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Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a mem-ber 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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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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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) Middle East on Edge After Trump Says He Delayed Attack on Iran
President Trump said he had postponed a “very major attack” against Iran, as Pakistan continued its mediation efforts to end the war.
By Euan Ward and Elian Peltier, Euan Ward reported from Beirut, Lebanon, May 19, 2026
A U.S. military official said that Iran had been able to study the flight patterns of American fighter jets and bombers. Jack Taylor/Reuters
The Middle East remained in tense limbo on Tuesday after President Trump said he had postponed a major U.S. attack on Iran to give more time for diplomacy.
Iran did not immediately respond directly to Mr. Trump’s remarks, which were made on Monday. An Iranian Army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Akraminia, warned on Tuesday that any renewed attack would prompt Iran to open “new fronts" using “new tools and methods,” according to IRNA, Iran’s state news agency.
As the monthlong cease-fire has come under increasing strain, Pakistan, a mediator in the conflict, has sought to keep indirect talks alive between Tehran and Washington. Iranian state media reported that Pakistan’s interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, had met Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Tehran on Monday evening, and discussed efforts to end the war.
The Pakistani government has not commented on the two-day trip, which reportedly started on Sunday. Mr. Naqvi is close to Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, who has been leading the country’s mediation efforts and speaking directly with Mr. Trump and Iranian officials, according to two people with knowledge of the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency, described Mr. Naqvi’s visit to Tehran as part of Pakistan’s efforts to “facilitate dialogue and promote regional peace.”
Mr. Trump said on Monday that he had authorized a “very major attack” against Iran for Tuesday, but had postponed it after the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates asked for more time to pursue an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. He said there was a “very good chance” that a deal could be reached but that the U.S. military was prepared for a “full, large scale assault” if Iran did not agree to terms acceptable to Washington.
The episode was the latest example of Mr. Trump’s brinkmanship over Iran, in which threats of overwhelming force have repeatedly given way to last-minute pauses for diplomacy.
The spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, Majed al-Ansari, said at a news conference on Tuesday that his nation supported Pakistan’s mediation efforts but cautioned that nobody could predict whether they would succeed. He said that Mr. Trump’s decision to postpone any attack was a response to calls from Gulf leaders to give diplomacy “another chance.” Mr. al-Ansari added that communications were ongoing to “ensure there is no return to escalation.”
Negotiations have stalled over Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit point for oil and gas, which Iran has effectively closed since the early days of the war, rattling global energy markets.
State media in Iran reported on Tuesday that the country’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, had briefed members of Parliament on Tehran’s latest proposal to Washington. Mr. Gharibabadi said that the proposal included ensuring Iran’s right to enrich uranium, according to the report, suggesting that Tehran was holding firm on core demands that have proved to be nonstarters for the Trump administration.
Mr. Trump has demanded that any agreement prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The war, now in its third month, has hit Iran hard, but U.S. military officials say that the government in Tehran has demonstrated resilience and the ability to impose heavy costs on the wider region and on the global economy.
Iran has used the cease-fire to dig out bombed ballistic missile sites, move mobile launchers and adjust its tactics for any resumption of strikes, according to a U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
Ismaeel Naar and Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
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2) Oil Slick Reaches a Pristine Persian Gulf Island in Iran
Videos show birds, turtles and crabs trapped inside mounds of tar around Shidvar island, a protected wildlife sanctuary with turquoise waters and white sand beaches.
By Sanam Mahoozi, Erika Solomon and Devon Lum, May 19, 2026
A video verified by The Times shows oil coating the shoreline of Shidvar Island as smoke rises from the Lavan refinery, seen in the distance. @ehsanjalali2000, via Instagram
An oil spill has reached the shores of a pristine Persian Gulf island in Iran surrounded by clear turquoise waters that provide refuge for endangered sea turtles and dolphins, according to videos circulating on social media.
The tiny, uninhabited island of Shidvar is one of Iran’s most important protected nature reserves. It is home to large coral reefs and a breeding ground for more than 80,000 birds.
The videos, verified by The New York Times, show large dark ribbons of oil snaking along the island’s pristine white sand beaches. Birds, turtles and crabs can be seen trapped inside mounds of tar.
