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We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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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.
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. Alter 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) Target Apologizes and Drops Halloween Costume Criticized as Racist
The children’s costume evoked blackface imagery, critics said. “We know we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry,” the retailer said in response.
By John Yoon, Aug. 25, 2026
Al Jolson in the 1930 movie "Mammy." Brown Brothers
Target apologized on Monday and said it had stopped selling a children’s Halloween costume after facing widespread criticism that the design evoked racist stereotypes of Black people.
The product listing on Target’s website, which appears to have been deleted, showed a circus clown costume in orange and black, with accessories including gloves, a top hat and a mask shaped like a grinning mouth with large teeth.
Critics said these features, in addition to a promotional image that appeared to show a Black child modeling the costume, mirrored caricatures from Jim Crow-era minstrel shows.
Target, the Minneapolis-based big box retailer with around 2,000 U.S. stores, said in a statement that it had stopped selling the costume and “was looking closely at how this happened.”
“As a company, we know we got this wrong, and we are deeply sorry,” it said.
“The costume is offensive and should never have been part of our assortment,” the statement continued, adding: “We know this is especially hurtful for our Black guests, team members and partners.”
Minstrel shows were a form of 19th-century American theater built around caricatures of Black people and culture. Performers, who were usually white, wore blackface and enacted these caricatures for predominantly white audiences.
Dong-hwan Lee, a professor at Gyeongin National University of Education in South Korea who specializes in American culture and has written on minstrel shows, said that selling such a product “reduces Black individuals to contemptible, clownish figures.”
Shomane Touré, the founder of Afrocentric Films Collaborative, a group based in Oakland, Calif., that promotes Black culture, said Target seemed to have neglected to consider how the product was presented.
“Target appears to have overlooked these historical implications by choosing to market a costume worn by a Black child in a manner that can be interpreted as reinforcing a longstanding racial stereotype,” Mr. Touré said in an emailed statement.
Target did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
Other major brands have dropped products criticized as racist. During Black History Month in 2019, Gucci apologized and pulled a sweater that had an opening for the mouth with bright red lips that were widely denounced as evoking blackface.
Target, like many American companies including Google, Meta and Walmart, rolled back its diversity, equity and inclusion program last year after the Trump administration said it would be investigating companies with such initiatives.
Nadine Smith, the president of Color of Change, an activist group focusing on racial justice, said the decision had led to “corporate blindness” at Target that allowed a product featuring racist stereotypes to make it through the supply chain.
“Somewhere along that chain, people either did not recognize the racism, did not feel empowered to name it or were not heard,” Ms. Smith said in a statement on Tuesday. “Target cannot treat Black voices as expendable in its decision-making and still expect Black dollars at the checkout.”
Target, which has struggled financially while losing ground to Walmart, its top rival, was at the center of controversy over its Pride Month marketing campaign in 2023. That campaign drew anger from some on the political right, including some customers who demonstrated confrontational behavior in stores, the company said. After Target removed merchandise in response, some L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups criticized the company for appearing to cave to pressure.
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2) Inflation Remains Elevated as Energy Costs Push on Prices
The Personal Consumption Expenditure index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation tracker, held steady in July.
By Ben Casselman, Aug. 26, 2026
Many households are struggling to manage higher prices. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The stubborn U.S. inflation problem did not get much worse in July. It did not get any better, either.
Consumer prices were up 3.7 percent in July from a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditure price index. That was the same rate as in June, and still well above the Fed’s target of 2 percent annual inflation.
Core prices, a measure that strips out the volatile food and energy categories, were up 3.3 percent from a year earlier, also unchanged from June. Policymakers often focus on the core measure because it can give a more reliable indication of how inflation will behave in the months ahead.
On a monthly basis, overall prices were up 0.2 percent in July, reversing a slight decline in prices in June. Core prices also rose 0.2 percent.
The data, released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Wednesday, highlighted the tricky position Fed policymakers face as they weigh whether to raise interest rates at their meeting next month.
Inflation jumped this spring after President Trump led the United States into war with Iran, which pushed up energy prices around the world. It has eased somewhat since then, and there have been few signs that higher oil prices are filtering through to the economy more broadly, apart from some isolated categories such as airfares.
That has led some policymakers to conclude they can afford to wait to raise rates, at least as long as inflation does not pick up again.
Other officials, however, argue that the inflation problem is not isolated to energy prices. The boom in artificial intelligence is driving up prices for computer chips, while a renewed trade war with Canada threatens to lead to higher costs for imported goods. Diesel prices, which are nearing a record, could do the same for an even wider array of consumer goods. And they say that after five years of elevated inflation, the central bank needs to act decisively or risk losing their credibility.
The data released Wednesday offered support for both points of view. Both overall and core inflation were slightly hotter in July than forecasters had expected, and prices for services excluding housing — a measure some officials view as a gauge of underlying price pressures — rose more quickly than in June. Inflation readings for earlier months were also revised slightly higher.
But another measure, which strips out some prices that consumers don’t pay directly, was more encouraging. Prices for groceries, clothing and some other goods fell outright.
Adding to the confusion, the Bureau of Economic Analysis next month will revise how it calculates inflation in several categories, including computer products and financial management fees. Economists have mostly praised the changes, which are part of a longstanding annual process by which the agency updates its methodology. But this year’s revisions will most likely result in inflation readings that are modestly better than current numbers show.
The data also showed both the resilience of the economy and the toll that higher prices are taking. Personal income, after taxes, rose faster than prices last month. But consumer spending did not, suggesting that households are cutting back spending in some areas to deal with higher prices in others.
