Thursday, July 30
National CALL to ACTION at U.S. Drone Bases
Please share far & wide
Simultaneous protests planned at 4 U.S. Drone Bases:
1. Beale AFB in Marysville, CA - Central base for drone surveillance data analysis, and home to the new “Collaborative Combat Aircraft” autonomous drone fleet.
2. Holloman AFB, Alamogordo, New Mexico - Largest drone training base in the U.S.
3. Creech AFB, Indian Springs, Nevada/near Las Vegas - Central command for U.S. MQ9 Reaper Drone combat attacks.
4. Hancock Field Air National Guard, (Syracuse, NY) - MQ9 Reaper Drone combat operations and training.
Dear Northern California Peace Allies,
BanKillerDrones.org and ShutDownDroneWarfare are collaborating this Thursday, July 20, 2026, in a National Call to Action at U.S. Drone Bases. If you live in California, please consider joining us for an early morning commute protest/vigil at Beale AFB. (Note: Early am to avoid the summer heat and still reach the troops in commute hours). Organize a carpool from your area. We will leave East Bay at 4 am! We can do this! (The military do it every day of the week).
Drones are a critical tool in the wars in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine. U.S. drones have been the illegal and immoral tools of choice of the U.S. Empire and global domination since their inception.
In the war on Iran, 30+ MQ9 Reaper drones have already been destroyed at a cost of $50 million dollars each! Consider the basic human needs that are being neglected due to this grossly wasteful expenditure of unbridled militarism.
In addition, 4,000 to 6,000 Iranians have already been killed, tens of thousands more injured in this unprovoked and aggressive U.S.-Israeli War on the people of Iran. Though we mourn the loss of U.S. military as well, only 18-20 American losses are reported to date. This vast disproportionality underlines the horrors and cruelty of the conflict.
Please join us this Thursday at Beale to call on our military to:
· REFUSE ILLEGAL ORDERS
· IRAN?: HELL NO, DON’T DRONE!
· PROMOTE PEACE WITH IRAN (& everywhere)
· STOP KILLING FOR EMPIRE!
If you’re interested in attending, please contact:
Toby Blomé, toby4peace@sonic.net
(for more details and assistance with carpooling, if needed)
Contacts for other base actions:
Holloman AFB: jonahph@proton.me
Creech AFB: Kb11680@gmail.com
Hancock AFB: Mary Anne Grady Flores: gradyflores08@gmail.com*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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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.
Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a member of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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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) Why Restarting a Nuclear Power Plant Can Be Much Harder Than Expected
The first U.S. attempt at reopening a shuttered reactor has been held back by run-down equipment and a lack of planning.
By Rebecca F. Elliott, Photographs by Jamie Kelter Davis, July 27, 2026
Reporting from the Palisades nuclear plant on Lake Michigan and the plant owner’s headquarters in Camden, N.J.
Some of the setbacks at Palisades were expensive and time consuming, such as discovering that key equipment was corroded.
When Michigan’s oldest operating nuclear power plant shut down in 2022, it was supposed to be for good. The plant, which sits on the coast of Lake Michigan, had company — dozens of other reactors had already been wound down.
But soon after the turbines stopped spinning, those plans changed. A little-known company from Camden, N.J., quietly started taking steps to attempt what no one had done before in the United States: restart a shuttered nuclear reactor. The process would take about two years, estimated the company, Holtec International.
Four years later, the plant, called Palisades, is not yet generating power.
The delay is a reminder of the challenges of expanding nuclear energy, even at a time when the technology enjoys broad bipartisan support. The United States has built just two new reactors in the past decade. They cost more than twice as much as planned and arrived seven years late, quelling interest across the energy industry and on Wall Street.
Some of the setbacks at Palisades were expensive and time consuming, including discovering extensive corrosion of the equipment that uses hot radioactive water to produce high-pressure steam. Others were mundane: supply chain headaches, an underground water line that leaked, valves that needed replacing.
None of these challenges were unforeseeable. Holtec had never operated a nuclear power plant. It also embarked on the project almost as soon as it bought Palisades. The company applied for federal subsidies for the effort seven days after the sale closed, according to records obtained by The New York Times.
By the time Holtec decided to restart Palisades, it had not completed a top-to-bottom inspection of the plant, Jeff Borah, the general manager of plant operations, said in an interview.
“We didn’t take the time to really plan out the whole project before we started doing work,” Mr. Borah said. “It’s like building a fire truck on your way to the fire.”
Now, Holtec is aiming to load fuel into the nuclear reactor in September, records show, and generate power by the end of the year. It faces a March 2027 contractual deadline.
The Palisades restart is part of a larger effort to revive nuclear energy in the United States. The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, is dangling billions in federal financing to kick-start investment. In June, the Energy Department offered up to $17.5 billion in subsidized loans for the purchase of nuclear equipment in hopes of having 10 large reactors under construction by 2030.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes to get that ball rolling,” Chris Wright, the energy secretary, said in an interview.
Jigar Shah, who ran the Energy Department’s loan office during the Biden administration, said Holtec’s work encouraged other companies to pursue similar projects. Constellation Energy and NextEra Energy followed Holtec by agreeing to reopen nuclear reactors in Pennsylvania and Iowa. Like Palisades, those plants were slated to be dismantled, distinguishing the projects from other efforts to restart reactors that were taken offline temporarily.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Holtec being optimistic,” said Mr. Shah, whose office backstopped a low-interest loan of up to $1.52 billion to finance restarting Palisades, which has the capacity to meet the electricity needs of more than 800,000 homes. “They thought that they were going to inherit a plant that was in much better shape.”
A Holtec executive and former nuclear regulators said it was not surprising that the company had decided to reopen Palisades without having inspected certain equipment, particularly given that it had owned the facility for only a short time.
“There are some systems you can’t really inspect until you start the project,” said Rick Springman, Holtec’s president. As an example, he pointed to a turbine that needed to be disassembled before being thoroughly examined, a process that took months.
“The difference between building a new house and rehabbing an old house is there is going to be discovery,” Dr. Springman said.
Other projects have not been as fraught. Constellation Energy says it expects to restart the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania next year, ahead of schedule. Unlike Holtec, Constellation owned and operated its plant for many years.
Palisades was bought from Entergy, a utility company. An Entergy spokesman praised Holtec’s restart effort but did not comment on the plant’s condition when it was sold.
The plan to revive Palisades, which opened in 1971, has put off some locals, including people who say they support nuclear power. Worries range from the amount of taxpayer money being spent and Holtec’s lack of expertise operating nuclear reactors to cancer risks. A recent study led by Harvard’s public health school found higher cancer mortality rates in counties near operating nuclear plants.
“It doesn’t seem like a smart idea to try to restart something that’s this old,” said Dave Simonelli, who spends summers less than a mile from Palisades as the crow flies. The 69-year-old described himself as being pronuclear, but concerned with safety: “Why restart an antique? A car in the junkyard.”
Palisades was built at the vanguard of a booming business in the United States. By the end of the 1970s, the country had more than 60 reactors. And by the mid-1990s, that figure had topped 100.
But people soured on nuclear power after a reactor at Three Mile Island partially melted down in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Companies canceled dozens of projects. One reactor after another shuttered as they struggled to compete with power plants that burned natural gas, which was becoming cheaper.
By 2022, however, public attitudes toward nuclear power were improving, including among Democrats who had been skeptical of the technology. Nuclear reactors can generate electricity around the clock without releasing greenhouse gases.
Officials working in the Biden administration and for Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, tried unsuccessfully to convince Entergy to keep Palisades open. So they turned to Holtec.