“It is known as the Maldives of Iran — a beautiful place,” said Kaveh Madani, director of the U.N. University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health.
The videos have provided some of the first evidence of the environmental toll the war has taken on the area. Iran has been under an internet blackout since the United States and Israel started a war in late February, severely limiting visibility into the impacts of the conflict.
In one of the videos, a small boat plies through waters darkened from an oil slick, as the men on board point to smoke billowing up from the oil refinery at the nearby island of Lavan.
The videos appear to have been taken not long after April 8, when Iranian state media said the Lavan refinery was struck, hours after a cease-fire had taken hold. It is unclear why the videos have emerged more than a month later, but it is likely because of the recent easing of restrictions on Iran’s nationwide internet blackout.
The cause of devastation, Mr. Madani said, was likely the strikes on the Lavan refinery.
“That video, I can say with a lot of certainty, is from the oil spill of Lavan, and we know the cause of that,” he added.
Another oil slick has been spotted near Kharg Island, one of Iran’s most crucial oil export and storage sites. But the causes of it are less clear.
Some U.S. officials accuse Iran of having dumped or mishandled oil in Persian Gulf waters. Iran has denied this, and Mr. Madani said there was no available evidence to support the dumping theory.
The damage from oil spills to the Persian Gulf’s fragile ecosystem is still not known. But it could extend beyond animals, said Manoochehr Shirzaei, an Iranian environmental expert who teaches geophysics and remote sensing at Virginia Tech University.
“Among the most immediate and widespread consequences could be impacts on desalination infrastructure, as many Gulf countries rely heavily on desalinated seawater for municipal and industrial water supply,” he said.
“These facilities draw seawater directly from the Persian Gulf, making them highly vulnerable to oil contamination.”
Mr. Shirzaei said he was able to detect several slicks off the waters of Shidvar and Lavan with satellite imagery. He also used satellite imagery from early May to detect the large oil slick reported close to Kharg Island, which could also have serious environmental consequences for the region.
The oil spills come at a particularly critical time of year for the region’s delicate ecosystem, experts say. It is currently breeding season for many birds, who could struggle to find food for their young off Shidvar island, and may not have time to learn to adapt to the sudden change to their habitat.
On Shidvar’s shores, thousands of turtle hatchlings should be emerging at this time from sands now covered in oil, which may make their first steps fatal.
The impact of this damage could be compounded because the Persian Gulf is not an open ocean, but rather semi-enclosed, the experts said, and slower water circulation means oil slicks may linger. That intensifies the impact on humans and animals and allows the slicks to spread.
“Once oil enters the Gulf, it does not remain inside the logic of war,” said Iman Ebrahimi, an Iranian conservationist who monitored the bird populations of Shidvar for four years.
“It moves into beaches, nests, feathers, turtle hatchlings, fish nurseries and the bodies of animals that belong to the whole region.”
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3) Trump’s Deportations Are Costing Americans Jobs, Study Finds
According to a new study, construction was impacted more than any other industry studied, with American-born workers losing more jobs than immigrants as a result of the deportations.
By Ronda Kaysen, May 19, 2026
The home building industry, already strained, faces a new challenge amid a surge in deportations. Philip Cheung for The New York Times
The Trump administration has long claimed that mass deportations would deliver more jobs and higher wages to American-born workers. But a new study casts doubt on that assertion, undermining a central tenet of the president’s immigration policy.
Recent surges in deportations have led to job losses for both immigrant and American-born workers, while wages have stayed flat, according to the study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan research organization. Construction, which depends heavily on immigrant labor, was impacted more than any other industry studied, with American-born workers losing more jobs as a result of the deportations than the undocumented workers who remained.
The study offers the first national analysis of the effects of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation operations on the labor market, comparing communities that experienced surges in deportations between January 2025 and October 2025 with those that did not.
Analyzing federal labor data, researchers focused on four industries that rely heavily on undocumented immigrant workers: agriculture, construction, manufacturing and wholesale. Deportations had a chilling effect on each of those industries, disproportionately affecting men, who accounted for more than 90 percent of the immigration arrests. Taken together, the affected industries saw a 5 percent drop in employment for male undocumented workers and a 1.3 percent drop for male American-born workers without a college degree.