“Consumers are not really in strong enough shape to continue spending on the higher prices at the pump and then also keep spending on all the other categories,” said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust, a financial services firm.
That, he argued, should help keep inflation in check despite tariffs and other price pressures because companies will struggle to pass higher costs on to their customers.
Kevin M. Warsh, the Fed chairman, has resisted laying out his own criteria for when to raise rates, saying only that he is committed to bringing inflation back to the 2 percent target. He will have another chance to explain his thinking on Friday, when he delivers a speech at the Fed’s annual conference in Wyoming.
Policymakers will get another inflation report before their meeting next month, as well as updates on the state of the labor market.
For many families, however, the situation is less complicated. Consumers are paying higher prices for essentials, particularly gas, while wage growth has stagnated. That is putting stress on household budgets. Consumer confidence fell in August for the second month in a row, the Conference Board said Tuesday.
“It’s hard to ignore the reality of those higher prices,” said Tom Porcelli, chief economist at Wells Fargo. “People are feeling the pinch of it.”
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3) What Dolly Told Me
By Jad Abumrad, Aug. 25, 2026
Mr. Abumrad, a journalist and composer, created the podcast “Dolly Parton’s America.”
Herb Ritts/Trunk Archive
I was lucky enough to interview Dolly Parton a dozen times, on two continents, and she began nearly every interview with some version of this: “Ask me anything you want to ask me, and I’ll tell you what I want you to hear!”
It was genuinely funny, funnier each time she said it, and she’d punctuate each punchline with a staccato giggle that’d swoop upward in pitch, ending in a glassy register that was uniquely hers.
At the time, I took this to be one of her many crowd-tested Dollyisms. Those words ring differently since I learned of her death on Tuesday, at 80 — less a quip, more a motto. A sentence that encapsulates a life.
There are two somewhat conflicting but both very Dolly ideas neatly juxtaposed in that one phrase.
The first part — “ask me anything” — says: I welcome you, I see you. And she did. Everyone felt at home at a Dolly concert. Men in trucker hats (and sometimes Confederate flags) stood next to men in drag. “Big-haired church ladies” stood next to women holding hands and little girls wearing coats of many colors, everyone shoulder to shoulder, singing “I Will Always Love You.”
It’s no surprise that she was nicknamed St. Dolly. It’s a wonderfully layered term of endearment. A reference to her faith? Yes. An ironic nod to her sometimes raunchy sense of humor? Definitely.
But St. Dolly is also meant earnestly. She did practice a unique brand of radical acceptance. No one would ever be thrown out of the Big Dolly Tent.
The second part — “I’ll tell you what I want you to hear” — points us in a different direction: I am in control here.
I believe this is the part of Dolly people don’t focus on enough. This is a woman who created a several-hundred-million-dollar media empire mining stories of her past. She used humor and charm to control every interview. If a male talk-show host made a joke about her figure, she’d make an even better joke about it. She was always two steps ahead of you. She never allowed herself to be a part of a story of which she was not the author.
My first interview with Dolly (for what would become the nine-part podcast series “Dolly Parton’s America”) happened on Jan. 15, 2018. She steamrolled me by recounting one delightful story after another. I could barely get a question in.
“You asked one question, and I’ve talked for two hours.”
Upward swoop laugh.
The previous night I read her memoir, “Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business,” a compendium of Tennessee Mountain nostalgia from her childhood. In the interview, many of the same stories came out, rapid-fire. The time she was 6 or 7 years old and jumped over a fence, landing on a broken Mason jar that sliced some of her toes almost clean off. (Luckily, her mother sewed them back on.) How in the dead of winter she and many of her siblings would huddle together in one bed, not minding when they peed on one another because it kept them warm. She talked about June bugs and the smell of honeysuckle.
As a scrawny Arab kid growing up in a Southern Baptist universe in Nashville during the Persian Gulf war, I’ve always been suspicious of the Southern propensity to wax nostalgic about better days. Those stories typically have an alienating effect on me. Not so with Dolly. To sit with her was to watch (and then inevitably join) a person so completely inhabiting an earlier time that suddenly the air around you changed, the oxygen molecules shifted polarity. You saw the June bugs she was seeing and smelled the honeysuckle.
At the time, I asked her why she kept returning to those stories. They are my truth, she said. I believed her and yet wondered what was being left out.
The Dolly story I keep coming back to these days has to do with how she got her start.
In 1967, a 21-year-old Dolly Parton arrives on a set in Nashville to fill the role of backup singer for Porter Wagoner, the biggest name in country music television. His TV variety show reached over three million people at its peak. At first, viewers complained about Dolly and resented her for displacing a previous backup singer, Norma Jean.
Before long, though, Dolly was all anyone wanted to see. Long story short: Her relationship with Mr. Wagoner disintegrates. He disparages her in the press and sues her for $3 million when she leaves.
In one of our interviews, I opened my laptop and called up a publicity photo and inelegantly pointed out the obvious: how Mr. Wagoner in his pimp jacket has his arm around her as if he owned her. Her response surprised me.
Well, it’s more complicated than that. I mean, just think about it. He had had this hit show for years. He didn’t need me to have his hit show. He wasn’t expecting me to be all that I was, either. When he hired me as a singer, he was just hiring what he thought was a ripe, pretty little girl. But I was a serious writer. He didn’t know that. I was a serious entertainer. He didn’t know that. He didn’t know how many dreams I had.
There it was again, Dolly’s particular gift, to present two opposing thoughts, juxtaposed.
