that includes Mr. Shakur’s relatives and several notable names.
Those include Mr. Knight, who was wounded in the shooting and is serving a 28-year sentence for a fatal hit-and-run, and Gov. Joe Lombardo of Nevada, the former sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
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6) The Places Where the Bombs Have Rarely Stopped Falling in Iran
While fighting has abated in much of Iran, near-constant U.S. airstrikes in Qeshm island and other southern spots have upended lives and livelihoods.
By Farnaz Fassihi and Shirin Hakim, Aug. 10, 2026
The reporters interviewed two dozen local residents, business owners, tour operators and fishermen in the south of Iran, including in Qeshm island, for this story.
“I would like the world to know that ordinary people have never wanted this war and are not on either side of it,” he said. “Yet they are the ones paying the highest price.”
The turquoise blue waters, white sandy beaches and dramatic cliffs on the island of Qeshm until recently drew millions of annual visitors and a devoted community of artists, investors and designers who helped turn the island into Iran’s hottest vacation spot.
It is so exquisite that it earned a UNESCO Global GeoPark designation because of its natural wonders, with names that seem out of a fairy tale: the Valley of Stars, the Hara Forest mangroves and the Hawksbill turtles of Shib Deraz.
But the war with the United States and Israel, now stretching into its sixth month, has upended life, leaving the once bustling destination desolate and its population struggling.
Farideh, 25, works in the tourism industry in Qeshm and said in a telephone interview from the island that everyone in the tourism sector had been affected and that the war never abated for the people of the south, unlike elsewhere in Iran, because of near-constant airstrikes. She said they lived in a perpetual state of alert.
“Many people owned boats and transported passengers, ran guesthouses, rented motorbikes to tourists or operated cafes. Almost all the cafes gradually closed, sometimes one or two a day. Some people simply packed up and left the island,” said Farideh, who, like everyone interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of retribution.
Qeshm was one of Iran’s rare economic success stories, fueled by robust domestic investment that led to development and job growth. In 2025, nearly four million visitors traveled to Qeshm, and investment in the island grew by 241 percent compared with the year before, according to government data.
The tourism sector employed about 40 percent of Qeshm’s 150,000 people, and the island’s free-trade zone, allowing for imports and exports at minimal cost and free of tax, made Qeshm a trade hub.
But that has all changed, particularly as the U.S. bombing campaign has become largely focused on the south of Iran, targeting Iranian forces, installations involved in attacking vessels in the nearby Strait of Hormuz, and critical infrastructure used by civilians.
City dwellers who once hopped to the island for weekend and winter getaways have stopped coming, people say. The traditional houses turned into stylish boutique hotels, typically booked weeks ahead, remain empty. Cafes and restaurants along the beach, known for impromptu dance parties to the beat of local drummers, are mostly closed.
The island’s other main economic activity — fishing — has come to a near halt as fishermen fear venturing into the open sea, according to interviews with nearly two dozen residents, business owners and frequent travelers to Qeshm island.
“My life has been completely disrupted,” said Ali, 48, a fisherman on Qeshm reached by phone. “I have spent my entire life fishing. It was my only source of income, but at the moment, I have no income whatsoever.”
He said fellow fishermen from nearby islands and on the coast of the mainland faced a similar predicament. “We have fear, fear, fear,” he said. “Fear of terrible events and fear of war.”
Tayeb Mofidi, a member of Qeshm’s tourism board, told local media recently that the island’s economic distress had rippled widely, from hotel owners facing bankruptcy to the local fishing industry and handicraft market. He said some people had started selling personal belongings to survive.
“The situation is simply devastating,” said Hossein, a 29-year-old teacher from Qeshm. “The regional economy has practically come to a standstill.”
Endless War
For the south of Iran, the violence that first erupted with American and Israeli airstrikes on Feb. 28 never ended, except for two intervals, even as a fragile cease-fire held in other parts of the country. The U.S. military said it had targeted military and surveillance facilities, as well as infrastructure like coastal radar towers, ports and bridges.
But bombs have also landed on tunnels, ports, railways, harbors lined with fishing boats, factories and water desalination plants, according to videos, Iranian state media and officials. The U.S. military said just last month after the cease-fire collapsed that more than 1,000 new targets were hit in the south, with the strategy being to cut off the area from resupplying.
From April 8 — when Tehran and Washington announced a cease-fire and began negotiating over an interim peace deal — until July 30, the United States attacked the south of Iran almost nightly except for from April 8 to May 7 and then again from May 7 to 25, according to a review of statements from U.S. Central Command.
The fighting has followed a predictable pattern: Iran attacks ships trying to bypass its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. bombs targets in the south of Iran, and then Iran retaliates with drones and ballistic missiles against U.S. military bases in the region.
The south of Iran is the heart of the country’s oil and gas industry and home to major ports, refineries, energy and military installations, making it a vital region for the country’s economy and security. But it is also home to millions of civilians who are increasingly bearing the economic and human toll of the war.
The effects have been felt in many southern cities. In Jask, at least 100 fishing boats in the harbor were destroyed, local officials said, affecting the livelihood of more than 3,500 people. In Kenarak, 17 fishermen have been missing since May when their boat disappeared in the Sea of Oman after warning shots from an American helicopter, the state news agency IRNA reported.
In a wildlife preserve north of Bandar Abbas, airstrikes targeting a guard station killed three family members of a park ranger, according to the minister of environment and a video published on BBC Persian showing the destroyed facility.
“Since the attacks began, there has been a constant feeling of uncertainty,” said Reza, 28, a resident in Bandar Abbas, the largest city in southern Iran. “Even when Bandar Abbas itself is not being attacked, people are still worried because no one knows what might happen next.”
Fatemeh, 35, a mother of two small children in the city of Lar, close to Iran’s southern coast, said the repeated airstrikes and gnawing sense of uncertainty were taking a toll on her mental health. She said she has had panic attacks, shortness of breath and a feeling of hopelessness.
“Every time I hear the word ‘war,’ I immediately panic, and it continues for several days,” said Fatemeh. She added, “We have no way out. In front of us is an enemy attacking, and behind us a government that is brutal and making life difficult for people.”
For the residents of Qeshm, July 30 marked the moment when the abstract fear evoked by explosions in the distance became a tangible threat of being killed in your sleep.
In the early hours of that day, an enormous explosion rocked the island, rattling walls and windows like an earthquake. When neighbors and rescue workers arrived at the scene of the blast, they found a modest family house of mud bricks reduced to a pile of debris and a family of five trapped under the rubble. The bomb had created a giant crater.
A New York Times visual investigation found that the U.S. had dropped a 2,000-pound bomb, one of the most powerful weapons used in this war, on the house, located in a densely populated residential area in the village of Chah-Tangou. There were no military facilities in its vicinity.
The airstrike killed the father and mother and their 2-year-old son. It injured their two other sons, 8 and 14, according to official reports. The father, Gheysar Jaffari, had worked as a taxi driver. He had been struggling to find work and make ends meet during the war, according to comments by his relatives to Iran’s top newspaper Shargh.
“Under the blazing 125-degree heat, he drove around all day looking for a passenger,” Mr. Jaffari’s cousin told Shargh.
The Highest Price
Amir, 45, a businessman from Tehran, moved to Qeshm about 10 years ago with his family, drawn to the island by its slower pace of life, natural beauty and economic opportunities. He bought a property, renovated it and then began a business of converting homes into trendy hotels. He said there were challenges: a poor road network, inadequate medical care and spotty internet.
But the past year, Amir said, has been the hardest. First, the government shut down the internet to quell protests during a nationwide uprising crushed by brutal force in January, disrupting advertising and booking, which is mainly done through social media. Then came the war in February at the peak of the tourism season, and the financial losses piled up.
Daily power and water cuts, amid extreme heat, and travel difficulties because of damage to infrastructure have added to the misery, Amir said.
“I would like the world to know that ordinary people have never wanted this war and are not on either side of it,” he said. “Yet they are the ones paying the highest price.”
Abbas, 38, a surfer, tour guide and boat operator, said the island, its waters and its beaches were his home, and like many native residents, he could never leave it behind no matter how bad it gets. But he said it pained him to watch the years of work building a thriving economy slip away.