It was a gamble. The company was in the business of making the equipment to store spent nuclear fuel and dismantling old reactors, not running plants.
Holtec quickly estimated that reopening Palisades would take two years and cost more than $1.9 billion, including a contingency for cost overruns, records show.
It took almost that long just to line up customers and other financing after the Energy Department rejected Holtec’s initial application for subsidies. Holtec eventually pushed the restart date to October 2025 and then to the end of this year.
Two electric cooperatives, Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy, agreed in 2023 to buy the power Palisades produced for 28 years at a fixed price. A Times review of a Holtec securities filing indicates the co-ops may have agreed to pay roughly $59 per megawatt-hour. That is slightly higher than the market rate for wholesale electricity in the region.
Holtec and Wolverine Power declined to comment on the price. Hoosier Energy did not respond to requests for comment.
It didn’t hurt that the government was showering Palisades with money, including $300 million from Michigan and the promise of federal tax credits once the plant was running. Separately, the Agriculture Department awarded $1.3 billion to Wolverine and Hoosier in late 2024, most of it to be put toward this effort.
It was around then that Holtec discovered a major problem. The plant’s twin steam generators, among its most expensive equipment, were more degraded than the company had expected.
Holtec plugged or repaired thousands of skinny U-shaped metal tubes inside the generators. “That was a significant delay in the project, months,” said Mr. Borah, the operations manager.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission signed off on Holtec’s approach, which activists and some residents worry was insufficient.
“Here at Palisades, there have been so many compromises,” Michael J. Keegan, a co-chairman of the environmental group Don’t Waste Michigan, testified at a June N.R.C. hearing where he argued that Holtec should have replaced the steam generators.
Dr. Springman, Holtec’s president, said the repaired equipment had been extensively inspected and tested. “We feel very comfortable with the safety of the component,” he said.
This spring, Palisades resembled a Lego set that was being reassembled. Scaffolding draped in orange fabric straddled the turbines and a generator that converts steam into electricity. Nearby, a worker cleaned pipes. A screen showed men clad in white protective suits inspecting a giant metal barrel designed to hold nuclear fuel in the nearby reactor building.
Holtec, which is responsible for any additional expenses tied to the project’s delay, declined to share an updated cost estimate.
Mr. Springman said that describing the project as delayed was “unfair” since the contractual deadline for restarting the facility is March 2027.
It is a sensitive time for Holtec, which this month filed paperwork for an initial public offering. Armed with its experience at Palisades, the company wants to build and operate smaller nuclear reactors, starting at the Michigan site.
It is riding growing enthusiasm for nuclear power. The federal government, technology companies and others are offering to invest in or lend money to nuclear companies. Elsewhere, the energy crisis stemming from the war with Iran is pushing countries toward nuclear energy.
That Palisades has been slow to reopen was of little concern to Gail Patterson-Gladney, a commissioner in Van Buren County, the plant’s home. “We are like a prototype, something that’s never been done,” Ms. Patterson-Gladney said.
Jim Wilson, 66, who lives down the road from Palisades, has been readjusting to the idea of having the plant back online. He recently bought a Geiger counter to measure background radiation levels in his home.
“I have faith that they’ll do it right,” Mr. Wilson said. “Otherwise I’d have a for-sale sign on my house.”
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2) Should We Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent?
More light at the day’s end comes at a price: much later winter sunrises across much of the U.S. Scientists have documented consequences for public health and the economy.
By Lynne Peeples, July 27, 2026
Lynne Peeples is a science writer in Seattle who has written about circadian rhythms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/science/daylight-saving-time-health-safety.html
George Etheredge for The New York Times
The Sunshine Protection Act, passed by the House this month, promises an easy fix to an unpopular ritual: The bill would halt the twice-yearly changing of the clocks and make daylight saving time permanent.
A competing House measure, introduced in early July, would lock the clock on standard time. Now lawmakers confront three imperfect options: permanent daylight saving time, permanent standard time, or the seasonal clock-switching we have now.
Permanent daylight saving time may well be the riskiest of those choices, many scientists believe, with unintended consequences for health and the economy. Ultimately, the question is where to place an hour of daylight, a particularly scarce resource in winter.
The name of the House bill “gives the illusion that you’re increasing the amount of light,” said Jamie Zeitzer, co-director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences at Stanford University.
“But you’re not. You’re just changing when the light occurs.”
In Seattle, for example, permanent daylight saving time would push sunrise past 8:30 a.m. for roughly 10 weeks each winter. Permanent standard time would bring sunrise before 4:30 a.m. for about two months each summer.
Many sleep and circadian scientists think the disputed hour belongs in the morning. A network of clocks throughout the body coordinates everything from immune defenses to metabolism. The most potent time-setting signal for that system: sunlight.
Bright mornings and dark evenings help keep the internal clocks in sync, so the body can perform the right functions at the right times. Shifting an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening potentially disrupts this circadian system.
“The preponderance of the evidence is that daylight saving time is not good for our health or safety, and I think it shouldn’t happen,” said Elizabeth B. Klerman, a sleep and circadian researcher at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Studies link chronic circadian misalignment to higher risks of cardiovascular and metabolic disease, some cancers and mental health problems. That’s one reason why the American Medical Association and other health, sleep and scientific organizations have endorsed permanent standard time.
Still, the appeal of permanent daylight saving time is obvious. More people would leave school and work before dark during the winter. Extra evening light might encourage exercise and socializing and, some studies suggest, reduce car accidents and rates of certain crimes.
“Where is that hour of daylight the most beneficial? I think it’s a pretty intuitive answer — when people are awake to use it,” said Steve Calandrillo, a law professor at the University of Washington who has studied the economics of daylight saving time.
The cost is darker mornings. “The worst choice of all three options is permanent D.S.T.,” said Dr. Phyllis C. Zee, director of the Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The country has tried it before. In January 1974 during the oil crisis, Congress imposed year-round daylight saving time. It was popular at first — until people began complaining about the “second dark age,” and children were struck and killed walking to school in the dark.
Officials scrapped the experiment, and most of the country went back to seasonal clock changes, a system some researchers now consider the lesser of three evils.
Mixed Research
The public has little appetite for keeping the status quo. Only 12 percent of Americans say they want to keep springing forward and falling back, according to an AP-NORC poll in October.
Beyond the annoyance, studies have found measurable short-term consequences to resetting the clocks: upticks in traffic accidents and heart attacks, dips in life satisfaction, even reductions in charitable giving and longer criminal sentences handed down by judges.
Settling on a permanent time brings its own trade-offs, although the evidence here is thinner.
Results of studies predicting road safety, for example, under year-round daylight saving time land all over the map — with positive, negative and no effects. Much of that research draws on clock transitions or short extensions of daylight saving time, making it hard to know how the effects would play out during a permanent change, Dr. Klerman said.
Still, one analysis exploited natural variations in sunrise and sunset times to estimate that permanent daylight saving time could prevent hundreds of pedestrian and motor-vehicle deaths a year, largely because evenings see more traffic than mornings do. Another study found that robberies dropped with extended evening light.
But such gains, scientists note, could be offset in other ways by darker mornings, chronic sleep loss and circadian disruption. Even under the current seasonal system, research suggests our circadian clocks never fully adjust to the spring shift.
So some researchers have tried to gauge the effects of permanent daylight saving time by comparing people living at different positions within time zones.
These studies link living on the western side, where the sun rises and sets later by the clock, to less sleep, lower wages and higher rates of some cancers and suicide. And one study found significantly higher rates of fatal traffic crashes in counties unusually far west in their time zones.
