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We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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We need as many people there as possible to carry our message - no more of our tax dollars for endless wars. Can we count you in? Sign up here:
https://www.codepink.org/novdc26
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 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 *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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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) Over 100 Migrants Are Dead After Boat Capsizes Near Djibouti
The shipwreck is among the deadliest ever recorded on the route to Yemen, the International Organization for Migration said. Dozens remain missing, and the bodies of 15 children were recovered.
By Leo Sands and Saeed Al-Batati, Oct. 11, 2026
Saeed Al-Batati reported from al-Mukalla, Yemen.
A photo released on Sunday showing the shipwreck of a boat that sank off the shores of Djibouti between Thursday night and Friday morning. Credit...International Organization for Migration Djibouti, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
At least 139 people have died, including 15 children, after a boat carrying hundreds of migrants capsized while traveling from the Horn of Africa to Yemen, the International Organization for Migration said on Sunday. An additional 84 are still missing, the United Nations body said in a statement, stoking fears that the death toll could climb.
The shipwreck is among the deadliest ever recorded on the route, one of the most dangerous crossings in the world. More than 80 people survived, all of them Ethiopian nationals.
The boat was carrying 305 people when it overturned between Thursday night and Friday morning, near Guhere, north of Obock, a small Djiboutian port town, the migration agency said. The migrants were traveling from Djibouti to Yemen across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the agency said. Last year, more than 900 people died or went missing while making the journey, according to an agency tally.
The bodies of nine girls and six boys were among the 139 recovered as of Sunday, the U.N. migration agency said. The cause of the disaster was not immediately clear.
Tens of thousands of men and women from Ethiopia and other East African countries make the desperate sea crossing from the Horn of Africa to Yemen every year, seeking jobs and security in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. The boat trip is only the first part of a route fraught with danger. In Yemen, which has been torn apart by civil war since 2014, migrants risk violence, thirst and hunger as they traverse the country toward the Saudi border, frequently on foot.
The additional risks posed by the heated conflict in Yemen, between the Houthi militia and government forces backed by Saudi Arabia, do not appear to have deterred migrants from embarking on the journey. Last week, the Yemeni government, backed by Saudi warplanes, launched a military offensive to retake territory along the Bab al-Mandab Strait from the Houthis, who are backed by Iran. Much of the fighting has taken place in and around Ras al-Ara, a key entry point for African migrants arriving in Yemen.
The humanitarian situation has deteriorated sharply in the country in recent weeks, as the pace of the fighting escalates and front lines move quickly. More than 200,000 people have been displaced by the war, the migration agency said on Wednesday, a sharp increase compared with the 76,000 displaced people it counted in mid-September.
The death toll as of Sunday makes the shipwreck one of the deadliest in the Red Sea in recent years. In August last year, more than 60 migrants were killed after their boat capsized in the Gulf of Aden. The previous March, over 180 went missing after two boats capsized off the coast of Yemen.
“We cannot keep treating these deaths as normal,” said Amy Pope, the director general of the International Organization for Migration. “No one gets into a boat like that unless they believe there is no other safe way,” she said in a statement on Sunday. “I am asking governments and donors to act before the next boat goes down.”
Alexandre Coissac, the agency’s chief of mission in Djibouti, described the death toll as devastating. “This tragedy is a stark reminder of the dangers faced by migrants along this migration corridor as they seek economic opportunities,” he said in a statement.
Djiboutian authorities continued search and rescue operations on Sunday, even as hopes of finding survivors began to fade. In Obock, the migration agency said it was working with the local authorities to provide health care and shelter for the survivors. The Djiboutian health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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2) ‘What You See in America Is Exactly What You Saw in Poland and Hungary’
By David Broder, Caroline de Gruyter, Mattia Ferraresi and Tim Schneider, Oct. 12, 2026
Mr. Broder is the author of “Mussolini’s Grandchildren.” Ms. de Gruyter is a columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC. Mr. Ferraresi is a writer for the Italian newspaper QN. Mr. Schneider is an editor in Times Opinion.
“Caroline de Gruyter: The world is changing fast. Governments can’t keep pace, are incompetent or, for various reasons, don’t meet voters’ demands. Far-right parties jump into the void. But they do not win elections by just criticizing governments and uttering extremist views: They need the media to pay attention and, crucially, they need parties from the political center to start copying them. It is only when other political parties start shifting to the right that the far right can attract a sufficient amount of voters.”
Bina Thorsen
The far right has been rising in Europe for a long time — Edward Luttwak called fascism “the wave of the future” back in 1994 — but last month’s electoral breakthrough in Saxony-Anhalt by the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, felt seismic. For the first time in Germany’s postwar history, a far-right party stands on the brink of power. The AfD joins a legion of others, not least Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, either in office or perilously close to it.
In a written online conversation, Tim Schneider, an editor in Times Opinion, hosted David Broder, author of “Mussolini’s Grandchildren”; Caroline de Gruyter, a columnist for the Dutch newspaper NRC; and Mattia Ferraresi, a writer for the Italian newspaper QN, to discuss Europe’s thriving far right, the roots of its success, its plans for power and, of course, what President Trump has to do with it all.
Tim Schneider: An easy one to start: How did we get here?
David Broder: The post-2008 period is often described as a temporary “populist moment.” But nativist parties obsessed with civilizational decline have since established themselves as major forces, even where electoral systems or national histories offered apparent defenses against them. The reasons are many: a drop-off in mainstream parties’ ability to guarantee social progress; the specter of immigrants undermining national identity; and fewer people voting. The financial crisis helped undo the old mainstream. Now, some of these parties are becoming the right-wing establishment and building effective coalitions.
Caroline de Gruyter: The world is changing fast. Governments can’t keep pace, are incompetent or, for various reasons, don’t meet voters’ demands. Far-right parties jump into the void. But they do not win elections by just criticizing governments and uttering extremist views: They need the media to pay attention and, crucially, they need parties from the political center to start copying them. It is only when other political parties start shifting to the right that the far right can attract a sufficient amount of voters.
Mattia Ferraresi: I guess the short answer, for me, is the crisis of liberalism in the post-Cold War era. Mainstream liberal politics, in both its left- and right-wing versions, failed to deliver on its promises, not only in terms of welfare and economic growth but also in the more complex realm of identity and meaning. The apparent triumph of that worldview paved the way for its own demise. What we’re seeing today, all over the world, are different — sometimes very different — expressions of the same disillusionment with liberalism and its policies.
Schneider: A common perception is that these parties appeal to a particular type of voter, often older workers in left-behind, deindustrializing areas. Is that true? Is there a core far-right constituency in Europe?
Ferraresi: There’s some truth to the far right’s appeal to the post-working class, I guess, but I would tie it to a lack of political and cultural identity. The AfD’s strength in eastern Germany is only partly linked to the region’s dire economy; at a deeper level, the party offers a framework for identity. Voters across Europe who are drawn to the far right are often united by a sense of meaninglessness that was once filled by other structures and parties (mainly Christian Democracy and Communism). James Carville’s line about the economy was an effective campaign message for Bill Clinton, but it was ultimately shallow and wrong. It’s the identity, stupid!
Broder: These parties draw moral force from claiming to represent people the left forgot. Even their more middle-class voters like to think they’re on the side of the underdog. The real picture is more mixed: The National Rally, for instance, grew earlier in the areas you mention, but now its support is rising faster among white-collar groups. Though lower-educated voters in deindustrialized rural eastern Germany were early backers of the AfD, the party has since captured much broader attention and support. In many countries, these parties harvested former social-democratic voters after 2008. Today, they are cannibalizing the mainstream center right.
De Gruyter: Most voters will go for centrist parties — we are middle-class countries, after all. The problem is that if mainstream parties leave the center and all that is on offer is the far right, part of the electorate will go for that, and some will simply stop voting. People vote for far-right extremist parties because that is what is on offer. I think it is a myth that voters are shifting to the right. Parties are shifting to the right!
Schneider: It’s interesting that we’ve not really mentioned immigration, which most people regard as these parties’ signature issue. What about the rest of their platform — what is their offer economically or culturally?
