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The Bay Area Demo Legal Collab and friends are hosting a Grand Jury education and training event. Join us for a political history of how Grand Juries are used for political repression, hear from Grand Jury resisters and learn how to plan for repression for yourself and your community.
In the Bay Area there have been recent FBI visits, Grand Jury subpoenas and investigations into our political movements. If you are contacted by the feds or other law enforcement agencies you should exercise your rights and reach out to legal support:
· You do not have to open your door or let FBI or other agents into your home without a warrant.
· You have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney: you do not have to talk to FBI or other agents or answer their questions. It can be dangerous to do so. Say, "I do not want to answer questions without my lawyer. Please slip your card under the door and my lawyer will call you."
· For legal help, call the Bay Area Federal Defense Line, 415-285-1041 and someone will return your call within 48 hours.
The Bay Area Federal Defense line can help connect you to a lawyer if you are contacted by agents related to progressive political activism. It is sponsored by the Bay Area Demo Legal Support Collaborative- a joint effort of Legal Solidarity Bay Area, NLG-SF, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Anti-Repression Committee, and Oaklaw.
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a member of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) ‘We’re Trapped in Hell’: Iranians Say Life Is Put On Hold by Months of War
Devastated by cycles of violence and economic crisis, many are giving up on work and their futures as the United States batters Iran again.
By Leily Nikounazar and Erika Solomon, July 24, 2026
Street vendors beneath a billboard of the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran last week. Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
A horribly familiar rhythm of war has returned for Iranians — with bombarded highways and a plunging currency, menacing social media posts by President Trump and fiery rhetoric by Iran’s clerical rulers.
Yet when Behnam, an unemployed musician in Tehran, calls his family or friends to check in, he never starts by talking about the war. “The first question we ask one another is: Have you eaten?”
Like all Iranians interviewed for this article, Behnam, 38, asked that his last name not be used for fear of reprisal from Iran’s government. “It has honestly reached a point where we’re only thinking about survival,” he said.
Gone are the pep talks from relatives about finding a job, he said, as unemployment continues to soar. Many Iranians have shelved plans to repair buildings or rebuild lives battered by the war. Planning for the future seems an absurd luxury when impoverished friends can afford to buy rice only by the cup and when the United States and Iran are trading strikes on military sites, ports and water desalination plants around the region.
For more than a year, Iranians have been trapped in a constant cycle of airstrikes, domestic security crackdowns and economic devastation. A short-lived cease-fire reached last month with the United States brought some respite from falling bombs, though not from the plummeting economy.
The unraveling of the agreement in recent weeks tipped the country back into war. Many Iranians have been left feeling that their lives are on hold or are no longer their own.
“I have no control over my life anymore,” Behnam said. “Our fate is in the hands of those who don’t think about ordinary people.”
This cycle of crisis has plagued Iranians since the 12-day U.S.-Israeli war that battered the country in June last year. In its wake, the government placed the country under a monthslong internet blackout, citing national security concerns. That sent the already foundering economy into a nosedive.
Then, a currency crisis in December set off antigovernment protests that grew into a nationwide movement. Those were crushed in January in a crackdown fiercer than any Iran had experienced in decades, leaving thousands dead and the country bitterly divided.
Weeks later, Mr. Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced their war against Iran, describing it as a once-in-a-generation chance to topple the country’s authoritarian rulers. American and Israeli warplanes pummeled Iran, destroying infrastructure and killing the supreme leader and thousands of civilians. But the country’s theocratic rule remained intact, emboldened by its survival.
Asal, a 20-year-old shopkeeper in a town near Tehran, was among the thousands who took part in the protests in January. Breaking into tears as she described the arrest and torture she said she and her friends experienced, Asal said she had once hoped the U.S.-Israeli intervention would help bring down the regime.
“Trump told us he wanted to save us, but that wasn’t true,” she said. “Whatever happens in the future doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
Adding to the malaise, some Iranians said, was witnessing how many times their loved ones tried to overcome economic adversity only to see their small victories crushed by the next crisis.
Farzad, a web designer in Tehran, said that, in the downturn after the 12-day war, a family friend had begun selling homemade pickles and jam over Instagram to supplement her pension, which was no longer enough. Her once-thriving business collapsed during the internet blackout, which the government imposed throughout the January crackdown and the first months of the war.
Some Iranians said in interviews that prices had become so high that they were foregoing medical care, or buying vitamins to replace fruit and vegetables in their diet because they were cheaper.
“Put aside the statistics,” Farzad said. When it comes to measuring the economic crisis, he said, “we know it with our own bodies, with our lived experience.”
Even when the bombings subsided this spring, Iranians faced fresh indignities. Their government continued to pursue its crackdown on the opposition, including a surge of executions of January protesters and confiscations of dissidents’ property. Last month, cyberattacks shut down three of Iran’s main banks, according to the authorities. Millions of Iranians suddenly lost access to the little money they had.
By the time the banking chaos had been resolved, the country was back at war.
Supporters of Iran’s government argue that the country has no choice but to keep fighting.
“Everything comes at a cost,” said Hossein, who runs an online business from the port city of Bandar Abbas, which has experienced heavy U.S. bombardment in the past week. “Standing up to the United States and preserving our independence is far more valuable than becoming another country in the region that simply says yes to whatever the U.S. wants.”
Much of the renewed fighting has been in the south of Iran. Farideh, 51, has been appalled by the U.S. bombardments that have smashed railroads and brought down bridges in her region, leaving some residents stranded for days.
In the southern province of Hormozgan, airstrikes knocked out power networks and a water desalination facility, according to Hamid Saed Panah, head of the local electricity distribution company, and Ahmad Nafisi, deputy governor of the province. The United States has not commented on those claims.
Some residents of the south said they had been left without running water and suffering hourslong electricity cuts while having to endure temperatures that frequently top 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
“It has been an extremely bitter, stressful experience, filled with hopelessness about the future,” Farideh said. She struggled to imagine what would become of her children’s education and what career prospects they would be left with. “Unfortunately, we, the people, are paying the price for the mistakes and stubbornness of governments.”
Loyalists to the Islamic republic camp out nightly on the streets of most cities, demanding that the government pursue war instead of peace and fraying the nerves of those Iranians desperate for the crisis to end.
“Things have become so bad that everyone has completely lost it,” said Mohsen, a business owner in the central city of Isfahan. “We’re trapped in hell, and there’s no saving us.”
Sanam Mahoozi and Shirin Hakim contributed reporting.
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2) I’m Native American. Land Acknowledgments Are Infuriating.
By Reid Walker, July 24, 2026
Mr. Walker is a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation.
Alex Jacobs-Blum
The guide acknowledged that we were standing on the ancestral homelands of the Munsee Lenape. He was a careful man in a careful place: the Union Church of Pocantico Hills, the Rockefeller family’s church at the edge of their Kykuit estate in the Hudson Valley of New York. The morning light on the pews streamed in through stained glass windows by Matisse and Chagall. A few people in the group glanced at me, the Native person in the room, as if to gauge whether what we’d just heard was acceptable.
“We’d like to think they are looking down on us, pleased with what we have done with the land,” the guide concluded his acknowledgment.
I thought about pulling him aside afterward, but my patience was low and I didn’t want to get into it on the first day of a multiday art tour.