Modern life has muddied the picture. Many people spend their days in relatively dim indoor light and their evenings under much the same artificial light, blurring the natural contrast between day and night.
Scientists may still debate the risks and benefits of moving to permanent daylight saving time, but generally agree on one point: Different people in different places will experience them in different ways.
Worries About Children
Extreme early birds, for example, might do fine with extra evening light — it could even help them stay awake long enough to enjoy a night out.
But teenagers and night owls might struggle, scientists say. Circadian timing usually shifts later during puberty; adolescents tend to fall asleep later and wake up later. Darker mornings could dial their natural clocks later still, even as school bells force them out of bed early.
One risk: car accidents. “High schoolers are driving cars to school in the dark in the middle of their biological night,” said Horacio de la Iglesia, a biologist at the University of Washington who has studied circadian rhythms for decades.
Other potential hazards range from mental health to academic performance. Winter depression among teenagers and young adults in Russia rose after it adopted permanent daylight saving time in 2011, then fell again after the country switched to permanent standard time in 2014.
Because brains, not factories, drive much of today’s economy, student performance may be the strongest economic case against year-round daylight saving time and for year-round standard time, said Philipp Neumann, an economics researcher at Bielefeld University in Germany.
Taking advantage of Indiana’s historically uneven adoption of daylight saving time, one study found SAT test scores were an average 16 points lower in counties that observed seasonal daylight saving time compared with those on permanent standard time. The gap widened among lower-income students.
Dr. de la Iglesia studied students before and after Seattle high schools moved their morning bells to 8:45 a.m., about an hour later than before. Students slept about 34 minutes more a night, and grades and attendance improved.
Permanent daylight saving time, he said, would “undo all the benefits of the school start time delay.”
Certain businesses, however, clearly profit from later sunsets. Retail and entertainment interests have long supported daylight saving time and its extension. Candy companies, too, backed delaying the fall clock change until after Halloween.
Dr. Neumann coauthored a broad review weighing the short- and long-term effects of permanent daylight saving time and permanent standard time on health, road safety, crime, electricity use and the economy.
The conclusion: Permanent standard time came out ahead overall, driven largely by the expected health benefits.
Too Soon?
Under current law, states may opt out of daylight saving time and stay on standard time year-round, as Arizona and Hawaii do. Both bills before Congress would change the national default while leaving some room for state choice.
But too much local discretion risks recreating the very confusion that standard time zones were designed to fix, Dr. Zeitzer said.
Before U.S. railroads introduced standard time zones in 1883, towns set their clocks to strike noon when the sun reached its zenith overhead. As The New York Times put it that November, if clocks had rung an alarm at local noon from Maine to the Pacific, “there would have been a continuous ringing from the east to the west lasting for 3¼ hours.”
Returning to true local sun time isn’t practical in a modern, interconnected society, Dr. Zeitzer said — even though, biologically, he considers that standard the best solution.
Among the more viable options, scientific opinions diverge. Some researchers actually prefer the current system to either permanent alternative.
Acknowledging the limited and inconsistent evidence to date, a recent review of more than 150 studies found the effects of clock changes and seasonal daylight saving time were “not uniformly detrimental.” The authors concluded that continuing the biannual dance, while working to mitigate its negative effects, is “worth consideration — until more robust evidence emerges.”
David Prerau, a leading expert on daylight saving time, suggests that we keep the twice-yearly resets but ramp up public campaigns urging people to prepare as they would for jet lag, by getting more sleep and slowly shifting bedtimes, meals and even medication schedules ahead of transitions.
“Before we make any major change, I would at least try it,” Dr. Prerau said.
Till Roenneberg, a circadian researcher and professor emeritus at LMU Munich who has long studied human sleep timing, also sees biological logic in the seasonal switch and prefers it to permanent daylight saving time.
His own preference, though, is permanent standard time — paired with more flexible school and work start times.
The problem here isn’t really the clock but the rigid schedules society has built around it, he and other scientists say.
School and work schedules should be delayed or relaxed to better accommodate both early birds and night owls, who don’t all thrive on the same fixed clock, they say. Schedules could even be shifted with the seasons.
Permanent daylight saving time “is not a problem except for the fact that businesses are still telling people to get into work at 8 a.m.,” Dr. Zeitzer said. “And schools are still opening up at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m.”
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3) ‘Never Should Have Gotten This Far’: Trump DOJ Moves to Drop Case Against Union Leader David Huerta
“This case, like others, sought to silence criticism of the administration’s improper immigration actions,” said attorneys representing California labor leader David Huerta.
By Brad Reed, July 27, 2026
The US Department of Justice on Monday moved to drop its criminal case against California labor leader David Huerta, who was charged with conspiring to impede an officer after being arrested last year while protesting federal immigration enforcement operations.
In a two-page filing, the DOJ said it was moving to dismiss charges against Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West.
As noted by a Monday Politico report, the DOJ had originally hit Huerta with a felony obstruction count, then downgraded it to a misdemeanor, before moving to drop the case altogether.
Heurta’s arrest caused an outcry last year, as video footage taken from the protest showed a masked law enforcement officer shoving the labor leader to the ground during a demonstration against a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Los Angeles.
In a statement released after the government’s motion to dismiss the case, Huerta said that the Trump DOJ “is finally admitting what we knew from day one and what was obvious to anyone who saw the videos: the charge against me was baseless, meant to intimidate anyone who dares to speak out, organize, or demand justice.”
Attorneys Abbe Lowell and Marilyn Bednarski, who are representing Huerta, delivered a scathing assessment of the DOJ’s conduct.
“This case, like others, sought to silence criticism of the administration’s improper immigration actions,” the attorneys said. “Today’s filing is proof that David and other critics will not be silenced.”
Lowell and Bednarski added that, even though their client is no longer facing criminal charges, the choice to pursue prosecution in the first place inflicted significant costs upon him.
“This case revealed that the Department of Justice was willing to charge a labor leader, hold it over him for months, and then walk away from it once the charge couldn’t survive scrutiny,” they said. “That is not how a justice system is supposed to work.”
The California Federation of Labor Unions expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that the decision to charge Huerta showed the DOJ has gone off the rails.
“Today, justice prevailed,” the federation said. “But it never should have gotten this far. The arrest of our union brother David Huerta was an assault on the entire labor movement by the Trump administration. The decision to drop these outrageous charges reflects the power of working people standing together.”
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, told The Los Angeles Times on Monday that she wasn’t surprised to see the government move to dismiss charges against Huerta because there were “problems with this case from day one.”
“When you look at the photos and videos, there’s certainly an argument from the defense that it was law enforcement acting in a defensive manner and he was just protesting,” Levenson said. “It would have been a tough case for the prosecution to win if this went to trial.”
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4) 'Draconian' UK terror laws under scrutiny as Palestine Action activists face terrorism ruling over Barclays red paint protest
By Assiah Hamed, London, July 27, 2026
Human rights groups have warned that treating five Palestine Action activists as terrorists over a 2024 protest at a Barclays bank would mark a dangerous expansion of the UK's counter-terrorism laws, with campaigners telling The New Arab it could set a precedent for criminalising political protest.
The warnings come after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) argued that five Palestine Action activists convicted over criminal damage at a Barclays branch in Burnley should be sentenced with a "terrorist connection", despite the protest taking place nearly a year before the group was proscribed under UK terrorism legislation.
According to reports, Brendon O'Hagan, Amanda Kelly, Hmeera Atiqnisar, Mohammed Malik and Alma Yaniv were convicted of causing £212,000 worth of damage after smashing windows and throwing red paint at a Barclays branch in Burnley, Lancashire, in August 2024.
