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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a member of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) How American Socialism Changed, and Stormed the Democratic Party
The movement was better at critiquing the system than reshaping it. But it has never had this much mainstream political power.
By Jia Lynn Yang, July 10, 2026
The labor leader Eugene V. Debs addressing a crowd, circa 1910.Fotosearch, via Getty Images
The word “socialist” has a unique ability in American politics to provoke high emotion. President Trump warned last month that the recent success of democratic socialist politicians posed “the most serious threat to our country since its existence.” He compared it to “an uncontrollable form of cancer” that will eventually destroy the country.
And that’s just the Republican response. Some Democratic leaders, too, want nothing to do with the socialists after a number of incumbents in New York and Colorado lost their primaries last month to insurgents from the left. These candidates won by harnessing a wide sense of grievance. They have also staked out positions uncomfortable for top Democrats, like ending all deportations and stopping military aid to Israel. “If you’re a socialist, you’re not a Democrat,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. “We are capitalist, not socialist,” announced a letter signed by a group of moderate House Democrats worried that their whole party will look extreme — and will lose in purple states and districts.
Socialists are used to losing in this country. Yet their movement has endured, because socialism — more of a spirit than a single ideology — adapts to each era. Socialists are astute critics of the status quo, always imagining other ways to live, whatever historical moment they happen to be in. Now their fortunes have turned, and they could be “on the verge of the political revolution we have fought for for such a long time,” as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has bedeviled the party while becoming the most influential American socialist in a century, said last week.
But if the movement is so amorphous, what is the type of socialism that is ascendant now?
Viewed through the lens of history, the modern version of American socialism is in some ways a throwback. The Democratic Socialists of America platform calls for universal health care, an idea long since implemented by their counterparts in Europe. Socialists have always tried to advance a spirit of cooperation, rather than competition. They abhor inequality — and don’t mind agitating the establishment in pursuit of their moral ends.
In one important way, though, the American socialist movement is breaking new ground. “This is the first time that a mass socialist organization has had members where almost all of them decide to run as Democrats, instead of running on their own party line,” said Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and a former editor of Dissent, a magazine of the social-democratic left.
It’s a bet that, with a new strategy this time, socialist ideas can be realized at a greater scale than ever before in the United States. The inside track is less revolutionary but far more threatening to the Democratic Party leadership, weakened after losing to Trump in 2024 and no longer able to ignore the rising forces to its left.
The ascent of the new D.S.A. candidates may have surprised the political establishment. But it’s not because the socialists have changed their tune. It’s because throughout their history, they have fallen short when they worked outside the two-party system. And now the call — ringing louder and louder — is coming from inside the house.
The outside arc
When socialism emerged in Europe in the early 1800s, the idea of capitalism had not fully crystallized. The earliest socialists were utopian thinkers. They dreamed of a society where people felt bonded to their neighbors, never pitted against them.
But the very loftiness of socialism has left room for wide interpretation and disagreement — both over what it looks like in practice and how to achieve it politically. Some proponents have wanted to smash capitalism entirely. Others hoped to work within liberal governments to reform it, spreading wealth to more people. Always, there are pragmatists who chase achievable results and purists who scoff at such moral capitulation.
But socialism also persists because its ideas can win adherents in moments of political and economic crisis. When the market collapses, when leaders are venal, when everything seems too expensive, socialism is ready. At its heart, socialism is “the hope for human freedom and justice under the unprecedented conditions of life that humanity will face,” wrote Michael Harrington, who led the American socialist movement in some of its most fallow years and co-founded the D.S.A. in 1982.
Some of the earliest socialists were in fact capitalists — only they were consumed by a utopian vision requiring a total restructuring of society.
Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist and cotton manufacturer, became horrified by factory conditions in England in the early 19th century. Children as young as 6 worked for 16 hours a day. Workers were routinely maimed or died on the job. To Owen, industrialization felt exploitative and cruel. The more factory owners competed with one another, the more they squeezed their workers to accrue greater profits.
In an era with no factory regulations, Owen shortened the workday, refused to employ children under the age of 10 and opened a company store with affordable goods for workers. Then he began to imagine entire communities built in the spirit of cooperation. Socialism was to be a new science of society itself, with ideas for how to eradicate poverty and inequality. He moved to Indiana in 1825 and founded a community called New Harmony, where everyone would pitch in to farm, to clean, to cook. All would be shared. Within a few years, however, the project failed.
Compared with England, it took longer for socialism to emerge in the United States, since the country was slower to industrialize. But when the ills of factory life arrived in the late 19th century, the socialist movement soon flowered. The Socialist Party, founded in 1901, attracted an unusual collection of people horrified by the way economic forces were reshaping their country. There were tenant farmers on the Great Plains, secular Jews in New York City and tradesmen in Midwestern cities, united in their revulsion toward big business. Socialist newspapers, bookstores, even summer camps flourished. Many socialists were Christians fervently trying to follow Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Eugene V. Debs, a charismatic labor leader from Indiana, became the face of the movement and ran for president five times, urging crowds to vote out “the foul and decaying system.” His strongest performance came in 1912, when he won 6 percent of the popular vote.
Further down the ticket, though, some socialists were victorious and began running cities. These mayors, in places like Milwaukee, built a reputation for good governance. Known as “sewer socialists,” they cleaned up unhygienic water systems, built libraries and parks, fortified funding for public schooling.
These years would mark the apex of American socialism in the 20th century, though. Cold War politics would later mash socialists and communists together into one common enemy. Yet the two groups were in fact often rivals. Many of their ideals overlapped, but when the Bolshevik Revolution inspired some leftists to swear their loyalty to the new Russian regime, socialist leaders balked. The Communists formed their own party, and thanks to Soviet sponsorship, its ranks swelled as the Socialist Party lost members.
Still, in times of crisis, socialist ideas occasionally took hold.
When capitalism nearly self-destructed during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted programs like Social Security, modeled on a socialist idea for old-age pensions. The president borrowed another socialist notion — public works projects — and employed millions of jobless Americans to build structures like the Hoover Dam and the Lincoln Tunnel.
In the 1960s, socialists were among the most effective leaders of the civil rights movement, bringing radical ideas of racial and economic equality to the masses. A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, both socialists, organized the 1963 march where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Harrington, an ally of King, emerged in the late 1960s as the next leader of the socialist movement. He brought a new approach. Harrington believed that the socialists would never succeed by running candidates under their own flag and instead should work to transform the Democratic Party in order to pursue a “left-wing of the possible.” After Harrington’s influential book “The Other America” drew a devastating portrait of American poverty, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration asked him to help wage the so-called war on poverty. Harrington urged Americans to notice that they were settling for a far weaker welfare state than other liberal democratic countries in Europe.
Nevertheless, these were decades of decline for socialists. By the end of the 1980s, capitalism was in full triumph as communist regimes crumbled. An ethos of individualism and competition — the opposite of the original socialist spirit — animated American culture. At the turn of the century, the movement seemed anemic, with D.S.A. membership numbering roughly 5,000.
A new path
But the inside track would eventually bear fruit. The 2008 financial crisis exposed terrifying cracks in the economy, now thoroughly globalized and maximized for profit by Wall Street. Millennials graduated college into the most miserable job market since the Great Depression, and Americans began paying more attention to an elderly senator from Vermont who called himself a democratic socialist. In 2016, Sanders soared in the Democratic presidential primary, winning over young people, including many independents, who feared economic insecurity more than a Soviet boogeyman that had been vanquished for decades.
Among these fresh acolytes were figures like Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom eventually won elections in New York by running in Democratic primaries. Others in this cohort have won that way this spring, from New York to Colorado to the District of Columbia, where the next mayor is set to be a socialist. A feeling of revolution is back in the air. But for now it is the party, not the country, that is being remade.
The D.S.A. has an opening because of dissatisfaction not just with the economy but also with Democratic leaders. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents indicated they felt frustrated with the party. Many of these voters want it to stop promising to return America to the pre-Trump status quo, since they no longer believe in that system.
The socialists are drawing from a national rage at the state of the country that has been gathering steam for decades and transcends party and ideology. Americans are bitter over how their leaders have handled its economy and its wars, and each cycle they have tried to express it, one way or another. First, the Republican base took out its party’s leadership and installed Trump and the MAGA movement. Now Democrats are firing incumbents.
Some Democrats argue that in the face of the rising tide of D.S.A., the party should affirm its support for capitalism. This may be a tough sell in a time when capitalism is falling in popularity. Under half of Americans say capitalism is working very well or even somewhat well, down from 60 percent a decade ago, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NORC survey. Whatever you want to call the status quo, many Americans say they simply don’t want it.
This is precisely the type of historical moment when socialism begins to make sense to more people, and now socialists have come to Democratic voters to offer it. When your life feels horribly constrained by forces beyond your control, when it feels as if every possible avenue has been exhausted, socialism arrives with a vision of another way: Here, it says. Here lies the way out.
Jia Lynn Yang
Explanatory reporter
Hi everyone,I set out to write this piece because in all the reaction to the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America, it felt a little hard to perceive what we were actually looking at. American socialism is not new, so how does the current wave compare with what’s come before? And what exactly is socialism in the first place?I relied on several books on the history of the American left and the emergence of socialism as an idea in 19th century Europe. I found it to be a story filled with drama, with a real lineage, all leading to our current moment.I’m curious to hear more from readers: How do you feel about socialism as an idea? And why do you think the D.S.A. is gaining so much traction within the Democratic Party right now?
Jia Lynn Yang is a senior Times writer.
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2) How Marco Rubio Is Running Venezuela From Afar
The secretary of state effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. His grip on the country is a vivid manifestation of American power in the Trump era.
By Tyler Pager and Anatoly Kurmanaev, July 11, 2026
Tyler Pager, who covers the White House, reported from Washington and Caracas. Anatoly Kurmanaev, who covers Venezuela, reported from Caracas.
President Trump was sitting in the Oval Office earlier this year with Secretary of State Marco Rubio when an idea came to him.
Maybe he should dispatch Mr. Rubio permanently to Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, where U.S. commandos had carried out the proudest foreign policy achievement of Mr. Trump’s second term: the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president.