The researchers found no evidence that employers increased wages to attract American workers. Instead, work slowed.
In construction — where the researchers estimated 15 percent of the work force is undocumented — American-born workers have paid a price for the deportations, the study found: Employment dropped by 3 percent for male American-born workers without a college degree, and 7.5 percent for undocumented workers. For each arrest, six American-born workers lost a job, and four undocumented workers lost one.
“Construction companies view it as easier to reduce production, reduce the construction of new homes and new buildings in general, rather than try to increase wages for U.S.-born workers,” said Chloe East, an author of the study and an economics professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Previous research has also shown that increased immigration enforcement slows housing construction, drives up home prices and leads to job losses for American-born workers.
At the State of the Union address in February, President Trump claimed that thousands of new construction jobs had been created, saying, “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.” In a news release earlier this year, the White House argued that the construction industry had benefited from the deportations.
But the residential construction industry has been slowing. Permits for new housing units were down 7.4 percent year-over-year in March 2026, to 1.372 million units, according to the census. In April 2026, residential construction jobs were down 1.5 percent year-over-year, according to federal jobs data.
“Given high interest rates, given rising material prices and fewer people available to provide roofing, tiling, carpeting and other flooring services, it renders fewer projects financially viable,” said Anirban Basu, the chief economist to Associated Builders and Contractors, a national trade organization.
Even before the deportation surge, the construction industry was facing labor shortages amid an aging, depleted work force that lacked a robust pipeline of newly trained workers. The exodus of foreign workers during the 2008 foreclosure crisis, when almost 2 million construction workers lost their jobs, has had a lasting impact. The country has failed to build enough homes since then, in part because of a persistently anemic labor force, leading to a drastic housing shortage that is driving the current crisis.
“I assume we’re going to see a similar long-term shock to the construction sector,” said Ms. East.
In recent months, Adrian Avila, the president of Avica Construction and Development, a homebuilder in Los Angeles, has watched older, immigrant workers self-deport amid fears of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. “It became a mind shift for some individuals,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to hang up the hat, literally hang up the hard hat.”
Mr. Avila, whose company is rebuilding homes destroyed in the Eaton fire last year, has had to delay projects to accommodate the labor shortage, but hasn’t raised wages because he said he pays competitively. A labor crunch he thought was a few years away feels like it has arrived.
“We thought we were going to have some time to fill in those gaps” in the labor force, said Mr. Avila, who is also the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Hispanic Construction Alliance. “But now with this, that gap is becoming bigger.”
Projects that once took Samantha Jones, a general contractor in South Florida, two or three months to complete now take five or six. Last year, Ms. Jones lost 14 of her 34 workers through arrest or self-deportation, including 11 in a span of three weeks last August, nearly driving the company she’s owned for 17 years out of business.
“People think we hire migrant workers because they’re cheap labor,” Ms. Jones said. “It’s not because they’re cheap labor; it’s just that their skill set fits our industry better.”
The workers, many of whom have worked for her for decades, arrived with specialized skills in masonry and carpentry. “We don’t really have any trade schools here in the South,” she said.
Ms. Jones anticipates raising the prices she charges clients by 15 percent — money that would not go toward higher wages, but to cover the loss of business from delays. Last week, ICE was active in the area again, keeping some workers home out of fear. “It’s horrible logistically,” she said.
But in Miami, Omri Farache, the owner of Mia Remodeling Contractors, is hopeful that the deportations will ultimately benefit him. He sees a future when he is no longer outbid by an unlicensed contractor willing to work for less money. “Honestly, it’s good eventually,” he said. “I feel like more regulated, less handyman pricing around is good for me.”
Some contractors are struggling to find qualified workers to fill the new vacancies. In Minneapolis, Josue Alvarez, the owner of Milestone Construction, a drywall subcontractor, has been interviewing candidates to replace one of his painters, who was deported back to his native Guatemala in December. Mr. Alvarez had come to rely on the worker, who had eight years’ experience and was willing to put in long hours.