She said it without judgment. He simply didn’t know. She held his confusion and pain while pointing out that she was separate from him and would not sacrifice her ambition for anyone.
Trailing Dolly around the world, I witnessed so many small moments in which she owned her power without the slightest hint of fight.
On Feb. 17, 2019, I interviewed Dolly in a hotel room in London, moments before the opening night of “9 to 5: The Musical” at the Savoy Theater. The interview wasn’t going well. Members of her entourage moved in and out of the room with an urgency bordering on panic, stirring the air and making it hard to concentrate. Their nerves were understandable. Outside the window, we heard angry chanting and overlapping sirens. A citywide climate protest had brought London to a standstill. As a consequence, Dolly’s manager had formulated an almost military-style minute-by-minute movement sheet for how his team would transport her from the hotel room into a car and down a sequence of carefully mapped back roads to deposit her at the red carpet precisely 14 minutes before the show started, as I recall. The movement sheet had us leaving the hotel at 6:39 p.m.
At precisely 6:39 p.m., her manager — a lovely man but broad-shouldered and quite intimidating — walked into the room, looked me dead in the eye and drew his finger across his neck with such force that I leaped out of my seat. The message was clear. The interview is over. Disappear.
My position in the Dollyverse had always felt tenuous. I could kid myself and say that I’d earned the right to be there because of my decades in journalism. The truth is the only reason I was allowed in the room was nepotism. Many years ago, through a twist of fate, my dad became Dolly’s temporary doctor. Over the years, they became friends, then great friends. (He was with her in her last moments.) So this was a favor to him.
I immediately accepted my dismissal as both inevitable and proper. But Dolly smiled and quietly nodded at me to sit back down. She held up five fingers, as if to say, “We can talk for five more minutes.”
I knew that she didn’t have five more minutes. But she knew that the interview needed something more. A moment of surprise and grace.
As the city erupted outside and her manager turned white and left the room, Dolly sat calmly, determined to enjoy the final moments of our conversation. She would leave only when she was ready. And she did.
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4) Deadly Nepal Flood May Have Been Caused by Ice Snapping Off Glacier, Scientists Say
An initial assessment of satellite imagery suggests an “ice avalanche” from a high-altitude glacier sent a giant cascade into the valley below.
By Leo Sands, Aug. 26, 2026
A glacial lake in the Everest region of Nepal, in 2018. Prakash Mathema/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The deadly flooding in Nepal on Wednesday was likely set off at least in part by an enormous chunk of ice snapping off a glacier and cascading thousands of feet to the valley below, according to an initial assessment by a group of geologists and glaciologists. The phenomenon is known as an ice avalanche.
“It looks like a glacier in the area basically snapped off in a clean break, allowing it to fall just over a vertical kilometer to the valley bottom,” said Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada who studied satellite imagery to analyze what happened.
“The bottom looks like a bomb exploded — it’s just deposits from the broken-up glacier,” he said.
But he said that it was too early to rule out other possible factors behind the flash flooding. Hundreds of people are missing in Nepal and the Chinese territory of Tibet after floodwaters cascaded through river valleys on Wednesday morning. Warming temperatures caused by climate change may have accelerated the glacier’s collapse, scientists said, but they added that it was too early to determine a precise cause.
Across the fast-warming Himalayas, melting glaciers are presenting dangerous new opportunities for avalanches and earthquakes to cause destruction by unleashing torrents of water.
On Wednesday, a chunk of ice with a width of about 2,000 feet snapped cleanly off the glacier, Dr. Shugar said, sending a mixture of ice and water to the valley floor. By his assessment, the chunk of ice fell from an altitude of around 17,000 feet, dropping almost 4,000 feet.
“This is a big chunk of ice that is stored at high elevation in the mountain, with a huge amount of potential energy,” said Simon Cook, a glaciologist at the University of Dundee in Scotland who also worked on the satellite analysis. When it breaks off, he added, the sheer force of the drop pounds the ice into a dangerous, fast-moving mix.
“That ice just gets pulverized into water,” he said.
According to the group’s analysis, the flow of ice moved northwest along the valley toward the Bhotekoshi River, at the border between Nepal and the Chinese territory of Tibet.
Dr. Cook said the ice avalanche recalled a similar event in India in 2021, when a Himalayan glacier broke and caused major flooding in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, killing more than 100 people.
Kristen Cook, a geomorphologist at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, said that local seismic readers indicated that a large mass had suddenly moved downhill in the area at around 8:40 a.m. local time. That was followed immediately by a “flow signal,” which indicates flooding.
“I see a signal that is quite large at the start of the event, but it does not look like an earthquake,” she said. “When we combine this with what we know about the area and satellite imagery, we come to a preliminary interpretation that this was most likely a rock-ice avalanche that transitioned into a flow as it moved downstream.”
At around that time, the United States Geological Survey recorded 4.4-magnitude tremors in the area. The scientists said they were still analyzing data to determine whether the force of the avalanche above ground could have set off the tremors.
The U.S.G.S. said that it was assessing whether there was a relationship between the tremor and the landslide.
William Barnhart, assistant coordinator for the U.S.G.S. Earthquake Hazards Program, said it was possible that an earthquake caused the landslide, or that the landslide itself caused a seismic signal that looked like an earthquake. “There’s also the possibility that there was an earthquake and a landslide and they were unrelated,” he said.
Though complete weather data is not yet available, Dr. Shugar said, satellite images show a vanishing snow cover over the previous day, indicating warmer temperatures that may have melted the glacier and contributed to the ice avalanche.