“People are deeply frightened, and feeling everyone else’s fear affects me too,” Abbas said. “It weighs on me.”
“I swear we are exhausted,” he said. “The best thing the government can do is make peace with the world.”
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7) Flock Cameras Can Track Every Car in America. Police Love Them. Citizens Don’t.
In Texas, there’s one thing liberals and conservatives agree on: They don’t want cameras trained on their cars.
By Fernando Alfonso III and Kashmir Hill, Aug. 10, 2026
Fernando Alfonso III, Texas editor, reported from Carrollton and Houston. Kashmir Hill is a technology journalist.
Driving down a road lined with strip malls outside Dallas, Philip, a 27-year-old cellphone tower repairman, was describing the exquisite piquancy of his homegrown hot peppers when he stopped midsentence.
“Flock!” he said, pointing to a traffic light pole at an intersection. Attached to it was a small black box with a camera that takes photos as cars drive by. It was a license plate reader made by Flock Safety, based in Atlanta, that alerts law enforcement when it spots wanted cars and allows officers to see where cars of interest have been.
Philip pulled into a strip mall, parked outside a dentist’s office and opened an app on his phone. The app, DeFlock, invites people to “view and contribute to an open map of public mass surveillance devices.” He zoomed in on the intersection on the digital map and plotted the location of the camera. Philip asked that his full name be withheld, because Flock’s chief executive, Garrett Langley, once called DeFlock “terroristic.”
To Philip, DeFlock is about pushing against the proliferation of cameras that capture the ordinary moments of ordinary people.
“And what is my way of pushing back? Education. Data,” Philip said. “Am I just being paranoid? No, they’re actually everywhere.”
Flock’s 120,000 cameras can be found alongside roads in every state but Alaska, allowing law enforcement officers to see within seconds where a car might be, and where it has been. The company has contracts with 7,000 law enforcement agencies, which is 40 percent of all departments in the United States.
Other companies sell license plate tracking services, but Flock, a private company valued at $8.4 billion, has become a lightning rod because of its rapid expansion, the ubiquity of its cameras, and a number of controversies involving its product.
A Texas officer used Flock’s cameras to track a woman across state lines who was suspected of self-administering an abortion. Officers across the country have abused their access to Flock’s cameras, including to track romantic partners, resulting in discipline and termination. Los Angeles and Dayton, Ohio, among other cities, recently suspended their contracts with Flock to prevent immigration authorities from accessing data from the cameras. Dayton resorted to covering the cameras with trash bags. In cities like Houston, Oakland, Calif., and Grand Junction, Colo., residents have taken matters into their own hands, with police reports and surveillance footage documenting Flock cameras being cut down, splattered with paint and even shot.
Flock’s pitch is simple: It can help the police find stolen cars, locate wanted people and solve crimes. One license-plate reader led to the arrest in Florida of a man who had threatened a mass shooting in Louisiana; another helped police find the man eventually convicted in an assassination attempt against Donald J. Trump.
But as its cameras have spread, so has the opposition. Americans are accustomed to surveillance cameras. They put them on their doorbells and tolerate them on street corners, offices and restaurants. What sets Flock’s cameras apart are that they are connected, creating a vast, searchable national network — often surprising residents who didn’t realize their local governments had signed up for them and raising fears of Big Brother-style surveillance. And they are hard to miss once you start noticing them.
“We all want, expect and deserve privacy. The problem is that we typically cannot feel, see, or experience the loss as it is happening,” said Danielle Citron, a professor of law at the University of Virginia. “Seeing those cameras is a punch in the gut — we see them and it says you have no room to just be, to go about your day feeling lost in the crowd.”
As Flock built one of the nation’s largest vehicle-tracking networks, Texas became a bellwether both for law enforcement’s adoption of the technology and for the growing backlash. Flock started selling its services to police departments in early 2020, installing a few dozen cameras in a suburb of Houston. Six years later, 700 departments in Texas contract with Flock. The opposition includes liberals worried about government surveillance, conservatives skeptical of expanding state power and privacy-conscious citizens and lawmakers concerned about how the network could be abused.
“It’s going to be an ongoing debate probably forever,” Mr. Langley, Flock’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We should have this debate and we should continue to evolve our point of view as a society of what we’re comfortable with and what level of safety we want.”
Citizens Against Surveillance
In late May, Hannah Foust’s neighborhood group chat was abuzz about a license plate reader that had been installed on her street in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
Then another camera was spotted outside the recreation center, across from the community pool.
“All of us really got the ick,” Ms. Foust, 41, said.
Ms. Foust, who said she leans left politically, began posting about license plate readers on Reddit groups devoted to Dallas and Carrollton and started a digital petition to have the cameras removed from her community. By late July, she had collected roughly 800 signatures from neighbors, some of whom also spoke out against the cameras at a Carrollton City Council meeting on July 24.
“I’m very much your average American. I vote, but I’ve never organized or been really an activist in any way,” said Ms. Foust, who works in human resources and has two children. “I’m not committing any crimes, but I don’t want necessarily anyone, let alone government agencies or a private company, to have a view of where I drop off my kids, or what route is my favorite for my commute, or whether I prefer H-E-B or Kroger, or what house of worship I attend.”
Noticing cameras and posting about them on Reddit led a software engineer named Will Freeman to create DeFlock in 2024. He was on a road trip from the West Coast to Alabama and kept seeing cameras along the way. He decided to create a crowdsourced map to plot the devices in Huntsville, Ala., where he was living, and the project went viral. The app has been downloaded by more than 350,000 people, Mr. Freeman said, and the site says it has mapped 125,000 license-plate readers made by Flock and other companies.
Mr. Freeman, 27, now lives in Boulder, Colo., which also has a contract with Flock. The city says its 31 cameras have led to a 34.5 percent decline in motor vehicle theft and helped solve other crimes. Mr. Freeman, however, said he did not think that privacy should be sacrificed for safety. The cameras create an infrastructure for the government to track and harass critics, he said, even if most officers aren’t abusing their access.
Wanting to know when his own vehicle had been spotted, Mr. Freeman requested those records from the Boulder Police Department, which refused to provide them. In May, he filed a lawsuit against the city, saying the cameras created an unconstitutional “warrantless surveillance dragnet.” (The city declined to comment on the suit, but in legal filings has said “there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on publicly owned streets and sidewalks.”)
“It feels bad to always be watched and scrutinized,” Mr. Freeman said.
Across Texas, the opposition to the cameras has been bipartisan. Flock’s contracts have been canceled in liberal Austin as well as in Bandera, a conservative Hill Country town of about 900 people. The city said at least one of its cameras was vandalized.
In Congress, Keith Self, a Republican whose district lies north of Dallas, introduced a bill in July that would require federal law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing or querying data collected by state and local surveillance systems, license plate readers among them.
“We have a surveillance state happening,” said Mr. Self, who is also a retired Army colonel and former county judge. “This is not a left issue, not a right issue. It is a personal issue.”
Surveillance as a Service
Mr. Langley, 39, started Flock because he was troubled by how easy it was to break into cars in his neighborhood in Atlanta. When he asked police why they were unable to catch the thieves, Mr. Langley said he was told they needed the perpetrators’ license plate numbers.
Mr. Langley, an electrical engineer, teamed up with two fellow Georgia Tech graduates to create a solution: cheap internet-connected cameras, powered by solar panels and paired with software to extract license plate numbers from photos.
When Flock was founded in 2017, it sold devices largely to homeowners’ associations. But in 2020, it began working with police departments. That year, Mr. Langley said, his S.U.V. was stolen, and Flock cameras helped locate it.
Flock charges around $3,000 per camera per year, Mr. Langley said. In exchange, the company installs and maintains the cameras, provides a searchable database of every vehicle that passes them, and sends alerts if the cameras spot cars on a so-called hot list — like the F.B.I.’s database of stolen vehicles and license plate numbers associated with missing or wanted people. In recent years, as artificial intelligence has advanced, Flock has added the ability to search for cars based on their make, type, color, or unique details, such as bumper stickers or visible damage.