“He was a dependable guy, someone I could lean on,” said Mr. Alvarez, who shut down his business for six weeks during the winter’s ICE surge out of a concern his other workers would be arrested.
Amid a tight labor market, Mr. Alvarez said other subcontractors are also racing to replace the workers they’ve lost as projects pile up. Some of the subcontractors he once competed against have gone out of business. “Pretty much everybody is on the hunt,” he said. “A lot of companies lost a lot of good employees.”
However, he said, in the four years that he has owned his company, no American-born worker has ever applied for a job. And none have applied to fill his current opening, either.
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4) W.H.O. Chief Is ‘Deeply Concerned’ by Speed and Scale of Ebola Outbreak
Health officials reported more than 130 suspected deaths and 513 cases, a sharp rise since the outbreak was first identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
By Yan Zhuang and Lynsey Chutel, May 19, 2026
Outside a hospital in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, on Sunday. Jospin Mwisha/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The head of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned about the scale and speed” of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, as the suspected death toll climbed to more than 130 people.
Laboratory testing has linked 30 cases to the viral outbreak in Congo’s northeastern Ituri province, where the first cases were identified, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the W.H.O., said at a meeting of the organization in Geneva.
Where Ebola outbreak was first identified
Experts have expressed alarm that the virus appears to have been spreading unchecked for several weeks in an area where contact tracing is likely to be very difficult.
Many migrant laborers are drawn to gold mines in Ituri, which is also home to a large population of people displaced by conflict. Over 100,000 people have been uprooted in recent months alone, Dr. Tedros said, warning that “significant population movement” risked spreading the virus.
Dr. Tedros said the deaths of health care workers and the absence of vaccines or therapeutics to treat the Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the outbreak raised fears that the outbreak would spread further and cause more deaths. Cases have already been reported in urban areas, including in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and Goma in eastern Congo.
The W.H.O. chief made his comments shortly after Congo’s health minister, Dr. Samuel-Roger Kamba, said at a news conference that 131 suspected deaths and 513 suspected cases had been linked to the outbreak.
The figures were a sharp increase from Monday, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there had been reports of 88 suspected deaths and 336 cases, and 11 confirmed cases in Congo. Two cases had also been confirmed in neighboring Uganda, the C.D.C. said.
A C.D.C. order issued on Monday allows the United States to bar foreigners from entering the country if they have been in Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days. The order will remain in place for 30 days.
Several countries in the region, including neighboring Rwanda, have also started screening travelers or tightening border controls.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement on Tuesday that it had acted “rapidly, transparency and responsibly” to call the world’s attention to the outbreak, and criticized the “use of broad travel restrictions as a primary public health tool.”
“Global health security cannot succeed if countries are penalized for transparency during outbreaks,” Dr. Jean Kaseya, the head of the organization, said on social media.
President Félix Tshisekedi of Congo urged citizens to remain calm and to follow containment measures to curb the spread of the disease.
Brian Otieno contributed reporting from Nairobi, Kenya.
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5) Military Bases Are Rife With ‘Forever Chemicals.’ New Mexico Wants Them Cleaned Up.
The state is leading the country’s reckoning with PFAS. The outcome of its suit against the federal government will affect how courts treat more than 15,000 other claims nationwide.
By Alexander Nazaryan, Photographs by Nina Riggio, May 19, 2026
Art Schaap, right, a dairy farmer in Clovis, N.M., and James Kenney, of the New Mexico Environment Department, stand in the area where Mr. Schaap had to kill his cattle.
Two men walked through livestock pens with .22-caliber rifles, killing Art Schaap’s cows. One man would raise his rifle, its barrel inches from a cow’s forehead. A shot would ring out, the cow would fall and the men would move on to the next cow.
There were 3,665 cows at the Highland Dairy in Clovis, N.M., a city in the flatlands near the Texas border. After six hours of gunfire, there were none.
Mr. Schaap felt he had no choice but to have his herd killed. Testing showed that the water he had pulled from wells on his property contained exceptionally high levels of PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, which have been linked to birth defects, liver and heart disease and some cancers. State and federal regulators pulled his permit to sell milk and quarantined his herd. Selling his cows for beef was out of the question.