Dr. Shugar added that overcast conditions meant that up-to-date satellite imagery remained incomplete, and that scientists’ understanding of the cause of the flooding would become clearer in the coming days.
He also said it was too early to rule out other contributing factors.
“The amount of water in the videos is astounding, an order of magnitude bigger than other recent glacial disasters like this,” he said. “It’s very possible that there’s another culprit here.”
Amy Graff contributed reporting.
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5) ICE Arrests Soar as People With No Criminal Record Are Increasingly Targeted
By Albert Sun and Allison McCann, Aug. 27, 2026
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents patrolling a federal court building in New York last month. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
A surge in immigration arrests this summer has swept up thousands of people who had not previously been the focus of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. They included people married to U.S. citizens, people who had entered legally and were pursuing an asylum claim, and others with a temporary legal status that the administration pushed to revoke.
A majority of the immigrants arrested in July were people who were accused of violating civil immigration laws but who had not been charged with or convicted of a crime, an analysis of newly released federal data shows. The share with a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than 4 percent.
Overall, immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July. Two fatal shootings involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in Texas and Maine, drew outrage but did not meaningfully slow the pace of arrests.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that the administration was keeping its promises to arrest and deport criminals and that anyone in the country illegally was a target for enforcement.
The new data contains details on every ICE arrest through Aug. 5 and offers the fullest picture yet of how the agency’s activities have shifted since public backlash forced a retreat from the aggressive tactics seen in Minneapolis early this year. It was obtained by the Deportation Data Project, an academic group, through a public records lawsuit and analyzed by The New York Times.
After his confirmation this spring, the secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, promised quieter but more effective enforcement. ICE now appears closer than ever to meeting a recent goal of 2,000 daily arrests.
“They have more officers, more money, more detention space, more local partners and better systems,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official. “And they’re finally putting all the pieces together to build out this deportation machine.”
A wider focus
Immigration arrests are near all-time highs in almost every state. Even sparsely populated Montana and Vermont saw spikes, with arrest rates more than doubling.
But the surge was strongest in Florida and Texas, two states with large unauthorized immigrant populations and leaders friendly to the Trump administration’s crackdown.
ICE is making more than 380 arrests a day in Texas and more than 230 a day in Florida, with each state up by more than 100 arrests a day from the spring.
All the same, the increase has affected states led both by Republicans and by Democrats. New Jersey and New Mexico have seen arrests double, despite both states passing laws this year that restrict government cooperation with ICE.
More agents, more arrests
ICE appears to be hitting new arrest records in a couple of ways: The agency has hired thousands more agents — growing to 29,000 employees in June, up from about 21,000 when Mr. Trump took office, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. And it has relied more on state and local law enforcement partners.
ICE has rapidly expanded a program to deputize local police officers to arrest immigrants. The share of people detained through the program, known as 287(g), is now around 14 percent, the data shows.
ICE is making more than 380 arrests a day in Texas and more than 230 a day in Florida, with each state up by more than 100 arrests a day from the spring.
All the same, the increase has affected states led both by Republicans and by Democrats. New Jersey and New Mexico have seen arrests double, despite both states passing laws this year that restrict government cooperation with ICE.
More agents, more arrests
ICE appears to be hitting new arrest records in a couple of ways: The agency has hired thousands more agents — growing to 29,000 employees in June, up from about 21,000 when Mr. Trump took office, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. And it has relied more on state and local law enforcement partners.
ICE has rapidly expanded a program to deputize local police officers to arrest immigrants. The share of people detained through the program, known as 287(g), is now around 14 percent, the data shows.
Deportations have averaged well over 1,000 people a day since last summer, and there are signs that they are picking up speed. The number of deportation flights began rising in the spring, and in July reached a record of at least 329 flights out of the country, according to ICE Flight Monitor, a tracking effort run by Human Rights First.
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6) ICE Agent Released From Texas Jail After Minnesota Loses Court Fight
The state had sought to have the agent extradited from Texas to answer charges in Minneapolis related to an on-duty shooting that wounded an immigrant.
By Mitch Smith and Ernesto Londoño, Aug. 27, 2026
Ernesto Londoño reported from Brownsville, Texas.
Christian Castro was one of thousands of agents sent to Minnesota in the winter as part of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
An immigration officer facing state charges in connection with a shooting in Minneapolis was released from jail on Thursday after Republican officials in Texas prevailed in an extradition battle with their Democratic counterparts in Minnesota. It is unclear whether the agent will ultimately answer those charges in court.
The officer, Christian Castro of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had been jailed for the last three months in Cameron County, Texas, while Minnesota officials sought to have him sent north to face assault charges related to a shooting in January that wounded a Venezuelan immigrant.
Sheriff Manuel Trevino of Cameron County said Mr. Castro was released just before 7 a.m. local time.
The case has tested the limits of state powers in an era of deep political mistrust.
It is rare for federal agents to face state criminal charges for on-duty conduct, and the Trump administration has argued that the charges Minnesota prosecutors have filed against Mr. Castro are illegitimate. It is also exceedingly rare for one governor not to act on a request from another to extradite a criminal defendant, as Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has done.
Because Mr. Castro did not agree to leave Texas, where he lives, Minnesota officials needed Mr. Abbott to approve a request to extradite him. But Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has so far declined to act on the request from Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat. Because Texas law limits detention in extradition cases to 90 days, Mr. Castro had to be freed on Thursday.