De Gruyter: What they usually offer is the opposite of what mainstream parties offer. And they flip-flop in order to catch votes. For example, Ms. Le Pen used to protect the working class, with a plan to bring down the retirement age and so on. But now, with France drifting toward huge deficits and financial markets taking note, she suddenly switches tactics and proposes big cuts to welfare. N’importe quoi, really.
Broder: Often these parties are called “welfare-chauvinist,” in that they seek to protect social services by barring new arrivals. I think this is simplistic. Most offer some renewed idea of meritocracy and even retool the Third Way promise to reward “hard-working families,” while also prioritizing the nuclear-family model. They may even speak of integrating some deserving immigrants. But broadly the story is that migrants are unfairly cutting in line or being pushed ahead by elites, at the expense of hard-working nationals.
Ferraresi: Anti-immigration policies are essentially about providing an identity, whether rooted in whiteness, language, Christianity or something else. That, I think, is why they are so effective at energizing voters — far more so than other culturally conservative causes, such as traditional family values or opposition to abortion. In a culturally conservative country like Italy, Ms. Meloni did not win the election, and go on to lead the longest-serving government in the history of the republic, by rallying against abortion or same-sex marriage.
Schneider: What does Ms. Meloni’s tenure tell us about the far right in office?
Ferraresi: I think it tells us that going mainstream is the only way to govern. Ms. Meloni’s story is that of a shrewd politician who understood right away that her only chance of political survival lay in being legitimized by the European elite. Her success was forged in Brussels, so much so that when she was forced to choose between Mr. Trump and the European Union, she picked the latter. I’m not sure there’s a broader lesson here for other far-right parties, but the strategy has certainly worked for her.
Broder: Ms. Meloni has inspired imitators to become pro-NATO, pro-business parties who aim to change the European Union from within. Yet it’s also no surprise that a new further-right party, National Future, is quickly rising in Italy and ideas like so-called remigration are spreading. This is in part a critique of Meloni-style mainstreaming — she hasn’t delivered on more fiery promises — but also shows how such governments open space for more radical proposals.
De Gruyter: Ms. Meloni’s tenure tells us that part of the far right mellows when in power — though not all! The AfD is different, as is the Freedom Party of Austria. Once in power, Ms. Meloni suddenly became pro-NATO, pro-E.U. and pro-Ukraine. The far right in many other countries, including France, has also made huge U-turns. They do not want to exit the European Union anymore but to change Europe from the inside. This is a completely different strategy than before.
Schneider: The general shift of these parties toward accommodation with the bloc makes me wonder: Is a far-right European Union a contradiction in terms?
Broder: Though Ms. Meloni’s party still sometimes paints Brussels as a liberal blob, once-radical ideas like outsourcing border control to non-European states are now the norm — and conservative and far-right forces have repeatedly formed majorities, including in dismantling the bloc’s earlier green push. Most of the parties we’re talking about trade in vague ideas like a “Europe of nations,” emphasizing both civilizational solidarity and the defense of national sovereignty. They have no shared federalist project, obviously, but faced with issues like high energy prices or rearmament, they can agree to some cross-border collaboration. And no one really wants to dynamite the euro.
Ferraresi: The reality is that on some issues, most notably immigration, the Overton window in the European Union has shifted significantly over the past decade. On other subjects, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction: Positions on abortion or same-sex marriage that are now considered fringe were common among conservatives until relatively recently. We could find plenty of shifts in other areas. Remember when the Union was remarkably soft on Vladimir Putin’s Russia and eager to do business with it? That was not so long ago.
De Gruyter: Short answer: yes. Europe is about living together on a crowded continent. The only way far-right parties can succeed in European politics is by making compromises and seeking alliances. This is exactly what they are doing now in the European Parliament. Have you noticed that these parties all support protecting the single market against China and the United States? And condemn Mr. Trump for intending to snatch Greenland?
Schneider: We clearly need to talk about Mr. Trump. Let’s start with his administration’s support for these far-right parties, especially the AfD: How significant is that?
Ferraresi: It’s hard to prove or measure, but I think the AfD benefited very much from the Trumpian endorsement. Overall, it’s still a small party, but the Trump administration, and especially Marco Rubio’s State Department, was instrumental in creating a platform where parties like it could thrive. A pretty huge boost, all things considered.
Broder: The Trump administration and figures like Elon Musk undermine any attempt to wall off more radical parties like the AfD or Restore in Britain. So, they definitely give a platform to minoritarian forces. Yet it’s also true that the practical consequences of Mr. Trump’s conduct can be bad for these parties if they are in or near power. Mr. Trump’s Middle East policy, for example, has had direct effects on voters’ pockets.
De Gruyter: Well, it doesn’t always work: When the United States went all in for Viktor Orban in Hungary, he lost! Mr. Trump is incredibly unpopular in Europe, including with far-right voters. So, far-right parties are keeping their distance. Remember also when Ms. Le Pen was found guilty of embezzlement and Mr. Trump supported her? She hated it and refused to talk about it.
Schneider: If not always a successful booster, is the Trump administration — militantly anti-migrant, economically protectionist, culturally aggressive — a useful template for what far-right governments in Europe could look like?
Broder: Many battle lines are comparable to the United States, on identity and immigration, though some countries (like France) have a far more racialized political conflict than others (like Poland). Still, most European societies are less violent than the United States and I think ICE-style units aren’t quite on the agenda, even if Europe’s own border agency, Frontex, has also been implicated in the illegal pushback of migrants. Fundamentally, the European Union is not the same kind of power as the United States.
De Gruyter: What you see in America is exactly what you saw in Poland and Hungary during the reign of the far right. Most people did not vote for Law and Justice or Fidesz because they wanted to abolish democracy. They voted for them because of gasoline prices or other dissatisfactions with the performance of the previous government. When the parties started to attack democracy, voters turned away from them. That’s why, in the end, they lost.
Ferraresi: I don’t think a successful far-right governing party in Europe could realistically look like the Trump administration. One reason is the dense web of E.U. ties; another is that parliamentary systems are mostly designed to balance political forces, at the expense of executive power (and sometimes governability). Ms. Meloni, I think, is once again a case in point. I suspect any far-right party that wants to govern would have to follow a similar path.
Schneider: There are elections in Spain next month, in France and Italy next year, and in Britain and Germany before too long. By the end of these contests, far-right parties could be in power, jointly or alone, in all of them. So the last question is simple: How can they be stopped?
De Gruyter: By other parties. The far right needs other parties to get into government. So if center-right parties stay the course and make clear they will not work with the far right, many unhappy voters will not go for the far right — because that would make their vote pointless. It is only when center-right parties express willingness to cooperate with the far right that those parties can attract great numbers of votes. It’s quite simple, really.
Broder: Not just by warning against them but by mobilizing more people for something better. That may sound trite. But Pedro Sánchez did that last time in Spain: Back then, he ran on a record of cost-of-living measures, as well as criticizing the conservative and far-right alliance. Ultimately, angry nativist parties’ message takes root when mainstream parties fail to uphold a broadly accepted model of social progress and reward for hard work. Attending to that is the key antidote.
Ferraresi: In a democracy, far-right parties can only be stopped by other parties offering something more appealing to voters who are confused, scared and feel voiceless. Whether we like it or not, unregulated immigration is a source of concern for many in Europe, and mainstream parties need to face that and come up with competitive platforms. The far right thrives on the questions everyone else refuses to answer.
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3)How American Retirees on Different Incomes Rely on Social Security
Social Security funds are on track to run short by 2032, which would mean a reduction in benefits. Here’s how four hypothetical households rely on the program in retirement.
By Tara Siegel Bernard, Oct. 12, 2026
If Congress doesn’t act, more than 60 million Americans could see their Social Security income drop by nearly a quarter in six years.
That’s when Social Security’s retirement trust fund is expected to run dry, and incoming revenue would be enough to pay only 78 percent benefits, reducing every retiree’s paycheck by 22 percent.
The program, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law in 1935 during the Great Depression, is not in danger of completely running out of money. While lawmakers have long known they would need to move to close that gap — through tax increases, benefit cuts or some combination — they have been slow to act on this politically charged topic.
But the window is closing.
Many of the lawmakers being elected in the coming midterms will probably be entrusted with drafting reform packages, and they will need to contemplate crucial questions: Who will absorb the costs of any changes to shore up the program, and what will the consequences be? Will people be less prepared for retirement as a result?