“I don’t want this farm no more,” Mr. Schaap said.
The source of the contamination, state environmental officials say, was his next-door neighbor, the Cannon Air Force Base, home to the 27th Special Operations Wing. For years, firefighters there had conducted exercises using a foam that contained PFAS. Runoff had seeped into the aquifer where Mr. Schaap and other farmers and ranchers drew their water.
Similar scenarios have played out at hundreds of military facilities across the United States. But New Mexico has become the center of the nation’s reckoning with PFAS. The state is suing the federal government for turning bases like Cannon into epicenters of forever chemical contamination.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has led this campaign. Weeks after she became governor in 2019, her administration filed suit against the U.S. Air Force over the PFAS pollution at Cannon. Because the accusations in New Mexico are so clear-cut, a federal judge in South Carolina picked New Mexico’s suit to be a bellwether for similar litigation nationwide.
The designation means the outcome of the New Mexico case will become an important benchmark in how the more than 15,000 similar PFAS suits nationwide are treated in court, lawsuits filed on behalf of people like Mr. Schaap, who claim harm from forever chemicals in firefighting foam.
“It was a very clean-cut case,” said Zachary Ogaz, the general counsel for the New Mexico Environment Department. “It’s pretty darn obvious where the PFAS is coming from.” That, he said, will allow the court to explore the issue at the heart of the case: Who should be held accountable for the human, economic and environmental costs of PFAS contamination?
New Mexico’s legacy of military pollution dates to World War II, when the effort to build an atomic weapon, the Manhattan Project, was based there. Radioactive elements last a long time; so do bitter memories. Ms. Lujan Grisham was born in Los Alamos, the nerve center of the Manhattan Project. Her sister, Kimberly, was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was 2. Her parents believed the illness was linked to nuclear research.
“I can remember being in grade school and hearing the community talk about how many brain tumors there were,” Ms. Lujan Grisham said in an interview.
Kimberly, who died at the age of 21, continues to motivate the governor. “If you’re going to do something that hurts the citizens of my state, you’ve got to come through me,” Ms. Lujan Grisham said.
Earlier this month, the state scored a victory, when the Air Force made concessions regarding a Clovis cleanup. It agreed to provide funding and technical resources for groundwater testing outside the military base, including at dairies, according to a joint statement released on May 12 by the Air Force and the state environment department.
Yet the legal fight continues — the agreement will not affect New Mexico’s lawsuit or the thousands of others nationwide. “The federal government has to be accountable, right? It’s got to happen at some point,” Mr. Ogaz said. “That’s what we’re fighting for, at least.”
A Plume That Spreads Southeast
PFAS — the acronym stands for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are not only forever; they’re everywhere. Until recently, these synthetic compounds enjoyed widespread commercial and industrial use — in takeout food containers, dental floss, drinking water and water-resistant clothing.
Studies have linked the substances to a wide variety of ailments in humans and animals, including heart disease, low birth weight, infertility and cancers of the kidney, testicle and breast. Though the risk and extent of health impacts from forever chemicals remain uncertain, the federal government and many states have set strict regulatory standards for PFAS in drinking water and food packaging.
None of this is abstract for Mr. Schaap. After the killing of his cows, he and his workers spent two days hauling the carcasses into a pit on his property. Four years have passed, but the mass grave at Highland Dairy is still a barren plot. Animal remains protrude from the mud: hide, a hoof. Only weeds grow.
Preliminary testing revealed that Mr. Schaap’s well water had a concentration of 14,320 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS, two of the most ubiquitous forever chemicals — 205 times greater than the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended limit of 70 parts per trillion in drinking water.
The base offered bottled water and filtration, but did nothing for the well water that was crucial to Highland Dairy and other farmers and ranchers near Clovis. By 2021, the PFAS concentration in one of Mr. Schaap’s wells registered 37,733 parts per trillion. The following year, the E.P.A. also issued much stricter recommendations for PFOA and PFOS. On May 14, however, the agency indicated it intended “to rescind the regulations and reconsider the regulatory determination” for some other forever chemicals, including what are known as GenX substances, angering activists.