Mr. Rubio could be the next leader of Venezuela, Mr. Trump suggested. And while the president’s aides say he was joking — and that he frequently teases Mr. Rubio about an overseas assignment — the fact is that Mr. Rubio does not need to move to Caracas.
He already runs Venezuela from Washington.
In the six months since U.S. forces blew open Mr. Maduro’s bedroom door and snatched him in the dead of night, Mr. Rubio has become the de facto viceroy of Venezuela, holding sway over a sovereign nation in a way that no American official has since L. Paul Bremer III arrived in Baghdad in 2003 to run U.S.-occupied Iraq.
Mr. Rubio now effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials and people close to both governments in Washington and Caracas, who provided details about his involvement in steering the country’s policies. Many spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private interactions and internal discussions.
While he has not visited Venezuela in person since the U.S. took over, the secretary of state is deeply involved in the country’s day-to-day operations, keeping in close contact with Delcy Rodríguez, who was Mr. Maduro’s vice president and now leads her country on an acting basis, with the imprimatur of the United States. The two exchange messages in Spanish on WhatsApp, trading gossip, birthday greetings and selfies.
Despite the banter, the relationship between Mr. Rubio and Ms. Rodríguez is far from a partnership. It is a manifestation of Trump-era American power, in which the winner takes all regardless of sovereignty and international law.
The Venezuelan government did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration did not address detailed questions about Mr. Rubio’s authority in Venezuela. Mr. Rubio has downplayed his role, and largely avoids discussing his work. He declined multiple requests for an interview.
Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement that “with renewed cooperation and sound economic stewardship, Venezuela can re-emerge as a stable, prosperous partner whose citizens benefit from its vast natural wealth and strengthened ties with the United States.”
The direct control over Venezuela’s public revenues, in particular, distinguishes Washington’s influence there from most other countries beholden to its military and financial might.
The U.S. Treasury receives the revenue from most of Venezuela’s exports, then disburses it gradually to Venezuela through the country’s private banks, a relationship akin to parents handing out allowances to children. Mr. Rubio and his team set the conditions on what that money can be spent on, and by whom.
This system has allowed Mr. Rubio to stop Venezuela’s most egregious corruption schemes. And it brings some benefits to the Venezuelan government, which uses the effective protection of the U.S. Treasury to receive revenues without being hounded by the numerous creditors seeking repayment of billions in unpaid debt.
But the arrangement has also given Mr. Rubio immense leverage over Ms. Rodríguez, who depends on the money to pay workers and prop up the national currency.
He also oversees the application of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, deciding who gets to do business in the country and how. He has worked to reshape the oil sector and boosted the access of U.S. companies. For her part, Ms. Rodríguez runs important government appointments by him, such as the minister of defense.
Since two earthquakes struck Venezuela last month, Mr. Rubio has sought to bolster the country’s interim government. The United States has sent 900 military personnel to Venezuela, committed nearly $400 million in aid and delivered crates of cash to the Venezuelan government.
The earthquakes have complicated Mr. Rubio’s stated mission to return Venezuela to democracy (“It’s a setback in that regard,” Mr. Rubio acknowledged last month). But the country’s ability to recover is critical to Mr. Trump’s ultimate goal: securing Venezuelan oil for U.S. interests.
The arrangement is deeply unusual, unfolding 80 years after the United States relinquished its last sizable formal colony, the Philippines.
But Mr. Trump has made clear he wants to return to an era of American expansionism, musing about taking control of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.
He has found the most success in Venezuela. But there are risks.
Mr. Trump’s critics accuse the United States of siphoning Venezuela’s resources and propping up an authoritarian government by leaving Mr. Maduro’s henchmen largely in place. The arrangement also entangles the United States in the fortunes of a deeply unpopular, unelected regime facing increasingly restless clamor for political change.
“Secretary Rubio said that we are not at war with Venezuela,” Representative Sean Casten, Democrat of Illinois, said to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a congressional hearing in February. What authority, Mr. Casten asked, did the United States have to control Venezuelan assets?
Mr. Bessent told Mr. Casten that he would get back to him.
Mr. Rubio’s hard-nosed realpolitik in Venezuela is a sharp departure for a man who spent his career fashioning himself as a champion for democracy in Latin America. He has said his goal is an eventual democratic transition.
The outcome of the Venezuela foray could shape Mr. Rubio’s political future as Mr. Trump considers his successor.
‘Make Venezuela Great Again’
In the early hours of Jan. 3, shortly after Mr. Maduro was captured, Mr. Rubio reached Ms. Rodríguez by phone. Speaking in Spanish, Mr. Rubio told her that she had a choice between working with the United States or witnessing a broader attack targeting Venezuela’s infrastructure, military bases and senior officials.
After some negotiation, Ms. Rodríguez agreed.
She told Mr. Rubio that “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” according to Mr. Trump. The president said the United States would “run the country” until there was a “safe, proper and judicious transition” of power.
Days later, Mr. Trump told The New York Times in an interview that he expected the United States to run Venezuela for years.
At the center of the fulcrum is Mr. Rubio, dubbed by other officials as “viceroy,” the title given to the powerful governors who ruled the Spanish empire until Venezuela and most of its other provinces rebelled and won independence in the early 19th century.
As Ms. Rodríguez started to set up her government, Mr. Rubio weighed in on key personnel decisions, and encouraged her to purge Mr. Maduro’s family and business partners. She followed through.
Most Venezuelans expressed relief at Mr. Maduro’s downfall only to watch in disbelief as the Trump administration struck an alliance with most of his chief enforcers. Inflation has fallen but remains the world’s highest, and the country’s currency keeps losing value. Millions are clamoring for new elections, putting pressure on Mr. Rubio to move beyond economic deals and bring political change. Investors are nervous about putting capital into a system that could crumble at any moment.
Before the earthquakes, Ms. Rodríguez had been asking Mr. Rubio for more financial autonomy and the scrapping of economic sanctions, to reduce the domestic pressure on her government.
Mr. Rubio has been sympathetic to her arguments, but the U.S. government has not released control.
Mr. Rubio’s work with Ms. Rodríguez has provoked grumbling among some career U.S. diplomats, Venezuelan Americans and Mr. Trump’s allies, who bristle at the idea that Mr. Maduro’s chief lieutenant is in power.
Mr. Rubio and other officials have dismissed those concerns, pointing to how Ms. Rodríguez has followed nearly every order the administration has made, especially those related to the country’s finances. Venezuela sells much of its oil through two oil trading companies, Trafigura and Vitol, in an arrangement set up by the Trump administration.
Mr. Rubio has largely eclipsed Chris Wright, the energy secretary, in opening up Venezuela’s oil industry to foreign investment, the cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s vision for the country. He has prioritized the arrival of new American companies at the expense of European oil producers who were already working in the country.
Ben Dietderich, a spokesman for Mr. Wright, said the secretary has worked closely with Mr. Rubio, and has spoken regularly with energy industry leaders and Ms. Rodríguez.
Washington’s grip on Venezuela’s economy extends beyond the oil revenues. Mr. Rubio’s team drafts the licenses that provide companies who want to do business in Venezuela with exemptions from sanctions. Mr. Rubio has warned Ms. Rodríguez’s government to abstain from business with U.S. adversaries. Following Mr. Maduro’s downfall, for example, Venezuela’s state oil company has quietly taken over the operations of the oil projects that it co-owns with Russia’s state-run Rosneft. Rosneft did not respond to request for comment.
The Trump administration has also successfully pressured Ms. Rodríguez to turn over Venezuelans who have crossed the Justice Department. At the behest of the United States, Ms. Rodríguez’s government in February detained Alex Saab, the billionaire friend and business partner of Mr. Maduro, and approved his extradition to the United States, after stripping him of his Venezuelan passport.
Some officials believe the Justice Department wants to use Mr. Saab to strengthen the case against Mr. Maduro, who has been charged with various drug trafficking crimes.
And in June, the Rodríguez government helped the United States kill a criminal boss with longstanding ties to Venezuelan officials, according to several people familiar with the operation.
U.S. forces used the intelligence provided by Ms. Rodríguez’s officials to kill Niño Guerrero, one of the leaders of the gang Tren de Aragua, in a missile strike in a remote area of southern Venezuela. It was the first military collaboration between the two countries in decades. The Venezuelan government later recovered the gang leader’s body and passed it to the United States.
The Trump administration has accused Tren de Aragua of working with Mr. Maduro to flood the United States with drugs and illegal migrants, even though U.S. intelligence agencies last year assessed that Mr. Maduro did not control the gang.
The Trump administration even exerts control over Ms. Rodríguez’s public appearances and statements. In May, Mr. Rubio announced that Ms. Rodríguez would travel to India before the Venezuelan government mentioned it, surprising Venezuelan officials and foreign diplomats.
When the Fox News anchor Bret Baier contacted Ms. Rodríguez about participating in an interview, she told him that Mr. Trump would have to approve. Mr. Trump loved that Ms. Rodríguez was deferring to him, and has repeatedly recounted the story to others when they ask about her, according to multiple people familiar with his comments.
When the United States attacked Iran, Yvan Gil, Venezuela’s foreign minister, issued a soft condemnation of the aggression against Venezuela’s longtime ally.
The Trump administration communicated to Ms. Rodríguez that the post should be taken down, and warned her not to publicly support its adversaries again. Mr. Gil deleted the post hours after posting it.
In effect, it was an admission that Venezuela no longer set its foreign policy.
Mr. Gil did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Rubio was asleep in Bahrain last month when he was awakened by a call from the White House Situation Room. Two massive earthquakes had hit Venezuela, and early images were grim. Entire neighborhoods were flattened, and scores of people were missing.
Shortly after, Mr. Rubio spoke to Ms. Rodríguez, promising the full assistance of the United States. American rescue teams were on the ground two days later. Mr. Rubio has described the administration’s plans for Venezuela in three phases: recover the economy, stabilize the country and transition it to democracy.
Before the earthquakes, U.S. officials said they were in the second phase, working to open up Venezuela to international investment. To further that goal, senior Trump administration officials have traveled to Venezuela to meet their counterparts and strike new energy and mining deals.