The activists said they targeted the bank in the name of Palestine Action in protest at Barclays' financial ties to Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.
Following last month's convictions, reports said Judge Philip Parry informed both the prosecution and defence that he intended to consider whether the offences carried a "terrorist connection".
However, neither the defendants nor the jury had been informed during the trial that a "terrorist connection" could be considered.
The protest also took place before Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation and was not classified as a terrorism incident by the then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper or government officials at the time.
According to court filings cited by multiple media outlets, prosecutors argue the potential terrorist connection only emerged during the trial, when several defendants gave evidence about their affiliation with Palestine Action and said the protest formed part of the group's wider campaign targeting Barclays.
Could protesters be sentenced as terrorists?
Judge Parry referred lawyers to a recent judgment by Justice Jeremy Johnson, who last month ruled that four Palestine Action activists convicted of criminal damage during a raid on Elbit Systems' Filton factory near Bristol had committed offences with a "terrorist connection".
He attached that judgment when requesting legal submissions on whether a similar designation should apply in the Barclays case.
The earlier case involved Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani, who were sentenced with a "terrorist connection" after damaging 40 military assets belonging to Elbit Systems, including quadcopters, causing more than £1 million in damage.
In a statement, Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said the latest development was an example of "the floodgates flowing" from Justice Johnson's earlier ruling.
A terrorism sentence would subject the defendants to notification requirements for years after their release, including informing police of new electronic devices, bank accounts, telephone numbers, email addresses, vehicles, relationships and overseas travel plans.
Campaigners warn of 'dangerous precedent'
UK activist group Defend Our Juries told The New Arab that applying a terrorist connection to the Burnley case would represent an unprecedented expansion of anti-terror powers.
"To treat a peaceful protest against Barclays using red spray paint in this was represents a gross expansion of the use of the draconian terrorism laws. It is an insult to the victims of real terrorism and their families," it said.
The group argued that "the use of red spray paint is a basic tool of political protest", pointing to actions by Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, which it said "have caused far more damage than caused by the Burnley group".
Similar offences committed by those organisations have not been deemed to have a "terrorist connection".
"In the future it seems that the only way not be a terrorist will be either to express support for genocide and climate breakdown or to stay silent," the group said.
Liberty director Akiko Hart also warned the case risked broadening the use of terrorism legislation.
"It further highlights the deep flaws in the UK’s counter-terror laws," Hart told The New Arab. "It also confirms our fears that the Filton 4 sentencing would set a dangerous precedent for how terrorism laws are used to target protestors."
Hart added: "There is an urgent need to update the current definition of terrorism to enable current and future governments to uphold their duty to safeguard the public and national security, whilst protecting people’s rights and preventing overreach.”
Amnesty International UK also warned that treating criminal damage as terrorism risked fundamentally expanding the use of counter-terrorism legislation against peaceful protest.
"It would be completely disproportionate to punish someone for criminal damage as if they were terrorists," Tom Southerden, Amnesty International UK's Law and Human Rights Director, told The New Arab.
"A terrorism sentence stays with you for life, why should anyone be punished more severely for an offence because they did it as part of a demonstration against genocide or any other issue?" Southerden said.
"The misuse of counter-terrorism powers in this country is getting completely out of hand. It is the latest escalation in an ongoing crackdown on our right to protest, one of the most effective tools we have to hold our leaders to account," he added.
"Resorting to sweeping counter-terror powers against direct action protestors has to stop, and the proscription of Palestine Action should be lifted," he said.
According to Declassified UK, the defendants have applied for a pre-sentencing hearing so legal arguments can be heard on whether a "terrorist connection" should be attached to the case. They are due to be sentenced on 4 September 2026.
Founded in July 2020, Palestine Action describes itself as a movement "committed to ending global participation in Israel's genocidal and apartheid regime" by using "disruptive tactics" to target what it calls "corporate enablers" of Israel's arms industry, including British facilities linked to weapons manufacturers.
The UK government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation in July 2025 after activists broke into an RAF base in southern England and damaged military aircraft. The ban places the group in the same legal category as organisations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS).
The decision has been strongly criticised by campaigners, legal experts and several MPs, who argue that while Palestine Action has carried out criminal damage, its actions do not meet the threshold for terrorism.
Protest groups and Palestine solidarity campaigners have continued to call for the proscription to be overturned, warning that it represents a significant expansion of counter-terrorism powers and a dangerous shift in Britain's treatment of Palestine solidarity activism.
"When those taking a principled stand against genocide are treated as terrorists, we are past the point of being able to speak of a 'right to protest'. There is no right to protest left in Britain," Defend Our Juries told The New Arab. "It has been displaced by the absolute right to burn the planet and murder civilians, as long as it boosts the FTSE 100."
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5) Cuban Brigades Depart From Venezuela After Assisting in the Earthquake Emergency
By teleSUR. July 28, 2026
https://www.telesurenglish.net/cuban-brigades-return-after-assiting-venezuela-following-
Cuban brigade. X/@MINSAPCuba.
On Monday, July 17, 2026, Cuban teams of military personnel, doctors, and engineers who were deployed to La Guaira, Venezuela, following the double earthquake in June returned to the island.
The army’s Search and Rescue Brigade, comprised of 18 members, was received in Havana by the Ministers of the Interior and of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Lazaro Alberto Alvarez and Alvaro Lopez.
The Ministry of Public Health also confirmed the return of surgeons, forensic experts, and structural engineers, who were received by Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Josefina Vidal.
The Cuban mission, part of the Henry Reeve International Contingent, was seen off by Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who expressed her gratitude for the technical, medical, and humanitarian support provided.
The text reads, “The arrival in Venezuela of a group of Cuban rescuers to assist in the search for trapped individuals and to support our medical brigade constitutes a new demonstration of the unwavering solidarity of Cuba with the brother Venezuelan people.”
The 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on June 24 caused severe damage to homes, businesses, and economic assets, as well as loss of life, the number of which is still being updated.
Official figures report at least 5,546 deaths and 16,740 injuries. The Cuban contingent worked for weeks on search and rescue operations, reinforcing healthcare alongside medical brigades already present in Venezuela.
In recognition of their work, the Venezuelan government awarded the brigade the distinction of “Heroes and Heroines of Venezuela” in a ceremony presided over by Rodriguez at the Jorge Luis Garcia Carneiro Operations Base.
Source: EFE – Granma
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6) ICE Arrests Surge at Airports, Opening New Front in Deportation Drive
Federal agents are arresting spouses of Americans, tech workers and others whose visas have expired, including many who have active applications to stay in the country.
By Hamed Aleaziz and Miriam Jordan, July 28, 2026
A custom photo book made for Ms. Morales Rojas by Lauren and Scott Cahr, who hired her to care for their children.
The Trump administration has begun arresting foreign citizens with expired U.S. visas as they travel through airports, including spouses of Americans, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with immigration lawyers — a tactic that opens up a vast new pool of people for deportation.
Immigration agents in plain clothes have whisked away targets at check-in counters and arrival gates, with enforcement actions in at least 15 airports in recent weeks. Some of the arrests have occurred quietly, while others have happened as angry fellow passengers filmed the encounters.
The recent arrests appear to be an expansion of an arrangement between the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Times reported in December that ICE officers were arresting people with deportation orders at airports with the help of information provided by airlines to the T.S.A.