Procrastination has been costly, making these decisions now more difficult. Even some Republicans, who often resist any tax increases, have recently proposed raising the income ceiling on payroll taxes, the dedicated tax that finances the program, so that wealthier households contribute more.
“Any serious Social Security reform package should be scored on what it does to household retirement outcomes, not only on what it does to trust-fund balances,” said Jack VanDerhei, director of retirement research at Morningstar’s Center for Retirement & Policy Studies.
The details of any fix-it plan are crucial given the program’s extraordinary reach, potentially affecting tens of millions of working Americans, as well as future retirees and current ones — many of whom lean heavily on the program.
Just how heavily do they lean on it?
To address that question, we looked at four hypothetical households — two singles, two married couples — with different income levels and resources to illustrate the role that Social Security plays in their financial lives, a topic we’ll continue to closely track in the year ahead.
In each illustration, individuals are 64 years old and plan to retire and file for Social Security at 67, the age at which they qualify for a full retirement benefit. All analyses were run by Mr. VanDerhei of Morningstar.
Monthly Social Security benefit at age 67: $1,543
Social Security benefit if Congress doesn’t act: $1,204 (around age 70)
Social Security is often a primary source of income for the lowest-income Americans, according to other analyses.
In this case, a single man who earned $34,000 a year, on average, over his working life is one of the roughly half of households across the country that have no money in retirement accounts to draw on.
The Middle-Income Retiree
Monthly Social Security benefit at age 67: $2,548
Social Security benefit if Congress doesn’t act: $1,987 (around age 70)
Total monthly income from Social Security + savings: About $2,620
In this case, a single worker earned about $75,000, on average, over her career. That puts her monthly Social Security benefit at $2,548, which accounts for the vast majority of her monthly income because she has just $20,000 in retirement savings (generating about $70 a month), like households with similar earnings.
About three-quarters of similarly situated households also own their own homes; the median household holds $137,000 in home equity.
With pensions fading and ever-rising costs — health care, housing, college — continuously pushed onto families, Social Security has served as a stabilizer during retirees’ most vulnerable years. Should the stock market plunge on the eve of your retirement, damaging savings at the most inopportune time, Social Security remains unaffected.
Even households with solid income and savings need to stow away and accumulate substantial sums to draw even a modest income — one that must last for potentially several decades.
That $1 million savings milestone? It will typically generate $40,000 a year (adjusted upward for inflation in future years).
The Middle-Income Couple
Monthly Social Security benefits at age 67: $5,096
Social Security benefits if Congress doesn’t act: $3,975 (around age 70)
Total monthly income from Social Security + savings: $5,668
Each worker here earned $75,000, on average, over the course of their careers, for a combined total of $150,000. Retirement savings of $171,700 provide $572 in monthly income. Most households like theirs also own homes, with the median household holding $251,800 in home equity. A little more than a quarter also hold stocks, bonds or mutual funds outside retirement accounts.
The Higher-Earning Couple
Monthly Social Security benefits at age 67: $6,681
Social Security benefits if Congress doesn’t act: $5,211 (around age 70)
Total monthly income from Social Security + savings: $8,131
This couple collectively earned about $261,000 a year — one spouse earned at least the maximum amount subject to Social Security payroll taxes each year, which works out to an average of about $186,000 over this spouse’s career; the other worker earned $75,000 on average.
Their retirement savings of $435,000 could generate monthly income of $1,450. Most similar households own their homes; the median household holds $400,600 in home equity. About half hold stocks, bonds or mutual funds outside retirement accounts.
Many retirees report feeling reliant on Social Security.
But it’s more than just a feeling: Among beneficiaries 60 and older in the middle of a five-rung income ladder, where median household income was projected at about $90,900 in 2024, Social Security made up 38 percent of household income on average, according to the Social Security Administration’s MINT model, which uses administrative earnings and benefits records to make projections.
Those in the next-highest rung, with median household income of $152,300, leaned on Social Security for a quarter of their income, on average, while the group just below the middle relied on it for 56 percent.
Other studies have shown that roughly 42 percent of households rely on Social Security for at least half of their retirement income.
The program is more than just an inflation-adjusted insurance policy against running out of money in retirement — it also provides disability, survivor and family benefits. When so much of our financial lives rides on luck, timing and our collective human vulnerability, this social contract has persevered.
Assumptions and sources for illustrations
— Each example pairs a Social Security benefit calculated for a hypothetical worker born in 1962 who claims at 67 in 2029, with the retirement savings of real households near retirement with similar wages. The low and middle earners’ pay follows a career pattern based on actual workers’ earnings, rising with national wages; the higher earner earns at least the maximum amount subject to Social Security tax each year. Career-average earnings are stated in 2026 wage levels. Benefits are in 2026 dollars adjusted for inflation.
— The reduced check assumes the retirement trust fund is depleted in the fourth quarter of 2032, as projected in the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report, after which about 78 percent of scheduled benefits would initially be payable. It is an illustrative proportional reduction, not a benefit estimate provided by the Social Security Administration.
— Retirement savings figures are medians from the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, adjusted for inflation, for comparable households headed by someone age 55 to 64 in 2022. They are not projections; balances could rise or fall with contributions, withdrawals and investment returns.
— Retirement savings include individual retirement accounts, like Roth I.R.A.s, and employer plans such as 401(k)s and 403(b)s. Income from savings assumes a 4 percent annual withdrawal. It excludes pensions, earnings, home equity and other assets like stocks, bonds, mutual funds and annuities held outside retirement accounts. All income figures are before taxes.
— All data and analysis are from Jack VanDerhei, director of retirement research at Morningstar’s Center for Retirement & Policy Studies.
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4) America’s Favorite Fruit Is Being Bruised by the Iran War
The journey of one banana from farm to store shows how the war’s economic effects have cascaded into some surprising industries.
By Ana Swanson, Ana Swanson covers international trade., Oct. 12, 2026
Transporting bananas to the United States has become much trickier since the war in Iran put pressure on global supply chains. Hannah Beier for The New York Times
The war in Iran has rippled through the global economy in many ways, pushing up prices for oil, fertilizer and other products. It has also created challenges for America’s most popular fruit: bananas.
The banana business has long been an underappreciated feat of logistics. It involves transporting a fragile and finicky fruit thousands of miles from the tropics, only to be sold for less than a quarter each. And it’s a business that is even trickier of late as the war raises the costs of fuel and other materials banana producers need.
That has put even more financial pressure on banana producers, who operate with thin margins and have little ability to raise prices. Compounding the industry’s problems are the threat of disease, climate change, tariffs and an exceptionally severe El Niño this year.
The banana might be America’s most unassuming fruit, a cheaply priced staple of smoothies and school cafeterias. It is the most consumed fruit in the United States, with Americans eating around 80 bananas a year, on average.
But bananas make little profit for grocery stores or the companies growing them. Instead, stores price them cheaply to draw shoppers in the door. The average price of bananas in the United States — about 65 cents a pound in August — has changed little over the last decade, despite rising costs.
“Everything is costing more money,” said Danny Dumas, a senior vice president at Del Monte North America. “If you ask me, it is a crisis.”
Even so, Del Monte, like the other major banana producers, Chiquita, Dole and Fyffes, continues to bring massive quantities of fruit to the United States.
In a port outside Philadelphia this summer, cranes and trucks busily unloaded hundreds of refrigerated containers from the Del Monte Spirit, a hulking ship that stretches two football fields long and had traveled more than 2,000 miles from Central America.
The ship, one of seven in Del Monte’s fleet, contained about 7 percent of the bananas that would be brought into the United States that week, supplying an area stretching from Iowa to North Carolina and Nova Scotia. The crew had just 40 hours to empty the ship’s cargo — millions of bananas from Guatemala and Costa Rica — before it would sail back for the next week’s pickup.
To understand the impact of the war, The New York Times traced the journey of a container of bananas from that ship over roughly 2,500 miles, from the plantation where it was grown to a Pennsylvania grocery store.
Del Monte’s fruit loops
Some bananas on the Del Monte Spirit were grown in Tiquisate, a farm-dotted flood plain on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. Once carefully packed to avoid bruising, they were driven more than 250 miles in a refrigerated truck to Santo Tomás de Castilla, a port on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast.