Flock showed The New York Times how its technology works. After logging into the system, users must acknowledge they cannot search for license plates related to “reproductive care” offenses in 17 states and Washington, D.C. (Those places have expressly prohibited those searches, though a Flock spokeswoman said officers could do searches related to abortions in states only where abortion is illegal.) There is a similar warning about nine states that prohibit searching their cameras for “immigration enforcement.”
To perform a search, officers specify the type of crime, from animal cruelty to homicide. They then enter a license plate number or description of the vehicle, and a location, or simply go with the default: “All network(s) selected.” A search returns images of cars that are a match, along with exactly when they were spotted, where and on which law enforcement agency’s cameras. By default, the photos the cameras take are deleted after 30 days, though departments can change how long they retain them.
If a police department wants access to other cameras across the state or the country, it has to share access to its own. Most agencies search and share information nationally.
“Criminals don’t care where cities start and stop,” Mr. Langley said. “You can share with no one, and we have plenty of customers who do that.”
“You’ll solve less crime, but that’s OK,” he added.
Last year, when he was asked about the spreading opposition to Flock in a video interview with Forbes, Mr. Langley said he respected groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, that are fighting the company in court, but called citizen groups like DeFlock “terroristic organizations” whose “primary motivation is chaos.”
This month, Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator, and The Blaze, a far-right news outlet, mocked Mr. Langley’s equating a crowdsourced mapping project with terrorism.
Mr. Carlson said he had only recently become aware of the scale of Flock’s network after visiting DeFlock, which he told The Times had left him “horrified.” He said he was surprised such an expansive surveillance system had grown with so little public attention.
“Whether you’re libertarian, conservative, MAGA, progressive, everybody has an objection to Flock,” said Chad Marlow of the A.C.L.U.
Mr. Langley has since apologized for the terrorism comment. “Seeing people become active in their local communities is broadly really good,” he said in an interview.
Safety v. Privacy
Texas opposition may be attracting attention, but it hasn’t slowed Flock’s growth. Across the state, new cities are signing contracts faster than others are canceling them, said Jennifer Szimanski, a spokeswoman for the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, a police union that represents more than 28,000 officers.
The reason, she said, is impressive results. Some Texas police departments recovered stolen vehicles by the hundreds after installing the cameras, she said, and in smaller municipalities, vehicle burglaries have all but stopped. Despite community complaints, officials in Harris County, which operates 480 cameras, and Carrollton — which operates 67 license-plate readers, including 19 from Flock — are not changing their minds about the cameras.
“If a supplemental investigative tool helps our officers solve crimes more effectively, provides value to our residents, and can be managed responsibly, then it’s something we’ll continue to consider,” said Carrollton’s mayor, Steve Babick.
Independent research on the cameras’ efficacy is sparse. A 2024 study found that Flock’s cameras increased officers’ case clearance rates by 9 percent — but 404 Media, among others, criticized the findings because Flock had partnered with the researchers and chose the agencies that were part of the study.
States are starting to create rules for how police can use the technology. To address the concern about rogue officers abusing the system, 13 states now have laws requiring audits of license plate reader systems to detect misuse by officers, according to a legislation tracker created by the Policing Project at the New York University School of Law.
Texas is not among them. Ms. Szimanski said that the risk of Texas officers’ misusing the system was no greater than with the other databases they have access to, and that Flock provides a log of every search, who conducted it and why.
Being able to search all the cars on the road across the country is certainly convenient for authorities, but Barry Friedman, a law professor and faculty director of the Policing Project, argues that creating a vast database of Americans’ movements is not constitutional.
“This is indiscriminate data collection, not targeting specific crimes,” Mr. Friedman said. “The reason we have a Fourth Amendment is that they didn’t think the government should just be able to go after anybody even if they did nothing wrong.”
Courts have thus far disagreed with that reading, but have signaled that as the technology expands, that could change. In one case, in which residents sued Norfolk, Va., for installing 172 Flock cameras, a federal judge ruled that license plate readers might one day become so ubiquitous that their use amounts to an unconstitutional dragnet search, but “not today.”
“I don’t think judges understand the country is now blanketed with these things and they’re all interconnected,” said Sid Thaxter, of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
The DeFlock map allows people to see where cameras are positioned along their regular driving routes, and it has been a “really valuable tool” for privacy groups and lawyers arguing against the spread of these cameras, Mr. Thaxter said. But volunteers can do only so much to document the spread of the surveillance state.
Philip, the DeFlock contributor from the Dallas suburbs, estimates he has mapped around 200 cameras in his community, a figure he called “both a lot and not a lot.”
He repairs radios on cellphone towers for a living, so he is “always looking around at infrastructure.” On his short commute to work, he estimates he passes nine Flock cameras.
Plotting cameras on a map is his form of protest. He has little interest in attending city council meetings, nor in destroying cameras.
“It’s kind of a hydra situation,” he said. “You chop down one, and 20 more take its place.”
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8) This Castro Is a Key Envoy to Trump. Could He Be Cuba’s Next Leader?
The Castro family envoy, Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro, who has been in talks with the Trump administration, was once named in a case targeting a Cuban smuggling ring.
By David C. Adams and Frances Robles, Reporting from Florida, Aug. 11, 2026
Raúl Castro, with his grandson and bodyguard Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro, during an official ceremony in Paris in 2016. Francois Mori/Associated Press
Raúl Castro was on an official state visit in Paris a decade ago as Cuba’s president when a hulky bodyguard in his entourage stood out.
The man kept so close to Mr. Castro while they walked the red carpet at the Élysée Palace that a member of the French honor guard tried pulling him back.
Even François Hollande, France’s president at the time, waved him back.
The security escort who kept inserting himself in official photos was none other than Mr. Castro’s grandson, Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro, a colonel in the interior ministry.
Today, the once largely unknown bodyguard has become a key figure in Cuba’s talks with the United States, even though he has never held public office. His name has even come up as someone the Trump administration might find acceptable to become Cuba’s next leader.
“He exemplifies how that government operates,” said Tim Rieser, a foreign policy aide to former Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, who met Mr. Rodríguez Castro several times. “It’s a lot like a family business, and so someone who was described to us a decade ago as President Castro’s bodyguard has for whatever reason, by whatever means, become something much more than that.”
But Mr. Rodríguez Castro, who has met with some of the most senior people in the Trump administration, may have also used his considerable influence to protect a large-scale smuggling operation that moved people out of Cuba and brought illicit goods into the country, according to interviews and court records.
Mr. Rodríguez Castro, 42, was accused of helping funnel goods purchased with stolen credit cards into the country, receiving luxury items as bribes and allowing wanted criminals to roam free on the island, the interviews and court records show.
The scheme was the target of a federal investigation that resulted in the convictions of at least 21 people and decades-long sentences. Mr. Rodríguez Castro has not been charged.
This article is based on court documents and interviews with nearly a dozen people who either know Mr. Rodríguez Castro personally, including one person close to the U.S. negotiations, or are familiar with the criminal investigation in which his name surfaced.
Mr. Rodríguez Castro did not respond to requests for an interview sent through formal diplomatic channels and a mutual acquaintance. A top Cuban official called the accusations slanderous.
Mr. Rodríguez Castro’s prominent role in the discussions with the Trump administration seemed to astound some Cuban officials who viewed him as merely a caretaker for his grandfather.
Still, an official with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba took to social media last month to say Mr. Rodríguez Castro had been the subject of “character assassination” in the U.S. media, which was aimed at making the Cuban government appear divided.
As he helps Cuba’s government try to survive and navigate its standoff with the United States, those who have spoken to Mr. Rodríguez Castro say he has made no secret of his ultimate ambition to be his country’s next president — though it is unclear whether he has the internal support to do so.
The Cuban Smugglers
The human smuggling network was known as the Cuban Mafia in Quintana Roo; its name came from the state in eastern Mexico where it was based.
The ring used boats stolen from Florida to sneak people out of Cuba who wanted to reach the United States, according to the Justice Department and members of the criminal gang who cooperated with prosecutors.
The Cuban migrants would be taken to Mexico, where they were held in safe houses until they paid smuggling fees, and were tortured if they didn’t, according to court testimony.