Now, through a review of Homeland Security Department documents and interviews with lawyers for more than 25 people from more than a dozen countries recently detained at airports, The Times has learned that the program apparently now includes people with expired visas — a much larger group.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants and visitors overstay visas each year. Many with expired visas occupy a legal gray area, as they are awaiting visa extensions or green cards and have been issued work permits. Such individuals were not prioritized for deportation in the past unless they had committed crimes, and they were rarely detained while waiting for visa extensions or green cards. But that has changed under President Trump, whose administration has undertaken a campaign of mass deportation and views all visa overstays as illegal.
“This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport,” a spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. The agency did not confirm the expansion of the program.
The department, which oversees ICE, has not disclosed how many people have been detained at airports as overstays under the new initiative. The arrests come during a period in which the White House has pushed ICE for more arrests across the country, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pledged to turn “up the heat on the streets.” To that end, the administration has set a target of 2,000 immigration arrests a day, roughly double the pace from earlier this year.
Interviews with more than a dozen immigration attorneys, advocacy organizations and an airline employee reveal a broad cross-section of targets: an engineer awaiting a work-visa extension, several newlyweds married to U.S. citizens, and a former au pair.
Footage of encounters between travelers and ICE officers have flooded social media. In one widely circulated video, Chantal Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old from Ecuador, was detained by plainclothes officers as she boarded a Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Oakland, Calif., on July 20. She had been spending the weekend with the family for whom she had worked as an au pair, according to the family.
When Ms. Morales Rojas scanned her boarding pass, an alarm sounded and the gate agent asked her to wait. Moments later, two plainclothes agents intercepted her in the jetway.
“They said they were going to be respectful, that they would be polite,” Alicia Dantzker, a friend of the family, who was on the same flight and filmed part of the encounter, told The Times in an interview. The video captures the men encircling Ms. Morales Rojas, and then ushering her through a side door and down steps to the tarmac as Ms. Dantzker screams for help.
Also among those detained was a Ugandan woman in a wheelchair who has sickle cell anemia and an active asylum application, according to her lawyer.
In another case, ICE attempted to arrest an Australian citizen who had overstayed his visa at the Las Vegas airport, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The scene was recorded by a bystander whose video of the encounter drew wide attention. Officers let him go “to de-escalate the situation and for officer safety,” but ICE ended up taking him into custody a day later when he tried to board a flight in Los Angeles, the department said in a statement.
“In 38 years practicing immigration law, I had never seen this,” said Charles Kuck, who is based in Atlanta and is representing an Indian engineer who was detained while awaiting a work-permit extension. “And I know it’s happening to lots of people.”
Shannon Shepherd, an immigration lawyer who is vice chair for the Chicago chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she and other lawyers were revising longstanding advice about domestic air travel.
“Before, I was saying, ‘As long as you have an ID, you can travel domestically,’” Ms. Shepherd said. “Now I am turning around and saying, ‘If you are in the process of changing status, avoid any travel.’”
The original collaboration between T.S.A. and ICE began in May 2025, when the airport security agency started sharing information with the immigration agency for enforcement purposes, according to a document obtained via the Freedom of Information Act from the government transparency group American Oversight and shared with The Times.
ICE shared names of individuals with deportation orders with the airport agency, which would run them through its databases and report any hits to ICE for potential arrest. It was a remarkable shift from past practices, when the federal government avoided involving the T.S.A. in immigration enforcement for fear of disrupting domestic travel.
Now, “the net they are casting for people they want to detain is far wider,” said Ghassan Shamieh, an immigration lawyer in San Francisco.
“It’s not people with criminal records” being targeted, Mr. Shamieh said. “You are talking about people with legitimate pending applications.”
Mr. Shamieh has four clients who were detained at airports in the last 10 days, including two women who recently married Americans and are in the process of obtaining permanent residency through their spouses. One of the husbands was with his wife when she was taken into custody after they landed in Burbank, Calif.
On Tuesday morning, an immigration judge granted her release on a $35,000 bond. But D.H.S. lawyers reserved the right to appeal within 30 days, and she is likely to remain detained until they decide.
Ms. Morales Rojas, the au pair, entered the United States lawfully in January 2023 as a J-1 exchange visitor, a legal status that allowed her to work for two years, according to her lawyer. Her visa expired Jan. 4, 2025, according to D.H.S. Before the exchange program ended, Ms. Morales Rojas filed an application with immigration authorities to remain in the country, said the lawyer, Laura Lichter.
“During the last three and a half years, Morales Rojas lived openly in the United States with the government’s knowledge of her pending case, passed repeated background checks, and received work authorization from D.H.S. while waiting for her application to be reviewed,” Ms. Lichter said. “The process she’s pursuing is completely lawful.”
But homeland security officials said in a statement that “in violation of our nation’s laws, she overstayed her visa.” On Tuesday afternoon, a judge granted her release on a $3,000 bond, and she is likely to leave detention by Wednesday.
Ms. Lichter has filed suit challenging the government’s decision to arrest and detain Ms. Morales Rojas without a proper arrest warrant and without an individualized determination that detention was necessary.
Lauren and Scott Cahr, her former employers, said they had hired Ms. Morales Rojas when their first child, Silas, was 6 months old. The Cahrs said in an interview that they had flown Ms. Morales Rojas to Denver during an Ultimate Frisbee tournament that they attended, and she had helped care for Silas and his little brother.
The family formed a deep bond, and the Cahrs created a custom photo book titled “The Adventures of Chanty and Gordo,” the nicknames Ms. Morales Rojas and their son called each other, as a parting gift.
“She is an amazing young woman who we were so lucky to have in our lives,” Ms. Cahr said. “We have tried to maintain a consistent relationship with her.”
Ms. Cahr has visited Ms. Morales Rojas in detention, while members of the Cahrs’ Ultimate Frisbee community have launched a GoFundMe campaign to help cover legal costs.
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7) Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer a Senate committee’s questions.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers health policy from Washington, July 29, 2026
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci refused on Wednesday to answer questions from a Senate committee investigating the origins of Covid-19, accusing the panel’s chairman of having an “unhinged obsession with me” before invoking his constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate himself.
“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” Dr. Fauci said repeatedly, as Republican members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee questioned him.
Senator Rand Paul, the panel’s chairman, pointedly warned the scientist that there would “be repercussions” for his refusal to answer questions. When a lawyer for Dr. Fauci, David Schertler, piped up to defend him, Mr. Paul ordered security to escort Mr. Schertler from the room. “He was not invited to testify,” the senator later said.
The decision not to testify marked the latest turn in the long-running battle between Dr. Fauci, who spent nearly four decades as the government’s top infectious disease expert, and Senator Paul, who accuses Dr. Fauci of funding research in China that sparked the pandemic, and then lying about it to Congress — accusations Dr. Fauci vehemently denies.
”Frankly the American people deserve an apology,” Mr. Paul said in his opening statement. “I hope to day Dr. Fauci will come clean, admit it was a mistake to fund dangerous research in China.” He accused Dr. Fauci of saying “one thing in public, and another in private” — an apparent reference to diary entries written by Dr. Fauci and released by Mr. Paul over the weekend.
In a brief opening statement, Dr. Fauci noted that he had testified before Congress more than 200 times during the 38 years he ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, including during the Covid pandemic.
“Over that period, I proved that I believe in and respect the value of legitimate congressional oversight,” he said.
“However,” Dr. Fauci added, “given Senator Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars.’”
Dr. Fauci received a pre-emptive pardon from former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., but the pardon protects him only from federal prosecution for actions he took through the date it was issued, Jan. 19, 2025. He told the panel that it pained him not to answer questions, but that he was doing so on the advice of his lawyers.