The resulting announcements, however, have mostly been optimistic outlines of potential investments.
In March, Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, visited Venezuela and met with Ms. Rodríguez at the Presidential Palace. During the visit, Mr. Rubio texted her to ask how the meeting was going. Ms. Rodríguez said it was going well, and sent a selfie with Mr. Burgum.
But the meeting was overshadowed by damaging news. Reuters reported that day that the Justice Department was quietly building a legal case against Ms. Rodríguez.
Ms. Rodríguez’s administration was shocked, and sought clarification from the White House. To allay Ms. Rodríguez’s concerns, Todd Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, called the report “completely FALSE.”
But the Venezuelan government sought further assurances. So the next day Mr. Rubio texted Mr. Rodríguez the link to a social media post from the U.S. president.
“Delcy Rodríguez, who is the President of Venezuela, is doing a great job, and working with U.S. Representatives very well,” Mr. Trump wrote. Ms. Rodríguez was pleased, and wanted to thank Mr. Trump with a post of her own. But first, she shared the draft with Mr. Rubio. She posted it after receiving his approval.
Before Mr. Maduro’s capture, U.S. prosecutors had been looking into many Venezuelan officials, including Ms. Rodríguez, though it is unclear if those efforts have revealed evidence of crimes. The Associated Press reported in May that the Trump administration told prosecutors to stop investigating Ms. Rodríguez.
The success of the efforts to bring stability to Venezuela, the second phase of Mr. Rubio’s plan, largely hinges on foreign investment. But investors are cautious. The oil sector is degraded and corrupt, and Ms. Rodríguez’s grip on power in uncertain. The earthquakes have delayed the negotiations for new oil contracts.
Mr. Trump appears unworried. He has repeatedly suggested that Venezuela could become the 51st state.
Who may lead the country on a more permanent basis is still deeply uncertain. María Corina Machado, the exiled opposition leader, remains the country’s most popular politician. But she has sworn enemies among Venezuela’s security and military officials, leading Mr. Rubio to bypass her and settle on Ms. Rodríguez as the country’s handpicked leader.
Once a staunch supporter of Ms. Machado, Mr. Rubio has distanced himself from her in recent months. The cooling relationship between the Trump administration and Ms. Machado became an open breach after the earthquakes. U.S. officials have refused to help her return to Venezuela out of fear of stoking unrest.
The time frame for the final phase of Mr. Rubio’s Venezuela plan, the free elections, remains undefined. When The Times asked Ms. Rodríguez in May when she would hold elections, she said, “I don’t know. Sometime.”
Political analysts say that Ms. Rodríguez may be trying to run out the clock on the Trump presidency, hoping that the pressure to hold the vote would fade under his successor.
For now, the question of when an election would be held is not in her hands. It is in Mr. Rubio’s.
Eric Schmitt and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
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3) Times Journalists Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media
The Justice Department is seeking to compel testimony from reporters who wrote about the new Air Force One. The Times called the move a “brazen act.”
By Michael M. Grynbaum, July 11, 2026
President Trump speaking to reporters before boarding the new Air Force One last week. Doug Mills/The New York Times
The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.
In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.
The Times denounced the administration’s actions.
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” said David McCraw, The Times’s top newsroom lawyer, in a statement on Friday evening.
“Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used,” Mr. McCraw wrote. “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
The subpoenas contain few specifics, asking only that the journalists testify “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” They were issued by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Mr. Clayton, who leads one of the country’s most prominent law enforcement offices, was recently nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as director of national intelligence.
Representatives for the White House and the U.S. attorney in Manhattan did not respond to inquiries on Friday evening.
The Times journalists who received subpoenas included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, who reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had departed Turkey on the old Air Force One as a security precaution at the urging of the Secret Service. On Thursday, The Times reported that the new Air Force One, a Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. Both articles cited sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.
Before the Wednesday article was published, a senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted a reporter and a senior editor at The Times to ask that the article be held, calling it an issue of national security, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The F.B.I. official declined to explain the security issue. The official also asked The Times to disclose its sources for the article; the newspaper refused to do so. (A spokesman for The Times, Charlie Stadtlander, confirmed the account.)
Mr. Trump has long been a harsh critic of the news media. But in his second term in office, he has moved aggressively to use the immense powers of the federal government in his efforts to attack the press.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department sought to compel testimony from journalists at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The Justice Department withdrew the subpoenas after both news organizations fought back in sealed filings.
Both Democratic and Republican administrations have initiated leak investigations into the disclosure of classified information. But subpoenas aimed at journalists are not common, and First Amendment advocates say they can chill the work of news gathering.
In January, F.B.I. agents took the rare step of searching the home of a Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, as part of an investigation into a government contractor’s handling of classified material. The agents seized phones, laptops and a smartwatch after executing a search warrant. Ms. Natanson had spent months speaking with government employees while reporting on the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal work force.
The Times is a party to several lawsuits involving Mr. Trump and his administration.
The president sued The Times last year, accusing it of defaming him, disparaging his reputation and seeking to undermine his 2024 candidacy.
In December, The Times sued the Defense Department after it imposed restrictions on reporters who cover the military. The company sued again after the agency reduced reporters’ physical access to the Pentagon.
In May, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued The Times, accusing it of employment discrimination. On Friday, The Times filed a counterclaim, saying the lawsuit was an act of retaliation for its coverage of the Trump presidency and a violation of its First Amendment rights.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
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4) An American Politician is Blocked by Israeli Settlers in the West Bank
Representative Ro Khanna was barred from leaving for 90 minutes. Where past U.S. leaders toured the region to show support for Israel, today’s Democratic presidential aspirants are going to bolster their credentials as critics.
By Lisa Lerer, July 11, 2026
Representative Ro Khanna visits a Palestinian school destroyed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank village of Khirbet Zanouta. Samar Hazboun for The New York Times
The Israeli settlers had guns and Representative Ro Khanna was scared.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Khanna, the congressman from Silicon Valley who is exploring a 2028 presidential run, was visiting the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta, a tiny Palestinian Bedouin village in the southern West Bank that was abandoned after escalating attacks from settlers and then demolished.
Suddenly, a car of men holding guns pulled up and blocked the narrow road out of the village. The men began taunting the congressman and his team, swearing at them in Hebrew and Arabic and kicking the tires of their minibus, according to accounts, photographs and video footage from Mr. Khanna, an aide and his security guard. A photographer for The New York Times traveling in a different vehicle also saw the interaction. Soon, a Jeep with more men arrived.
When two cars from the Israeli military pulled up, Mr. Khanna assumed the soldiers were there to help him pass. Instead, the soldiers smoked cigarettes, chatted with the men and after the settlers left, moved a car to block the road, he recounted.
“I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life,” said Mr. Khanna, who was eventually allowed to continue his journey after calls to the U.S. embassy and Israeli police. “Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes.”
Mr. Khanna said the experience was the most frightening part of a three-day trip organized by a member of his staff. Representatives of the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a time when Israel is hemorrhaging support among Americans and particularly among Democrats, a tour of the West Bank is a new way for progressive politicians to signal their concern.
For decades, potential presidential aspirants made pilgrimages to Israel in hopes of burnishing their foreign policy credentials. Their trips followed a familiar itinerary: meetings with Israeli political leaders, sightseeing at the Western Wall, a tour of an Israel city damaged by Palestinian rocket fire and visits with Palestinian leaders in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank. The goal was to demonstrate their commitment to the United States’ special relationship with a longtime ally.
But where past Democratic leaders headed to the region to show their support, so far today’s Democratic presidential aspirants are going to bolster their credentials as critics.
Mr. Khanna said what he observed in the West Bank would inform his politics and perhaps his run for president. If he mounted a campaign, Palestinian rights would be a key focus, he said.
“I have something unique to offer about the injustices of Palestinians,” he said “I’m going to go to every corner of America, regardless of whether I run or not, and tell their stories and tell the story of what is happening in the West Bank.”
Violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank have intensified since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza. The responses of the Israeli authorities have generally ranged from unkept promises to address the problem, to blame shifting, to outright denial.
As Mr. Khanna was being blocked by settlers in the West Bank, Rahm Emanuel, another potential presidential candidate, was speaking at Tel Aviv University, where he delivered his own critique of Israel and “a 23-state solution” for Israel and all the Arab nations. He had been invited to give a speech at the university and also met with leaders in the country.
“The prime minister and his government have led Israel into a dead end,” said Mr. Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff, who called for an end of U.S. military aid to the country.
Opposition to Israel has emerged as a key factor in midterm races from Michigan to New York, as a progressive wing has positioned the issue as a central moral test for Democratic candidates. The visits this week by Mr. Khanna and Mr. Emanuel indicate that presidential aspirants are preparing for America’s relationship with Israel to become a litmus test in 2028.
Democratic voters are now more likely to be critical of Israel and its government than they are to be supportive, according to several recent polls, a monumental change in American sentiment.
Mr. Khanna, too, has shifted on the issue. He has visited Israel three times, including in October 2024 as part of a bipartisan delegation that met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah II of Jordan.
Mr. Khanna says he still supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, but criticism of the country has become increasingly central to his public image. He has repeatedly accused the country of genocide and endorsed calls to cut off U.S. support even for the Iron Dome missile-defense system.
Last month, Mr. Khanna went from a target of Track AIPAC, a group that opposes the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to winning its endorsement in his race for re-election this year.
What he saw in the West Bank, Mr. Khanna said, convinced him that the region’s problems won’t be solved just by replacing the Israeli leadership.
“One of the things it’s made me realize is how hard a two-state solution is going be in practice, that it’s going require the removal of a lot of violent settlers,” he said. “The on-the-ground reality is so much more brutal and hard and difficult.”
On his trip, Mr. Khanna visited a number of Palestinian towns and met with families and local business owners. The mayors of Bethlehem, Beit Shair and Beit Jala described the restrictions on their freedom of movement and access to water. They told Mr. Khanna that they had never met a member of Congress, according to video recorded by his team, and would welcome his colleagues.
In the southern West Bank village of Umm al-Khair, he met with the family of Awdah Hathaleen, a well-known Palestinian activist whose work was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” and who was killed by an Israel settler. On his final day, he visited a school where a 14-year-old was gunned down in broad daylight by a settler and met with Palestinian Americans, who described stories of being beaten and threatened.