The corner of the base closest to Mr. Schaap is where the firefighters trained. As at most American military sites, Cannon firefighters put out fires with aqueous film forming foam, or A.F.F.F. A-triple-F, as it’s known, is exceptionally good at fighting fuel fires, which it does by creating a barrier against oxygen. It does so thanks to PFOS.
One former Cannon firefighter “described incidents where firefighters would spray each other with the foam as a form of horseplay, and that they would spray the foam and allow visiting children to play in it,” according to New Mexico’s lawsuit. Firefighting foam now uses other forever chemicals, thought to be somewhat less harmful than the ones that found their way into Mr. Schaap’s water.
The foam that percolated into the base’s soil formed an underground plume that slowly spread southeast and now extends four to six miles from Cannon. “It’s not contained,” said James Kenney, the secretary of the state environment department, at a public meeting in Clovis last year. “The horse got out of the barn.”
Mr. Schaap draws water from the Ogallala Aquifer, which is in the path of the PFAS plume. Last summer, a state health department study found that people who lived or worked within the plume’s area had blood concentrations of PFHxS — a common forever chemical, more durable than PFOA and PFOS — three times higher than the national average.
Mr. Schaap has his own lawsuit against the Pentagon. “We’re not letting them off the hook,” he said.
Military bases are PFAS hot spots. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office published last year, the Pentagon has identified 718 military installations where PFAS chemicals may have been released. Another G.A.O. report found that about 1,500 military facilities worldwide were still using A.F.F.F. to suppress fires.
A spokeswoman for the Air Force said the Department of Defense was “committed to replacing A.F.F.F. with fluorine-free alternatives,” referring to other formulations that do not contain PFAS. The spokeswoman also said that the Defense Department can meet its deadline for doing so, Oct. 1.
Then in early May, New Mexico officials quietly traveled to Washington for a meeting at the Pentagon. They came away with what Mr. Ogaz, the environment department’s general counsel, described as a “verbal agreement” from the Air Force that it would pay for groundwater monitoring around Cannon, an important step in the cleanup process.
The agreement resolves a practical matter for landowners like Mr. Schaap, but does nothing to address the deeper questions of responsibility. Nor does it address contamination at other bases across New Mexico, like the one next to a lake animals drink from.
A Lake That Is Not a Lake
If cows tell the story of Cannon, ducks tell the story of Holloman Air Force Base, a four-hour drive southwest.
Lake Holloman, just outside the base, is a popular stop for migratory birds, including ducks. Designated an Important Bird Area by the Audubon Society in 2002, it is a rare body of water next to the undulating expanse of White Sands National Park.
But it is not a lake, exactly. Created in 1965, the Holloman Evaporation Pond collects runoff from the base, including firefighting foam. Initially, swimming was forbidden, but not other recreation. “Just as recently as a few months ago, people were camped next to it,” Joseph Cook, a biologist at the University of New Mexico, said last year.
Last summer, Dr. Cook and Jean-Luc Cartron, a biologist at the University of New Mexico, and their colleagues published a study that found “massive” PFAS contamination around Lake Holloman. A dead killdeer chick collected on its shore had the highest PFAS concentration ever measured in a bird. According to Dr. Cartron’s calculations, a kangaroo rat found at the lake carried a PFOS burden 360 times that of Mr. Schaap’s most contaminated cow.
“Dime-size amounts of breast meat” from waterfowl, Mr. Kenney said at the public meeting in Clovis, “can have a lifetime exposure of PFAS.”
Public access to Lake Holloman was terminated around the time the study was published. Today, the lake is a flat blue expanse ringed by chain-link fencing. The only sign of human life is the roar of F-16 Fighting Falcons taking off and banking over the Sacramento Mountains. Birds land on the lake. Bigger animals drink its water. Then they disperse across the state.
The town of Santa Rosa, in Eastern New Mexico, is 200 miles from Lake Holloman, but migratory birds and animals easily traverse those distances. To understand how PFAS is spreading through water fowl, Matthew Monjaras, who founded Impact Outdoors, a nonprofit that conducts environmental programs, including hunting trips for veterans, and Christopher Witt, a bird biologist at the University of New Mexico, set out into a series of wetlands outside Santa Rosa called Tres Lagunas.