Two defendants in the case implicated Mr. Rodríguez Castro as a collaborator in the organization, according to court records and interviews with several people familiar with the investigation. Both defendants, José Miguel González Vidal and Reynaldo Crespo Márquez, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to long prison terms for their roles in the scheme.
Mr. Rodríguez Castro arranged safe passage for the group into and out of Cuba, a leader of the group told U.S. prosecutors, several people familiar with the case said. Mr. Rodríguez Castro’s name came up in a U.S. Department of Justice case in 2020 against the group, according to evidence gathered by prosecutors and one of the people familiar with the investigation.
The people who know Mr. Rodríguez Castro spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships with Cuban government officials, and those familiar with the criminal case did so to discuss sensitive legal matters they were not authorized to disclose.
It is unclear whether Mr. Rodríguez Castro is a target of the ongoing investigation. The Justice Department declined to comment.
The smuggling ring stole vessels from South Florida to bribe foreign officials, according to an admission statement filed in federal court as part of a guilty plea signed by Mr. González Vidal, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The statement does not name Mr. Rodríguez Castro.
But Mr. González Vidal and another defendant told U.S. authorities that Mr. Rodríguez Castro was among the foreign officials who received a stolen boat, court records show.
The issue was also discussed in open court.
During a September 2023 trial in Miami, a defense lawyer asked Mr. Crespo, who was a cooperating witness, about a meeting in which he told prosecutors that Mr. González Vidal and Mr. Rodríguez Castro had discussed sending him a boat in Cuba. Mr. Crespo is serving 20 years in prison for his role in the smuggling operation.
Mr. González-Vidal said the men who smuggled migrants and goods bribed Mr. Rodríguez Castro to keep the Cuban Coast Guard and Customs away, three of the people said.
In exchange for allowing merchandise that the smuggling network bought in Mexico with stolen credit cards to clear Cuban customs, Mr. Rodríguez Castro was given a Fountain 38 high-performance boat and various other gifts, including a Rolex watch, Suzuki motorbike and Louis Vuitton clothes, Mr. González Vidal claimed.
The products were later sold in Cuban government stores, he said.
Mr. González Vidal’s account was supported by text and voice mail messages that the F.B.I. extracted from the cellphones of members of the smuggling ring, the people familiar with the case said.
Mr. González Vidal’s lawyer, Juan D. Berrios, declined to comment.
Mr. Rodríguez Castro, in a recent interview with USA Today, which some critics took to be self-promotional, he said he had no wealth of his own. “Wealthy friends and admirers” had paid for fashionable clothes, luxury foreign vehicles and expensive overseas trips, he said.
A Slanderous Accusation
Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos R. Fernández de Cossío, in an interview with The Times in Havana, called the accusations against Mr. Rodríguez Castro involving the smuggling ring “slander.”
He said that for several years during migration talks with the United States, Cuban officials had repeatedly raised concerns about widespread smuggling of Cubans through Central America and Mexico.
They received no response, he said.
“We alerted them. Meeting after meeting: ‘Have you taken action? What have you done?’” Mr. Fernández de Cossío said. “I cannot doubt whatsoever that there are organizations in Mexico, in Central America and in other parts of Latin America, which involve Cubans that have been making money and had a business of smuggling aliens to the United States.
“But I can assure you,” he added, “there’s no link with the Cuban government.”
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
One American close to the U.S.-Cuba discussions said that, despite the allegations of smuggling, Mr. Rodríguez Castro was considered a worthy representative to interact with the Trump administration because his fondness for material goods suggested he was open to capitalist ideas.
Mr. Rodríguez Castro is not apologetic about his lifestyle.
“It pains me that many people can’t live the way I do,” Mr. Rodríguez Castro told USA Today. “And I’m working every day to change that situation.”
A Golden Boy of Cuba’s Elite
Mr. Rodríguez Castro is the son of Raúl Castro’s eldest daughter, Déborah Castro Espín, and the late Gen. Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, a powerful figure who helped establish Cuba’s military conglomerate, known as GAESA, which manages much of Cuba’s ailing economy.
His parents had a troubled marriage, so Mr. Rodríguez Castro, who is also known as “Raulito,” spent much of his youth at his grandparents’ house, several people who knew him in his youth said. His nickname, which is how he is commonly known, is “el Cangrejo,” meaning “the crab,” and was given to him because he was born with an extra finger on one hand.
Despite his revolutionary roots, he is descended from an upper-class family — his grandmother was an heir to the Bacardi rum fortune. He enjoyed extreme sports, music with racy lyrics and was less polished than other members of Cuba’s revolutionary elite.
He studied economics at the University of Havana, where he received credit for traveling with his grandfather, said Juan Juan Almeida, the exiled son of a hero of the 1959 Cuban revolution who was close to the Castro family for many years.
He described Mr. Rodríguez Castro as affectionate and friendly.
“He is better known outside Cuba than inside,” he said. “Cangrejo and all the Castros know that their power only lasts until the day his grandfather dies.”
Mr. Rodríguez Castro, who is often photographed wearing expensive designer clothes, was widely known during his younger years for being spotted in videos partying at concerts, hanging out with the reggaeton duo Gente de Zona and on boats.
One family member said he sometimes traveled around Havana in one of his grandfather’s BMWs, which irked some who thought it projected a bad image in a country where people suffer severe food, medicine and power shortages.
Mr. Rodríguez Castro has enjoyed extraordinary access, attending virtually every one of his grandfather’s meetings, including with the late Pope Francis.
After serving as a bodyguard, he became more of a personal assistant for Mr. Castro, 95, who was vice president for decades and became president in 2006 when his brother Fidel fell ill. While he no longer holds any official government post, Mr. Castro is widely considered the most powerful person in Cuba.
After Cuba began secret meetings with the United States this year seeking to end sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, Mr. Rodríguez Castro met separately with C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (The C.I.A. has covertly created a task force as part of the U.S. campaign to pressure Cuba into political, economic and leadership change, The Times reported.)
Arturo Lopez-Levy, a research associate at the University of Denver who is a second cousin to Mr. Rodríguez Castro, said much of the criticism of his relative is based on videos of rowdy behavior that circulated more than a decade ago.
He has not spoken to his cousin in about seven or eight years, he said, but his public persona appears to have changed considerably.
“The relationship with his grandfather has changed from a young man who was quite immature to someone with political knowledge and connection to his grandfather — not only for the protection of his life, but politically,” said Mr. Lopez-Levy, a former analyst at Cuba’s Ministry of Interior. “He has not been outside the door; he has been inside every meeting.”
Reporting was contributed by David Ovalle and Jack Nicas. Seamus Hughes and Kristen Noyes contributed research.
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9) What to Know About the Cuban Mafia in Quintana Roo
A group of Cuban men in Mexico was charged with smuggling people to the United States. One of its leaders said Raúl Castro’s grandson helped, according to interviews and court records.
By David C. Adams and Frances Robles, Reporting from Florida, Aug. 11, 2026
The former Los Angeles Dodgers player Yasiel Puig was one of the Cubans smuggled into the United States by a criminal group known as the Cuban Mafia. Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
For years, luxury boats and marine equipment were going missing from southwest Florida cities, from Sarasota to Naples to Marco Island.
Even after three South Florida men were arrested in January 2010 in Sarasota in a sting to trap thieves stealing GPS devices, it would take a decade for federal authorities to link those cases to a major conspiracy that trafficked people and stolen vessels between Cuba, Mexico and the United States.
It became the focus of an F.B.I. and Homeland Security Investigations task force known as Operation Sisyphus. Eventually Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro, a grandson of former Cuban president Raúl Castro, was named as someone who helped the Quintana Roo mafia from inside Cuba, though he has not been charged.
Did anyone get caught?
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted several Cubans based in Mexico suspected of being members of a criminal group known as the Cuban Mafia in Quintana Roo, a state in eastern Mexico. They were accused of stealing boats in southwest Florida as far back as 2009 and using them to smuggle thousands of migrants out of Cuba to Mexico and ultimately the United States.
Among the migrants smuggled were professional baseball players, including shortstop Adeiny Hechavarría, who played for a variety of teams, and Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Yasiel Puig.
Did anyone get hurt?
About 25 people died during the voyages, according to court documents.