The Spirit then carried them to Gloucester City, N.J., where Del Monte unloads up to 300,000 boxes of bananas a week. The company ships them directly to retailers or sends them to its own ripening facilities, which slowly increase the temperature and introduce ethylene gas so the bananas turn a perfect, unblemished yellow on your kitchen counter.
While many farmers and food sellers have seen costs increase because of the war, bananas have been hit harder because they are transported long distances and must be kept carefully refrigerated.
The price of diesel — needed to power Del Monte’s fleet of refrigerated trucks — has risen about 70 percent in the United States since the war started seven months ago, peaking at over $6 a gallon. Prices have also surged for the bunker fuel for Del Monte’s ships, and for the fuel for farmers’ irrigation systems in Central and South America.
The fertilizer that banana plantations depend on has also become more expensive, since much of it is made from natural gas coming from the Middle East. And the higher cost of shipping has spilled over into other products, like cardboard and plastic packaging and the chemicals that farmers spray on bananas to prevent disease.
Although the Trump administration has repeatedly pronounced the war with Iran over, the cease-fires have so far not held.
Transits out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz — which formerly helped to move about a third of the world’s fertilizer and a quarter of its seaborne oil — are still a small fraction of what they were. While more oil is flowing out of the Middle East than before, global oil prices have repeatedly breached $100 per barrel over the last seven months.
“Across the supply chain, everything depends on energy,” Mohammed Abbas, Del Monte’s president, said in an interview.
The threat of disease
Del Monte grows some of its own bananas and buys others from farmers. Banana companies worry that higher prices may cause farmers to forgo fertilizer and disease-treating chemicals, resulting in a smaller crop next year. Some Central American farmers are already switching to pineapples.
Rising costs could also sap the industry’s ability to invest in disease-resistant varieties. The banana as Americans know it — a genetically homogeneous strain called Cavendish — is at risk from fungi and viruses that are spreading through South America.
While there are hundreds of varieties of bananas, ranging from the silvery-blue Ice Cream banana to the purplish Red Dacca, many Americans encounter only the Cavendish. Until the 1950s, Americans ate a variety called Gros Michel, a plumper, sweeter banana with a thick skin suited for shipping, and a flavor profile that lives on in banana-flavored candy.
But a fungus called Panama disease decimated the Gros Michel by the 1960s. Farmers turned to the Cavendish, first cultivated by an English gardener in the 1800s. Virtually all bananas consumed in the United States descend from that single English plant.
As farmers adapted, so did fungus. Another strain of Panama disease now targets Cavendish bananas in Southeast Asia and South America. It can survive in soil for decades, permanently wiping out farms.
Companies are quietly researching genetic alternatives in case the global supply collapses, an effort requiring significant investment. Del Monte declined to comment on its program.
Miguel Angel Morales, a small producer in northern Peru, said Panama disease had wiped out one in three banana-growing valleys in his region, forcing him and others to relocate their farms. The region produced 12 containers of bananas five years ago, but farmers now fill only one.
Stress from the war in Iran has compounded those problems. Mr. Morales said that his costs had jumped 25 to 30 percent this year, and that there was little support from banks or the government.
He had not yet raised his prices because annual contracts locked them in. Eventually, he thought, consumers in wealthier regions should pay more.
“If production costs increase, it’s logical that banana prices should increase, right?” he asked.
Banana-nomics
Yet an undisputed truth — at least among banana executives — is that the effort they put into their product has little relation to its price.
For decades, grocery stores have approached bananas as they do other “loss leaders” — pricing the fruit cheaply to get customers in the door. The industry structure, in which several companies compete to sell a largely identical product, also leaves banana producers with little power to raise their prices.
Banana companies have also developed highly efficient supply chains that shaved internal costs from farm to store — a strategy brutally perfected by the United Fruit Company, which turned large parts of Central America into company-run territory in the early 1900s.
The result is that the banana, despite being fragile and shipped long distances, is typically sold for as little as 15 cents each.
Adjusted for inflation, the average price of a pound of bananas in the United States has fallen roughly by half in the last 40 years. In the second quarter, Del Monte’s margin on bananas was just 2.3 percent.
“I always used to say that we are a nonprofit business,” said Juan Alarcon, the chief executive of Fyffes North America.
Banana companies also struggled last year with costs from tariffs, until the Trump administration exempted some food that is not locally grown in November.
Companies have also contended with a shortage of truck drivers, in part because the Trump administration stripped more than 30,000 drivers of commercial licenses.
The price at which many producers sell bananas is fixed by long-term contracts, some of which expire in December. But it’s not clear how much grocery stores will allow prices to rise.
Tom Stenzel, managing director of the Banana Association of North America, said it was “almost a mythology” among retailers that they couldn’t raise the price of bananas, the way they could for produce grown much closer to stores.
“I don’t want to throw my apple brothers under the bus,” Mr. Stenzel said, but apples are more expensive and take less effort to grow and ship. The banana industry’s ability to absorb costs is “at a breaking point,” he added.
“What else can you buy in a grocery store for 25 cents?” he asked.
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5) Trump Cancels Planned Livestream of Fort Hood Shooter’s Execution
The president said only immediate families of the victims of the mass shooting in 2009 would witness the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
By Tyler Pager and John Ismay, Oct. 15, 2026
A memorial for the soldiers killed in the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in April 2014. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump on Thursday canceled the Pentagon’s planned livestream of the execution of the Army officer who was convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting.
Pentagon officials said last week that the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, would be broadcast via livestream. But Mr. Trump said Thursday that only immediate families of Mr. Hasan’s victims would be able to watch the execution in person.
“Many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” he wrote on social media. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”
Democrats and Republicans in Congress panned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the shooting, and even Vice President JD Vance expressed doubt about the plan.
“I’m not going to be watching it,” he said. He added: “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.”
The plan to broadcast Mr. Hasan’s execution, which the Pentagon said is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at the same Army post where the massacre took place, had also drawn widespread condemnation from retired military officials, religious leaders and even some of the wounded soldiers who survived.
On Wednesday, dozens of retired admirals, generals and other officers published an open letter opposing the plan.
“Livestreaming this execution would clearly violate the basic human dignity of the condemned prisoner,” they wrote. “It turns what should be the solemn and grave punishment of a member of our society for committing the most serious crimes into a carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators.”
“This type of exploitative broadcasting — that debases human dignity — will taint the honor of the military that employs it, and a nation that allows it,” they added.
In an interview with Real America’s Voice, Mr. Hegseth said he supported the public execution of Mr. Hasan “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
Mr. Trump, in his post on social media, contended that streaming the execution “might have been a strong deterrent” to show how “America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan,” but he said it would not go forward.
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6) For Texas Schoolchildren, Minor Misbehavior Can Mean Criminal Charges
More students ages 10 to 13 are ending up in the justice system after vaping, making threats and lashing out at school.
By Kristian Hernández, Asher Lehrer-Small, Clare Amari and Rosie Cima, Oct. 15, 2026
This article was reported in collaboration with The San Antonio Express-News and Big Local News at Stanford University as part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
Over the past decade, school districts across Texas have sought to make classrooms safer by swelling the number of police officers on campuses and taking a tougher stance on misbehavior. But the crackdown has had an unexpected consequence: sweeping tens of thousands of elementary students and middle schoolers into the justice system.
Children ages 10 to 13 were referred for prosecution after incidents in schools more than 47,000 times since 2014, an analysis by The New York Times and The San Antonio Express-News found. About 4,800 students in that age group were referred during the 2024-25 academic year alone, the most recent school year for which data is available. That is a third more than the number a decade before.
Most of the students were accused of minor offenses, like making threats, using cannabis vapes or lashing out at classmates or teachers, the analysis found. Few caused serious physical harm.
Outside Austin, an 11-year-old bumped into a school counselor. In Victoria, a 10-year-old said he saw someone on campus with a weapon, but later admitted he had made up the story. In El Paso, a 10-year-old kicked an assistant principal after his cellphone was taken away.
All three found themselves in the justice system.