Mr. Khanna, who is Indian American and grew up in Pennsylvania, said he had never been so aware of his race as on this trip.
“In Palestine, I felt first as someone who was brown,” he said. “We really saw the apartheidlike conditions, the inequality.”
He added: “No American would support this if they knew the details of what was going on here.”
Mr. Khanna’s trip was organized by Cameron Kasky, a Parkland school shooting survivor, who ran for Congress with a platform of opposing what he called Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Mr. Kasky, 25, withdrew from the race to work with Mr. Khanna on combating settler violence in the West Bank. He now works for Mr. Khanna on digital strategy.
The idea of the trip grew out of an interview that Mr. Khanna did with Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist who focuses exclusively on the West Bank.
Daniel C. Kurtzer, a Princeton professor who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush and has been involved with trips for U.S. dignitaries, said Mr. Khanna had apparently received a particular view of the region.
“He got an earful in the company of people who, I would say, are probably not objective analysts,” said Mr. Kurtzer.
But Mr. Khanna described the visit as an “uncurated,” “Palestinian-led” glimpse into the West Bank and is one he believes more members of Congress — and potential presidential candidates — should experience.
He also left with some parting words for the Israeli government.
“Free advice to the Israelis: It’s not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates,” he said. “Not how you’re going to build good will with the next American president, whoever that is.”
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5) Kansans Will Vote on an Elected Supreme Court. The Target: Abortion.
Frustrated by the appointed court’s support of abortion rights, which has been affirmed resoundingly by voters, Republicans are pushing an Aug. 4 referendum to elect Kansas justices.
By Kate Zernike, July 11, 2026
A doctor entering an exam room to consult with a patient at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas City, Kan., in 2022. Voters supported a state ballot measure supporting abortion rights that year. Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
A summer ballot measure in Kansas four years ago showed the enduring popularity of abortion rights even in deeply red states, and started a trend of ballot measures to defend them.
Next month, Kansas will again vote on a measure with consequences for abortion — as well as for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, congressional redistricting and other hot-button issues. But none of those words will appear on the ballot.
Kansans this time will decide whether to elect their state’s supreme court.
Frustrated by the appointed court’s decisions, especially on abortion, Kansas’ Republican-controlled legislature put a measure on the Aug. 4 primary ballot to abolish the current system under which the governor — since 2019, a Democrat and supporter of abortion rights — chooses justices from a list submitted by a nine-member commission of lawyers.
Republicans see this as their best hope to finally overturn a 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision that recognized a right to abortion in the state’s Constitution, a decision affirmed by voters in 2022 when they declined to overturn it.
The state has become an abortion access point for women from the South in the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the federal Constitution does not protect a right to abortion. Planned Parenthood, the state’s largest provider, says its affiliate there has seen a 700 percent increase in abortions since Roe v. Wade was overturned, well outpacing the national rates. Some 75 percent of women have come from out of state.
Opponents and backers alike say that if the measure passes, it could inspire similar moves to elect courts in other red and purple states where nonelected supreme courts have blocked Republican efforts to ban abortion or gender transition treatments, and to abolish independent redistricting commissions.
With conservatives dominating the U.S. Supreme Court, national and local groups that support abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. protections have tried to secure those rights under state constitutions.
Conservatives are trying to short-circuit those efforts.
“There is a real desire to bring back some accountability to the judiciary,” Kris Kobach, the Kansas attorney general and a longtime opponent of abortion rights, said in an interview. “It’s not just about abortion. It’s about this whole panoply of potential areas where plaintiffs can ask a state supreme court to create a new liberty interest that is far broader than anything created in the U.S. Constitution.”
Even before the Kansas court’s decision on abortion, Republican elected officials in the state had bristled against a ruling that required the legislature to spend more on public schools.
Backers of the ballot measure argue that nearly half the states elect their supreme court justices. But the United States is extremely rare in electing judges at any level, and opponents of the measure say that doing so puts the court up for sale to the highest bidder.
An election to decide a swing vote on abortion in the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023 became the most expensive judicial election in United States history, with $51 million spent. Two years later, an election for another seat on that court broke that record, with $100 million spent.
Abortion rights groups say Republicans are looking to ban abortion against the wishes of the state’s voters.
“Voters resoundingly rejected the push to end abortion rights in the state Constitution, so they have to come up with another tactic,” said Emily Wales, the president of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, which is fighting the amendment.
The current judicial appointment commission is made up of nine members, including one lawyer and one nonlawyer from each congressional district. The state bar association elects the lawyers, as well as another lawyer to lead the commission, and the governor appoints the nonlawyers.
The governor fills vacancies on the court from a list put forward by the commission, and the new justices then face retention elections after a year, and every six years after that. Backers of the ballot measure note that no justice has ever lost a retention election.
“The reason no one ever loses is there is no opponent who has an incentive to raise money,” Mr. Kobach said. “Most members of the public have never heard of who’s been on the Supreme Court because they’ve never seen an advertisement or heard any deliberation about whether this is a good justice or not.”
Opponents of the ballot measure argue that the current system was designed to make sure that the court reflected the entire state, and that elections would deny a voice to less populated areas.
“This is a system that Kansans developed specifically because of concerns about political gamesmanship in the courts,” Ms. Wales said. “When the court is not making headlines every day, that means the court is calling balls and strikes the way they should. They have held both parties accountable, and they have remained true to the Constitution.”
The ballot measure in August 2022 asked voters to declare that there was no constitutional right to abortion, which would have effectively repealed the court’s 2019 decision saying there was.
Abortion opponents hoped that putting the measure on the ballot in the summer, when historically turnout is lower, would smooth its passage. Instead, voters outraged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe six weeks earlier defeated the measure by an 18-percentage-point margin.
Mr. Kobach, then running for attorney general, called for the legislature to put an amendment on the ballot to elect judges, telling anti-abortion activists it was the best path to “slowly and quietly” affirm justices who would overturn the 2019 ruling, allowing a ban the legislature had passed to go into effect.
The 2022 measure in Kansas inspired abortion rights supporters in a dozen other states who have used ballot initiatives to establish or protect a constitutional right to abortion, overturning near-total bans in states including Missouri and Ohio. Courts in Utah and Wyoming have blocked abortion bans, citing protections in their state constitutions. In Utah, the court has also upheld an independent redistricting commission passed by voters, prompting the Republican legislature to remake that state’s judiciary system.
Kansas switched from a system of elected justices to the appointment commission after a notorious scandal known as the “triple play” in 1957. The state’s chief justice, an ally of the governor, resigned from office claiming health issues. The governor, who had just lost his primary bid for re-election, followed suit. Then the lieutenant governor was sworn in as governor and promptly named the former governor as chief justice in his only official act of a two-week tenure.
The system Kansas adopted is known as the Missouri Plan, after that state’s system. Now, however, Missouri is among the states that have proposed ballot measures like the one in Kansas to move to elected courts.
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6) Israel Struck an Iranian Steel Facility. Was It a Valid Military Target?
During the war, Israel attacked Iran’s steel plants, saying they provided forces with revenue and the means to make weapons, but it also hurt the civilian economy.
By Yeganeh Torbati, July 11, 2026
Workers at the Mobarakeh Steel plant in Isfahan, Iran, in 2016. Candy Welz/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images
Over the course of the Iran war, U.S. and Israeli warplanes hit missile depots and launchers, security forces’ headquarters and air defense systems.
Yet not all of the targets during the six-week campaign were traditional military sites. On March 27, and again a few days later, Israeli airstrikes pounded a vast steel complex just outside Isfahan called Mobarakeh Steel, and another one in the southwest of the country.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asserted that his country’s strikes had slashed Iran’s steel production capacity and eliminated revenue for the powerful Revolutionary Guards, whose repression underpins the Iranian government.
Companies like Mobarakeh illustrate the complexities inherent to Iran’s economy. While Iran’s clerical leadership and security forces are deeply enmeshed in the country’s most profitable and important businesses, those same companies are vital to the livelihoods of millions of ordinary Iranians, regardless of whether they have deep ideological allegiance to the government.
The attacks shut down major parts of the Isfahan plant for weeks, idling over 20,000 workers and choking off the supply of steel to domestic manufacturers. “I felt like my own home had been destroyed,” said Mostafa, a former employee, who asked to speak on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by the government.
The United States and Iran have lurched between peace talks and exchanges of fire in recent weeks. Their negotiations were expected to cover the economic benefits Iran might receive in return for long-term limits on its nuclear program.
The interim cease-fire agreement, signed last month, could result in as much as $300 billion for Iran’s reconstruction and economic development. But that now seems a distant prospect, after President Trump said this week that he believed the temporary truce was “over.”
If any investment does flow to Iran, companies like Mobarakeh will undoubtedly come into focus because of their importance to Iran’s economy, as well as their affiliation with Iran’s most powerful security forces.
Mr. Trump has frequently threatened to attack Iranian infrastructure, and if war restarts, there will be scrutiny over any such strikes.
On Thursday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the United States of striking a railway bridge that connected the country with Turkmenistan. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command confirmed that the United States struck the railway bridge, describing it as military logistics infrastructure that enabled a flow of weapons and other military supplies to key areas.
Mobarakeh has provided revenue to an investment fund belonging to a state-run militia, the Basij, which answers to the Guards, according to the U.S. Treasury. A 2021 report by Iran’s Parliament identified the investment fund as a major shareholder of Mobarakeh.
Recent financial statements from Mobarakeh show that its shareholders include an investment fund ultimately controlled by Iran’s supreme leader. Although the statements do not show a link to the Guards, they often obscure their ownership through proxy investors.
In justifying the strikes on steel facilities, Mr. Netanyahu said they would deprive the regime “of both financial resources and the ability to produce many weapons.”
Mobarakeh executives did not respond to a request for comment, and it is unclear if the steel produced at Mobarakeh was used in making Iran’s weapon systems.
“Mobarakeh Steel products might not be directly used in missile production, but the company is most probably engaged in research and development of modern high-strength steel alloys for future large-scale production,” said Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow with the Washington Institute and an expert on Iranian military affairs. He added, “Mobarakeh Steel products, though, are more likely used in producing missile transporter-launcher vehicles.”