Minnesota officials have said they were worried that Mr. Castro would flee to Mexico if he was released, and they filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to force the Texas governor to act. But Mr. Abbott’s lawyers said he needed more time to determine whether Mr. Castro was eligible for extradition. The judge sided with Texas on Wednesday, finding that there was no proof that Mr. Abbott was acting in bad faith.
Mr. Castro was among the thousands of federal agents sent to Minnesota last winter as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which resulted in violent clashes between agents and residents, thousands of arrests and three shootings.
Mr. Castro was accused of shooting a Venezuelan man, Julio C. Sosa-Celis, on Jan. 14 after a long car chase and short foot pursuit with Mr. Sosa-Celis’s roommate.
State prosecutors said Mr. Castro fired through the door of a home, striking Mr. Sosa-Celis in the leg. They charged Mr. Castro in mid-May in state court in Minneapolis with four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
Mr. Castro, who returned to Texas shortly after the shooting, did not travel to Minnesota to face the charges. He was arrested in Texas in late May on a warrant from Minnesota.
Mr. Castro has not publicly addressed the charges against him, and he did not respond to requests for comment through a jail messaging system in recent months.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, federal officials backed Mr. Castro and accused Mr. Sosa-Celis and his roommate, who is also from Venezuela, of engaging in a sustained attack with a broom and a shovel.
Days after the shooting, Mr. Sosa-Celis and his roommate were charged in federal court with assaulting a law enforcement officer. But federal prosecutors dismissed that case in February after investigators determined, based on a video of the encounter, that agents had likely lied about the events that led to the shooting.
Federal officials have said they were investigating the agents involved in the shooting, though no federal charges have been announced.
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7) Trump Administration to Expand Deportation Flights to Haiti
Flights to the Caribbean nation will increase from once a month to once a week now that the Supreme Court allowed President Trump to cancel a humanitarian program.
By Hamed Aleaziz and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Aug. 27, 2026
Deportation flights to Haiti will increase as soon as this week. Credit...Jean Feguens Regala/Reuters
The Trump administration plans to step up deportation flights to Haiti as soon as this week, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, a move intended to more quickly expel thousands of Haitians whose legal status expired this summer with the end of a humanitarian program.
The administration aims to increase the pace of flights from once a month to once a week, the documents show, potentially allowing for the deportation of hundreds more people per month. The flights are expected to continue weekly in the near term, though a U.S. official cautioned that the plans were still being finalized.
The push comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration was free to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status, a program that blocks the deportation of people from designated countries deemed too dangerous to return its citizens to. The Trump administration concluded that Haiti is safe enough to be removed from the protected list, despite widespread lawlessness and gang activity in the country.
The State Department has warned U.S. travelers not to visit Haiti “due to the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited health care.” The Federal Aviation Administration banned commercial airlines from landing in the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this year, citing “ongoing instability.” There have been reports of gangs firing on aircraft trying to land at the Port-au-Prince airport.
“There is not even a vestige of a state in control,” said Daniel Foote, the Biden administration’s special envoy to Haiti, who resigned in 2021 over the deportations of Haitian migrants. Mr. Foote, who remains in contact with people on the ground in Haiti, said the deportations would likely include many Haitian immigrants who have spent most of their lives in the United States and will now be sent to a dangerous environment.
“Not only has it not gotten better, it hasn’t stabilized,” Mr. Foote said. “It just continues to get worse and worse and worse.”
Mr. Foote questioned how the Trump administration assessed that Haiti was now safe enough for an increase of deportations. In fact, internal emails and documents obtained by The Times indicate that the Homeland Security Department decided to terminate the protections in June 2025 without obtaining input from the State Department, which typically is responsible for assessing the conditions in foreign countries.
Deporting hundreds more to Haiti will hasten deportations, but it will still take time to reach the more than 300,000 Haitians who had been allowed to legally live and work in the United States under the expired protected status. The administration will most likely need to further increase the pace to expel every Haitian now in the country illegally. The administration has offered people in the country illegally a plane ticket and $2,600 in cash to self-deport using an app.
“The federal courts have ordered the Haitian illegals must leave the U.S. and we have generously made free flights available,” said Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, who declined to provide specific details on deportation flights to Haiti.
Seeking safer ways to land aircraft than arriving at Port-au-Prince, U.S. officials have flown migrants about 120 miles away to the city of Cap Haitien, which is where the new flights will land. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been flying Haitians to the much smaller city once a month, according to Savi Arvey, the director of policy for immigration issues at Human Rights First, who oversees a project that tracks the deportation flights.
Last Thursday, ICE said it deported more than 160 Haitians to Cap Haitien. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, pointed to more than a dozen Haitians on the flight with criminal records. The last deportation flight before that one was in July, according to Ms. Arvey.
Temporary Protected Status “was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement this week. “Under the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump, we are putting America first again.”
The agency said it would not confirm future deportation flights for security reasons.
Temporary Protected Status was first offered to Haitians during the Obama administration after a devastating earthquake struck the country. The Biden administration extended the protections because of gang violence and instability in the country. But Mr. Trump has made it clear he wants to purge people from Haiti, which he disparaged as a “shithole” country even as his administration has deemed it safe for deportations.
ICE officials have called Haitian immigrants to check in in recent weeks and placed ankle monitors on them, according to advocates. The technology allows ICE officials to monitor their whereabouts.
Mr. Mullin has been under intensifying pressure by supporters of the Trump administration to ramp up deportations of Haitians. “We are giving them an opportunity to either leave on their own and we’ll help you, or we’ll arrest you and send you back,” Mr. Mullin told News Nation this month.