He had named the Munsee Lenape, the broader people of the region. But the particular community of that ground, the Weckquaesgeek, went unmentioned.
Most land acknowledgments don’t end with the suggestion that the displaced are smiling down from heaven, grateful for what replaced them. But the moment captured, in exaggerated form, something that can happen even in more careful versions of the practice. A ritual meant to recognize dispossession becomes a form of reassurance instead. History is named and then absorbed.
Land acknowledgments became common in museums, universities and cultural institutions across the United States and Canada, recognizing that they occupy the ancestral territory of Indigenous nations. Some are now vanishing; Ohio State banned most land acknowledgments last fall under a state law meant to reverse diversity, equity and inclusion measures.
The practice has roots in Indigenous protocol, but the modern institutional version came through Australia and Canada. In Australia, a “Welcome to Country” can only be delivered by a member of the nation whose territory you’re on, usually an elder — a host’s gesture. An “Acknowledgment of Country” is what non-Indigenous people offer in return, as guests. The American version collapsed the two, so non-Native institutions now perform what was originally a host’s role.
In 2021, Indigenous anthropologists formally asked the American Anthropological Association to pause the practice. There was no evidence, they argued, that acknowledgments produce measurable change.
Because the ritual still treats land as something that can be owned, it names the theft while leaving the idea of ownership untouched. Indigenous relationships to land were not about possession or title. They were about reciprocity, care, responsibility. Wendy Red Star, an Apsáalooke artist, put it this way: “The concept of territory is a completely Western idea. When we make land acknowledgments, we’re putting a Western, colonial concept on the relationship between the Native people who were stewards of the land. It’s not ownership.”
Land was taken in many ways, from treaties signed under duress to the day the federal government flooded our bottomlands in North Dakota for the Garrison Dam. In some cases, store owners would extend credit to Native families: a sack of flour, canned beans, survival food. Once Natives were indebted, their land would be taken in exchange. Little of this made the official record; it survived as our histories often have, told across generations. My aunt, Marilyn Youngbird, an elder of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation in North Dakota — my nation, too — heard it from her elders and told me. “The Indian people didn’t understand what was happening,” she said. “The Native people didn’t understand that the land was worth more than the rice, the beans, the flour, the credit. So it was stolen.”
This is the history a land acknowledgment is meant to answer for. When the Barack Obama Presidential Center opened last month, its acknowledgment was thorough. The dedication honored the Anishinaabe and the Council of Three Fires. A permanent display on the campus names nine nations beyond them, refuses the past tense and quotes Mr. Obama on broken treaties and promises. The criticism came anyway, most of it from conservatives who would ridicule any acknowledgment at all. The Center cost $850 million to construct; its museum charges $30 to enter. If you mean it, give it back, the conservatives said. They are not asking in good faith, but they are asking for the right thing. It names the gap between the words and anything the institution is willing to surrender. One side points at that gap to dismiss the whole thing. Native people point at it to ask what comes next.
The attack from the right took a new form this month. A recent 162-page White House report on the Smithsonian faulted museum officials for opening events with land acknowledgments and criticized exhibits describing Native people forced from their homelands. Acknowledgments, it said, are objectionable no matter their wording. Its complaint is that institutions dwell too long on the theft.
Mine is different. Institutions stop exactly where the cost to them would begin.
The fight over land acknowledgments is a fight about words. The right wants them struck; museums and institutions want to keep saying them. A quarrel about language is one an institution can survive. A reckoning with what it owes would be different.
When my aunt and I spoke about what the land actually means to our people, she said: “The earth is our relative. Everything that has passed returns to the earth. We would say ashes to ashes, but ours was blood and body to our soil.”
It’s not about owning the land. It’s about belonging to it.
If “territory” is a Western imposition, then fighting for title means fighting inside the imposition. If title is the only protection the United States actually recognizes, then refusing it on philosophical grounds creates its own kind of vulnerability. That tension is not one I can resolve. Indigenous people live in that contradiction every day; non-Indigenous audiences mostly don’t have to.
I keep thinking about that morning at Pocantico Hills. The guide naming the Munsee Lenape and then, in the same breath, enlisting them to bless the estate built on their displacement. What I haven’t been able to forget are the glances. The people in the room turning, briefly, to read my face, looking for permission or absolution, or maybe just a sign that the moment had been handled.
The people he named are not looking down from anywhere. They are a nation with citizens, a government and a future they’re still negotiating, mostly without the help of estates like the one we were standing on.
They are not pleased with what has been done with the land. They were not asked. The guide was speaking as a host on land where he was, in any honest accounting, the guest.
I’m not ready to throw the practice of land acknowledgments out. The form is too small for what it carries; there’s no way to spell out four centuries of dispossession in two sentences. An acknowledgment that opens a conversation, that involves the tribe, that leads somewhere, is different. But the test isn’t in the words. It’s in what action comes after the words have been spoken.
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3) ICE Detention Center in North Carolina to Be Among Largest on East Coast
The new complex near the Virginia border signals that even as ICE has retreated from its plan to buy warehouses, the agency remains determined to increase its detention capacity.
By Eduardo Medina and Hamed Aleaziz, Published July 23, 2026, Updated July 24, 2026
Eduardo Medina reported from Hertford County, N.C.
The facility is owned by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison operators in the country. The new detention center will have about 1,400 beds, the documents show, making it among the largest such centers on the East Coast. Cornell Watson for The New York Times
For weeks, residents near the long-dormant Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, N.C., have noticed trucks inside the prison’s gates, people walking around the entrance and fences being erected.
Internal documents obtained by The New York Times show that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to open a detention center at the complex in northeastern North Carolina by the end of the year. The facility is owned by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison operators in the country. Contract negotiations are ongoing, but the documents show that the facility will have about 1,400 beds, making it among the largest detention centers on the East Coast.
The opening of the facility — the first of its kind in North Carolina — signals that even as ICE has been retreating from its plan to buy up warehouses around the country, it remains determined to increase its capacity for detaining people as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Documents obtained by The Times in June show that ICE plans to offload seven warehouses that it bought for more than $700 million, scaling back a signature initiative under the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. The Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to Pennsylvania officials this month saying that it no longer planned to use a warehouse in Berks County.
But it continues to partner with private companies like GEO Group to repurpose existing prison complexes in places like North Carolina, Colorado and Arizona, all of which have large immigrant populations.
The agency has to find bed space in places that are perceived as “more friendly” toward such facilities and do not prohibit them, said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations.
At the same time, North Carolina and its surrounding states are a so-called detention desert. Most detainees in the region are often taken to facilities farther south — as happened during the immigration crackdown in Charlotte last year — which costs more time, money and resources. Immigration lawyers and advocates say that a new detention center near the Virginia border could greatly increase agents’ capacity to detain more people across neighboring states.
North Carolina, which has a powerful Republican-controlled legislature, also recently passed laws that require sheriffs and state law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE, which is likely to increase the need for capacity.
The Winton facility is poised to make North Carolina a major hub for ICE detentions along the East Coast, said Stefanía Arteaga, the co-founder of Carolina Migrant Network, an immigrant rights group.
The internal documents show that the ICE field office in Washington plans to manage the detention center. A state official, who requested anonymity to discuss private planning, said the facility could be open as soon as late September.