Migrants who were trafficked and could not pay the $10,000 smuggling fee were held captive in Mexico, tortured with Tasers, and their families were extorted, prosecutors said. Some women were forced to work in strip clubs, according to court records.
The traffickers would contact the victims’ relatives and threaten to torture, starve and kill their victims if the relatives refused to pay, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Those who paid the fee were sent by bus to the U.S.-Mexico border and coached on how to request political asylum.
“We would do physical punishment,” one of the traffickers, Reynaldo Crespo Márquez, testified in 2023 after pleading guilty in U.S. federal court in Miami. “Sometimes they were beaten up with a wooden board or with a Taser gun.”
Among other schemes prosecutors discovered: buying goods with stolen credit cards and smuggling them into Cuba for sale at Cuban government stores. The defendants were also charged with stealing more than 600 outboard boat engines and vessels from the Tampa area and shipping them to the migrant smugglers in Quintana Roo.
“These guys were the real pirates of the Caribbean,” said David Bolton, a veteran private investigator who said he stumbled upon the operation while working on an unrelated case and brought the issue to federal authorities.
He described the members as “ruthless killers.”
In 2009, several group members conspired to kidnap and kill a man in a dispute involving a Mexican cartel called the Zetas. His body was dismembered and disposed of at sea, according to court documents.
Members of the organization also sought to profit from drug trafficking and fraud schemes, which included smuggling boats, cars and trucks, the Justice Department said. Some boats were sold to pay off foreign officials or used as bribes, documents show.
How is the grandson of former Cuban president Raúl Castro involved?
At least six co-defendants pleaded guilty, including José Miguel González Vidal, 38.
Mr. González Vidal later said he gave a boat to Mr. Rodríguez Castro, former Cuban president Raúl Castro’s grandson, court records show.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security called Mr. González Vidal “a career criminal” whose criminal record included multiple convictions for false imprisonment, robbery, grand theft, larceny and illegal use of credit cards. He illegally entered the United States at least twice, Homeland Security said.
A dual Cuban-Spanish citizen, he had been deported to Spain only to be extradited back to Florida to face federal RICO conspiracy charges.
He pleaded guilty in late 2023 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Court records show a federal judge recently sealed his closed case, which is sometimes done when a defendant is cooperating with prosecutors. His lawyer, Juan D. Berrios, declined to comment.
The Cuban government called the accusations involving Mr. Rodríguez Castro “slander,” and Mr. Rodríguez Castro did not respond to requests for comment.
The defendant who Mr. Crespo Márquez had testified against, Javier Hernández, of Miami Beach, was found guilty for his role in the conspiracy — largely smuggling boats to Mexico — and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
In April, Mexican authorities announced they had arrested a key financier of the Quinta Roo group, Remigio Valdez-Lao, 59, who is expected to face extradition. The New York Times was unable to determine whether Mr. Valdez-Lao was represented by a lawyer.
Mr. Valdez-Lao’s name had surfaced before: he was among those arrested in 2010 in Sarasota.
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10_ Heat, Fire, Smoke and Storms Are Wreaking Havoc on the Economy
Repeated heat waves, wildfires, droughts and storms are solidifying the understanding that new investments are unavoidable.
By Lydia DePillis, Aug. 11, 2026
“Cake is just not meant for extreme weather,” Stephanie Hart, in a dark shirt, said. Since a power outage in June led to losses for her Chicago bakery, she has been freezing fewer cakes and making more of them to order. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
In early June, the power went out at Stephanie Hart’s bakery on Chicago’s South Side, during an intense storm and a suffocating heat wave.
Five hundred ice cream bars meant for a restaurant customer had already perished, along with chocolate candies, and $30,000 worth of cakes in her walk-in freezer were at risk.
Ms. Hart quickly directed her staff to pack the freezer with dry ice, which cost $1,700. Then she began calling every politician she knew. “Every good-will thing I’ve ever done, I called it in,” Ms. Hart said. Finally, it worked: The utility turned her power back on the next day, and her cakes were saved.
Ms. Hart was relieved. But she’s not resting easy — the power outages that have followed more frequent summer storms in Chicago could still wipe out her inventory. So she has been making more of her cakes to order, which means slower delivery times and more intermittent work. For next summer, she’s contemplating an expensive backup generator.
“That was a lot of pressure, and who knows if I’m going to able to pull it off again?” Ms. Hart said. “Cake is just not meant for extreme weather.”
Take that stress and that expense and multiply them by thousands to understand what this summer has been like just in Chicago, where torrential rain has repeatedly brought down power lines to crash a grid already strained by the relentless need for air-conditioning.
Multiply them by millions to understand approximately the financial toll this brutal summer of heat, fires, smoke and storms has taken on businesses and households around the world. This July was the hottest month on record in the contiguous United States, according to federal data, and Western Europe experienced its hottest June-to-July average ever recorded.
Economists have long studied the worsening impact of climate change on economic growth, inflation and employment. Most estimates for damage caused to date have been moderate, while projections for damage over the long run become more drastic. But the past year has delivered climate-related shocks that are becoming impossible for businesses to avoid.
“Without these reoccurring annual events, it’s easy to say, ‘It’s part of our enterprise risk-management system, so we’re going to get to this,’” said Alexander Heil, a climate-focused economist at the Conference Board. “Nothing focuses the attention more than an emergency.”
Higher Costs, Less Income
Consider the effects of heat in isolation, without accounting for the attendant wildfires and storms. Allianz Research, an arm of the global insurance company, analyzed the likely economic impact over the next five years if they looked like the five hottest years from 2014 to 2024. The economic output of the most exposed countries, including France, Japan, Italy, Germany and Spain, would be 5 to 7 percent lower than their base-line trajectories by 2030.
There are also serious fiscal consequences. Heat hits tax revenues by reducing production and consumption, and requires more spending on damaged infrastructure. Across Europe, the Allianz Research authors found that annual government deficits would rise by 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, potentially destabilizing the debt loads of the worst-affected countries.
The projection is likely conservative. “When I proposed the scenario, some people said, ‘You are taking the five maximum heat waves during the last 10 years — this is a bit of a pessimistic scenario,’” said Hazem Krichene, an Allianz Research climate economist who started working on the project last fall. “Already 2026 is going higher than that.”
Heat affects economies through two main channels. The first is energy costs. Nearly all forms of generating electricity — solar panels, wind turbines, dams, gas turbines — operate less efficiently in extremely high temperatures. At the same time, outside of the northernmost nations, energy demand increases as households and businesses crank up their air-conditioning. Both of those dynamics boost prices and raise the risk of outages.
The second channel is productivity. Construction sites have to shorten their hours, and sleep suffers. When schools and child care facilities can’t operate, parents can’t get to their jobs. One recent study found that every day of school-based child care canceled because of wildfire smoke reduces the probability of employment by 1 percent for mothers of young children, likely because inflexible workplaces make repeated absences untenable.
Paloma Corona is feeling both of those effects. She runs two day care locations in Los Angeles, and the heat and smoke of the past few years have doubled her electricity bills. Sometimes the temperatures force her to keep the toddlers inside all day, and multiple times this summer she has had to warn parents that the power might go out or send her charges home early because of heat.
“It’s a huge impact,” Ms. Corona said. “Not only us as a business, but also the families, because they don’t know if I’m going to call them today and ask them to pick up their babies because we don’t have electricity.”
Collectively, abnormally high temperatures degrade economic well-being even in rich nations. A working paper published in July found that state-level economic conditions in the United States deteriorated for months after a heat wave.
Those effects count just the “soft” impact of heat on people’s costs and ability to work. But the destructive power of wildfires shifted into a new gear this year in Europe, as fast-moving blazes ravaged landscapes, choked cities and forced thousands to evacuate.
Sarah Meier, an economist who studies interactions with natural systems, published a study that found European wildfires from 2010 through 2018 slowed the annual growth rates for affected regions, especially for the retail and tourism industries. This summer could soar past those figures — the bills for fighting the fires have exceeded the overall economic cost she had detected.
“I think the difference now is wildfire has never been so close to major cities in Europe,” Ms. Meier said. And there’s no reason to think this is the worst of it. “For Portugal, Greece and Spain, we saw there is no natural ceiling of how these fires can get statistically,” she said. “Each record can blow the last one by a wide margin.”