International law prohibits strikes on industrial sites that serve civilians, unless the facility makes an effective contribution to military action and striking it confers a definite military advantage, international law experts said.
The dominant international view rejects the idea that generating revenue for military operations is enough to qualify a civilian site as a military target, said Susana SáCouto, director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University’s Washington College of Law.
Miad Maleki, a former U.S. Treasury official, said that while he believed the complex was a legitimate target for sanctions, he doubted that it should have been hit in military strikes. “These are the Iranian people’s assets, and it’s going to hurt the economy even way beyond the Islamic republic,” he said.
“It does employ many people and pay salaries for many people,” Mr. Maleki added. “But at the same time, it’s really just a major source of revenue for a lot of corrupt actors.”
Opaque ownership
Built by an Italian business group, Mobarakeh became operational in 1992 and was a symbol of Iran’s industrial development and rebuilding after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
People with ties to the Revolutionary Guards moved into leadership positions at the plant starting in the late 1990s, two former employees said, declining to be named to avoid repercussions from Iran’s government. For instance, Mehdi Taj, a former senior Guards commander, served on the complex’s board of directors and held an executive position there in the early 2000s.
Mr. Taj is now the director of Iran’s soccer federation, which did not respond to a request for comment.
And a privatization drive carried out in the mid-2000s transferred portions of state-owned companies, like Mobarakeh, to powerful and opaque players such as the Guards and conglomerates that answer to Iran’s clerical leadership.
In 2008, a consortium led by Mehr Eghtesad Iranian Investment Company, an outfit belonging to the Basij, purchased 45 percent of Mobarakeh’s shares. As of 2021, Mehr Eghtesad was one of Mobarakeh’s largest shareholders, with a nearly 14 percent stake, according to a parliamentary report written that year.
The Basij is one of the primary forces that the regime deploys to suppress protests, including the recent nationwide demonstrations in December and January. Those protests arose over discontent with Iran’s currency crisis and perceived economic mismanagement by the government.
Mehr Eghtesad’s owner, a bank, in 2020 merged with another Iranian bank, Bank Sepah, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Mobarakeh earned roughly $1.6 billion in net profit in 2024-2025. The U.S. Treasury said in 2018 that the company “has provided millions of dollars” annually to Mehr Eghtesad.
“Some part of the economy is run through the government, but some larger part of the economy is run through the shadow government or Revolutionary Guards,” said Mahdi Ghodsi, an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies.
One relatively new shareholder of Mobarakeh, according to documents filed with the Tehran Stock Exchange, is a company belonging to Astan-e Quds-e Razavi, an Iranian foundation that the United States put sanctions on in 2021 for being controlled by Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The company owned 1.79 percent of Mobarakeh as of last year.
Other major owners include several state-owned pension funds. Iran’s pension funds have been struggling for years to make payments to retirees, and the destruction of key sectors of the economy is likely to worsen that problem.
Iranian legislators investigated possible corruption by managers at Mobarakeh in 2021 and blamed many of its issues on the flawed process of privatization, saying it was “now governed by completely opaque ownership alongside entirely state-controlled management.”
A ‘beloved’ company
Interviews with some of the people who used to work at Mobarakeh present another image of the company.
For aspiring engineers growing up in Isfahan, working at Mobarakeh was a “dream job,” said Maryam, who now lives outside Iran. She and some other former employees whom The New York Times spoke to requested that they not be fully identified, for fear of repercussions for speaking publicly.
Some said they felt they were at a prestigious, state-of-the-art company that was contributing to the country and cared about their well-being.
“Even before I was born, my father was working in steel,” said Maziyar Shokrani, who, like his father, worked at Mobarakeh.
Mr. Shokrani began working there as a lawyer in the mid-2000s, taking a bus each day to the sprawling plant 40 miles outside Isfahan. “I know my entire life and existence to be from steel,” he said.
Mobarakeh also donated funds to build stadiums and educational institutions and supported poor families in the area surrounding the complex, said Mostafa, the former employee, who now lives outside Iran.
“It was beloved in that region,” Mostafa said. “Any industry that hit a snag, or any group that had a problem, they had some hope that Mobarakeh Steel would arrange for some kind of support.”
The Iranian news outlet Rouydad24 reported in early May that of 27,000 workers, just 2,000 were still working at the plant. Iranian officials have said that Mobarakeh is being rebuilt more quickly than expected, and in early June the company relaunched a furnace that had been damaged in the strikes.
In interviews, former employees had differing views about who was to blame for the strikes on Mobarakeh.
“More of the blame should be cast with the Guards, because it deliberately and consciously took the country’s economy down this path,” said Mr. Shokrani, who now lives outside Iran.
In the minds of Iranians, the United States and Israel were closely linked in their conduct of the war, said Abbas Kamranian-Marnani, a mechanical engineer who worked at Mobarakeh or its contractors for a decade and now lives in Europe. “They worked mostly toward the destruction of infrastructure and the destruction of Iran,” he said.
Mr. Kamranian-Marnani said strikes like the one on the steel plant had caused Iranians to lose hope in the idea of better relations with the United States.
A senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said they did not know of any U.S. role in the steel strikes.
Josh Holder, Sanam Mahoozi and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
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8) Iran Targets Gulf States After Night of Intense U.S. Strikes
U.S. Central Command said it had hit about 140 targets in Iran overnight after Tehran attacked a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s military said it had responded by firing at U.S. targets in Jordan, Oman and Qatar.
By Leo Sands, Sanam Mahoozi and Aaron Boxerman, July 12, 2026
Oil tankers and cargo vessels anchored off the coast of Oman in June. Credit...Elke Scholiers/Getty Images
Iran attacked U.S.-allied Persian Gulf Arab states on Sunday after American forces conducted some of their most intense strikes against Iran in weeks, with no signs of diplomatic progress to try to salvage a cease-fire that has been steadily unraveling.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said that the Iranian navy attacked a Cypriot-flagged container ship in the Strait of Hormuz overnight between Saturday and Sunday, and that it had hit about 140 Iranian military targets in response, capping nearly a week of back-and-forth attacks.
President Trump suggested the two sides had been close to a deal over the weekend but shortly after that, Iran launched a drone attack on a ship. In a Sunday morning interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” he said that in response: “We bombed the hell out of them last night.”
Mr. Trump also rejected Iranian claims that Tehran had closed the Strait of Hormuz after the latest exchange of strikes, saying that the two countries had agreed to a deal only for Iran to attack a commercial ship.
Iran has not said that it had agreed to any new deal, and Mr. Trump has often made unsubstantiated claims about the war.
Iran confirmed that it had struck what it called a “violating” vessel in the strait, and said that in retaliation to the U.S. strikes overnight, it had targeted American military assets in Jordan, Oman and Qatar.
Kuwait also reported incoming fire, and on Sunday morning the United Arab Emirates’ defense ministry said that it was also intercepting missile and drone attacks from Iran.
Capt. Tim Hawkins, the spokesman for Central Command, said in a text message that the Iranian strikes did not cause any significant damage or injuries to American personnel.
Iran and the United States appear locked in a spiraling cycle of attacks, at the center of which is a tug of war over control of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway used to transport a large share of the world’s energy resources.
Although both sides agreed to restore access through the waterway in last month’s truce, Iran has insisted that all ships transiting the strait must travel through its territorial waters, as it seeks to use control over the waterway as leverage in peace talks. Washington has demanded that Tehran abandon its claim and say that all channels for crossing the strait are open. Neither side is backing down, putting their temporary truce in peril.
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9) White House Directed Patel to Oversee Investigation Involving Times Reporting
The F.B.I. director spent about eight hours at the White House Friday focused on the effort, which led to the subpoenaing of several Times reporters who wrote about the security of Air Force One.
By Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, Published July 11, 2026, Updated July 12, 2026
Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush, who cover the F.B.I., reported from Washington. Maggie Haberman, who covers the White House, reported from New York.
Kash Patel’s role in the leak investigation reflects a further dismantling of the wall that had separated the White House and the F.B.I. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
The White House directed Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, to oversee a leak investigation into reporting by The New York Times about security issues with the new Air Force One, leading to a flurry of subpoenas to several Times reporters Friday night, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
Mr. Patel scuttled a planned trip to Chicago and spent roughly eight hours at the White House on Friday, running the investigation from there rather than F.B.I. headquarters — a major departure from historical practice. Mr. Patel also briefed senior administration officials on the investigation, two people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.
The White House’s deep involvement in the case came after officials said that President Trump was enraged about the coverage of the Qatari-donated plane, which The Times reported Thursday lacks the same defensive countermeasures of the previous Air Force One.
Mr. Trump flew on the new jet to a NATO meeting in Turkey earlier in the week, but was forced to change to the old plane when he departed because of Secret Service concerns, as The Times reported on Wednesday.
Mr. Patel’s role in the investigation, in close coordination with top administration officials, reflects a further dismantling of the wall that had separated the White House and the F.B.I. in previous administrations. The government’s effort to immediately seek information from journalists, when such cases are typically centered first on identifying potential internal wrongdoing by officials, comes as the Trump administration has intensified pressure on news organizations.
In response to a request for comment, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said that “President Trump is laser focused on helping the American people and keeping them safe. That will always be his priority.”
Emily Covington, the director of the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs, sought to downplay the unusual nature of the subpoenas, some of which were delivered late Friday night directly to the doors of the reporters’ homes.
“Every administration has addressed the crime of leaking national security information,” she said in a statement. “To the extent that we have to investigate breaches of national security, that’s something that we will continue to do.”
She added: “To be clear, reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are.”
Ben Williamson, an F.B.I. spokesman, said in a statement that “Director Patel and White House officials agreed to meet on Friday at the White House to brief an ongoing matter. While we would not comment further, other speculative reporting regarding the nature of the meeting is absolutely false.”
One person briefed on the conversations said that Mr. Patel had his own concerns about the type of information publicly disclosed about the plane. Another person said that Mr. Patel went to the White House on his own volition to oversee the investigation.