Top administration officials, including Stephen Miller, have said before that removing Haitians is an appropriate action.
“Well, of course, if you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported,” he told reporters in June.
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8) There Is a Sickness Worse Than Wokeness
By David French, Opinion Columnist, Aug. 27, 2026
George Douglas
There was a moment — it was brief — when I thought the era of peak woke, or what Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently referred to as “Woke 1,” could lead to a free speech renaissance in this country.
On July 7, 2020 — in the midst of a shameful and sometimes terrifying wave of cancellations and terminations that included a number of innocent people who either had the misfortune of being misunderstood or speaking in ways that angered the most intolerant voices online — a cross-partisan coalition of writers, professors and other public figures published “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” in Harper’s Magazine.
I recognized most of the signatories, and their ideology ranged from left to right and everywhere in between. But they were united under the banner of free speech, and their words were music to my free-speech-loving ears. “The restriction of debate,” they wrote, “whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.”
“The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away,” they said. And they made perhaps the most critical argument of all — that justice and freedom are not in tension. Instead, they “cannot exist without each other.”
It was a necessary message at a crucial moment, and had that message been the manifesto of the so-called anti-woke movement, then I’d argue that our nation would be in a substantially different place in 2026. More free. More united. More grounded in the Constitution and the pluralistic principles of the founding.
That’s not what happened. The anti-woke movement went in a different direction, and its “cure” for wokeness was more intolerance and more repression — just from a different faction of American politics. The anti-woke movement has taken all the excesses of wokeness, absorbed it into the Republican Party and weaponized it into the worst and most repressive administration for free speech since Woodrow Wilson arrested and prosecuted thousands of political opponents during World War I.
This administration has arrested college students for writing opinion pieces and participating in demonstrations, retaliated against universities and law firms for their constitutionally protected speech, threatened broadcasters based on the content of their programming and recently even threatened a think tank, the Center for American Progress, with a $5 billion defamation suit for publishing a study that found that there is “no evidence” that President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard into multiple American cities reduced violent crime.
We had a preview of Trump’s censorship well before Trump’s second term. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida declared that his state was the place “where woke goes to die.”
And how was Florida killing wokeness? Through a wave of censorship that would make many of the most woke college administrators blush. It passed a statewide speech code that purported to ban critical race theory but in reality unconstitutionally violated the free speech rights of professors and corporations in the state. It passed a different speech code that sharply restricted discussions of gender and sexuality in public schools, and it retaliated against Disney when the company objected to the policy.
All of this has been chronicled before. I’ve written about the excesses of the anti-woke right time and time again.
But I’m less interested in what happened than in why it happened. Why did the right choose to fight censorship with censorship, and why — as a side effect of that fight — did it also become the home of America’s worst cranks, grifters and conspiracy theorists?
In other words, the right didn’t just become more repressive; it became more stupid at the same time.
The reason, in hindsight, is obvious. Instead of choosing to defend free speech, they instead embraced many of the worst people and worst ideas and then wielded them as a weapon against the hated left.
As a longtime free speech lawyer and proponent, I’ve become quite accustomed to defending speech I dislike. That’s, in fact, central to the job description. If you defend only agreeable speech, you’re not defending free speech, you’re defending your speech.
For example, in 2005 — when I was president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (then called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE) — we defended the free speech and academic freedom of a professor named Ward Churchill. He’d written an essay just after 9/11 that compared the victims of the World Trade Center attack to Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust.
He called them “little Eichmanns.” Their sin was being part of “a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire.” He praised the 9/11 hijackers for making “gallant sacrifices”
In other words, he was vile.
But it is easy, or at least should be, to defend speech without embracing the speaker. As Greg Lukianoff, our legal director (and now FIRE’s president) wrote at the time, “If he intended to generate sympathy for terrorists, the effect has been the opposite. We need not fear his words, and we must not allow our anger to cause us to betray our deepest moral and legal principles.”
I was proud of our work in that case. We did our best to stand in the shoes of the great free speech advocates who’d come before us, the people who’d defended the least popular speech so that all of us could be secure in our liberty.
It is not the government’s role to determine the viewpoints that are too terrible to hear. When it has been given that free hand it has proved that it was more likely to wield as a weapon against abolitionists, pacifists, partisan opponents and anyone else who seeks to challenge those in positions of prestige and power than it was to preserve any sort of civic virtue. As Frederick Douglass wrote, free speech, “of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.”
At FIRE we never let our love of liberty cloud our moral judgment. To refer to one of the most famous First Amendment cases in American history, Nazis may have a right to march through Skokie, Ill., but they are still Nazis.
Many in the anti-woke movement, however, changed this calculus. Rather than defend principles, they embraced extremists. Yes, innocent people were canceled, but terrible people lost their jobs as well (sometimes quite appropriately), and when they did, the anti-woke right welcomed them with open arms.
Imagine if the A.C.L.U. didn’t merely defend the free speech of Nazis in Illinois, but put them on television, raised money for them online, gave them book deals and created a podcast — perhaps one called “Just Asking Questions” — that further injected their vile ideas deeper and deeper into the American bloodstream.
Once you see this pattern on the anti-woke right, you can’t unsee it. The instant the “woke” declared someone or something bad was the instant that the right started to find their point of view intriguing, provocative and perhaps even compelling. And the definition of woke was always shifting, until it settled on “anything or anyone even slightly to my left.”
The examples are legion. Tucker Carlson was canceled by Fox News for, among other things, the sin of being a serial fabulist and conspiracy theorist. He soon became one of the most popular podcasters in the land.