The contract negotiations have not been made public by GEO Group, which did not respond to requests seeking comment. A spokesperson for ICE said in a statement that the agency had “no new detention centers to announce at this time.”
“It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space,” the statement said.
Since President Trump took office in January 2025, federal immigration agents have arrested more than 6,300 people in North Carolina, which is double the number of arrests made during the previous two years combined, according to the Deportation Data Project, an academic group.
In Hertford County, N.C., whose county seat is Winton, some local officials have expressed concerns about being kept in the dark over the federal government’s plans, as they try to manage all the speculation. The county is heavily Democratic.
“This is the most divisive issue that we’ve had in this area,” said Mayor Weyling J. White of Ahoskie, about 10 miles from Winton, noting that he had major reservations about having an ICE-operated facility nearby. “What kind of quality of life do those jobs bring?”
The county, which has a population of less than 20,000, is predominantly Black with pockets of Haitian and Mexican communities. Its poverty rate is about 23 percent, nearly double the statewide rate.
It also sits in a competitive congressional district, currently held by Representative Don Davis, a Democrat. The district was redrawn last year to favor the Republican candidate, Laurie Buckhout, a retired Army colonel. Neither candidate responded to requests for comment on Thursday. Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, also did not respond to a request for comment about the facility.
Well-paying jobs are scarce in the county, so some see the new ICE detention center as an economic lifeline. Others worry about becoming another flashpoint in the immigration crackdown and serving as an outpost for a deeply polarizing federal agency.
The former Rivers Correctional Institution, which closed in 2021 as the Biden administration moved to end federal contracts with for-profit prisons, also has a history of poor conditions.
A federal report of private prisons in 2016 found that Rivers had the highest rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual misconduct, violence, contraband finds (excluding cellphones) and positive drug tests. More recently, prisons across the state have struggled to find employees, and it is unclear how Rivers would fare if it reopened.
“Part of my worry is that we’re not prepared for what’s going to happen when that place opens,” said Jennifer Smyth, who teaches English to nonnative speakers in Hertford County. Even if the county doesn’t see more ICE arrests, she says she worries about increased activity in other parts of the state.
Residents say the financial struggles and need for job creation are evident: Downtown Winton has several abandoned buildings, and the surrounding infrastructure is easily prone to flooding.
But a steel manufacturer is expected to bring more than 700 high-paying jobs to Hertford County by 2030. On GEO Group’s website, there is one job posting for a facility maintenance manager in Rivers; the pay minimum is $72,800.
Leroy Douglas, a Hertford County commissioner who politically identifies as an independent, said the two recent fatal shootings by ICE agents in Texas and Maine had made some residents more resistant to having an immigration detention facility in their backyard. But plenty of others, he added, approve of the plan, especially those who lost their jobs when the Rivers prison closed in 2021.
It is unclear how many locals would be employed there. In 2021, the prison employed about 300 people.
While he doesn’t agree with a lot of ICE’s aggressive tactics, Mr. Douglas said he did not believe that agents would be “running rampant around Hertford County, because that’s not what this is about.”
“If they open up, I really see no negative change in our actual community,” said Mr. Douglas, whose wife worked as a correctional officer at GEO Group decades ago before moving into administrative roles at the company. “I actually see a positive one because there would be a few more jobs.”
Mr. Douglas says he has had no communication with ICE or GEO Group leaders. Other county commissioners did not respond to requests for comment.
In Facebook posts speculating about the prison reopening, comment sections have turned into broader debates about the morality of ICE and border security.
Local activists have begun to mobilize against the facility, organizing protests and flooding county officials with questions. Bobby Ray Riddick, who retired years ago and used to work at a chicken processing plant, is one of them, with 10,000 followers on Facebook.
“This is going to be a ride that I don’t think we’re ready for,” Mr. Riddick said.
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4) Divided by Poverty Even in Death
Latin America’s deep-seated inequalities prevailed over the grimly equalizing force of the Venezuela earthquakes, and set even the dead apart.
By Emma Bubola, Photographs by Adriana Loureiro Fernandez, July 24, 2026
Emma Bubola and Adriana Loureiro Fernández reported from La Guaira, Venezuela.
The teenager sat in the passenger’s seat of a pickup truck beside her mother’s coffin and merged into traffic along a coastal road in Venezuela. Michell Mendoza, 16, had escaped the wreckage of one of the many high-rise public housing complexes that collapsed during last month’s catastrophic earthquakes in the state of La Guaira. Her parents and her older brother, however, were killed.
But when Michell and her other family members — mostly children and teenagers — arrived at the hillside graveyard in her town of Caraballeda, the caretaker sent them away. The family did not own a gravesite, he said, and because they could not afford one, Michell could not bury her mother there.
“I didn’t know even graveyards could be private,” said Alexandra Romero, 18, Michell’s sister-in-law, who is six months pregnant, her legs dangling from the pick up in front of the cemetery.
The rejection started a long, painful ordeal for Michell’s family, but it also illustrated the bleak fate that can follow the less privileged even after death.
The back-to-back earthquakes that ravaged northern Venezuela tore through social classes, leveling upscale high-rises and neglected housing blocks alike. Luxury towers and public housing complexes now look identical — both reduced to piles of rubble. Wealthy young women from Caracas and local fishermen from La Guaira spent days sifting through the debris with the same anguish and the same desperate prayers that their loved ones would emerge alive.
But there were differences within this shared horror.
With heavy machinery in short supply, wealthier Venezuelans were able to rent private equipment to aid their search. Many were also able to bury their dead in private family plots, while poorer Venezuelans were forced to cremate their loved ones because of a lack of affordable burial options nearby.
Cremation in Venezuela, as in other Latin American nations, is not historically customary, and in many cases was not what victims, or their relatives, would have wanted.
When Michell, who had kept a calm and gentle attitude for much of the day, returned to the morgue to hand over her mother’s body for cremation, she looked distraught. She said she wanted her mother to be buried in a grave she could visit, not turned into ashes.
“I would have liked to bring her flowers,” she said.
The deep-seated inequalities that are prevalent across Latin America loomed large amid the devastation in Venezuela, prevailing over the grimly equalizing force of a natural disaster and setting even the dead apart.
“We all have the same need” said Victor Calderón Castillo, explaining that over 20 of his family members who lived in the same apartment complex were killed in the earthquakes. For four days, he was forced to stop digging for the last bodies because he had no tools and could not afford to buy them. “But the rich come first.”
Sitting on top of the rubble that had buried his family, he looked at a tall crane operating at a nearby private building. “If you don’t own anything, you are nobody,” he said. “It’s always been like that.”
Cranes and excavators became the most coveted objects in La Guaira — a town now covered in ruins where everything people cared about is trapped beneath collapsed columns and contorted steel.
It is unclear how Venezuela’s government was allocating its stock of heavy machinery, but many victims complained that too little arrived too late.
Some private companies and donors stepped in to operate cranes for free. But several people said that they paid for machines, showing that financial privilege could dictate access to the equipment needed to recover bodies.
Paola Alessandra Peñaloza Gómez, 30, said she was paying a private company $650 a day to search for the body of her father, who had lived in an upscale building along the waterfront in La Guaira.
She said she was grateful that her family could afford it, but acknowledged that “there are buildings that have no machines, buildings that have no money.”
“We have many things that most people don’t have,” she added, and asked: “How do they manage, those who have nothing?”