Mr. Trump had sought the rapid retrofitting of the Qatari-donated 747 after he learned that two new Boeing planes that were supposed to replace the aging ones used as presidential aircraft would be delayed for years.
Mr. Trump has basked in the luxury of the new plane, which is more than a decade old but has the kind of opulent furnishings the president prefers. He has repeatedly described the Qatari jet as cost free to the United States. But in reality, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were spent to upgrade its security systems. Officials have said that he plans to take the plane with him as a donation to his presidential library when he leaves office.
While Mr. Trump has said the Qatari plane was upgraded with the necessary security “bells and whistles,” The Times reported on Thursday that it lacks the defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities.
Experts said the absence of the capabilities creates a potential risk when Air Force One is flying overseas, not only for the president, but also for the large entourage of White House staff members, Secret Service officials, journalists and guests who fly aboard.
After the Secret Service urged him to fly the old Air Force One out of Ankara, Mr. Trump announced that he was making a swap in aircraft. In a post on social media, he claimed that he was taking the older plane to the United Kingdom for “old time’s sake,” and that he wanted to show the new jet to U.S. troops on a military base there.
Once he landed at Mildenhall Air Force Base in England, he walked from the older plane to the Qatari-donated jet, which transported him back to the United States.
When The Times and other news organizations began reporting this week on the security issues with the new plane, the president was livid, according to an official with knowledge of his comments who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Before The Times’s first article was published, a senior official at the F.B.I. contacted a reporter and a senior editor to ask that the article be held, calling it an issue of national security. The F.B.I. official declined to explain the security issue. The official also asked The Times to disclose its sources for the article. The newspaper refused to do so.
On Friday, after Mr. Patel left the White House, he posted a message on social media confirming that he had been there, and said that “the fake news will find out why soon.”
That night, 48 hours after The Times had published the first article on the new plane, its reporters were served with subpoenas demanding that they provide evidence before a grand jury on July 15.
In a statement, David McCraw, The Times’s top newsroom lawyer, said, “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
The rapid escalation of the case is a sharp departure from past national security leak investigations. Typically, officials first seek to establish how many people have had access to the information that was made public. Depending on the size of that group, prosecutors then attempt to determine ways to eliminate potential suspects from the list. In past leak cases, such efforts have often been abandoned if the pool of potential leakers is simply too large to scrutinize.
Historically, the Justice Department has sought to subpoena reporters only as a last resort after other reasonable options have been exhausted.
The Trump administration has pushed for a number of leak investigations, several of which have been conducted by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia. Those efforts, which included subpoenas to reporters from The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, foundered in the face of resistance from a federal judge, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Federal prosecutors withdrew them last month.
The subpoenas issued to Times reporters on Friday were from a different jurisdiction, the Southern District of New York, and were sought by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, who was recently nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as the director of national intelligence.
The subpoenas seek the reporters’ testimony on the same day Mr. Clayton is set to face a Senate confirmation hearing for his new post. The same day, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, is set to take part in a confirmation hearing to serve as attorney general on a permanent basis.
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10) What We Know About the ICE Shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
Mr. Araujo was a father, a husband and a business owner who had moved to the United States 35 years ago from Mexico.
By Christina Morales and Jacey Fortin, Published July 9, 2026, Updated July 11, 2026
The killing of a Mexican man living in the United States by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent during a traffic stop in Houston has become the latest fatal encounter as the Trump administration continues its mass deportation campaign.
The man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, was killed while on his way to work. In recent weeks, President Trump has renewed the deportation effort, which had slowed in the spring.
“He wanted nothing else in life but to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people,” said Ronaldo Salgado, one of Mr. Araujo’s sons. “That’s how I want the world to know my father — not as someone who got shot and killed, but as a family man, a man who understood that good things come to those who put in hard work.”
Here’s what we know:
ICE agents were searching for a different person.
Details of the interaction between Mr. Araujo and immigration agents remain murky.
The federal authorities initially said that ICE agents stopped a vehicle around 6:50 a.m. on Tuesday and tried to arrest Mr. Araujo, whom they described as an “illegal alien.” On Friday, ICE said in a statement that Mr. Araujo had hit an ICE vehicle, had not followed orders and had tried to run over an officer. An ICE agent fired in self-defense, the statement said. Mr. Araujo was shot in the abdomen and taken to a hospital, where he died hours later, according to the Houston Fire Department.
But on Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration agents, said that Mr. Araujo was not the intended target of the operation. Federal officers had been looking for a different man.
Witnesses have disputed the authorities’ account.
At the time of the stop, Mr. Araujo was on his way to work at a construction site. Three men were in the car with him, including Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, his younger brother. As of Friday, they remained in immigration detention in Conroe, Texas, outside Houston.
On Thursday, the three men told a lawyer, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, that Mr. Araujo did not use his vehicle as a weapon or try to run over the immigration officers, and that no agent had been positioned in front of the vehicle, the lawyer said.
The authorities did not provide video footage of the encounter. The ICE agents were in unmarked vehicles and were not wearing body cameras, according to the area’s congresswoman, Representative Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat. Ms. Garcia said she had spoken to the acting director of ICE, David Venturella.
Surveillance and witness videos obtained by The New York Times show two ICE vehicles tailing Mr. Araujo’s white van and trying to cut it off. The van can be seen doing a U-turn before stopping alongside the road, with several immigration agents running toward the van as it comes to a halt. Video of the moments when shots were fired has not emerged.
Multiple investigations underway.
Hours after three witnesses questioned the official account of how an immigration agent killed a man in Houston this week, city officials said they would begin their own investigation of the federal government’s actions.
Mayor John Whitmire of Houston said he, the city’s police department and the district attorney’s office would work aggressively to obtain all evidence and uncover the truth, reversing his earlier position that the city had no jurisdiction over the case.
“We are not settling to wait for an F.B.I. report,” Mr. Whitmire said during a news briefing on Friday afternoon. “We want answers.”
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office is also investigating the shooting. And the F.B.I.’s Houston office is investigating, focusing its inquiry on the accusations that Mr. Araujo assaulted a federal officer.
Both the district attorney and the mayor said that federal law enforcement agencies were not cooperating with local officials and were tightly controlling evidence. Still, Mayor Whitmire said the city “would not rest” until it had completed its inquiry.
The city’s police chief said that he would meet with the head of the F.B.I. Houston field office on Tuesday to discuss the evidence.
Mr. Araujo’s family and civil rights activists have called for an independent investigation and have asked the public for any new images or videos of the encounter.
Mr. Araujo lived in the United States for 35 years.
Mr. Araujo, 52, was a husband, father of three children and a business owner who had been in the country for more than three decades and was trying to obtain legal residency.
His sons said their father, a Mexico native, was most likely months away from obtaining a work permit after submitting fingerprints to immigration officials.
Mr. Araujo’s family said that he had followed his morning routine on the day he was killed. He got up at the crack of dawn, brushed his teeth, drank coffee and picked up his workers to head to a construction site. In evenings at the home he built, he would typically sit by the porch with his dog after eating the dinner his wife had made.
Ronaldo Salgado, 29, and his younger brother Lorenzo Salgado Jr., 27, described their father as a humble, hard-working man who had achieved his dream of running his own construction crew.
“He did not deserve to die,” the elder brother said.
At least 21 people have been fired on by federal agents since last year.
The Trump administration has recently revamped its goals to detain and deport immigrants after its efforts temporarily stalled in the spring when Kristi Noem resigned as homeland security secretary.
Ms. Noem stepped down after a tumultuous year of leading immigration operations in left-leaning cities, which were often furiously challenged by protesters — especially after several fatal shootings of immigrants and U.S. citizens.
Since last year, federal agents have fired on at least 21 people, many of whom were shot in their vehicles.
Federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in January during a weekslong immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. One of those citizens, Renee Good, was killed in her vehicle, while the other, Alex Pretti, was kneeling and restrained in the street.
In February, revelations emerged that ICE agents had shot and killed a third U.S. citizen, Ruben Ray Martinez, in March 2025 during a traffic stop in Texas. And Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, a Mexican immigrant, was killed in Chicago in October after officers fired at his vehicle as he drove away.
In many of these shootings, immigration agents have accused drivers of trying to assault a federal officer with their vehicles. Many people fighting those allegations in court have prevailed.
Federal immigration agents detained more than 10,000 people in a five-day period at the end of last month. And from Tuesday through Thursday, ICE officers arrested more than 6,000 people, internal records showed, a pace of about 2,000 arrests per day.
Reporting was contributed by Edgar Sandoval, Hamed Aleaziz, Pooja Salhotra and Allison McCann.
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11) The Democratic Socialists Winning Elections Far From New York City
They won Democratic state legislative primaries in Buffalo and Syracuse, showing how the party’s messaging and ground game can work outside New York City.
By Benjamin Oreskes and Mark Sommer, July 12, 2026
Mark Sommer reported from Buffalo N.Y.
Adam Bojak, a democratic socialist candidate, won a three-way Democratic primary for the New York State Assembly in the Buffalo area. Credit...Lauren Petracca for The New York Times
As the national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, Megan Romer has worked for plenty of campaigns and knocked on all sorts of doors across the country.
But for Ms. Romer, there is something special about Buffalo that made it “the best canvassing city in the country,” and it’s not just because she hails from nearby Cayuga County.
“Everybody has got a front porch,” she said. “It is such a nice place to spend a Saturday talking to voters.”
Ms. Romer speaks from recent experience. She was part of a volunteer team that knocked on around 25,000 doors in the western Buffalo area, helping Adam Bojak to a decisive win in last month’s three-way Democratic primary for a State Assembly seat. If Mr. Bojak wins in November, he will become the State Legislature’s first democratic socialist to represent western New York.
Roughly 150 miles to the east in nearby Syracuse, a similar army of fired-up volunteers knocked on thousands of doors in support of Maurice Brown, a democratic socialist. The effort paid off: Mr. Brown narrowly defeated Assemblyman William B. Magnarelli, a 28-year incumbent, by 82 votes in a primary that saw about 6,700 people cast their ballots.
The primaries in New York last month underscored the continued emergence of the left as a political force. Nowhere was that more evident than New York City, where two democratic socialists defeated more established rivals in Democratic House contests, and another leftist candidate took down a House incumbent.