In the predawn darkness, the men parked, loaded shotguns and moved in silence through the snake-infested grass of Tres Lagunas. They waded into cold water, which quickly reached their waists. Then they stood, waiting, as pink bands of light appeared in the sky.
Mr. Monjaras used duck calls to produce a series of convincing quacks. Ducks answered the call. Shots rang out. Birds fell into the water.
After the hunt, Dr. Witt dissected each bird, shaving off liver samples to be tested as part of a statewide survey.
PFAS tend to concentrate in liver tissue. Mr. Monjaras estimates he has eaten dozens of duck livers. He has grown so concerned that he drove three hours to the meeting in Clovis. Carter Monjaras, his 5-year-old son, wearing hunting camouflage, tagged along.
As the presentation was concluding, Mr. Monjaras asked about the game he and his family consume: “How do I guarantee that I’m not inviting PFAS to my dinner table?”
“I would personally choose not to eat wild game that was hunted around Holloman,” Mr. Kenney answered delicately. But he also acknowledged the impossible position Mr. Monjaras and others were in, having to guess the toxic exposure of every bird they hunted.
“That should never have happened,” Mr. Kenney said.
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6) Calls for ‘No Seed Oil’ Push Companies to Order Up Butter and Beef Tallow
Businesses are finding different (and more costly) ways to fry foods as shoppers demand alternatives to seed oils as part of the Make America Healthy Again movement.
By Julie Creswell, May 19, 2026
The Masa beef tallow chips will be available regionally in Target by June and in Whole Foods nationwide by August. Credit...Vincent Alban/The New York Times
For more than three decades, loaves of crusty French bread were transformed into crunchy croutons at Olivia’s Croutons.
The croutons, sold at supermarkets nationwide, were already produced to be free of preservatives and with low levels of sugar and sodium.
But a few months ago, the grocery store chain Sprouts Farmers Markets had another request: Could the croutons be made without canola oil or other seed oils?
Seed oils have become a hot topic over the last couple of years after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly vilified them. The future U.S. health secretary claimed they were a primary cause of the obesity epidemic in the United States. Last year, Louisiana passed a law requiring restaurants to disclose their use of seed oils to customers by 2028.
Along with ultraprocessed foods and artificial dyes, the “hateful eight” — canola, corn, sunflower and other oils derived from the seeds of some plants — are blamed by some in the Make America Healthy Again movement for playing a key role in chronic disease in America.
“Industrial refining reduces micronutrients” in seed oils, making them ultraprocessed, according to the 2025 White House MAHA report, which added that seed oil was “a topic of ongoing research for its potential role in inflammation.”
But many scientists argue seed oils are not harmful to health. They point to decades of research that not only shows they are safe, but in some cases the unsaturated fats they contain have been linked with reduced risks for cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
A variety of chips, salad dressings and snacks made with avocado or olive oil or even beef tallow (rendered beef fat) are showing up on shelves at Whole Foods, Target and other national retailers, driven by growing consumer demand.
“Shoppers have become more ingredient aware, for sure,” said Brian Hillins, senior vice president of merchandising at Sprouts, which since 2023 has expanded its mix of seed-oil-free products by 30 percent, albeit from a modest start.
“Condiments were one of the first to move away from seed oils, but now we’re seeing chips and snacks, like beef tallow chips,” he said. “Those have been doing really well with us.”
Even large players like PepsiCo are wading into the no-seed-oil market in response to consumer demand. Last year, PepsiCo acquired Siete Foods, including its popular line of chips made with avocado oil, for $1.2 billion. This year, PepsiCo released some versions of its Lay’s, Ruffles and Miss Vickie’s potato chips made with avocado and olive oil. (Lay’s and Ruffles chips are typically made with vegetable oils, like canola, sunflower or corn oil.)
“As consumer interests evolve, PepsiCo remains focused on offering more options, including different oils,” a company spokesperson said in an email.