Many do not.
“Please, I need a machine, I can’t wait any longer,” Vladimir Peña, 29, cried as he ran toward two men operating a piece of machinery at a private apartment complex that had collapsed.
He was looking for his wife, Pribeth Peña, 26, who had lived in a public housing complex reduced to rubble nearby. It had already been two weeks since she was trapped, but he still had hopes of finding her alive. “I don’t want her to die for a lack of help.”
A few blocks away, two excavators, rented privately for about $400 a day, sifted through the rubble of a townhouse to remove a pickup truck buried underneath. Days earlier, the same man had rented the same machines to pull out the bodies of his two children.
Venezuelans turned to crowdfunding or asked friends and relatives abroad for financial help to rent cranes. But even with heavy machinery on site, there was no guarantee that bodies would be recovered.
Ms. Peñalosa Gómez’s father was found after about three weeks of searching. Another family said they had spent $11,500 on a large crane for four days of digging at a destroyed building in Catia la Mar and could not find the bodies of relatives buried under the debris.
Still, having the resources to rent heavy machinery helped some people fight a sense of helplessness that overwhelmed many of those who did not have access to such equipment.
“We had to pull out our relatives with our own hands,” said María Calderón, 52, Mr. Calderón’s sister. Her son, Robert Adrian Hernández Calderón, 30, as well as 17 other family members died in the quakes. When relatives recovered Robert’s body, there was no car to take him to the morgue, she said. So the body sat on the side of the street for five hours until they found a ride.
The only free options to bury him in the ground, she said, were faraway cemeteries, so she had to cremate her son, even though it was not what she wanted.
“There were no other options,” she said.
Venezuelan authorities offered some options to bury the dead for free. They included a mausoleum in a Caracas cemetery, a mass grave in another cemetery and a gravesite the government had dug on a mountain west of La Guaira.
All these options were about an hour’s drive from many of the large housing projects destroyed in the quakes. For residents, many of whom do not own a car, the locations were simply too far.
At nearby cemeteries, burial plots had to be paid for.
“I don’t have 900 dollars to bury the three of them,” said Amarilis Rada, 31, watching rescuers pull a body from rubble, straining to see if it was her 7-year-old son, Adrian. The bodies of her husband and 2-year-old son, Vicneth Elian, had been recovered earlier that day.
Ms. Rada said a cemetery in La Guaira had wanted her to pay $300 to bury each of them. So she cremated the two bodies she had already found while continuing the search for her older son.
“I don’t have money to look,” said Ms. Rada, who used to sell snacks on the beach.
“I didn’t have money to hold a wake for him,” she added, talking about her youngest child. “If I could have held a wake, I would have a place to visit him, a place to go for his birthday.”
Sheyla Urdaneta contributed reporting from Buenos Aires, and Isayen Herrera from La Guaira.
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5) Black Parents Are Rattled by Mississippi Teen’s Death Among White Friends
The death of Nolan Wells after he boated with friends to an island party on July 4 has sparked anguish among Black parents about the safety of their children in predominantly white spaces.
By Clyde McGrady, July 24, 2026
LaTonya Davis has been following the death of Nolan Wells “constantly on TikTok,” she said, and has been thinking of her 21-year-old nephew, Jayden Holmes, whom she has called her “neph-son” since she took legal guardianship of him when he was 11, after his parents’ deaths.
The death of Mr. Wells, a Black 18-year-old community college athlete from Ocean Springs, Miss., who took a boat to a Mississippi barrier island with white friends on July 4 and did not return, has drawn huge attention on social media and beyond. It has also stoked outrage and deep anxiety among parents like Ms. Davis, who say they have long nursed fears about how their Black children are faring in predominately white environments.
“It was like I was watching one of the things that I’ve always been worried about,” said Ms. Davis, 58, who moved Mr. Holmes from Orlando, Fla., to Miami Beach to raise him.
Local authorities in Mississippi say they believe the death was an accidental drowning. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department released a statement on July 6 — the day Mr. Wells’s body was found — stating that “no foul play was suspected.” The police have said they believe Mr. Wells at one point left his friends to join another group, and possibly boarded another boat. So far nothing concrete has emerged to contradict that.
Even so, internet sleuths and Black activists have parsed details of the investigation that they say suggest malfeasance. And many Black parents say they see a double standard in the way the case has been handled. The authorities, they say, would not have dismissed the possibility of foul play so quickly had a white youth died at a predominantly Black party.
In that case, “those young Black men” would have been “interrogated to the full extent of the law,” Benjamin L. Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing Mr. Wells’s family, asserted at a news conference this week.
Despite any official suggestion of wrongdoing, the intense scrutiny online has often cast suspicion on the group of Mr. Wells’s friends who went with him to the island. The commentary has at times veered into conspiracy theory and misinformation that has set off its own burst of outrage on behalf of Mr. Wells’s friends.
But the attention has also provided a megaphone for Black social media users to describe their own experiences and fears. They have recalled painful moments as the only Black children in predominately white prep schools, neighborhoods and social settings.
Ashley Stoney, a Black freelance journalist, wrote in New York magazine of group chats lighting up with anxiety over Mr. Wells’s death.
“We talked about how isolating it can feel to be the only Black person and how dangerous it can be if no one truly values your humanity,” she wrote. “What kinds of experiences do our kids have when we aren’t around? Who will protect us when no one is looking?”
The worry is rooted in the long, violent history of racial segregation in America and what integration and assimilation look like in modern society. Some social media users have implied that Black parents shouldn’t allow their children to be the only one in “white spaces.”
That is not always possible “for things that you want to expose them to, depending on where you are,” said Tangala Hollis-Palmer, a mother and lawyer in Grenada, Miss., who is Black.
When she learned about Mr. Wells’s death, her thoughts turned to her children, who navigate similar all-white environments in the Deep South. She doesn’t tell her son, who was the only Black child on his baseball team, to be suspicious of white people, but she does say he must “be aware” of potential mistreatment “because you’re the only one there,” she said.
The worries are not just over physical harm but also social alienation, unintentional or not. Ms. Hollis-Palmer said she paused when her daughter wanted to compete on a dance team that required her to straighten her hair, afraid that it would send the message that she wasn’t good enough. But she acquiesced.
“Your hair is just as beautiful,” she recalled telling her daughter.
The death has also provoked a conversation among Black parents about race, privilege and why they feel their children have a more difficult time receiving justice.
Mr. Wells’s family has been castigated even for questioning the initial reports of their son’s death, Nolan’s mother, Christine Wells-Wonsley, said. Some members of the public have been baffled by the Black response.
“Any parent that would be in this situation, you would do anything to find out what happened to your child.” she said.
Mississippi’s history of racial violence and denied justice is also factoring into the skepticism. Last September, a 21-year-old Black student named Demartravion “Trey” Reed was found dead, hanging from a tree on the campus of a small college in northwest Mississippi. The death was ruled a suicide, and no evidence has emerged to suggest otherwise, but Mr. Crump is representing Mr. Reed’s family and has commissioned an independent autopsy in the Reed case. The report has not yet been released.
Then there’s the case of Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old Black man whose face was bloody and swollen when his body arrived at the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office in August 2021 after an altercation with sheriff’s deputies. His cause of death was ruled undetermined, but three pathologists who examined Mr. Cameron’s autopsy report at the request of The New York Times and Mississippi Today said his death should have been ruled a homicide. The same state medical examiner is also conducting Mr. Wells’s autopsy.