No Easy Fixes
This year, rather than relief, autumn will bring new strains. An unusually strong El Niño weather pattern is expected to impose severe droughts on some parts of the world and excessive rainfall in others, disrupting planting and harvest cycles and reducing production of staples like wheat, corn and sugar.
Hens even lay fewer eggs as temperatures rise. The meat processor Pilgrim’s Pride noted on its second-quarter earnings call that production may be depressed as a result. Heat waves also attack the food supply chain, spoiling crops as refrigeration fails on the way to markets. Scarcity is likely to drive food costs higher.
The macroeconomic consequences have already put central banks in a difficult position. This year’s climate disruptions have come during a trade war that has pushed up prices in the United States and a conflict in the Middle East that has squeezed energy and fertilizer supplies around the world. The central banks may raise interest rates to keep costs in check, even if doing so ratchets up financial strain.
“Raising interest rates doesn’t create more supply of food, so central bankers have typically not wanted to go there,” said Richard de Chazal, an analyst at the investment house William Blair. “Now, if solutions aren’t coming from other areas, the fiscal side of things, then they feel they need to address it.”
With little aid from governments, and insurance policies that cost more and cover less, businesses are scrambling to adapt.
Nikki Bravo owns Momentum Coffee, a small cafe chain in Chicago. Even though she hasn’t experienced power outages like Ms. Hart’s bakery, she had to close one location during a smoky day and sustained water damage in one of her locations after a storm. But the big drag has just been the intensely rainy days, which are increasingly frequent in Chicago and depress weekend tourist traffic.
Ms. Bravo had expected Lollapalooza, the four-day music festival at the start of August, to generate big sales at her downtown location. But it rained most of the weekend, and she generated 40 percent lower sales than last year. Going forward, she will try to adjust staffing more quickly, and bring more customers in during the week.
“It now becomes incumbent on me to say, ‘I need to look at the forecast and be ready to pivot,’” Ms. Bravo said. “Part of it is really understanding, or accepting, what is. We have to figure out, what to do with that? Is there a way to weatherproof our business?”
The cost of shielding people from climate change, with measures like burying power lines and shrouding crops to blunt the sun, would be likely to more than pay for itself in avoided damage, according to the consulting firm McKinsey. But it is still expensive upfront: Full protections would cost around $540 billion annually, the firm estimated.
In the short term, businesses and governments are taking obvious steps, like shifting work schedules and trying to protect residents and workers with cooling centers and water breaks. And there is a push toward more air-conditioning in places that never needed it before, like France and England.
But Eleni Myrivili, the chief heat officer for the United Nations Human Settlements Program, cautions that air-conditioning can’t be the only solution. Although it has allowed wealthy societies to develop in the desert, committing to energy-intensive cooling systems may not be feasible on a global scale, as electricity becomes more difficult and expensive to generate.
That’s why in the medium term, she’s pushing for building designs that keep interiors cooler and greenery-filled streetscapes that absorb heat rather than reflect it, and pushing against new development in the hottest places.
“What seems to be the way forward, and what a lot of companies are looking into right now, is to look at cooling less as less of an appliance issue and more of a systemic issue,” Ms. Myrivili said.
Longer term, avoiding further warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the only way to contain the damage. “Adaptation is buying us time, but mitigation will determine whether adaptation remains affordable,” she said.
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11) Should Letting Children Play Alone Outside Be a Crime?
Some parents have been surprised to find themselves in the legal system’s cross hairs.
By Ian Frisch, Aug. 11, 2026
“I was so naïve,” said Mallerie Shirley, regarding the investigation into her family. “I thought that nothing was going to come of this. But I was mistaken.” Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
Mallerie Shirley knew something was wrong the second she saw her then-6-year-old son walk through the front door. It was November 2025, and he had just returned from riding his scooter to a playground about a quarter of a mile from their home in Atlanta, Ga.
Ms. Shirley remembers how he looked: shoulders slouched, eyes cast downward. She asked him what happened. He explained that a woman stopped him on his way home and demanded to know his age, why he was alone and where he lived. Scared, he ignored the woman and continued on his way.
Ms. Shirley and her husband, Christopher Pleasants, believed in instilling a sense of independence in their two children, and they had recently started to give their son opportunities to do things unaccompanied, like asking him to find items in the grocery store. Typically, after he explained to concerned adults that he had permission from his parents, people felt reassured.
But this woman’s concern felt more accusatory than empathetic. “I think she followed me in her car,” Ms. Shirley remembers her son telling her.
She didn’t think much of it until two days later, when a case manager from the Fulton County Division of Family and Children Services showed up at her house. Ms. Shirley was not home, but Mr. Pleasants was. The case manager explained that a complaint had been filed, and that she would need to inspect their home and interview their son at school. (The conversation was recorded on the family’s Ring camera.)
“When we were growing up, our parents would be like, ‘Oh, you know, go ahead, it’s fine,’” the case manager said, “but now he would have to be, like, 13.”
“13?” Mr. Pleasants said. “Is that the law?”
“I mean, they are going to consider that inadequate supervision for him to go completely by himself,” the case manager said. “Because anything could happen, right?”
“He’s extremely vulnerable at that age,” the case manager added.
In recent years, in places like Baldwin City, Kan. and Silver Spring, Md., parents have been investigated — or even arrested — for letting their children walk to the store, play in the park or ride their bicycles unsupervised. Proponents of childhood independence say it’s beneficial for kids to have autonomy; others see this approach as potentially dangerous. And vague child-neglect laws force law enforcement to make difficult judgment calls regarding whether a child is in legitimate danger.
But as the stories of well-meaning parents have gained attention, the way lawmakers think about child independence is starting to change: All told, 13 states have either created new, less restrictive child-neglect laws or amended existing ones. A bipartisan federal bill, the Promoting Childhood Independence and Resilience Act, was introduced in the House of Representatives in May.
Despite the shift, some parents are still finding themselves in the government’s cross hairs.
“I was so naïve,” Ms. Shirley said of the investigation into her family. “I thought that nothing was going to come of this. But I was mistaken.”
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Two forces — fear and control — have systematically reduced childhood independence over the past four decades, said Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, a professor of developmental psychology at Ohio State University.
First came a newfound worry about child abductions and “stranger danger.” In 1979, the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz in New York City drew widespread media attention. Congress passed the Missing Children Act in 1982 and, two years later, missing children’s photos were put on milk cartons nationwide. Inflated statistics on abductions, with estimates sometimes as high as 50,000 minors annually, underpinned the discourse. (In reality, authorities estimate that closer to 100 children are kidnapped by strangers each year.)
These events were contributing factors “in cultivating a sense of fear and a need for more protection,” said Aliza Pressman, a developmental psychologist and co-founder of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center in New York City.
Then, in the early 2000s, helicopter parenting started to take hold, particularly in middle-class families. Parents began to control many — or even most — aspects of their children’s lives in order to prepare them for an increasingly competitive society.
“It was a concern with protection, and then a concern with producing successful children,” Dr. Schoppe-Sullivan said. “This leaves children with little time to themselves, and often involves things that are scheduled by adults.”
In a recent Harris Poll of children from 8 to 12, 62 percent said they had never walked or biked somewhere without an adult.
“We’re not allowing children to learn that they’re both physically and psychologically tough,” said Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College and the author of the forthcoming book, “Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety.”
“We assume they’re fragile and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.
Dr. Gray pointed to more than a dozen studies that draw an association between overprotective parenting and increased rates of anxiety and depression in children, adding that independence increases a child’s self-reliance and self-worth.
It’s not that parents are oblivious to the benefits of giving their kids autonomy. According to a 2023 poll by C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., 84 percent of parents of children from 9 to 11 said kids benefit from having free time without adult supervision. But in that same poll, only 50 percent of parents said their child would go to find an item in a store when the parent is in a different aisle.
“There is no way for a child to feel capable and competent without being given space to make survivable mistakes,” Dr. Pressman said. “You want the child to stretch and bend, but not break. That’s the premise of healthy child development.”