While the case against the boy in El Paso was dropped two months after the incident, court records show, the consequences for his family were immense. His mother, Grace Lee-Vazquez, said she shouldered thousands of dollars in legal bills. The boy, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and still struggles to double-knot his shoelaces, became anxious about school. His grades tumbled.
School district officials would not answer questions about the incident, but wrote in a statement that they were “committed to maintaining safe and inclusive learning environments for all students.”
The ordeal, Ms. Lee-Vazquez said, “broke us.” She moved the family out of state in June for a fresh start.
In rare instances, children 13 and under have been accused of serious offenses. Last year, for example, an 11-year-old boy at Harris Middle School in San Antonio was charged with carrying a weapon in a prohibited place after school officials found a gun in his backpack.
But William Shaw, a juvenile judge in San Antonio, said that many of the cases that came before him could have been handled by a school principal.
“Kids are sometimes not going to get along,” he said in an interview. “They may end up pushing each other, maybe even fighting. That can be considered adolescent behavior. It isn’t necessary to arrest.”
The Times and The Express-News reported this year that Texas’ multi-billion-dollar investment in school policing had transformed discipline, subjecting thousands of students to physical force, at times over seemingly minor misconduct. Some were tackled, blinded with pepper spray or shocked with Tasers.
For the new analysis, our journalists examined data collected by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, identifying tens of thousands of instances since the 2014-15 academic year in which minors were referred into the justice system after an incident at school. Such referrals, as they are called, typically occur after an officer takes a child into custody. The youngest a child in Texas can be referred is 10; students 17 and older are considered adults.
Some of the children who were referred were required to appear before a judge and assigned community service, counseling or court supervision. In the most serious cases, they were committed to state juvenile justice facilities.
But even when children were released with just a warning, they were often taken from school in handcuffs, separated from their parents for hours and processed into the juvenile system — all of which, research shows, can hurt academic performance and is linked to future contact with law enforcement, feeding the so called school-to-prison pipeline.
Encounters between police officers and schoolchildren have not gone unnoticed. In July, The Texas Observer used law enforcement records to document thousands of arrests and criminal citations involving preteens in about 200 of Texas’ 1,200 school districts over a four-year period.
The analysis by The Times and The Express-News examined referrals statewide. It found that referrals of children 10 to 13 had increased by a greater percentage than referrals of older students. They rose for young children of every race, though Black children were referred at about twice the rate of white and Hispanic children.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, when students returned to in-person instruction, schools reported more fights, state data shows. But referrals of children 10 to 13 grew far faster.
The growth outpaced that of the student population, undoing years of work by advocacy groups and policymakers to end the school-to-prison pipeline.
Some of the state’s largest school districts, including Houston and Dallas, have decreased the number of referrals in recent years, data shows. The statewide increase was driven by roughly 60 districts, which account for about a quarter of Texas’ students. Many added officers to their elementary and middle schools during the period we examined, records show, or had taken a more aggressive approach to policing students.
The analysis by The Times and The Express-News examined referrals statewide. It found that referrals of children 10 to 13 had increased by a greater percentage than referrals of older students. They rose for young children of every race, though Black children were referred at about twice the rate of white and Hispanic children.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, when students returned to in-person instruction, schools reported more fights, state data shows. But referrals of children 10 to 13 grew far faster.
The growth outpaced that of the student population, undoing years of work by advocacy groups and policymakers to end the school-to-prison pipeline.
Some of the state’s largest school districts, including Houston and Dallas, have decreased the number of referrals in recent years, data shows. The statewide increase was driven by roughly 60 districts, which account for about a quarter of Texas’ students. Many added officers to their elementary and middle schools during the period we examined, records show, or had taken a more aggressive approach to policing students.
Officials in some of those districts said they believed the referrals represented progress toward safer campuses, a top priority since the 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.
Representative Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat, cosponsored a 2023 state law requiring a police officer at every public school. When shown our analysis, he said that the increase in referrals among young children was alarming, and that he would push for stricter limits on policing in schools when the state legislature convenes in January.
“No one should want that as a result of what we did,” he said.
‘She just gave up’
Laquital Thompson knew that her daughter’s transition to Central Middle School in Galveston might be difficult.
Like many 12-year-olds, the girl enjoyed filming videos for TikTok and trying different hairstyles. She liked school, too, especially math and science. But she had been acting out in class, Ms. Thompson said, and the school district had identified a behavioral disorder that led her to challenge authority. (The Times and The Express-News are not naming the children in this article to protect their privacy.)
Within a week of starting classes in August 2024, records show, the girl was sent to the principal’s office for being “disruptive.” School officials suspended her and told her to wait for her mother in the lobby. But the girl refused to go there.
Eventually, a school police officer, Vincent Ramirez, was summoned. When he arrived, several school employees were hovering nearby.
In an exchange captured by the officer’s body camera footage, one school administrator said that the girl’s mother had consented to the use of handcuffs on her daughter. Another warned that the girl could be arrested if she did not go where she was told.
Officer Ramirez turned to the girl. “You’ve got four seconds to walk over there,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m going to put you in handcuffs, and we’re going to give you a ride.”
She did not budge.
“OK, I’m done,” Officer Ramirez said. He slid off the girl’s pink backpack and handcuffed her wrists behind her back.
His body camera footage shows the sequence.
The girl is in the lower right corner above, facing a glass display case.
The officer confronts her, telling her she has four seconds to comply.
Ninety seconds later, he handcuffs her and leads her down the hall.
In a recent interview, the girl told our reporters that she was confused when the officer detained her. “I didn’t really know why it was happening,” she said. “Why would they put me in handcuffs?”
The officer drove her to the school police headquarters at a nearby campus, where she continued to ignore instructions. When she would not put her hand on a fingerprint machine, officers twisted her opposite arm behind her back until she screamed and complied, according to body camera footage.
Later, as she sobbed and yelled profanities, the school district police chief, Josette Rivas, held up a cellphone and apparently began recording her, body camera footage shows. She told the girl it was for Facebook.
“You all see how she’s acting?” Chief Rivas said as she held the phone.
Chief Rivas and Officer Ramirez declined to comment for this article. The Galveston school district’s superintendent, Matthew Neighbors, wrote in an email that the officers had “remained calm and respectful.” Asked if cellphone video of the girl had been posted online, he said no.
Records show the girl was charged with trespassing. Two former school district police chiefs who reviewed the case at our request said that the arrest and referral were unnecessary.
Threatening to post video of the girl was particularly concerning, added Bryon G. Gustafson, who was previously the police chief for the Stockton, Calif., school district and now teaches at the University of Virginia. “A police chief doing that is just unfathomable to me,” he said.
The girl pleaded guilty and was put on probation for a year, Ms. Thompson said. After that, she had even more trouble paying attention in class.
“She just gave up,” her mother added.
Ms. Thompson said that she had agreed to the handcuffs because in that moment, she did not want to question the administrator’s judgment. But after learning what had happened, she wondered why the school officer had been called to handle the situation at all.
“Why couldn’t they just let her stand in the hallway and be quiet and wait on me?” she said.
‘Cops are going to do what cops do’
In the past, principals and teachers typically handled minor misbehavior themselves. Now, as more schools like Central Middle station officers in their hallways, educators can turn to law enforcement when students are disobedient, even if the children are young or pose minimal threat.
Under state law, school officers are supposed to stay out of “routine student discipline.” But the law does not define the term or detail repercussions for violations.
“The cops are supposed to be there to protect the children from shooters,” said Phillip Lyons, the dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and a former police detective who handled juvenile cases. “If there aren’t any shooters, the cops are going to do what cops do, and that is arrest.”
At Walsh Middle in the Round Rock district, near Austin, an assistant principal directed a mother to school police officers when her daughter, a sixth grader, said that three boys had hit her in the head with their fists and a cellphone. The boys, ages 11 and 12, gave different accounts of what happened that afternoon, records show; two said that they had been playing a game and another said he had accidentally hit the girl with a stuffed monkey.
All three were charged with misdemeanor assault, the records show.
“I thought we would sit down and apologize and he would serve lunch detentions,” said Kimmy Lueders, the mother of one of the boys.
The district superintendent, Hafedh Azaiez, said in an interview that the school administrator should have tried to handle the situation before involving law enforcement. “It’s not something we’re proud of,” he said.