At the center of Mr. Paul’s inquiry is whether the coronavirus originated naturally, as Dr. Fauci believes, or in a laboratory. Mr. Paul insists that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Dr. Fauci ran from 1984 until his retirement at the end of 2022, funded dangerous research in China that spun out of control and essentially created the virus that led to the pandemic. Dr. Fauci says that is not true.
That research, called “gain-of-function,” involves tinkering with the genetic makeup of viruses so that scientists can better understand how they evolve and use that information prevent future pandemics. On Tuesday, President Trump announced fresh restrictions on such work.
While Dr. Fauci’s institute did fund research at the Wuhan laboratory in China, the National Institutes of Health has repeatedly said the viruses being studied with American tax dollars were distinct from the one that caused Covid-19. But Mr. Paul asserted that the Dr. Fauci had stuck to a narrow definition of gain-of-function research that did not capture the risks of work his institute had funded in Wuhan.
“The American people weren’t asking for a semantics debate over what is gain of function,” the senator said. “They were asking for common sense over whether this research was dangerous in Wuhan.”
The top Democrat on the panel, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, accused Mr. Paul of waging a politically-motivated inquiry to “basically legitimize a predetermined conclusion that was reached years ago.”
Dr. Fauci and Mr. Paul have been tangling with one another for years. In 2021, when the senator accused Dr. Fauci of lying while testifying before the Senate, Dr. Fauci replied, “If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.”
Mr. Schertler, Mr. Fauci’s lawyer, said in statement that he believes that exchange “triggered” the senator’s crusade against his client. But he did not deliver the statement, because Mr. Paul refused to let him speak. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, read parts of the statement into the record.
“The accusations that Chairman Paul continues to propagate are false and disgraceful,” the statement said, “and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Paul released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s typewritten diary without saying how he got them. On Tuesday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he gave the documents to Mr. Paul and another Republican, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, “so they could see the light of day.”
The diary does not add much to the scientific debate around the so-called lab leak theory. Rather, it echoes past disclosures showing Dr. Fauci wrestling with a fast-moving crisis as scientific understanding of the virus evolved.
But the entries included personal observations in which Dr. Fauci marveled at his fame and his relationships with a rapidly growing list of celebrities, further inflaming a partisan political battle.
Mr. Paul has been taunting Dr. Fauci on Twitter all week, and Dr. Fauci’s conservative critics have been ridiculing him over diary entries that focus on his own fame and his relationships with celebrities.
Peter Staley, a longtime AIDS activist and close friend of Dr. Fauci’s, said he kept the diary to help write a memoir, which he was already drafting when the pandemic hit. It was published in 2024. Mr. Staley said the personal observations reflect Dr. Fauci being “astonished at what was happening in his life.”
On Tuesday, a group of more than 155 physicians, scientists and public health advocates, organized by AIDS activists who worked closely with Dr. Fauci in the 1990s, issued a public letter defending him and condemning what they considered the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on science and scientists.
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8) Why Do We Tolerate Elon Musk’s Racist Commentary?
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, July 29, 2026
Ioulex for The New York Times
“The Turner Diaries” is a work of white supremacist agitprop. It purports to be the diary of a neo-Nazi militant, Earl Turner, who is working to overthrow the United States government — or as the book calls it, “the System” — through a group called “the Organization.” Turner castigates “the System” for promoting integration, encouraging nonwhite immigration and placing Jewish people, Black Americans and other minorities in positions of authority over whites.
Among other atrocities, the novel describes nuclear attacks on predominantly Black cities, a Holocaust of Jewish Americans, the total ethnic cleansing of California, the subjugation of women and the “Day of the Rope” — a mass public lynching of white people deemed “race traitors” for their relationships with nonwhites. The book’s epilogue describes a future after the “Great Revolution” in which the former United States is now an all-white, utopian garrison state led by the Organization, which went on to export its revolution and exterminate nonwhites worldwide.
The white power movement in the United States, notes the historian Augusta Dell’Omo in “Saving Apartheid: White Internationalism at the End of the Cold War,” “looked to white southern Africa for inspiration as it planned for the coming ‘race war.’” This apocalyptic fantasy of racial conflict in places such as Zimbabwe and South Africa shaped “The Turner Diaries.” And in turn the novel, first serialized in the pages of a white nationalist periodical in 1975 and then published as a stand-alone volume in 1978, became a touchstone for the American and global far right.
“The Order,” a white supremacist terrorist group responsible for three killings, including the murder of the Denver talk-radio host Alan Berg, took its name from the book. And Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, carried passages from the book on his person and once sold the book at gun shows.
The ideas, images and language of “The Turner Diaries” have long since entered the gestalt of far-right ideology. The book hovers there even when it isn’t mentioned. In his manifesto, for example, Dylann Roof — who murdered nine people at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, S.C. — frames himself as a martyr and calls on white Americans to fight a race war against Black people.
Today, you don’t have to look far or dig deep to see the ambient influence of “The Turner Diaries” on the far right. You need just to spend a little time in the online world of the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk (although to be clear there is no direct evidence that Musk has read the book).
The Musk of the mainstream media is an enthusiastic, if awkward, technologist, industrialist and would-be government reformer, as seen in his now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency. But Musk spends much of his time on X, his social media website, where he amplifies far-right accounts and shares his own white nationalist, anti-immigrant politics for all the world to see.
Over the past month in particular, he has adopted the imagery of a recent film, “Citizen Vigilante,” in which the actor Armie Hammer spends the run time playing a Charles Bronson-esque character who targets alleged criminals, framed mostly as Arab and African migrants. Musk uses that imagery to state his views about what must be done to save Western civilization.
“Yes,” replied Musk to an image of a gun-toting Hammer clad in black with the caption, “First the traitors then the invaders.” He also shared a post from a different user who explained that the point of “Citizen Vigilante,” in which the Hammer character “spends the first half of the movie murdering white people not migrants,” is that you must “always hang a traitor before you hang an enemy.” Musk repeated this several times, including in a post that simply said, “Traitors before invaders.”
Last week, Musk again posted that we must “Deal with traitors before invaders” and then said a few days later that “Anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor.”
“Remigration” is the call, from far-right European political parties, to forcibly remove nonwhite citizens to their supposed countries of origin, regardless of whether they are immigrants or native-born. It is essentially a form of ethnic cleansing and it is envisioned as a response to the supposed “Great Replacement” of white Europeans with nonwhites, an idea originating from a different work of far-right fiction, “The Camp of the Saints,” published in 1973.
As Musk sees it, opponents of remigration are traitors to “the West.” And as “traitors” their proper fate, according to the logic of his posts, is to be killed as punishment for their role in the demographic transformation of majority-white nations and, presumably, as a warning to those who might pollute the national bloodstream by welcoming nonwhites into their lives and into the country.
Musk’s preoccupation with demographic “traitors” flows directly from his obsession with population collapse, which he frames in terms of shrinking European and white American birthrates. “White people are a rapidly diminishing minority of the global population,” Musk wrote in September 2025. “Low birth rate,” he later said, “is the number one threat to the West followed closely by migration. There will be no West if this continues.”
One might even see his destruction of the United States Agency for International Development — responsible, so far, for an estimated 700,000 deaths worldwide — as consistent with his concern with falling white birthrates relative to those in places such as sub-Saharan Africa, where U.S.A.I.D. was active. After all, one way to secure a future for Western children, in this zero-sum view of the world, would be to starve African ones.
Musk, it should be said, insists that no one has died because of his cuts.
In a recent interview with The Economist, Musk denied that he was a racist, even as he defended his far-right views of immigration. “If you have a large and growing, rapidly growing group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to Western beliefs, at some point, there will be a reckoning,” he said.