Mallerie Shirley said that her son was more fulfilled when she let him do things on his own. But with the D.F.C.S. investigation looming over their family, Ms. Shirley kept her son indoors. “We were afraid of being arrested,” she said. “His mental health really struggled.”
In late December, the agency notified Ms. Shirley and Mr. Pleasants that the complaint against them of child abuse and neglect had been substantiated. The couple hired a lawyer and filed an appeal. They also discovered that the law was on their side: Georgia had recently narrowed the definition of child neglect to give children the right to engage in independent activities, including playing outdoors alone.
Ms. Shirley raised this during a recorded phone call with a D.F.C.S. supervisor. The supervisor responded, “Logically speaking, policy or no policy, let’s just talk about being a parent. This baby is 6 years old. How is he able to self-protect at 6 years old?” The exchange gave Ms. Shirley the impression that the supervisor’s personal feelings could be influencing her work on the case.
The Georgia Department of Human Services, which oversees Fulton County’s D.F.C.S., declined to comment on the investigation into Ms. Shirley and Mr. Pleasants, but in a written statement, they said, “We take seriously every report that might be made to the agency and work with law enforcement when appropriate to ensure the safety of Georgia’s children.”
‘Free-Range Kids’
In 2008, Lenore Skenazy, a mother living in New York City, wrote a column for the New York Sun about why she allowed her 9-year-old son to ride the subway alone. The article went viral and Ms. Skenazy went on a media blitz, explaining why she thought it was detrimental for parents to make judgment calls based on long-shot what ifs.
“I call it worst-first thinking,” she said in a recent interview. “We’ve all been trained as parents to go to the worst-case scenario first and proceed as if it’s likely to happen.”
Ms. Skenazy coined her belief in reasonable childhood independence the “free range kids” movement, and she began to call attention to cases where free-range parenting collided with the law. Eventually, state laws about child neglect began to change.
After attending one of Ms. Skenazy’s parenting lectures, Connor Boyack, the founder of a libertarian think tank, helped conceptualize the nation’s first law on childhood independence, passed in Utah in 2018. It specified that neglect does not include “permitting a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities.”
Georgia revised its bill last year after Brittany Patterson, a mother of four, was arrested and charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct for allowing her 10-year-old son to walk alone to a nearby dollar store. When deputies from the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office came to her house and handcuffed her, “I was livid,” she said. She added that her arrest, and the subsequent media attention, were more traumatizing to her children than anything that had ever happened to them while they were unsupervised. The charges were eventually dropped.
This January, Kansas amended its child-neglect law after Shaley Knickerbocker, of Baldwin City, was twice reported by a neighbor for allowing her preteen children to play outside unsupervised. Both times, law enforcement came to Ms. Knickerbocker’s house. “I feel a lot of relief to now have a law that protects those decisions,” she said.
Some experts point out that preventable accidents can occur when a child is given too much independence, and that the new laws could make protecting children more challenging. Last May, a mother and father were charged with involuntary manslaughter after their 7-year-old son was hit by a car and killed while crossing a busy road with his 10-year-old brother in North Carolina. “In such cases, adults must be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment for their children,” the Gastonia Police Department said in a statement. The couple pleaded guilty and received probation.
Karen Ruskin, a family psychotherapist based in Scottsdale, Ariz., said a law’s specificity might make law enforcement more hesitant to approach a child to confirm that they are safe: Is a child riding her scooter one mile, two miles, four miles? If a child is home alone, what time will the parents return?
Jason Baron, an assistant professor of economics at Duke University who studies child welfare systems, agreed that the concept of child protection is ambiguous and nuanced.
“You can imagine these types of laws having unintended consequences, just like you could imagine it helping a few families that got tangled up with the system that maybe shouldn’t have,” he said. “The question we have to ask as a society is: Do we want to err on the side of caution or do we want to err on the side of not bothering parents?”
As for Ms. Shirley, in January the Georgia Department of Human Services sent a letter stating they did not agree with Fulton County’s finding of neglect and that the allegations would be labeled unsubstantiated. Ms. Shirley and Mr. Pleasants were cleared.
Soon after, they allowed their son to once again ride his scooter to the playground alone. “He was overjoyed,” Ms. Shirley said. “That’s all we want as parents, feeling like he is capable of taking care of himself.”
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12) New Evidence Shows Agents Using Slurs, Bolstering Profiling Claims
Body-camera video and other court evidence capture federal agents using slurs and targeting Latinos while bypassing white bystanders during immigration sweeps in Chicago and Los Angeles
By Jazmine Ulloa, Maia Spoto and Jill Cowan, Aug. 11, 2026
The reporters collected body-camera and bystander footage, text messages and court filings from more than a dozen cases filed across the country. An artificial intelligence model helped reporters comb through 169 hours of footage across 459 videos. The reporters checked the model’s work.
Federal agents making an arrest in Minneapolis in January. Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Since immigration agents began carrying out a string of big, aggressive sweeps last year, civil rights groups have argued that the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has been defined by brazen racial profiling.
Now, body-camera footage, text messages and other documents emerging from lawsuits around the country reveal how race and ethnicity have figured in the dragnets that unfolded in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and other U.S. cities.
In several instances documented in court filings, federal agents referred to targets as “tonks” — a derogatory term typically used to refer to Mexican immigrants and intended to echo the sound of agents’ flashlights striking their heads. Migrants suspected of being undocumented were described as “wet,” shorthand for the slur wetback. And an agent who led an operation in Southern California later described the appearance of individuals he considered suspicious: “older Hispanic males.”
Yet even as evidence of racial profiling has come to light, what seemed like settled law — that law enforcement officers could not question or detain someone solely based on their race or ethnicity — has turned out to be far more of an open question when it comes to immigration enforcement.
Last year, the Supreme Court took a step toward upending a half-century of jurisprudence when Justice Brett Kavanaugh gave a provisional blessing to such racial profiling by agents seeking out undocumented immigrants. The government has maintained that their operations are constitutional.
The lawsuit that led to the court’s temporary decision and other similar suits are still working their way through lower courts, and it could be months before they are resolved and years before the Supreme Court has a chance to say more.
In the meantime, civil rights lawyers are continuing to amass what they hope will be a valuable trove of evidence that racial profiling by immigration agents is prevalent — and that it is unconstitutional in the manner that it is being carried out today.
In 1975, the Supreme Court cleared the way for some degree of racial profiling in immigration enforcement when the justices allowed race and ethnicity to be one of the factors — but not the only one — used by agents deciding when to stop a car on suspicion that the occupants include undocumented immigrants.
Jennifer M. Chacón, a Stanford law professor who studies immigration law, said the current wave of cases — and the Supreme Court’s recent order — engages with the question of whether the 1975 decision, in U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce, still holds.
“Is this still good law, and even if it is, when does agency behavior cross the line of what is permitted?” Professor Chacón said.
The latest batch of depositions, videos and surveillance records in Los Angeles, first reported by CalMatters and The Los Angeles Times, show that immigration agents and officers were focused on finding “day laborers.” But civil rights groups argue that their vague and varying explanations for whom they were looking for often defaulted to anyone who looked Latino, had darker skin or spoke English with an accent. That reliance on perceived race and ethnicity, they argued, also ended up unlawfully sweeping up U.S. citizens.
In one sworn declaration, a driver in a traffic stop in San Bernardino, Calif., said an officer told him he had been pulled over “because he looked like a ‘paisa,’” a slang term for a Mexican compatriot or newly arrived immigrant.
In another declaration, Angel Santiago Tafolla, a U.S. citizen in Anaheim, Calif., said that agents chased him — a dark-skinned Latino man — while ignoring his light-skinned co-workers at the Orange County carwash. One agent discharged a Taser, arcing electricity in front of Mr. Tafolla, whose clothes were wet from his work. He was handcuffed and loaded into a van, according to the document.
“I kept saying ‘I’m American,’ but they just kept telling me I was Latino and my documents were false and to stop talking,” he said.
Such encounters were not limited to California. In more than a dozen lawsuits filed in courts across the country — including in Alabama, Illinois, Oregon and Minnesota — civil rights lawyers argue that residents, predominantly Black and Latino, were wrongly targeted based on their appearance, specifically their skin color, perceived ethnicity, accents and work attire.