The circumstances of Mr. Wells’s death have resonated beyond the particulars of Mississippi and its history as Black families navigate the white worlds of a more integrated America.
Mr. Holmes, Ms. Davis’s nephew, has found himself in situations where, like Mr. Wells, he was the only Black person.
“It’s not necessarily something that I’m nervous about,” he said. “But it is something that is always top of mind. I always assume that I’m being judged.”
Ms. Davis’s worries have gone beyond judgment to fear.
“Anytime the phone rings, late at night, if he’s out with his friends, my heart just drops,” Ms. Davis said.
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5) With Hopes High for New H.I.V. Prevention Pill, Merck Takes Steps to Ensure Access
Companies in Africa and India will make generic versions of the pill that could cost as little as $5 per person per year. But access to the drug and other new products in much of Latin America remains uncertain.
By Stephanie Nolen, July 24, 2026
Stephanie Nolen has covered the global H.I.V. pandemic for more than 25 years.
"Gilead charges $28,000 per patient in the United States."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/24/us/politics/merck-hiv-pill.html
Health workers speaking with students about H.I.V. prevention drugs at the University of Zambia in Lusaka in March. Credit...Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times
The pharmaceutical company Merck said on Friday that it would license seven generic drugmakers to produce a low-cost version of a new monthly H.I.V. prevention pill that has generated significant optimism about the role it could play in ending the H.I.V. epidemic.
The decision is intended to make stockpiles of the drug immediately available in developing countries if clinical trial results next year live up to expectations for the pill.
The company’s announcement on Friday comes as a major international AIDS conference begins in Rio de Janeiro, against a backdrop of disappointment with limited progress on cutting H.I.V. infection rates.
The new drug, alimatravir, is a pill taken once a month for what is called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. It is being tested in a late-stage trial involving young women in three sub-Saharan African countries, and in a separate trial in countries across Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa that involves transgender people and men who have sex with men.
There were 1.2 million new H.I.V. infections in 2025, according to UNAIDS, a United Nations agency. More tools to prevent infection are available, but they are not reaching many of the world’s most vulnerable people. Slow but steady progress toward the goal of lowering H.I.V. transmission rates was derailed over the past 18 months by sharp reductions in funding from the United States and other major donor countries.
A recent analysis by the Clinton Health Access Initiative found a 42 percent decline in the number of people who were started on oral PrEP in 2025 in 10 sub-Saharan African and Asian countries with high rates of H.I.V. infection, compared to the year before.
Merck’s deal will allow generics to be produced for 129 low- and middle-income countries. The company said it would also manufacture a bridge supply to be sold to those countries at a no-profit price, before the generic product comes to market and gets regulatory approval. The company would not disclose the price.
Merck will give a royalty-free license to four generic companies in India, and to three in sub-Saharan Africa — drugmakers in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa — in a boost for regional manufacturing efforts. That has been an African Union priority since the continent was largely shut out of access to Covid vaccines until a year after the rest of the world.
Because production of alimatravir uses a small quantity of its active pharmaceutical ingredient, and because it is a standard oral formulation, companies could produce it profitably at scale and sell it to national health systems for as little as $5 per person per year.
The timing of Merck’s announcement, coming well ahead of final clinical trial results, is unusual, and appears to be an effort to avoid problems that have dogged the introduction of other PrEP products.
Advocates for H.I.V. treatment and care are advising Merck on how to ensure access to the drug, if the trial results show it works.
“Our engagement with pharma has always been fights, but it is amazing to sit with them and have them say, ‘We are learning from the other products,’” said Kenneth Mwehonge, the executive director of the Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development in Uganda.
Still, he added: “It all sounds good for now, but we will wait to see how it’s put to action.”
H.I.V. researchers expect alimatravir to provide a high level of protection against infection, because the molecule at the heart of the drug is closely related to another highly effective H.I.V. medication, which provided high rates of protection in studies with nonhuman primates, said Dr. Nina Russell, who oversees investment in H.I.V. drug development for the Gates Foundation.
“We have more optimism about this than is typical,” she said. “It could be pretty transformative.”
The Gates Foundation has invested $100 million into the late-stage trial for the drug, and expects to invest an additional $80 million to support efforts to get it through testing and to market, she said.
In studies, the drug has provided protection from H.I.V. starting just one hour after a person takes it, and has offered about a weeklong grace period of protection if people have forgotten to take their next pill at the start of the month, said Gregg Szabo, a senior vice president at Merck.
A daily PrEP pill has been widely adopted in high-income countries in communities of people at higher risk of H.I.V. infection, such as gay men. But it has not proven to be a viable option for many people in developing countries.
Long-acting PrEP is seen as key to ending the African H.I.V. epidemic in particular. Ten countries across the continent have recently made available an injectable drug, lenacapavir, that provides close to 100 percent protection from H.I.V. for six months.
But as the funding to assist African governments with the purchase and distribution of new H.I.V. products has contracted sharply since early 2025, the hope invested in lenacapavir has dimmed. Fragile health systems may struggle to deliver it or to keep people coming back to get it.
Alimatravir, at just 12 pills a year, would be much easier to deliver than an injectable, and could be distributed outside clinics, and in venues such as hair salons and high schools, Mr. Mwehonge said. A young woman, he said, could pick up a year’s supply at the same time she gets birth control pills.
The generics deal covers all of Africa; Asian countries with large populations of people with H.I.V., such as Cambodia and Thailand; and some of Latin America. It does not include Brazil, where there are 55,000 new infections each year, or Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Chile, all of which are sites for clinical trials of the drug.
Chirfi Guindo, Merck’s executive vice president for strategic access, policy and communications, said the company was in talks with the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a Brazilian public health research institute that manufactures drugs, about a supply deal for Latin America.
“The intent is to find ways to really make alimatravir available in Brazil and in the region of Latin America as rapidly as possible in a way that is affordable,” he said.
Access to new products in Latin America is a persistent challenge. The region’s middle-income countries are typically left out of licensing deals, although the population most vulnerable to H.I.V. relies on public health systems that struggle to afford innovative products.
More than seven months after lenacapavir began to be given out in Africa, it is still not available in Brazil. Gilead, the company that makes lenacapavir, did not include Brazil or Mexico, which were part of the key clinical trial that showed the drug provided near-total protection from H.I.V., in the licenses it gave generics makers.
Dr. Alexandre Padilha, Brazil’s minister of health, said that Brazil remained shut out after more than a year of negotiating with Gilead.
The country has offered to pay Gilead $400 per patient per year, which is 10 times the price of generic lenacapavir in the countries covered by Gilead’s voluntary licenses, he said. That price reflects significant advance purchase commitments from the United States government and other funders, which brought the price down. Gilead charges $28,000 per patient in the United States.
Dr. Padilha said that although Brazil has an effective PrEP program, with 150,000 people taking oral PrEP daily, those are mostly men who have sex with men. There is a clear need for other products to serve other high-risk groups, such as sex workers, who would likely find the discretion of a twice-a-year injection appealing. But the public health system cannot afford it at the price Gilead wants Brazil to pay, he said.
“Innovation without access is injustice,” he said. “We cannot afford the stratospheric prices they propose, in a public system.”