In some districts, the expansion of policing has been accompanied by a more hard-line approach to violent behavior. Officers have taken more students into custody for suggesting they might hurt someone. Over the past decade, the count of students 10 to 13 referred for making a “terroristic threat” tripled statewide, to more than 600 annually.
At times, officers’ efforts have thwarted potential school shootings. Last year, officers arrested a 13-year-old who they said was plotting an attack on his San Antonio middle school.
But threats made seemingly in jest or as playground bluster can also attract police attention. In the Wylie school district, near Dallas, district officials told teachers to warn third and fourth graders that once they turned 10, they could be charged with a crime for making a threat they did not mean. In the Hays school district, outside Austin, officials circulated a poster with a row of boys in orange jumpsuits urging students not to have “threat regret.”
The threats did not always involve mass violence. In February 2025, a 12-year-old with an intellectual disability and autism had a meltdown after an aide at his Lubbock middle school unplugged a classroom phone that he wanted to use, records show. “Respect me or you’re dead,” the boy told the aide.
A school police officer came to arrest him. When the boy did not comply with the officer’s orders, a second officer showed up. The two pulled the boy to the ground by his sweatshirt and handcuffed him, police records show. Afterward, the boy was terrified of the police, said his mother, Colette James. He avoided his family’s church because it had hired officers for extra security. For a time, he slept in his parents’ bed.
Lubbock-Cooper school district officials declined to comment, citing student privacy laws. The aide, Jennifer Huckabee, told a reporter she had felt threatened because the boy was bigger than she was.
In another case, in Corpus Christi, a 13-year-old was referred after shouting “I’m going to kill you” at classmates who had beaten him up, his mother said. He was held at a county juvenile detention center for nearly two weeks. The county’s juvenile judge, Timothy J. McCoy, sometimes holds children who make threats for counseling and to ensure they do not follow through, he said.
In an interview in his cell, the boy said he had not meant the threat literally. “I was angry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said it.”
Of the dozens of children in the facility that day, the youngest was 11. Some of them sat at tables of four in a common area, reading, working on laptops or resting their heads. When a reporter asked how many of them were there because of incidents at school, about half raised their hands.
‘A teaching moment’
In some districts where referrals went up, the increases reflect what officials consider a tough love approach.
In an interview last year, Kirby Warnke, the chief of the Corpus Christi school district department and president of the Texas School District Police Chiefs’ Association, said he believed the state’s juvenile justice system gave children a chance to learn from their mistakes.
“It’s a teaching moment for them,” Mr. Warnke said.
Referrals of young children in his district more than doubled over the past decade, state data shows. They reached a record high, of 171, in the 2022-23 school year, more than in the Houston and Dallas districts, each of which have more than four times as many students as Corpus Christi.
The Forney school district, east of Dallas, cracked down on violent behavior and threats when it created its own police department in 2020, said Joseph Sanders, who was then the department’s chief. The following school year, 42 students 10 to 13 were referred by the school police — more than had been referred in the previous six years combined.
“We just set the tone and set the tone early,” said Mr. Sanders, who left the district in 2024 and now trains law enforcement leaders.
But elsewhere, officials who were troubled by the uptick took steps to reverse it.
Donny Lee, the superintendent of the Wichita Falls school district in North Texas, said that before he was hired in 2022, school officers would “arrest kids first and ask questions later.”
“We were having charges put on our elementary kids,” he said.
He hired a new chief who agreed with him that arrests should be a last resort, and they replaced most of the officers. Mr. Lee also convened regular meetings to review law enforcement data.
Referrals dropped for students of all ages, data shows. For children 13 and under, the annual number was cut by more than half, to 44 from about 100.
Mr. Lee said that the district had achieved those results without being “soft” on discipline. Students who broke the rules were assigned in-school suspensions or community service and offered counseling.
“We’re not in the crime and punishment business,” he said. “We’re in the education business.”
Justin Mayo contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett, Alain Delaquérière, Georgia Gee, Sheelagh McNeill and Kirsten Noyes contributed research. This article was reported in partnership with Big Local News at Stanford University, and with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
Produced by Rumsey Taylor.
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7) France Is No Longer in Control of Its Destiny
By Mujtaba Rahman, Oct. 15, 2026
Mr. Rahman is the managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. He wrote from Brussels.
Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
The French have a phrase for it: “un engrenage,” a vicious spiral. That’s what France is in. Several crises have been long in the making; each now threatens to accelerate the others.
The first is a crisis of liberal democracy. Polls suggest that the far right may take power in the presidential election next spring. The second is a crisis of fiscal mismanagement. France’s public debt has reached a record $4 trillion, with the cost of new government borrowing surging above that of Italy and Greece. The third is a crisis of youth disaffection. French students, protesting against dilapidated schools and diminished life chances, have blocked nearly half of the country’s high schools in the past few weeks.
Clashing with police and bearing inspiring banners, the students have riveted the world’s attention. The protests are certainly dramatic and significant. So too is the rise of the far right. But the fiscal crisis is the most dangerous, underlying many of the country’s woes and threatening to bring it to ruin. France, truly, is on the brink.
The high school protests began in the poor suburbs of Paris in mid-September. They have spread to state-run schools in every region of the country, from big cities to provincial towns. The 15- to 18-year-olds are rebelling against long hours, large class sizes, frequent teacher absences and crumbling school buildings. They also worry about global warming, the rise of the far right and the A.I. threat to jobs for the young. At the center of their complaints is chronic underinvestment.
This is something of a conundrum. After all, the French state spends a great deal on education: around $100 billion a year, or 5.1 percent of gross domestic product, above the European Union average. So what’s going on? Crucially, more than a quarter of that money goes not to the young but to the old, paying the pensions of retired teachers. That points to one of the root causes of the country’s problems. About one-quarter of all state spending goes to pensions; another quarter goes on social services, from health care to unemployment benefits.
No French government has balanced its books for 52 years. Even so, the French debt pile, at 119 percent of gross domestic product, is lower than that of some other countries, including the United States. As recently as 2019, President Emmanuel Macron managed to bring the annual deficit within the E.U. target of 3 percent of G.D.P.
Then came the pandemic. Mr. Macron’s pledge to spend “whatever it takes” to keep the French economy alive during lockdown sent the deficit rocketing to 9.2 percent of G.D.P. in 2020. Accumulated debt rose by $335 billion in one year. France was then slower than other E.U. countries to ease its pandemic subsidies. The government spent another $95 billion to shelter France from rising energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
After that, Mr. Macron lost control. He was re-elected in 2022 but failed to win a majority in the National Assembly. He imposed a modest pension reform in 2023, increasing the official retirement age gradually from 62 to 64. He argued, rightly, that France needed to work longer to afford its generous pensions and welfare system. Yet over 70 percent of French people disagreed, some violently.
In response, Mr. Macron called an ill-advised snap election in 2024, which further reduced the size of his centrist coalition. Since then, two prime ministers have proposed solutions to French overspending. Both were booted out by a majority of left-wing and far-right lawmakers in the National Assembly. The result has been a curious blend of stalemate and chaos.
Mr. Macron deserves some of the blame for the mess. So does the opposition, from the far-left France Unbowed to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. They have preferred to play political games rather than address the gathering fiscal disaster — especially the stifling weight of pensions and other social payments. In February, the center-left Socialists allowed a budget to pass for this year but only at the price of suspending Mr. Macron’s pension reform.
The current prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has proposed painful but scarcely punishing changes in the 2027 budget, which would bring the deficit down to 5 percent of G.D.P. He faces a first critical vote in the Assembly on Oct. 20. If his government fails to pass the budget, the cost of servicing French debt may explode. France could be forced to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund and to pray for it from the European Central Bank — a humiliation for the world’s seventh-biggest economy.
France remains in many ways a robust and wealthy country. Yet market distrust of France is not so much economic as political. The markets doubt whether a poisonously splintered political system, increasingly dominated by extremes of right and left, will ever agree to the painful changes that are needed to get the public finances back on track. The country, they fear, is becoming socially volatile and institutionally paralyzed. That explains the withdrawal of confidence that has pushed France’s borrowing costs sky-high.