But for national Democrats wrestling with how to channel the enthusiasm for populist outsiders without alienating general-election voters in November, the victories in Buffalo and Syracuse — hundreds of miles from New York City and its democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani — might also prove instructive.
Candidates and organizers said in interviews that voters seemed to care most about affordability and had a sense that government was in need of generational change.
That thirst for change was evident in Buffalo. Bonnie Bullard, a nanny who lives on Buffalo’s densely populated West Side, where Mr. Bojak received just under 66 percent of the vote, said that she felt compelled to vote for Mr. Bojak after he was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont.
“I am tired of politics as usual, not just with the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party, and I feel democratic socialists are listening to the everyday person,” Ms. Bullard said.
Christine McMullen, a 35-year-old tattoo artist, agreed. “I think sometimes traditional Democrats are more worried about making their donors happy, where socialists are more concerned about what they can do for people,” said Ms. McMullen, who works at Crucible Art Collective on the West Side of Buffalo.
Mr. Bojak and Mr. Brown said they were somewhat surprised that their ties to the D.S.A. did not elicit more skepticism or curiosity. Just five years ago, India Walton, a democratic socialist who had an upset victory in the Democratic primary for mayor in Buffalo, lost in the general election. Her opponent — Byron Brown, the incumbent mayor at the time — ran an aggressive write-in campaign that portrayed her as an extremist.
But the candidates said that the attention given to Mr. Mamdani’s win last year has made voters in western and central New York more comfortable with the democratic socialist brand.
“Bernie Sanders chipped away at that, but then Zohran Mamdani was a huge help,” Mr. Bojak said.
He continued: “Zohran wasn’t successful because he talked about being a socialist. He just said what he was going to do. Our messaging is broadly popular. People want to tax the rich and expand child care. I don’t care what letter is next to their name.”
Maxwell Bollman, who helps lead the D.S.A.’s Buffalo chapter, said that after Mr. Mamdani’s victory last year, the chapter saw its membership grow from around 200 members to about 500. And over time, more voters seemed receptive to the group’s economic platform.
“People are feeling that squeeze even if you’re wealthy and tucked away in the suburbs,” said Mr. Bollman, who also served as Mr. Bojak’s field director.
And while their opponents mostly relied on paid canvassers, Mr. Bollman said that his team of volunteers actually knew Mr. Bojak and believed in his policies — a personal touch and conviction that is sometimes lacking in traditional get-out-the-vote efforts.
“The old Buffalo establishment is getting pushed out,” Mr. Bollman said. “We’re filling that void because we’re the only political project around here that can actually motivate voters.”
Mr. Brown, known to most as Mo, also benefited from D.S.A. volunteers, who fanned out to suburban pockets of their districts, where the group’s policies may not have been received as warmly.
Mr. Bollman said that the parts of the district in Buffalo were easier to canvass because of the city’s density and its more progressive slant. But in the last month before the primary, the campaign began to venture into suburbs like Hamburg to try to lure more mainstream voters — a prelude to what Mr. Bojak and Mr. Brown will need to do for November’s general election.
Mr. Bojak succeeded against his two opponents by garnering about 61 percent of the vote in the more vote-heavy Buffalo, overcoming roughly 33 percent he pulled in Hamburg.
If the two men prevail, they will be part of a cohort of 16 D.S.A.-backed legislators in Albany next year. This would represent the largest number of democratic socialists in the State Capitol ever, and that doesn’t even account for the lawmakers who agree with the group’s platform but are not officially part of the organization.
“The wins point to a good amount of sclerosis in the old line, consultant machine blob, and that the era of simply bombarding people with mailers and television ads is maybe over,” said Ms. Romer, the national D.S.A. co-chair.
In Syracuse, Rachel May, a Democratic state senator, said that there was not much ideological separation between Mr. Brown and Mr. Magnarelli, but Mr. Brown was able to capitalize on voter frustration.
“People here feel that the Democratic Party’s business as usual is not meeting this moment,” said Ms. May, who also represents Syracuse and was one of the few elected officials to back Mr. Brown.
“I think people who are not necessarily of the same ideological spectrum as Mo still want someone who is going to fight in new ways because the old ways have not been working,” she added. “He tapped into some of that.”
Another modern-day concern became an issue in Syracuse and Buffalo: mammoth data centers used to power generative artificial intelligence. A state bill sponsored by a D.S.A. lawmaker that was passed in Albany last month would create a one-year moratorium on new data centers.
Mr. Brown recounted attending a community meeting in the small town of Lysander, where a data center had been proposed. “The room was not big enough to hold everyone who wanted to be there for that meeting,” he said.
“They wanted elected officials to pay attention,” he added. “I had a leg up on my opponent, because I was.”
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12) Younger Voters Are Propelling the Democratic Socialist Surge in New York
Age seemed to be the predominant factor in the Democratic Socialists of America’s primary wins in House races in New York City.
By Emma Goldberg and Luke Vrotsos, July 12, 2026
Mayor Zohran Mamdani helped elevate the candidacies of three leftist candidates who won House primaries last month. From left to right, Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, Mr. Mamdani and Darializa Avila Chevalier. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
In a low-slung house in Queens, Cooper Smith and his roommates live at the epicenter of a political shift.
Mr. Smith is a 26-year-old copywriter who recently voted for Claire Valdez, a democratic socialist who won a House primary last month. He said he cannot think of a single one of his friends who identifies as a political moderate.
In his voting precinct, not far from the Brooklyn border, Ms. Valdez received 84 percent of the vote. Three-quarters of the people who cast ballots in this year’s primary there are under 40.
There are a multitude of reasons for the Democratic Socialists of America’s expanding reach in blue states like New York: dissatisfaction with the status quo, anger over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, concern about the growing affordability crisis. But what became clear during the June primaries is that those sources of friction have weighed heaviest among the younger voters driving the D.S.A.’s success at the polls.
A New York Times analysis of election data about Ms. Valdez and another democratic socialist who won a House primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier, found a strong correlation between the average age of people who voted in June in a precinct and its support for candidates backed by the D.S.A.
In New York’s Seventh Congressional District, where Ms. Valdez won, younger registered Democrats turned out at a higher rate than older registered Democrats, a rare occurrence in a primary election.
In two neighboring parts of Ridgewood where at least 80 percent of voters are under 40, Ms. Valdez won at least 80 percent of the vote. Overall, she got 76 percent of the vote in precincts with an average age under 40, and just 39 percent in precincts with an average age of 50 or more, according to The Times’s analysis of election data, which excluded precincts with significant Hasidic Jewish populations who historically vote as a bloc, regardless of age.
In Manhattan and the Bronx, the precinct where Ms. Avila Chevalier received the highest percentage of votes overlaps with Columbia University’s main campus and was the only precinct in the 13th District where most voters were under the age of 35. Ms. Avila Chevalier also received at least 70 percent of the vote in a precinct that includes Columbia’s medical school and another that includes the City University of New York’s medical school.
The precinct where her opponent, Representative Adriano Espaillat, performed best consisted almost entirely of a senior center, with a median age of 78. He won just over 90 percent of the vote in that precinct. (The only precinct with an average age under 50 that Mr. Espaillat won included part of the campus of Yeshiva University and its on-campus housing.)
While the two D.S.A.-backed candidates did better on average in precincts with more college graduates and higher median incomes, those correlations were not as pronounced as voters’ age.
In interviews with roughly a dozen voters under 40 across the congressional districts where Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier won, many described being squeezed by New York rent, feeling underpaid and overqualified for their jobs, and spoke of their desire to support candidates who promised to do away with same-old, same-old politics. Their elation was particularly visible at a victory party for Ms. Valdez, where hundreds of 20-somethings raved under a disco ball in East Williamsburg in Brooklyn chanting “D.S.A.”
“That trickle-down fear from our grandparents in the Cold War — I don’t think that really is affecting anyone’s opinion,” said Mr. Smith, the copywriter, in Ridgewood. “They’re looking at it from the perspective of, ‘Is the system working right now?’”
It’s the moments when Mr. Smith spends $17 for a slop bowl, $6 for a box of berries or $250 for monthly health insurance that it feels unsurprising to him that so many of his peers are casting ballots for sweeping economic change.
Grace Jackson, 24, lives in Ridgewood and decided to support Ms. Valdez after learning she was in the D.S.A. and had been endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fellow D.S.A. member.
“That was enough for me,” Ms. Jackson said. “I thought it would be cool if I had my own A.O.C.,” referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is closely associated with the D.S.A.
Age was also a defining characteristic in last year’s mayoral race, in which young people were far more likely to express support for Mr. Mamdani.
The heavily youth-driven nature of the democratic socialist wave in New York has led some Democratic strategists to question where the movement goes as participants get older.
“If you go back 100 years‚ you could go back to Vietnam, you could go back to South Africa — the folks who are the most progressive, shake up the establishment, fight back, are the youngest,” said Chris Coffey, a strategist who worked in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration. “That is not a new phenomenon. The question becomes, around the D.S.A., as they get older do they lose interest? Do they move to the center?”
Mr. Coffey noted that as recently as the 2021 mayoral primary, three of the four top finishers were moderates.
Ms. Valdez viewed young people as a crucial part of her base and pushed policies like socialized health care and curbing U.S. support for Israel, knowing these polled well among voters under 35.
The campaign was “very confident in being bold and muscular about our ideology,” said Andrew Epstein, a political consultant who worked for Ms. Valdez. “There was never a political reason to be timid about how we talked about Palestine or Medicare for all.”
While Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier’s primaries were sharply divided by generation, they were not deeply divided along racial lines, according to The Times’s analysis of election data.
The two D.S.A.-backed candidates performed slightly better in precincts with more white voters. Ms. Avila Chevalier, a child of Dominican immigrants, lost majority-Hispanic precincts in her district by 17 percentage points. She won majority-Black precincts by two percentage points. Overall, given the racial diversity of their districts, Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier could not have won their primaries without significant support from nonwhite voters.
“The margins by which I won this district wouldn’t have been possible if it was only white gentrifiers,” Ms. Valdez said in an interview.