But those views, as we see, are indistinguishable from what you would find in “The Turner Diaries.” With hundreds of millions of followers on a platform he personally controls, Musk stands as the most prominent purveyor of far-right and ultranationalistic rhetoric in the world. This is the same Musk who is also busy leveraging his vast wealth to shape that same world in his own image.
And what is that image?
As Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff show in their book “Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed,” an important part of Musk’s vision is to see the world as a compound, where “the horizons of humankind” are shrunk “into the defense of white fertility.” This in turn is tied to a larger effort to liberate humanity from the “woke mind virus” that Musk sees as a self-destructive tendency responsible for the “empathy” that has led Western nations to open their societies to others.
This too is little more than a restatement of themes and ideas found in “The Turner Diaries,” where the titular character believes that whites have been corrupted by a “Jewish-liberal-democratic-egalitarian plague.” Slobodian and Tarnoff observe that these views are also downstream of Musk’s upbringing in South Africa, where apartheid leaders fretted over birthrates and the future of white society.
Musk’s virulent racism and vicious, disturbing views are no secret. He does not hide them. They sit in plain view, easily accessible on the social media website he owns, where he does everything he can to promote similarly far-right and white supremacist ideas.
If there is a question to ask, then, it is this: Why does Musk get a pass? Why do politicians, journalists and commentators treat his far-right racist radicalism as a sideshow rather than the core of his political, ideological and industrial project, seen in everything from his deep support for Donald Trump in the United States and Restore Britain in Britain to his decision to construct a massive pollution-generating data center in predominantly Black Memphis, Tenn.
Musk spends a large part of his free time fomenting violence and spreading the same hateful ideology that motivated some of the deadliest shootings and attacks ever to happen on American soil. It is that fact, and not the cars he builds or the rockets he launches, that ought to define his place in public life.
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9) As Trump Squeezes Cuba, He Plans to Send Cuban Deportees to Uruguay
The State Department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio has deported Cubans to Africa. Now it’s negotiating with a South American country.
By Edward Wong and Emma Bubola, July 29, 2026
Edward Wong reported from Washington and Manila, and Emma Bubola reported from Montevideo, Uruguay. Both have been covering the Trump administration’s policies in Latin America.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States had many concerns about Cuba, which is 90 miles from Florida, including “the threat of mass migration.” Eric Lee for The New York Times
As part of its anti-immigrant drive, the Trump administration has deported thousands of Cubans, sending some to Mexico and even African countries, and others back to Cuba.
Now, U.S. officials are close to securing a new destination: Uruguay, the second-smallest country in South America, which already has a relatively large population of residents who migrated from Cuba.
The State Department under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has been discussing the proposal with Uruguay’s foreign ministry for months, according to officials from both countries.
Uruguay entered the negotiations partly because it needs immigrant workers, and partly to win favor with the Trump administration, a senior Uruguayan official said.
But as the United States searches for countries willing to take in Cubans, it is also worsening the circumstances that have forced many Cubans to flee their country in the first place.
In recent months, the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign has blocked oil shipments to the Caribbean island, which was already devastated by years of U.S. sanctions and misrule by its authoritarian leaders.
Mr. Rubio said the United States had many concerns about Cuba, which is 90 miles from Florida, including “the threat of mass migration.”
That is “always a risk that you run when countries are as deeply destabilized as Cuba,” he told reporters traveling with him in Manila last week.
In Uruguay, the government seeks to regularize Cuban migrants so they can find work opportunities and get social services. Many initially apply for asylum.
Some American officials think that could help ensure deportees do not try to return to the United States, while also allowing them to live outside Cuba, officials said.
A written agreement with Uruguay might not specify Cubans in the text, an official said, though in practice they would be the focus of deportations to that country.
Some of the Cubans in the United States might have relatives in Uruguay, and the governments are discussing the possibility of reuniting families, a foreign ministry official in Uruguay said. Like other officials interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
The Cuban government often has refused to take back citizens who have been deported from the United States, but it agreed to receive several flights this year.
The Trump administration told a federal court in March that it had sent 6,000 Cubans to Mexico, where many are struggling to find work. It has also sent Cuban migrants to Africa, including to Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, and war-ravaged South Sudan, where the migrants have been kept in detention centers.
The policy is part of a broad push by the Trump administration to find nations willing to take migrants and immigrants deported from the United States.
The State Department has been criticized for sending some deportees to distant countries where they have no connections, or where governments have records of human rights abuses.
Governments in South America have been reluctant to accept deportees. But Paraguay signed an agreement with the State Department last year and has accepted flights of deportees of various nationalities. Ecuador also signed an agreement last year, and the deportees sent there include Cubans.
Uruguay, a nation of 3.4 million, has long had a relatively open immigration policy.
“We have a tradition of welcoming people who come from other countries,” said Carlos Negro, the country’s interior minister. Uruguay, he added, “was born as an immigrant country.” Most Uruguayans are descended from colonial settlers and immigrants from Spain and Italy.
While migrants-rights groups have criticized Mr. Trump’s deportation policy, some have said that for Cuban deportees, ending up in Uruguay would be better than being sent to many other countries.
In March, Leydis Aguilera, who immigrated to Uruguay from Cuba 16 years ago, became a member of the national parliament. She has described the warm welcome she received in Uruguay and how she eventually found education and job opportunities there.
Uruguay needs to expand its work force to compensate for its small and aging population. Public opinion remains largely in favor of immigration, and deportations are rare. Even those who enter without a visa are often allowed to stay legally.
Last year, Uruguay had nearly 24,000 asylum seekers from Cuba, according to United Nations statistics.
The State Department declined to comment on the talks with Uruguay. “Implementing the Trump administration’s immigration policies is a top priority for the Department of State,” it said in a statement. “As Secretary Rubio has said, we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.”
The Uruguayan foreign ministry declined to comment.
During much of the Cold War, the U.S. government welcomed people from Communist-ruled Cuba and offered them a rapid pathway toward permanent residency and citizenship. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 has compelled this of Democratic and Republican administrations.
But starting in the Clinton administration, American officials have found ways to work around or weaken the requirements of the law to try to avoid taking in an influx of migrants.
President Trump has accelerated that. His administration has blocked several routes to permanent residency status and citizenship for Cubans.
That puts 600,000 Cubans at risk of deportation, according to MarÃa José Espinosa, the executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, which analyzes deportation data.
Ada Ferrer, a history professor at Princeton and author of a book on the history of Cuba, said “there was a time when they wouldn’t go after Cubans because of the Cuban Adjustment Act, but no one is abiding by that anymore.”
“If you ran on mass deportations, you’re going to try to do mass deportations,” she added. “But Cuban Americans thought they would be protected.”
A Cuban grandfather of Mr. Rubio who flew to the United States in 1962 without a visa got a deportation order, but was allowed to remain in the country after being granted refugee status, according to a biography of Marco Rubio by Manuel Roig-Franzia.
Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, said that all deportation plans were “bad options,” especially those targeting people who have lived in the United States for a long time.
Still, she said, a Latin American country “with a well-functioning asylum system that is safe is like the least bad option.”
Despite Uruguay’s relative tolerance, migrants often struggle. Uruguay is expensive compared to other South American nations. Many Cubans initially live in boardinghouses while working as delivery or Uber drivers, caregivers and security guards.
Hamed Aleaziz and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting from Washington.
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10) In Ohio, Toxic Wastewater Is Bubbling Up Out of the Ground
The state is a major importer of fracking wastewater, which gets pumped underground but doesn’t always stay there. The city of Marietta is fighting back.