Ashleigh Koss, a Gilead spokeswoman, said the company was committed to rapidly expanding access to lenacapavir.
“Discussions regarding access in Latin America and the Caribbean are taking place through multiple pathways, including ongoing regional discussions with the Pan American Health Organization,” she said, referring to the regional branch of the World Health Organization, which organizes pooled purchasing of drugs.
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7) Trump Orders Warnings Placed at ‘Inaccurate’ Smithsonian History Museum
President Trump said the signage at the National Museum of American History would correct what a disputed White House report described as “extreme political activism.”
By Robin Pogrebin and Zachary Small, Published July 24, 2026, Updated July 25, 2026
The president’s executive order said signage outside the National Museum of American History should inform people of locations where American history is better presented. Eric Lee for The New York Times
President Trump on Friday ordered warning signs and exhibits installed outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to alert the public that the museum does not, in his view, accurately reflect American history.
The unusual directive, made through an executive order, was a considerable escalation of the president’s dispute with the Smithsonian and its history museum, which was the subject of a recent 162-page report. The report accused the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, of “radical activist ideology” and the museum of undermining “faith in American institutions.”
The order went so far as to suggest that the signage inform potential museum visitors of locations where American history is better presented. The administration did not explain where the public would be redirected.
The Smithsonian declined to comment.
Mr. Trump’s order came just days after Ms. Hartig was grilled by Republican legislators in two congressional hearings, where she was accused of teaching “national self-loathing.”
Ms. Hartig, who was a particular target of the White House report, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the hearings she contested the thrust of the report and insisted her museum was simply representing history in all its complexity.
“When historians talk about reframing a traditional narrative, we don’t mean erasing it,” she said in her testimony. “We mean adding the evidence, the voices, the objects that earlier tellings left out so that more Americans can see themselves reflected in the national story.”
Friday’s executive order also ordered several government officials to “restore trust in the Smithsonian Institution” and to seek its compliance with the White House findings, which asserted that the museum had become a tool of political activism and had not done enough to celebrate the achievements of the nation’s founders on the country’s 250th anniversary year.
The government officials include the interior secretary, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the administrator of general services, and the assistant to the president for domestic policy, the order says. The Domestic Policy Council published the White House’s report on the Smithsonian.
The inclusion of the budget office is consistent with the White House remarks in other settings that pointed to the fact that the Smithsonian is largely federally funded.
Representative Melanie Stansbury, Democrat of New Mexico, was among those who objected to Mr. Trump’s effort.
“Once again, the Trump administration is attempting to use executive authority to exercise its political will over our nation’s independent cultural institutions,” she said in a statement. “This executive order is a clear political overreach, driven by an ideological agenda to rewrite American history. Our Smithsonian institutions do not belong to the president, but the American people, and so does our national story.”
Some historians have also criticized the federal government’s attempts to overhaul the Smithsonian as ideologically motivated.
“I cannot recall a single instance where exhibits have been directly wrestled with by the upper echelons of the federal government,” said Samuel J. Redman, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has written extensively on the Smithsonian’s history.
The order by the president said the signage “shall notify visitors that the museum exhibits should be renovated consistent with the findings in the report and direct visitors to locations and resources for accurate information regarding America’s history.”
“Because the museum has failed to appropriately honor the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence during this 250th anniversary year of the founding of our country,” the order continues, government agencies “shall install temporary exhibits or signage on N.P.S.-maintained sidewalks, walkways, and land used by the public that corrects inaccurate information presented in the museum.”
In Friday’s order, Mr. Trump cited his March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which accused the Smithsonian of undermining “the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
This week’s hearings, which took place on Tuesday and Wednesday, increased the pressure on Ms. Hartig, who was questioned by lawmakers about exhibitions that they said indicated a liberal bias in emphasizing the country’s flaws and failing to adequately celebrate its achievements.
In particular, Ms. Hartig was repeatedly taken to task for two recent shows, one of which — “Entertainment Nation” — included explicit sexual imagery. Another, “Girlhood (It’s complicated),” discussed struggles with gender identity among young women.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has written critically about the Smithsonian and testified at both hearings, commended Friday’s executive order for enlisting the oversight of administration officials like Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, and Vince Haley, the director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council.
“Since I think the only way to correct the Smithsonian is to remove from office its entire leadership,” Mr. Gonzalez said, “I trust these two intellectual heavy hitters will work to do that.”
But Mr. Redman, the historian, said that many observers have been dismayed by the aggressiveness of the White House efforts to take control of the Smithsonian and its 21 museums.
“Historians are appalled,” Mr. Redman said. “The Smithsonian has been known for trying to present a consensus version of history.”
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8) A Once Outlawed Māori Art Form Is Alive and in the Flesh
Young Māori in New Zealand are embracing tā moko, the ritual tattoos that were banned under British colonial rule and became an act of protest in the 1970s.
By Francesca Regalado and Tatsiana Chypsanava, Visuals by Tatsiana Chypsanava, July 25, 2026
Tatsiana Chypsanava reported from Gisborne, Havelock and Whakatāne, New Zealand.
Mark Kopua pressed his face close as he drew on his nephew’s arm with a felt-tip marker. From memory, he sketched patterns and motifs that had been in their family for generations. Finally satisfied, he pulled on rubber gloves and a needle gun buzzed to life.
This was no regular tattoo. This was tā moko, the ritual body art practiced for centuries by the Māori, the Indigenous inhabitants of New Zealand. Half a dozen of Mr. Kopua’s relatives observed the ritual in February, squeezing into his small studio in Gisborne, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
Mr. Kopua, 64, and his nephew, Desmond Horomia, 56, grew up in a Māori community that had lost all its tohunga tā moko, or ritual tattoo artists. The craft had been traditionally handed down from parent to child, but in 1907, New Zealand’s British colonial rulers banned tā moko and other Indigenous art forms. Māori people began hiding their tattoos and stopped teaching younger generations.
More than a century later, the facial tattoos known as moko kanohi are being seen again, on television, on the streets and in the halls of New Zealand’s Parliament. Maori teens and young adults have taken to documenting their tā moko ceremonies on social media. Some have convinced their elders to be tattooed, helping the art form make a jubilant comeback after decades of stigma.
“I’ve been involved with this for well over 30 years now, but our culture is still relearning because they’ve been immersed and overwhelmed by Western culture,” Mr. Kopua said.
Mr. Kopua and a small group of other artisans began tattooing faces after a Māori nationalist movement gained ground in the 1970s.
“Moko was asleep at the time. We decided we want to wake this thing back up again,” he said.
A moko kanohi is the work of a lifetime. A person’s history can be gleaned from the tattoos on their face, signifying their ancestry and marking their coming of age, the birth of a child or the death of a relative.
Women are marked on their lips and chin with moko kauae. Men receive mataora, which starts on the chin and grows outward to mark personal milestones. Family trees can be traced through recurring patterns on different faces.
“It’s a thumbprint of your genealogy,” said Ruihana Smith, 32, a woodcarver who is an adviser on Māori relations to the Marlborough District Council in the South Island town of Blenheim.
He received a mataora in 2023 to honor his great-grandmother after her death. It took four and a half hours to tattoo Mr. Smith’s chin, nose and cheeks as family members watched.