Nick Fuentes was canceled by YouTube for Holocaust denial and profound antisemitism. At the time he had roughly 87,000 Twitter followers. Since that time his Twitter following has grown to a staggering 1.3 million people, and he met with Trump in between Trump’s two terms.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was stripped of her committee assignments after engaging in extraordinarily antisemitic and Islamophobic speech and then went on to become one of the leading Republican fund-raisers in the House and a MAGA darling (at least until she turned on Trump, the only unforgivable sin on the MAGA right).
I can keep going.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is and was a veritable geyser of medical lunacy. He went from claiming he was censored on Facebook and Instagram to becoming the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
And of course we have the godfather of all the canceled, Trump himself, who helped use right-wing outrage that he was ejected from multiple social media platforms after Jan. 6 to help kick-start his political comeback.
After a while, being “canceled” went from being a horrifying experience that ruined the lives and careers of decent people to being a cause for right-wing celebration among the worst of the worst, the first thing they’d put in their bio when they went hunting for book deals or speaking gigs.
On the right, many politicians, influencers and other public figures went from fearing the online mob to deliberately provoking it, hoping to become a lightning rod so that their star would shine brighter in the right-wing firmament.
This phenomenon has leaked all the way down to the grassroots. Perhaps the worst example is a woman named Shiloh Hendrix. She achieved her 15 minutes of infamy when she was recorded on video defending calling a young Black child the N-word, only to raise almost a million dollars on GiveSendGo, a Christian giving platform, after she faced a public outcry.
Don’t think for a second that she was apologetic. As she said in her fund-raising appeal, “I called the kid out for what he was.”
The reason for the shift is best explained by my colleague Ezra Klein’s interview with the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro last September. The modern right isn’t really conservative any longer. It’s “anti-left,” Shapiro said. And when it became primarily anti-left it adopted an ethos that declared that the enemy of my enemy was my friend — even if your new “friend” is a loathsome person sharing profoundly hateful or deranged views.
But calling the new right anti-left understates the case. It hates the left, with all of its heart, soul and mind. And when you hate a movement that much, you don’t care about their civil liberties. You will gladly violate their rights.
In some quarters of the new right, this view hardened into a doctrine that goes by the acronym NETTR, short for “no enemies to the right.” NETTR is different from the 11th Commandment popularized by Ronald Reagan: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican.” NETTR, in essence, means that Republicans shall not speak ill of any fascist.
In this view, the political and cultural dangers of the present moment are so great that it requires rallying everyone on the right — no matter how extreme — in a grand alliance to take down the left.
And what is the emergency that justifies wrapping both arms around Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump? It’s wokeness of course, the all-purpose rationalization for every authoritarian, dishonest, conspiracist turn in right-wing politics and thought.
To use the language of the new right, don’t you know what time it is? The old rules brought our nation to the brink of extinction. It’s time for the new rules and the new tactics.
It turns out, however, that when you embrace cranks, they change you more than you change them. And that is especially true when your movement is led by a crank — a crank you love in part because he is cruel, because he is hateful. Or, as JD Vance said before he became vice president, “Our people hate the right people.”
And anyone wonders why MAGA has gone so wrong?
There is no doubt that Woke 1 was often, as Ocasio-Cortez said, “crazy.” It was often worse than crazy. It could be gleefully vindictive. Good people — including people I know — were put through hell. I’ve experienced its scorn also, and I know what it’s like to face deeply unfair and grotesquely wrong accusations of hate and bigotry, along with demands that I face extreme personal and professional consequences for my speech.
I’ve felt the anti-woke movement’s claws as well, and no one has called for my cancellation with more vigor than the new right. As person after person endures this deep intolerance — an intolerance backed by the full power of the federal government buttressed by a vitriolic right-wing media ecosystem that’s being remade in the image of the 1930s radio demagogue Father Coughlin — it’s very clear what has happened in the United States of America.
My idea is that "cancel culture" on both sides was a consequence of the "tolerance paradox" taken to a second level. As Betrand Russell said "we cannot tolerate intolerance, or it would be the end of tolerance". True in principle, but it may become the best alibi of intolerants: whoever doesn't want to tolerate someone, says they are intolerant. So, "woke" cancel culture was based on the assumption "whoever disagrees, even slightly, with my idea of inclusiveness is racist, sexist, homophobic or transfobic and, as such, cannot be tolerated". And the answer from the right was "as woke is intolerant, any idea that may broadly be defined as such may and should be banned"
The difference is that Woke 1.0, while excessive in some instances, was mostly people using their free speech to call out things they disagreed with and businesses deciding when employee conduct was not aligned with their businesses interest. Eg. If someone calls a coworker “ugly” at work, it may be both a true statement and a use of constitutionally free speech, but the employer may determine this is hurtful to their other employees and their enterprise and choose to fire the offender. Whereas this anti-woke backlash is actually leveraging the government to silence people, blatantly against the First Amendment.
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9) Loving Dolly Was Easy. Understanding Her Was Hard.
By Tressie McMillan Cottom, Opinion Columnist, Aug. 27, 2026
Timothy White/AUGUST
Loving Dolly Rebecca Parton was easy. She was beautiful, funny and kind. Rumor has it that she was a prankster who could tell a good dirty joke. She was a country music original, a glittering pop star, a scene-stealing actress, a cultural icon and an unparalleled humanitarian. By the final decade of her 60-plus-year career, loving her had become something of a public sacrament. But Dolly didn’t see herself as a saint; she identified as something we needed even more: a writer.