At least 65 U.S. citizens were described as having been stopped, questioned or detained, and because all of them were eventually released, they were able to provide lawyers with detailed accounts of their encounters with immigration agents. Some said officers refused to accept their passports or valid drivers’ licenses as proof of citizenship. Several were threatened with Tasers, tackled and handcuffed. A few were held for hours before being released, according to court filings.
Many of the filings depict federal agents as working under crushing pressure to meet a new national quota, which for a time was as high as 3,000 immigration arrests daily. The increase — a near threefold increase in May 2025 from the prior base line — forced officers to shift from individualized investigations to street sweeps intended to round up as many people as possible. Roving teams of officers in unmarked S.U.V.s repeatedly converged on Latino neighborhoods and businesses, including carwashes, Home Depot parking lots, construction sites and shopping corridors, the court records state.
“For the individuals that they’re stopping, they don’t have any information about them other than the demographic profile that they appear Latino and working class,” said Mayra Joachín, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union working on the Los Angeles case.
Government lawyers maintain in court filings that immigration operations have been highly targeted, and that isolated examples of derogatory or inflammatory language are not evidence of an agencywide policy or intent. They also argue that agents have broad powers to question people they believe are not citizens of the United States, particularly when they are only briefly stopping someone to investigate their legal status and not necessarily to conduct an arrest.
In an emailed statement, Katherine Currie, a homeland security spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about agents using slurs. She called allegations that federal officers were engaged in racial profiling “disgusting, reckless, and categorically false.”
“What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — not their skin color, race or ethnicity,’” Ms. Currie said.
For more than 50 years, courts have taken the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, along with the 1975 Supreme Court ruling to mean that immigration agents cannot stop or detain people without a specific, factual basis for believing they are in the country illegally and that race or ethnicity cannot be the sole factor in targeting someone.
Federal law has granted immigration officers far more latitude at immigration checkpoints and within a 100-mile radius of any of the nation’s borders. But civil rights groups argue Border Patrol agents have been exercising those powers deep in the interior of the country.
Now, as the cases move through the courts, the rulings will determine whether federal agents are exclusively relying on race and ethnicity to stop, question and detain people for immigration violations — and whether the limits banning such tactics will remain in place.
Kevin R. Johnson, an expert in immigration law and a professor at University of California, Davis, said that most recent Supreme Court order and accompanying opinion from Justice Kavanaugh had emboldened federal officers to rely on racial profiling nationwide.
But he cautioned that the emergency order was not the last word. The newest footage — taken from inside patrol vehicles in Chicago and Los Angeles — could raise fresh concerns for the justices when the underlying lawsuit almost certainly returns to the Supreme Court for full consideration, he said.
“The racial slurs are troubling and coupled with the recent string of Latinos killed in car stops and detention centers, they are likely to get the justices thinking about what is going on here in ways that they haven’t,” said Mr. Johnson, a former dean of the law school at U.C. Davis.
In videos from Chicago, agents point out people on the street as “tonks.” The slur has been used since at least the 1990s by immigration officers along the nation’s Southern border.
The epithet is echoed in the latest batch of video evidence filed in the Los Angeles case. More than a dozen body-camera and bystander videos capture agents bypassing people who appeared white, moving instead to question and detain men who appeared Latino nearby.
In one video, taken Aug. 6, 2025, a group of heavily armed, masked agents in camouflage cluster in the back of a moving truck, peering out. A backpack is visible on the floor.
“Whose backpack is that? Tonk?” one agent asks. “Tonk backpack?”
In most of the other footage, agents appear to be casual as they drive, joking and speculating about how successful raids had been.
“They filled three vans,” one agent says to another as they drive through a Los Angeles neighborhood on June 19, 2025. Later, one of those agents recounts seeing a man sitting in a minivan whom he did not end up approaching. “I’m pretty sure he was wet,” he says.
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13) As Credit Card Debt Mounts, Home Becomes a Piggy Bank
A rise in home equity to record levels has led many Americans to refinance their mortgages to pay their bills.
By Gregory Schmidt, Aug. 11, 2026
Linda Boroski used a home-equity loan to pay off her credit card bills and to buy new windows for her home in Bellevue, Ohio. Credit...Daniel Lozada for The New York Times
When Linda Boroski bought her three-story Queen Anne home with a wraparound veranda in Bellevue, Ohio, in 2021, she made sure it fit her budget.
“My mom taught me, ‘We like to cross our t’s, dot our i’s, and we pay our bills on time,’” said Ms. Boroski, a 63-year-old retired schoolteacher.
So she was concerned when she ran up $26,000 in credit card bills to pay for travel for medical treatment. It meant putting off renovations for her drafty house and visiting her family less.
“I was so strapped each month,” she said.
When Ms. Boroski got an offer from Rocket, a mortgage lender, for a home-equity loan, she took out $45,000, paid off her bills and bought new windows. And she still has a little left over for a trip to see her granddaughter.
Americans continue to spend freely, keeping the economy humming, even as they amass more credit card debt. But like Ms. Boroski, many homeowners have built up a nest egg to help pay for their lifestyles: $35 trillion in home equity, a record high.
“People are sitting on all this money,” said Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, a real estate brokerage firm. “So they pull some of that equity out of their home to pay off their credit card debt.”
Household debt dipped 0.1 percent in the second quarter of 2026, to $18.8 trillion, from a year earlier, according to a report on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, using data not adjusted for inflation. But credit card balances climbed to $1.26 trillion from the year before.
In the first three months of this year, homeowners withdrew an estimated $47 billion in equity, up 2 percent from a year ago, according to a report from the Intercontinental Exchange, a financial services company. Second mortgages amounted to $25 billion, a 1 percent increase from a year earlier, but refinancing existing mortgages to take cash out jumped 18 percent year over year to $22 billion.
The accumulation of housing wealth is partly a result of a moribund property market. Soaring home prices and elevated mortgage rates have made buying a home less attainable, prompting buyers to pause. Sales of existing homes fell 1.7 percent in July from the month before, the National Association of Realtors reported on Tuesday.
Homeowners who secured mortgage rates as low as 3 percent just a few years ago are reluctant to sell their homes. They have built up an average of $310,500 in home equity, according to a recent report by Cotality, a housing market data provider.
“That equity provides an important financial cushion as everyday costs continue to rise,” Selma Hepp, Cotality’s chief economist, wrote in the report.
That enormous wealth comes with a caveat: Because it is tied up in their homes, owners have to refinance their mortgage to take advantage of it. Still a home loan at 6.69 percent — the average rate for a 30-year, fixed rate mortgage, according to the mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac — is a better option than credit card debt with an interest rate in the double digits, financial experts say.
“Nobody really talks about their credit card rates being 23 percent,” said Alex Elezaj, the chief strategy officer at United Wholesale Mortgage, a mortgage lender that works exclusively with independent brokers. “They are paying minimum payments, and they kick the can down the road.”
But as revolving debt mounts, he is seeing more homeowners looking to refinance their mortgage. To be sure, sometimes the money goes to renovating the home or paying for a vacation, but more often, he said, it is used for credit card or student loan payments.
“Most people are looking at it as a way to bring down their overall household interest rate,” he said.
Financial brokers are seeing more refinancing activity across the country, as more people seek to pull themselves out from under a pile of bills.
The average debt per cardholder grew 22.7 percent from 2018 through last year, to $7,161, according to a report from the Century Foundation, an independent think tank. (For comparison, cumulative inflation in the same period rose 28.2 percent.)
But Stacey Melton, a broker in Gilbert, Ariz., said the people who come to her for help carry an average of $20,000 to $50,000 in credit card debt, and sometimes as high as $90,000.
Hoping to avoid refinancing their mortgage in order to hang on to their low rate, many request a new line of credit using their home equity as collateral, but the math never works out because the rates on most home-equity lines are too high.
“You are basically trading apples for apples at that point,” said Ms. Melton, who recommends refinancing, even if the homeowner snagged an ultralow rate when buying the home.
But as more Americans use their homes as emergency slush funds, Ms. Fairweather worried that the activity could put them at risk if the economy starts to tumble.
“They might be in a situation where they have to sell their home because they can’t pay that refinanced mortgage,” she said.
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