In some tā moko ceremonies, relatives sing blessings and hold the person’s hands and arms as they undergo the ritual. While today’s tā moko artists use modern tattoo machines, traditionally the tohunga would use blades carved from shark teeth or the wing bones of an albatross, Mr. Kopua said.
Without forebears to teach them, Mr. Kopua — a tohunga whakairo, or a master woodcarver — learned tā moko from the patterns he used in carving and weaving. They studied moko kanohi patterns on decapitated heads that were under the care of New Zealand’s national museum.
Māori warriors believed that decapitation severed their enemies’ connection to the gods. In the 19th century, British settlers collected the heads as curiosities and trophies and offered guns and gold in exchange — prompting some Māori people to hunt down those who wore mataora and moko kauae.
“That was one thing that stopped our ancestors from wanting to get their faces tattooed,” Mr. Kopua said.
Māori who converted to Christianity at the time were also discouraged from getting tattoos. The ultimate blow, however, came with the Tohunga Suppression Act in 1907, which outlawed Māori experts, including priests, healers, teachers, woodcarvers and tattoo artists. The legislation, aimed at prohibiting practices that the authorities deemed exploitative, suffocated Māori culture for decades.
New Zealand’s Parliament repealed the law in 1962. But for years afterward, moko kanohi was seen as the sign of a criminal or a gang member, Mr. Smith said.
“None of the art forms are illegal any more, but we have to undo the damage,” he said.
Tame Iti, one of the leaders of the 1970s Māori protest movement, has moko that spiral across his face, from his forehead, past his neck and over his ears. The 74-year-old recalls growing up at a time when hotels and other public venues barred anyone with facial markings. He ran for Parliament four times, none of them successful, but became a national figure.
Mr. Iti’s last attempt to enter Parliament was in 2014. Two years later, Nanaia Mahuta became the first woman to wear moko kauae in the House of Representatives, the sole chamber of New Zealand’s Parliament. She served as foreign minister under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
“Now you’ve got politicians, judges, all kinds of people with moko. It’s beautiful that it’s out there,” Mr. Iti said.
Young Māori have been quicker to embrace tā moko than their elders, said Ed Harawira, 50, a tā moko artist. A New Zealand government survey in 2018, the most recently available, found that more than a quarter of Māori people ages 25 to 44 had traditional tattoos, the most of any age group, compared with 8 percent of those 55 and older.
“Our older people were the ones who initially opposed receiving moko because they had been oppressed for so many years,” Mr. Harawira said, adding: “They were brought up thinking that Māori culture wasn’t going to get us anywhere in today’s civilization.”
After the birth of her fourth child, Huirangi Law, 36, decided to become the first person in her family in three generations to receive moko. Though she considered how the outside world might perceive her differently, “I knew wholeheartedly in my soul that this is who I was, and this is what I wanted to do,” she said. “The spaces, jobs, careers, anything like that — they would come naturally.”
Children can start receiving moko kanohi from age 13, Mr. Smith said. Younger children, like his 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son, wear temporary tattoos to copy their parents. Mr. Smith said he started to learn tā moko with the goal of giving his children tattoos someday.
Mr. Kopua said he has been training students to pass tā moko down to future generations.
“That’s how we maintain it,” he said. “Not just to wake the art up, but to keep it awake.”
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9) What a Journey Through Wartime Iran Revealed
From the capital, Tehran, to the holy city of Mashhad, the Iran I saw was a nation of many layers: defiant but also weary, despairing but hopeful.
By Abdi Latif Dahir, Photographs by Emile Ducke, July 25, 2026
Abdi Latif Dahir and Emile Ducke were among the first New York Times journalists to visit Iran since the war with the United States and Israel began in late February.
Before I had even set foot in Iran, the country had begun telling me a version of its modern-day story.
It started on the Iran Air flight. Tucked into the seat pocket in front of every passenger was a leaflet bearing the face of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader who was killed months earlier, at the onset of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran. The message was unmistakable. Before visitors saw Tehran’s streets or spoke to a single Iranian, they were being introduced to a nation in mourning, one determined to highlight the foreign aggression it had endured.
When I reached the airport, portraits of Ayatollah Khamenei were watching over the arrivals hall. Giant banners proclaimed endurance. Posters and flags called for revenge. The message from Iran’s leaders was clear: The country had suffered. It had survived, and the world needed to see both.
I arrived in Iran in early July as part of the first team of New York Times journalists allowed into the country since the war began in late February. Before that, thousands of protesters were killed following anti-government protests that began in late December. We were allowed to report on Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies, accompanied by a government-appointed translator and a guide.
We spent several days reporting in Tehran, the capital, before traveling to Mashhad, the birthplace of the ayatollah and the city where he would be buried. During our visit, the war, which had briefly paused under a fragile cease-fire, began flaring again.
While the Iran we encountered was shaped by war, it was not defined by it alone.
Even as the state projected strength, resilience and national unity, the people we met revealed a more complicated reality. We found grief accompanied by a fierce sense of national pride, opposition to the government tempered by unease over foreign intervention, outwardly liberal lifestyles unfolding alongside religious mourning, and anger at Israel and the United States alongside frustration with economic hardship and state restrictions.
Understanding Iran meant holding all of those realities in view at once.
Enter Tehran
Our first stop was Golestan Palace.
The government’s choice was hardly accidental. It wanted to show how the war had reached beyond military targets to places central to Iran’s history and identity.
The sprawling UNESCO World Heritage site dates to a chapter of Iranian history that predates the Islamic Republic. Once the ceremonial seat of the Qajar dynasty, it was where Persian kings held court beneath glittering mirrored ceilings and elaborate tilework.
Now parts of it bore fresh scars after being damaged in a strike targeting a judiciary building nearby.
Shadi Jafari, who led the media tour, said it was “unfortunate” how the palace survived centuries of Iranian history only to be scarred by modern war.
Throughout our trip, we encountered reminders everywhere of the strikes’ broad reach.
At Sharif University of Technology, one of Iran’s premier academic institutions, damaged buildings had crumbled into heaps of concrete and mangled metal. The Iranian space research center had been reduced to a tangle of collapsed floors. The Azadi sports complex, a landmark venue that has long hosted major concerts, sporting events and public gatherings, lay in ruins. American and Israeli officials have said that certain civilian sites are used by Iranian security forces to generate revenue or produce materials that can be used for military purposes.
This destruction — along with the killing of top military, intelligence and political leaders — loomed over the ayatollah’s funeral, which coincided with Muharram, the month when Shiite Muslims commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. This year, the losses of the recent war have been woven into that centuries-old narrative of sacrifice and martyrdom.
Many mourners did not speak of compromise. They wanted retaliation. They wanted President Trump dead. To them, diplomacy was weakness.
At the Grand Mosalla prayer complex in Tehran, one woman told us that Iran had been attacked by the world’s most powerful military and was still standing. That, she believed, was victory enough. A man carried a yellowed newspaper from the era of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, bearing his declaration that “nobody has the right to negotiate with America.” Beside it, he held a handwritten sign that read, “This is the result of negotiations.”
When Ahmad Vahidi, the commander of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, appeared just a few feet from where I stood after the funeral prayers, chants of “Revenge! Revenge!” rippled through the crowd.
It was a sentiment shared by Seyed Mustafa, a businessman who had traveled from the southwestern city of Ahvaz. “Resistance and revenge are the only paths forward,” he said.