Ms. Jackson, the 24-year-old in Ridgewood, is a Black woman who voted for Ms. Valdez. She said she gets frustrated by the oft-repeated notion that the democratic socialist wave is being driven primarily by white gentrifiers. She hears in it echoes of the relatives who told her, when she was in high school, that Senator Sanders was a candidate for white people.
“The word gentrifier doesn’t mean anything to these people — it means outsider,” she said. “You can always blame something on an outsider when it upsets you.”
But Ms. Avila Chevalier’s performance was weaker in precincts with public housing, according to The Times’s analysis of election data.
“Even in those areas, in the parts of the district where the incumbent has represented for almost 30 years, we were in striking distance,” Ms. Avila Chevalier said in an interview. “The fact that we were able to build a base and coalition in the way that we did — now we can grow it and make sure folks are feeling included.”
For some young voters, support for D.S.A.-backed candidates has only increased as Mr. Mamdani’s administration has gotten underway, and they have tangible policy effects to point to, like the recently enacted rent freeze.
Julia Winck, 24, lives in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn in a building whose tenants have been in touch with members of the Mamdani administration regarding complaints about their landlord. Feeling the effects of his government has emboldened her to push back when her parents voice skepticism about democratic socialist candidates.
“For a lot of people my age, we look at old-fashioned politicians as more — I don’t want to say corrupt, but I feel like we haven’t seen them put their money where their mouth is,” she said.
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13) Prosecutors Went to Prison to Ask the Prisoners How to Fight Crime
What might stop kids from committing crimes? A group of district attorneys went to San Quentin, once one of California’s most infamous prisons, to ask the inmates for advice.
By Shaila Dewan, Photographs by Rachel Bujalski, July 12, 2026
Nathan Hochman, the Los Angeles district attorney, spoke with inmates at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in California. Rachel Bujalski for The New York Times
Except for the portraits of Jesus, the chapel in California’s oldest prison is reminiscent of a high school gymnasium, with cinder block walls and a high, narrow strip of windows. On a recent day, it was the venue for an unusual six-hour event in which the people in prison had a chance to talk to the people who put them there.
About 60 men in dusky blue work shirts — referred to as “inside people” — congregated with about 20 people in darker business attire — “outside people,” a contingent of district attorneys and their staff members.
It was the first time that Erik Nasarenko, the district attorney for Ventura County, had visited a prison in his 18 years as a prosecutor. Gripping and grinning, he worked the crowd. “What high school did you go to?” he asked one inmate, who was from Long Beach.
“Wilson,” the man said, affably. “For one day. Then I went to juvenile hall.”
Prosecutors rarely visit prisons, and even more rarely converse at length with people doing hard time. This was the second annual such meeting convened by Brooke Jenkins, the top prosecutor in San Francisco, who said that both sides stood to gain from the experience.
Prosecutors could ask prisoners for ideas about what interventions might have prevented their younger selves from committing crimes. And prisoners could tell their stories of redemption to the very officials who might review their requests for parole or a shortened sentence.
The location itself, on a stretch of Bay Area waterfront, was a draw for the outside people. Once the infamous home of California’s death chamber, the prison has undergone a rebrand. Three years ago, its name was changed from the San Quentin State Prison to the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, where prisoners have access to therapeutic and job training programs and can work on the hit podcast Ear Hustle, The San Quentin News, which is distributed at prisons around the state, or in a soon-to-open cafe.
Prosecutor visits to San Quentin began in 2012 with George Gascón, Ms. Jenkins’s predecessor. Understanding the rehabilitation process helped prosecutors make better decisions, Mr. Gascón said then. For her part, Ms. Jenkins has supported proposals by San Quentin prisoners to ensure that the money they pay to the courts goes to crime victims first — before fines and fees — and for single-occupancy cells, to make prisoners safer and more productive. The first idea became state law, the latter passed in the State Assembly last year.
After bagels and coffee, a microphone was passed around the chapel for introductions. The chief prosecutor for Merced County turned out to be seated between a man convicted of carjacking and another convicted of murder; the acting district attorney for Yolo County was rubbing elbows with a former police officer who had kidnapped and raped women, and a man who had killed his own son.
Many of the residents had worked their way from rougher institutions to San Quentin, where they are encouraged to come to terms with the harm they had caused. Several mentioned their victims by name and made a point of saying they had been “rightfully convicted.”
The day’s chosen moderator, an inside person, invited everyone in the room to take two deep breaths, in unison. “We just heard a lot of accountability,” he said, “and I really believe in self care.”
State prison officials permitted The New York Times to observe the event on the condition that prisoners not be identified, except for a handful who were selected to give interviews.
After a panel discussion, the outside people were given a tour of a new learning complex with floor-to-ceiling windows and benches fashioned from gargantuan wooden beams.
Stephen Wagstaffe, the district attorney of San Mateo County, who has been a prosecutor for 49 years, was attending for the second time.
“In California at large, I’m one that would be described as one of the public safety, law-and-order, harsh types. I fully acknowledge that’s what I am,” he said. But, he added, “This is spectacular. This is what we ought to be doing.”
Mr. Wagstaffe said he did not approve of recent changes to California law that allowed prisoners to seek relief from sentences that can exceed 100 years, even in crimes where no lives were lost.
But he had made one adjustment since his last visit, he said. “I went back to my office and I put in a rule that nobody in my office can request a three-digit sentence without my review and approval.”
He gestured toward a San Quentin resident. “I see people like this gentleman and I think, ‘You know, he doesn’t have to die here.’”
For the next two hours, the inmates and the prosecutors gathered in smaller sessions that one D.A. described as “inmate-led focus groups.” Among the topics: the difficulty of determining when a prisoner is truly rehabilitated, whether prosecutors could hire people with the “lived experience” of having done time, ways to expand prisoner mentoring of at-risk youth, and how to get hip-hop songs, recorded by prisoners and aimed at deglamorizing violence, into the hands of DJs. Prosecutors asked what might have kept the inmates from committing crimes in the first place.
“To be honest, I don’t know if I could have told anything to my younger self to stop the journey that I was on,” said Ryan Pagan, who was serving 77 years for a murder he committed as a teenager. Now, he makes podcasts and documentary films. People had tried to scare him straight, he said, but he did not listen. “I feel like I needed prison.”
Ms. Jenkins protested. “That makes me feel hopeless,” she said.
Jason Jenkins said it might have helped if someone had been around to cultivate his talent for basketball. But his mother had gone to prison for dealing drugs when he was 5, and his father had been shot and killed by the police. “No one ever showed up to my basketball games,” he said.
Taiosisi Matangi, who regularly speaks to high school students as part of a San Quentin mentorship program, said it was more important to listen to kids than to scare them.
If he could talk to his younger self, he would say that the abuse he experienced as a child was not his fault.
“But,” he would add, “we can do something to get you out of there and stop thinking that violence is OK.”
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14) Melbourne Symphony Wins Discrimination Case Over Gaza Comments
The pianist Jayson Gillham had sued the orchestra after it canceled his performance in the wake of comments he made against Israel’s war with Hamas.
By Derrick Bryson Taylor, July 12, 2026
The classical pianist Jayson Gillham outside federal court in Melbourne, Australia, in May. Jay Kogler/AAP Image, via Reuters
A concert pianist who sued the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for abruptly canceling one of his performances in 2024 after he had spoken out against Israeli forces’ killing journalists in Gaza was not discriminated against, a judge in Australia ruled.
The pianist, Jayson Gillham, claimed in a lawsuit that the orchestra had violated the country’s Fair Work Act and his right not to be treated unfavorably in the workplace because of his political beliefs.
But the judge, Graeme Hill of the Federal Court of Australia, ruled on Friday that because Mr. Gillham was an independent contractor he was not protected under the workplace rights law. The orchestra, Justice Hill determined, had acted to protect its business and reputation when it canceled the performance by Mr. Gillham and issued statements to its patrons about the matter.
“The court finds that the M.S.O. would have taken the same actions if Mr. Gillham had expressed a political belief in support of Israel, or if Mr. Gillham had made statements on any other topic that had the same impact or anticipated impact on the M.S.O.’s business and reputation that Mr. Gillham’s actual remarks had,” a summary of the judgment said.
In a statement on Instagram on Friday, Mr. Gillham, who is British and Australian, said he was “very disappointed” by the court’s decision. “I believe artists should be free to speak with integrity,” he said. “This case was never just about me. My principles remain unchanged.”
A spokeswoman for the orchestra said in a statement that it welcomed the judgment and that Mr. Gillham “should have sought the authorization of the M.S.O. before making the statements he made” from the stage.
The decision concludes an episode that began in August 2024, when Mr. Gillham announced during a solo recital in Melbourne that he would perform an unscheduled piece called “Witness.”
The piece, he said, was dedicated to journalists killed in Gaza, and had been composed by his friend Connor D’Netto.
Mr. Gillham told the audience that Israel was responsible for the deaths of more than 100 Palestinian journalists in the previous 10 months. “The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world,” he said.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel. According to the Committee to Project Journalists, at least 207 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. Tens of thousands of other Palestinian civilians have also been killed.
The day after Mr. Gillham made his comments, the orchestra informed him that it was removing him from the lineup of a concert that was scheduled for a few days later.
In a letter to people who had attended Mr. Gillham’s recital, the organization said the pianist had made “unauthorized statements” that represented an “intrusion of personal political views.”
At the time, Mr. Gillham told The New York Times that the orchestra’s response had caught him by surprise, adding, “It felt like an overreaction.”
In the aftermath, artists, journalists and music fans in Australia denounced the orchestra for canceling Mr. Gillham’s performance and defended his right to free speech.
The orchestra later said it had erred in judgment.
“The M.S.O. acknowledges that an error was made in asking Jayson to step back from his performance,” it said in a statement, adding that it was working to reschedule his appearance. “While the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra maintains that a concert platform is not an appropriate stage for political comment, we acknowledge Jayson’s concerns for those in the Middle East and elsewhere.”
It is unclear if another performance was ever rescheduled.
After the cancellation, the orchestra’s musicians passed a vote of no confidence in the administration, and the organization announced that its managing director was departing.
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