There is no easy way out. Whoever wins the presidential election in May will struggle to win a parliamentary majority in the legislative election that follows in June, setting up further political turmoil. What’s more, many doubt the willingness of Ms. Le Pen, the current front-runner, to confront the crisis honestly. She presented a five-year budget plan last week that was stuffed with ideological obsessions and creative accountancy.
On the other hand, Ms. Le Pen knows that the markets could make or break her presidency. She wants to prove that she is a stateswoman, not a wrecker. With that in mind, she will probably order her bloc of 139 deputies in the Assembly to abstain to allow the budget to pass. That may avert, for now, the kind of meltdown suffered by Greece after the financial crash. But France is no longer in control of its destiny.
“L’engrenage” — the vicious spiral — is here to stay.
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8) Anti-Israel Protesters Pose a Purity Test That Even Mamdani Can’t Pass
The enmity directed toward Mayor Zohran Mamdani from within the pro-Palestinian movement illustrates the challenge the wider left faces in corralling its insurgents.
By Matt Flegenheimer, Sally Goldenberg and Liam Stack, Oct. 15, 2026
The day after appearing at an Oct. 7 vigil, Mr. Mamdani faced criticism over his handling of police affairs after an ICE agent shot a man in the Marble Hill neighborhood. Karsten Moran for The New York Times
If pro-Palestinian activists had designed a New York City mayor in a political science lab, they would have strained to do much better than Zohran Mamdani.
He is the Muslim son of a prominent anticolonial scholar whose childhood home often teemed with leading Palestinian American thinkers, primed since his youth in Uganda and post-apartheid South Africa to connect the pain of Palestinians to liberation struggles around the world.
Galvanizing at a microphone and disarming in person, he has helped guide and expand the Democratic Socialists of America as the Palestinian cause has become a defining D.S.A. focus locally and nationally.
His unwavering denunciations of Israel amid a rise in antisemitic hate have unsettled many of New York’s roughly one million Jews, most recently last week when he marked the anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, with a statement that dwelled largely on the suffering of Palestinians.
And yet there the mayor stood on this Oct. 7, a veteran protester being protested, stone-faced but visibly emotional as hundreds of people shouted at him from across a police barricade in Union Square.
“Traitor, traitor, come on out!” the chants echoed, interrupting a peace vigil organized by a progressive Israeli group that had hoped to honor those killed both in Israel and in Gaza. “You sold all your people out!”
Every mayor disappoints his friends in due time. The job is too complicated, the compromises too inevitable.
What is remarkable about this fissure is that the blowback has come over an issue for which the mayor has repeatedly and defiantly expended political capital, risking his standing with more moderate voters to remain in league with activists who are now demanding more from him anyway.
The anger at Mr. Mamdani over a matter so central to his political rise as the plight of Palestinians has doubled as an early test of the wider left’s capacity to corral its agitators, even with an avowed former agitator in charge.
It arrives at a moment when the left generally, and the D.S.A. in particular, is grappling more broadly with how to reconcile its rapid ascent into expanded power with a boisterous, largely hierarchy-averse coalition in which dissent is often encouraged and valorized.
Segments of the movement are debating in real time how much latitude Mr. Mamdani and other elected leaders deserve in areas as varied as policing, housing and comportment toward the Trump administration. And the answers can diverge sharply, sometimes dividing 30-something organizers — relative pragmatists who helped put socialists into office — and college-aged activists who remain skeptical about involving the D.S.A. in electoral politics at all.
Mr. Mamdani’s allies have sought to play down the tensions, especially around Gaza, as the attention-seeking spasms of a fringe faction. Many pro-Palestinian activists have come to the mayor’s defense.
The accusations against him include things that are plainly untrue — like being a Zionist, a term that has become a slur across much of the left as public opinion turns strongly against Israel.
And he is being asked to fulfill an activist wish list unlike any delivered to mayors in the recent past. It includes abolishing the City University of New York Board of Trustees (over investments tied to Israel); intervening in the programming decisions of local synagogues; and halting any military shipments to Israel through the city’s major airports, which the mayor does not control.
Practically, the movement from which Mr. Mamdani emerged is really several, with political goals and strategic instincts that only sometimes overlap.
It is young and socialist and left-of-socialist, and consumed with rent and grocery prices and public transit, but also with anti-Zionism and divestment and the Middle East views of Mr. Mamdani’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish and comes from a billionaire family that supports Israel.
The rancor has also coincided with escalating left-wing criticism over Mr. Mamdani’s handling of police affairs after an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent shot and wounded a man on Oct. 8 while the man was in a car with his 5-year-old son in Marble Hill, a neighborhood straddling Manhattan and the Bronx.
Taken together, the tumult has reinforced and deepened some knotty conflicts that have, until now, mostly burbled quietly.
Mr. Mamdani is caught between advisers who have privately urged him to promote the pro-Palestinian movement even more forcefully, according to people close to him, and those who think the city is hearing quite enough from its mayor on this subject.
Organizers are balancing a longstanding instinct to hold power to account, even and especially in their own ranks, against a growing recognition that Mr. Mamdani will not (or in some cases cannot) use his power in all the ways they might prefer.
The base is decentralized and strong-willed, a source of its potency and its volatility.
The D.S.A. itself is working to negotiate these disparate impulses internally.
The New York City chapter, with which Mr. Mamdani is closely affiliated, has afforded him some space. “Every force opposed to the democratic socialist project would like to divide the mayor from his organizational base,” Gustavo Gordillo, the chapter’s co-chair, said in a text message.
The national organization, which is generally considered more incendiary, has called for Ms. Tisch’s removal. The New York City chapter has also found itself in the precarious position of talking down the Young Democratic Socialists of America. The Y.D.S.A. initially endorsed the demonstration that disrupted the Oct. 7 vigil at Union Square, which began with a rally at City Hall.
Members from several college chapters participated in the protest, where some attendees chanted in support of Hamas and called for the deaths of Israeli soldiers. But the Y.D.S.A. withdrew its support for the gathering amid pressure from N.Y.C.-D.S.A., according to people familiar with the conversations. N.Y.C.-D.S.A. also issued a statement distancing itself from the protest.
“I think it pained him tremendously to hear the word ‘traitor’ being shouted at him,” Asad Dandia, an activist and historian who is friendly with Mr. Mamdani, said in an interview. “Oct. 7, 2026, and Oct. 8, 2026, were probably the two hardest days of his mayoralty. It’s the first time he’s been confronted with a real crisis that brings him in some tension with the movement. At the same time, he’s very good at responding to crises.”
In a brief interview last week, Mr. Mamdani suggested he understood why emotions were so raw, alluding to violence from Hamas, Israel and ICE.
“I think that people are restive, and so am I,” he said. “I am, frankly, furious.”
In some ways, activists said, Mr. Mamdani has been a victim of his own rhetorical success.
Only a few years ago, it would have been close to unthinkable that someone with Mr. Mamdani’s posture toward Israel could win citywide election in the nation’s ostensible Jewish capital — let alone that his rise might help to affirm an increasingly mainstream disapproval of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
But the realities of local government, even in a global city, can be bracing.
“Zohran proved you can be elected mayor of New York City with a principled position on Palestine and the genocide, paving the way for this year’s congressional primary winners, who will be closer to the levers of foreign policy,” said Andrew Bard Epstein, a mayoral campaign aide last year and a D.S.A. member, nodding at the success of left-wing candidates endorsed by Mr. Mamdani in House primaries. “But public opinion barely steers domestic policy, let alone empire.”
Nerdeen Kiswani, a founder of Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestinian group that endorsed the protest that marched to Union Square, suggested that anyone asking the movement to give the mayor grace was misunderstanding the purpose of advocacy.
“People want to remind him of why we voted for him and why we made him mayor to begin with,” Ms. Kiswani said. “It feels like a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, well, you know, we got someone in power. We don’t need to keep looking at what’s happening.’”
She lamented that Mr. Mamdani “issues so much condemnation when it comes to any slight, any perceived slight even, against folks in Jewish and Zionist communities” while he “barely says a whisper when it comes to things like this on Palestine anymore.”
Jewish leaders reject this assessment, to put it mildly, and they say the mayor’s statement on Oct. 7 was an example of why.
“I think the job of all leaders is to try and bring people together and try and bring down the temperature,” said Mark Levine, the city comptroller. “And on that front, I’m not sure that statement met that standard.”