By Quinn Glabicki, Photographs by Maddie McGarvey, July 29, 2026
Quinn Glabicki and Maddie McGarvey reported from Marietta, Ohio, and the surrounding Ohio River Valley.
A truck carrying fracking wastewater arrived at an injection site near Marietta.
In historic Marietta, Ohio, riverboats churn past shores once surveyed by George Washington. Trolleys bump along brick roads that pass between Victorian homes and 2,000-year-old Adena and Hopewell burial mounds. Its cemeteries hold more Revolutionary War officers than anywhere else in the nation.
And there is something else buried deep beneath Marietta: Hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive fracking wastewater.
For years, it has arrived in a caravan of tanker trucks that come night and day to deposit the toxic brine in injection wells that pump it thousands of feet underground, where it is supposed to stay forever.
But the brine is spurting to the surface, and locals fear it could soon contaminate the drinking water source for 32,000 people. “It would destroy the city,” said Susan Vessels, president of the Marietta City Council. “Once the damage is done, it cannot be undone.”
Residents and local officials were for years “completely unaware” of their place at the heart of an interstate marketplace for toxic waste, Ms. Vessels said. They’ve come to realize, she said, that their corner of Ohio has become a major destination for fracking brine.
Ohio has permitted more than 240 injection wells for the disposal of oil and gas waste. By comparison, there are 19 such injection wells in Pennsylvania, and a few dozen in West Virginia, both of which border Ohio.
Pennsylvania, which produces more natural gas than any state besides Texas, last year exported to Ohio roughly three-quarters of all the fracking brine that it needed to permanently dispose of, according to state records.
Ohio pumps about 1.4 billion gallons of wastewater underground annually, according to state data. Estimates vary, but roughly one-third to one-half likely comes from out of state.
The fracking boom has transformed the United States into the world’s largest producer of natural gas. But fracking also produces huge volumes of salty wastewater laden with heavy metals, radioactive materials and cancer-causing benzene, as well as hazardous chemical additives from the fracking process.
Ohio became a destination for wastewater because decades ago, long before fracking, it received permission from the federal government to regulate its own injection wells, which were then just a small part of the oil and gas industry. As a result, today it’s easier to drill injection wells in Ohio than in states like Pennsylvania where there’s federal oversight.
Rural Washington County, home to Marietta, has 19 permitted injection wells. Over the past two years, 59 percent of the 562 million gallons of waste injected under the county came from out of state, according to state records reviewed by The New York Times.
The industry says injection wells are tightly regulated, and that thousands of feet of rock and shale safely contain the wastewater. Injection wells, “when properly sited, constructed, operated, and regulated, do not pose a significant threat to drinking water,” said Rob Brundrett, president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.
But brine has bubbled up from injection wells in Oklahoma, raising concerns about drinking water contamination, and it has gushed from the ground in Texas. Now, it’s coming to the surface in Ohio.
Last month in a wooded hollow outside Marietta, Bob Wilson wrestled with a wrench beneath a traditional oil and gas well (not a fracked well). A jet of fluid erupted: briny fracking wastewater.
“There should not be any water here at all,” Mr. Wilson said. He squinted at a pressure gauge that read 335 pounds per square inch — higher than he’d ever seen it, he said. “It keeps climbing.”
Mr. Wilson said he’d lost two more of his oil and gas wells in recent weeks to intrusions from fracking wastewater. Now the wells “don’t make me a nickel,” he said. He is suing several injection well companies, arguing that injected brine contaminated oil and gas reservoirs and violated his property rights. A lower court dismissed the allegations, which have been appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court. The injection well companies argue, among other things, that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove where the wastewater originated.
The flooded wells are evidence that brine is “migrating” underground through crooks and crannies in the rock, said David Jeffery, a professor of geology at Marietta College who previously worked as a petroleum geologist at BP.
Complicating matters, as many as 66,000 undocumented, old-fashioned oil and gas wells pockmark Ohio, according to state estimates. And some almost certainly pass through aquifers, experts say.
They could be conduits for brine that has been pumped underground, Dr. Jeffery said, and “we have no idea where they are.”
In 2024 the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission, a body of industry experts that oversees regulatory appeals, “explicitly confirmed” that brine was migrating underground, according to Cory Haydocy, an attorney who served as the commission’s executive director until 2023.
“The state and industry have possessed definitive proof for years that these injection wells were threatening the surrounding geology,” Mr. Haydocy said.
Ms. Vessels, the Marietta City Council president, said she didn’t know a thing about injection wells until about a year ago. Four wells just outside Marietta, population 13,000, are permitted to inject a combined 840,000 gallons of brine daily within two miles of the city’s drinking water aquifer.
Sitting on her porch recently, surrounded by stacks of inspection reports and well permits, Ms. Vessels, a Republican and former U.S. Army intelligence officer, said she wanted an immediate halt on injection and for state leaders to prohibit injection wells near public drinking water.
“We need a community that we can hand down to our children and our grandchildren,” she said. “And if we keep walking down this path, we might not have that.”
The four injection wells within two miles of Marietta’s drinking water source accepted wastewater from fracking sites in Pennsylvania that reported median levels of radium-226, a cancer-causing radioactive material, ranging from 428 to 1,800 times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standard, according to Pennsylvania waste records assembled by FracTracker, an organization that monitors oil and gas activity.
“If we get anything nuclear in our water, that’s it,” Ms. Vessels said. “We’re done.”
Last year, after the state approved a fifth and then a sixth injection well at Marietta’s doorstep, officials declared an emergency. (A seventh proposed injection well is pending.)
Not only was brine “regularly migrating to the surface,” officials said, but seismic activity in Washington County had increased almost 20 times over since 2023, a “clear indication” that underground rock formations holding billions of gallons of waste were “moving and likely fracturing.”
Marietta officials asked state leaders to halt injection within six miles of the city’s aquifer and to stop permitting new wells. By March, eight more water authorities in the county had followed suit in calling for a moratorium.
Drinking-water tests in Marietta and surrounding areas show no signs of brine, officials said. But if radioactive material were to enter the system, “we don’t think we can remove it,” said Bob Allen, who serves on the board of the Little Hocking Water Association south of Marietta, which supplies drinking water to nearly 10,000 people in rural Washington County.
Earlier this year, a lawsuit brought by Buckeye Environmental Network, an environmental advocacy organization, and Earthjustice, an environmental law group, challenged the proposed wells outside Marietta, all of which belong to DeepRock Disposal Solutions. Lawyers argue that the state didn’t follow the proper rules for issuing the permits. A lawyer for DeepRock said the permits should be upheld.
And in July, state regulators said that four injection wells in Washington County had shut down, including one owned by DeepRock outside Marietta, after regulators determined that fluid and high pressures found at oil and gas wells like Mr. Wilson’s “could only be caused by nearby injection wells.”
At a Republican Party executive meeting last August, Ohio State Senator Brian Chavez, who stepped down as DeepRock’s chief executive after taking elected office in 2023, downplayed the threat posed by injection wells, describing the brine as “ancient seawater,” according to an ethics complaint filed against him with the state’s legislative ethics committee. Mr. Chavez, who chairs the senate energy committee, also compared the radioactivity levels of the waste to that of a banana, according to the complaint, which was filed by residents of Washington County over his relationship with DeepRock.
A spokesman for Ohio Senate Republicans called the ethics complaint meritless.
In a statement, Laura Goins, an attorney for DeepRock, said, “We respect the concerns that have been raised by members of the community and believe those concerns deserve to be addressed through a science-based regulatory process.” She said “DeepRock remains committed to protecting public health, drinking water resources, and the environment.”
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