Despite the way we all loved Dolly, I don’t think that many of us ever really understood that about her. We hung on to the stories she told us about how she grew up with a lot of love and not much money. We knew that she revered her father and honored her mother. We knew she told Elvis Presley he could not own the rights to one of her songs and that, amazingly, the King didn’t seem to hold it against her. We knew that she wanted kids to read and queer people to be celebrated and country people to feel seen.
She told these stories so often and with so much authenticity that most of us don’t realize these are the only stories that she really told us about herself. It was the repetition over 60 years, albeit in different registers, with different deliveries, that made her endlessly beloved yet dazzlingly impenetrable. It’s a good writer’s sleight of hand.
To understand Dolly, you have to read her as a writer. Writing her own story was the most radical, precise way to define herself in a world that kept trying to fit her into a box. She was not simply Southern, not simply country. She was from Appalachia — a place that is just as mythologized, mocked and misunderstood as Dolly was. It’s a place where people are rarely allowed to speak for themselves. Instead, they are interpolated through coastal biases about white trash and red states. If they are lucky, Appalachians are stereotyped as hillbillies new to the modern world. Too racist to be redeemed. Too dumb to be a problem if they aren’t.
The story Dolly wrote about herself across thousands of songs and performances and books was a counternarrative about Appalachia. She narrated it as a place filled with soaring mountains and narrow hollers, geological wonders and distinctive cultures, abundant love and generational poverty.
Appalachian people are used to city folk making fun of them. It’s easy to forget that Dolly was not exempt from this sort of mockery. For most of her career, men made cracks about her figure. Women made digs about her lowbrow fashion. Critics often downplayed her artistry. No matter how famous she got, how many new audiences fell in love with her, how undeniable her talent, how ridiculous her work ethic, Dolly had to waste time with stupid jokes from small minds.
When people underestimated Dolly for looking like “the town tramp,” as she put it, she embraced it. In 2009 she told Morley Safer, “By the time they think that I don’t know what’s going on, I’ve done got the money and gone.” We call that particular trick country dumb where I am from. Dolly was a master at it.
Make fun of her cleavage? You better tell a funnier gag than one she already told about herself. Want to look down on her about being parochial? You will have to square that with her outstanding business acumen. At a time when women and poor people signed away their intellectual property for a shot at stardom, Dolly started a series of successful publishing companies to retain her rights.
That’s not to say that Dolly’s pride, especially in her craft, didn’t shine through. Her indefatigable sense of herself as a creative person, with the right to make her art as she saw fit, came from her sense of place. She crafted stories in the rhyme, meter, poetry and politics of Appalachia. Her interpretations of bluegrass may be among my favorites, especially when she met her creative match in Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. The song “Down From Dover,” from 1970, is an exemplar of Southern gothic storytelling — a story of young pregnant women hiding in plain sight that is as haunting in post-Roe America as it was when she wrote it. The vulnerability of “Jolene” made it impossible for any cover to transcend the original.
But it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that one of Dolly’s stories perfectly matched my own. I had a devastating pregnancy loss, which was, I knew, my last chance to have a baby. One day, I turned on college radio to drown out the silence. Dolly’s 1968 song “The Bridge” was playing. It wasn’t the first time I heard it. It was the first time I understood the young girl in it, pregnant, abandoned, contemplating suicide to end the pain. The juxtaposition of that pain and Dolly’s high, lonesome voice broke me wide open. I cried for the first time for everything I would not have. When I was done crying, I was the person I would be after loss.
For all her sparkle, Dolly was a simple girl. She wrote simple lyrics, simple melodies, told simple stories about simple human experiences. Her lyrics were simple because the living in Appalachia can be so hard. They were often radical for the same reason. Lines like “They just use your mind, and they never give you credit. / It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it,” from her smash hit “9 to 5” are true to the working-class politics of folk music but tell a story through women instead of men. Critics have always struggled to appreciate that kind of poetry. They make exceptions for Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen. Brevity is wit when men do it. When women do it, we’re supposed to think of it as luck. But for Dolly, it wasn’t luck; it was simply the truest expression of the homeland she never, not once, not even after she became a millionaire, spurned.
She knew what I know: Appalachia’s food, its literature and its music are universal. That’s why anywhere in the world where people have been pushed from their homeland or trapped in its cycle of exploitation, you will find a Dolly Parton fan.
I think I knew that the first time I stood too close to the television, at 9 years old, transfixed by the big-haired blonde singing “Two Doors Down.” The song wasn’t about me, wasn’t about my life, about my people. But good writing doesn’t have to imagine everyone. It only has to imagine the truest thing about all of us, that exists in each of us.
That is what made the girl from the holler make sense to me even though the world (and my mother) thought she shouldn’t. Before Dolly was a saint, when she was still just a popular twangy pop star in a wig, I saw something in the way she took up space that called to me, an ambitious girl the world did not expect much from but who knew — just knew — that she was a writer.
Dolly owned her right to write our American story. That was bigger than the hair and the boobs, shinier than the sequins, more feminist than a thousand burning bras, more honest than almost anyone gets to be in public life without selling a pound of flesh.
Dolly’s songs will live on. They document American history through the eyes of Americans who don’t often get to tell their own story. She also left a legacy for little ambitious girls. All races. All walks of life. The way she lived and worked, the way she sparkled and demurred, the way she took up space and took the hits for being larger than life is proof that a good story can change the way we see the world.
Dolly Parton was a writer. In the end, Dolly Parton is the greatest story that Dolly ever wrote.
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