At minimum, Mr. Mamdani’s loyalists and his Israel-defending detractors seem to agree on one thing.
“We are indeed living in a time of artificial intelligence,” said Amit Singh Bagga, a Democratic strategist who served in the administrations of Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Kathy Hochul, “for that’s what’s required to think that Mayor Mamdani has somehow abandoned the Palestinian cause.”
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9) Thousands of Immigrant Children, Alone and in Court, Face Deportation
For years, the government has helped secure lawyers for minors who arrive at the southern border. But a contract dispute has forced many children to face immigration judges on their own.
By Jazmine Ulloa and Madeleine Ngo, Oct. 15, 2026
The reporters attended in-person and virtual hearings in Arizona and New York, reviewed court records and interviewed more than 20 former and current federal officials, nonprofit leaders and immigration lawyers.
“In Texas, a 7-year-old agreed to voluntarily leave the country without a lawyer present to explain the legal consequences of the decision. In Arizona, an immigration judge ordered a 1-year-old baby appearing without a lawyer to file an asylum application, according to court filings. The baby’s mother, a 17-year-old who is an unaccompanied minor herself, appeared with the child in court.”
Unaccompanied minors appeared virtually at an immigration court in New York. Todd Heisler/The New York Times
The faces of the six migrant children beamed into a Manhattan courtroom on large screens. All had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone. All were facing potential deportation. And none had lawyers.
The minors — five boys and a girl, ages 13 to 17 — fidgeted in their seats, dressed in jeans, T-shirts and sweatshirts, as an immigration judge ran through her script. Where were their parents? Were they afraid to return home? Had they found a lawyer?
At times, a lawyer acting as a court adviser interjected from another screen to recommend that the judge grant the children more time to find counsel. The judge, Lisa W. Ling, pressed ahead, often with little more than a nod.
“Do you want the voluntary departure?” she asked a 15-year-old boy from Guatemala during the September hearing.
“Yes, that’s fine,” he replied. It was unclear if the boy knew that meant he was giving up on obtaining legal immigration status and agreeing to leave the country.
The scene in Manhattan has been playing out in courtrooms nationwide for months. In Texas, a 7-year-old agreed to voluntarily leave the country without a lawyer present to explain the legal consequences of the decision. In Arizona, an immigration judge ordered a 1-year-old baby appearing without a lawyer to file an asylum application, according to court filings. The baby’s mother, a 17-year-old who is an unaccompanied minor herself, appeared with the child in court.
Unaccompanied minors went without legal representation in about 55 percent of nearly 50,000 immigration cases completed as of August this year, the highest percentage since 2019, according to an analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research group.
Deportation orders for the children who Vera identified as unaccompanied minors have also surged, topping 7,300 in July, up from 3,500 in May. By comparison, that number was 2,000 in January 2025, according to the group.
The surge in deportations comes amid a monthslong contract battle between the Trump administration and the network of nonprofits that have long provided legal services to migrant children who have arrived at the southern border without their parents or guardians. (Vera held the federal legal services contract until December 2023.)
For decades, the young and vulnerable population has posed deep humanitarian and political challenges for both Republican and Democratic administrations. The minors make perilous journeys north alone, facing higher risks for trafficking and exploitation along the way and once in the United States. A New York Times investigation in 2023 found thousands working dangerous jobs at meatpacking plants and construction sites in violation of child labor laws.
Inside the nation’s immigration courts, they face another set of vexing obstacles. Many children do not have adult guardians to guide them through complex legal claims, and because many may be in pursuit of work or schooling, motives that do not qualify for asylum, they may be unshielded from deportation unless a lawyer can identify other protections.
Although migrant children do not have a right to court-appointed representation, under a 2008 law meant to protect children against human trafficking, the federal government is required to ensure unaccompanied minors have representation “to the greatest extent practicable.”
That responsibility lies with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. Officials say they have sought to overhaul their contract to enforce basic oversight of legal services, as they push to clear backlogs, curb fraudulent claims and increase vetting to protect migrant children from abuse and trafficking.
ORR has been in a dispute with the Acacia Center for Justice, a group that had a $200 million contract with the agency to provide legal services for migrant children. The agency allowed that contract to expire at the end of July, arguing that Acacia had refused to share new data to allow it to verify its legal services. Acacia and its nearly 100 legal services subcontractors said the data the administration is seeking is privileged, attorney-client information and assert that the government had improperly cut off funding.
Child advocates say the contract dispute has resulted in unrepresented minors filling courtrooms across the country at a time when the administration is speeding up immigration cases with little notice. With many judges saying they are under intense pressure to deport more people, many minors have been stranded in detention for longer periods of time, and others have been returned to dangerous home countries, lawyers said.
In response to questions about the number of minors going without representation, Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department, said claims that unaccompanied children “are being sent to immigration court without access to legal support do not accurately describe ORR’s role or the legal services available to eligible children in its care.”
“Dedicated public servants are working around the clock to safely reunite these children with their families,” she said.
The contract dispute has prompted a turbulent search for a new legal services provider. In August, officials awarded a contract to Our Rescue, an anti-trafficking group with little immigration court experience. The Acacia Center, which most recently held the contract, filed a formal protest, temporarily blocking Our Rescue’s contract. Officials then considered hiring Pentagon lawyers before abruptly scrapping the plan.
In a quiet federal notice published in late September, the administration indicated it planned to use Health and Human Services’ own lawyers to represent migrant children, a move that former department officials say would be a conflict of interest.
For now, ORR has hired the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, or U.S.C.R.I., to provide legal services through December. But the organization’s lawyers had formally represented only 12 children as of early September and a few dozen children by mid-month, according to court testimony and filings. Instead, in the vast majority of cases, U.S.C.R.I. lawyers have appeared as friend-of-the-court advocates, or neutral voices who can inform children of their rights but do not represent them.
Back in the Manhattan courtroom last month, the limitations were clear. A U.S.C.R.I. lawyer remained silent for much of the morning, at times reminding Judge Ling that the contract dispute had kept the agency from being able to secure lawyers for unaccompanied minors on her docket.
In the cases of the six children who appeared in a group, two of the boys agreed to voluntarily leave the country at their own expense. A 13-year-old girl from Honduras refused, saying that she did not fear returning to Honduras but that she had never known her parents and hoped to go to school in the United States.
Although Judge Ling noted the girl might be eligible for a special immigrant status for abused, abandoned and neglected children, she said that process could take years through a state family court. But the girl would need a lawyer to file the case there.
“Based on what you are saying, you are only eligible for voluntary departure,” Judge Ling told the girl. When the child still refused, the judge ordered her deportation.
For years, both Democratic and Republican federal lawmakers sought to ensure all children and teenagers in U.S. immigration custody received shelter, social services and access to a fair legal process. But that bipartisan consensus cracked as hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed the southern border during the Obama and first Trump administrations, fleeing rising poverty and violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Many came to reunite with relatives or in the hopes of finding work.
In his second term, the Trump administration has put up new barriers for young migrants to obtain deportation protections and increased its vetting of immigrant relatives and guardians, discouraging many from coming forward. It also has sped up children’s asylum claims, sometimes with only a day’s notice, lawyers said.
Robert Carey, who served as ORR director in the Obama administration, acknowledged that not all unaccompanied children were eligible for immigration relief. But he saw the contract dispute as part of a “systematic dismantling” of guardrails meant to guarantee them a fair process.
“Essentially, there was a wall between enforcement and child protection, and that wall has fallen pretty dramatically,” he said. He added that ORR operated under a simple premise during his tenure: “Not every child deserves asylum, but every child deserves to be heard.”
For 17-year-old Jairo, one of the six on the screen in the Manhattan courtroom, the search for a lawyer was an urgent scramble against a tight deadline.
He had told The Times at a prior hearing that his family had paid smugglers to drive him north in a series of van trips from Guatemala.
He was afraid to return home, he said, and he and an older cousin had been desperately searching for counsel. The boy asked that his full name be withheld for fear of retaliation by U.S. authorities.
Now before Judge Ling again, he asked for more time, saying they had just found a lawyer whose name he could only remember as “Kevin.”
Judge Ling granted him two more weeks.
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