Parallel Worlds
Only a few miles from where mourners gathered for days, a very different scene unfolded.
In north Tehran, the city’s upscale district, young people filled sandwich shops, cafes and boutique storefronts. Luxury cars inched through the nighttime traffic. Young tattooed men in shorts wore fresh bandages from cosmetic nose surgery. Women, dressed in bare-shouldered tops, rode motorcycles, their hair flowing behind them.
At one restaurant where we ate dinner, music featuring a female vocalist poured through the speakers. Only weeks earlier, a female singer had been sentenced to 74 lashes for performing at a concert without wearing a hijab.
Looking around the room, one of the government guides remarked, almost with amusement, “For people here, it’s as if Ayatollah Khamenei didn’t die.”
It was an understated acknowledgment of the parallel reality we had walked into.
Many of the Iranians we approached were remarkably warm. They asked where we were from. They wanted to know why we had come. Yet none agreed to be interviewed on record. Again and again, they apologized.
“I don’t want problems.”
“Why would I talk to journalists? Am I crazy?”
“You understand.”
Their silence was its own form of testimony.
Everyday Survival
Beneath the politics, another crisis threaded through many conversations: the struggle to make ends meet.
The war had accelerated financial pressures that many Iranians had been feeling for years because of sanctions, corruption and economic isolation.
Monthslong internet cutoffs had crippled businesses, including parts of Iran’s bustling tech sector, leading to mass layoffs. A spiraling currency had eroded purchasing power. University graduates spoke of struggling to find stable work. Those with jobs worried their wages no longer stretched far enough.
At one restaurant, a worker approached us at the washroom to say the restaurant would be forced to close during the upcoming funeral ceremonies, leaving him without the wages he needed to feed his family. He shrugged as he spoke, as though disappointment had become too familiar to provoke outrage.
To many Iranians, the funeral also became a measure of the state’s priorities. Even as elaborate mourning ceremonies were staged — complete with misting stations, free water and food — some Iranians described living through water shortages and power cuts.
The way that Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral events were planned and carried out left “a deeply troubling sense of inequality and discrimination,” said Lida, 44, a doctoral student who spoke by phone from Tehran and on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of retaliation.
“The government under his authority appeared to support only one segment of society — those regarded as insiders or loyalists,” she said, “and this is clearly reflected in the way his funeral ceremonies have been conducted as well.”
Exit Iran
Our journey ended in Mashhad, where Ayatollah Khamenei was to be buried. Mourners converged on the Imam Reza shrine from across the world. But even here, reminders of war interrupted devotion.
At the arrivals hall of Mashhad airport, dozens of mostly pink and blue backpacks were displayed in memory of children killed when a U.S. strike hit their school in the southern city of Minab early in the war. The bags were paired with roses and children’s shoes.
At a bakery in the city’s bazaar, a worker taped to the door a photograph of his nephew, a sailor who he said was killed when a U.S. submarine torpedoed his ship.
Just hours before, the United States had reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil and conducted new strikes inside Iran. The cease-fire was already beginning to unravel, giving way to a wave of fighting that has once again engulfed the wider region.
Hours after the ayatollah’s burial, we drove toward the Afghan border. At immigration, two officers motioned me over to their booth. With only limited English, one officer typed some words into a translation app on his phone and held up the screen for me.
“What do you think of Iran and its people?” it read.
As I looked up from the phone, the other asked, smiling: “Do you think we are strong?”
They were, in many ways, the questions that had followed us throughout the trip.
Iran had spent my entire journey asking the world to recognize its strength.
Its people had answered with something far more complicated: strength, yes, but also grief, defiance, weariness, fear and hope.
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10) India’s Education Minister Steps Down, Handing Win to Protesters
With Dharmendra Pradhan offering his resignation, the student protest movement achieved a major victory against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
By Anupreeta Das and Pranav Baskar, July 25, 2026
Anupreeta Das reported from New Delhi.
Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, celebrating the resignation of India’s education minister in New Delhi on Saturday. Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
India’s education minister stepped down on Saturday, in a major victory for a student protest movement whose explosive rise has become one of the most serious challenges in years to the power of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, submitted his resignation to Mr. Modi, bowing to weeks of public pressure that culminated in nationwide street protests from Delhi and Mumbai to Kolkata and Chennai.
Mr. Pradhan said he had been “deeply pained” by the events of recent days, but he pointed a finger at what he called “anti-national forces,” saying he did not want them to take advantage of the massive protests.
The movement emerged in May, powered by widespread anger and frustration after the government ordered millions of students to retake an extremely competitive national medical school entrance exam because test questions had been leaked. Students held Mr. Pradhan, under whose watch several national exams were marred by leaks, responsible.
Loud cheers erupted at the protest site near Jantar Mantar, an 18th century observatory in New Delhi, as protesters heard the news that Mr. Pradhan had resigned.
“This is democracy,” said Abhijeet Dipke, the 30-year-old founder of a youth movement that in two months has jolted Indian politics. But it wasn’t immediately clear that the protesters would call it a day. In a statement, Mr. Dipke said protesters had made more demands of the government. “We won’t go like this.”
Mr. Dipke founded a satirical party called the Cockroach Janta Party in May after a disparaging remark by India’s top judge comparing India’s youth to cockroaches. The party quickly became the vehicle through which millions of young Indians began to express their frustrations about a troubled education system and a lack of job opportunities.
The C.J.P. was founded just days after the medical school exam was canceled. Mr. Pradhan’s education ministry announced a fresh date for the test, but in the interim, at least 21 students died by suicide, according to the C.J.P.’s count.
Mr. Dipke’s C.J.P. began protesting in June, but the movement gained momentum this month, after the police cracked down with force on demonstrators as thousands marched to Parliament in New Delhi on Monday. Protests had spread to major cities across India.
One of the demands Mr. Dipke and other leaders of the movement put before the government was compensation of 10 million rupees (about $103,000) for the families of the children who took their own lives.
Mr. Dipke said his group also wanted accountability for security forces who cracked down on Monday’s peaceful protesters. “Action must be taken against the police officers for that,” he said.
Mr. Pradhan was previously largely dismissive of the protests. In a social media post he accused opposition parties of exploiting students to “manufacture disruption,” and in a June interview with a local media outlet referred to the student protesters as “the B-team of terrorists.” But that appeared only to strengthen the resolve of the students to remove him. Despite winning some rare concessions from the government, they vowed to continue the protests until the minister was dismissed.
The call to remove Mr. Pradhan forced Mr. Modi to balance loyalty to his supporters against the need to placate young people, who account for 40 percent of India’s population. An operative of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Mr. Pradhan was credited with helping the B.J.P. come to power in some recent state elections. Over a nearly three-decade political career, he has held various positions in the party.
But the exam leak scandal in May triggered long-simmering frustrations about government accountability and a lack of jobs and opportunity that Mr. Modi cannot immediately address. India puts students through a pressure-cooker education system, and yet nearly 40 percent of graduates between the ages of 15 and 25 are unemployed, according to a 2026 study. Student suicides are increasing faster than those of the overall population.
The students’ victory could motivate them to push their demands further. Aside from education, the C.J.P. is also asking the government to consider its far more sweeping agenda for change, including judicial reforms and gender quotas for Parliament.
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