The food industry is experiencing softening demand for many products as consumers tighten their wallets. The rising use of weight-loss medications has also caused a slowdown in sales. Switching to olive or avocado oil can be two to three times as expensive as seed oils for many businesses, and those additional costs may be tough to pass along to consumers already under financial strain.
Beef tallow is not only more expensive than seeds oils, but difficult to come by in bulk quantities.
“Most beef fat is not rendered into edible tallow because there has been low demand for it over recent decades,” said Seth Goldstein, a co-founder of Ancient Crunch, which fries its Masa corn tortilla chips in beef tallow.
Still, consumers appear to be seeking out products made with avocado and olive oils and even beef tallow because they believe they are better for them, according to some analysts.
“There have been some brands touting their use of avocado oil for years, but now it is a major selling point,” said Scott Dicker, a senior director of market insights at SPINS, a research firm for the natural products industry. “A couple of years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find a potato chip that was cooked in beef tallow in stores.”
For Ancient Crunch, which was founded in 2022, interest in its Masa beef tallow chips has skyrocketed. After selling directly to consumers on its website for a couple of years, Masa Chips landed on shelves at Sprouts last October and then in Wegmans Food Markets in January. Its beef tallow chips will be available regionally in Target by June and in Whole Foods nationwide by August.
At first, the company worked directly with ranchers to source its 100 percent grass-fed tallow, but as demand for its chips grew, it teamed up with a rendering plant to obtain more. But the price of beef tallow has risen over the past four years.
Today, Ancient Crunch spends $300,000 to $500,000 for 100,000 pounds of beef tallow, enough to make about 300,000 bags of chips each month. It is adding higher-capacity equipment at its manufacturing facility in New Jersey to ramp up to several million bags per month.
For small manufacturers, the question is whether the interest in non-seed-oil products is a passing fad or will stick around for a while.
“In 1991, when we started Olivia’s Croutons, canola oil was all the rage. It was the next best thing,” said Francie Caccavo, who started the company in her kitchen in Charlotte, Vt., about 12 miles south of Burlington, and named it after her daughter. “Now, it’s like you’re putting poison in your product.”
She said she warily watched interest in seed-oil-free products grow over the last couple of years. But she held off on reformulating, largely because she believed her product — croutons — wouldn’t move the needle for anyone in terms of health consequences, good or bad.
“You’re putting four or five of these on your salad. I was using a non-GMO, clean seed oil, so I thought, ‘We’ll get away with this. People will leave us alone,’” Ms. Caccavo said. “But there’s some people out there who don’t want even a minute amount of seed oil in their products.”
Reformulating the product to be free of seed oil was relatively easy. The butter and garlic flavor croutons were made with a combination of canola oil and butter. She simply eliminated the canola oil and added more butter. For the Parmesan pepper croutons, the seed oil was swapped with more olive oil.
But butter and olive oil cost significantly more than canola oil, which is derived from the seeds of the rapeseed plant. So Ms. Caccavo raised prices by 8 cents a box to cover her costs.
She said the cholesterol levels in the croutons went up slightly with the new ingredients as well.
“I would not call them necessarily healthier,” said Ms. Caccavo. “Croutons are a topping or a garnish. As my mother always said, ‘Everything in moderation.’”
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7) I.R.S. to Drop Audits of Trump and Family
As part of the Justice Department’s deal, officials vowed not to pursue any matters, including those involving President Trump’s tax returns, that are pending.
By Alan Feuer, Andrew Duehren and Glenn Thrush, Published May 19, 2026, Updated May 20, 2026
The document was signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Kenny Holston/The New York Times
The Justice Department has granted President Trump, his family and businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, a potentially lucrative arrangement that could shield the president from significant financial liability.
The provision, quietly inserted on Tuesday as a supplement to a remarkable deal that also created a $1.8 billion fund aimed at benefiting Mr. Trump’s allies, protects the president, his relatives and his businesses from pending audits and tax prosecutions.
The one-page document, signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Mr. Trump, his family members and businesses.
The provision invited immediate criticism as tax experts raised the possibility that it was illegal.
That the addendum to the deal was posted, without fanfare, on the department’s website belied its bare-knuckled audacity. It revealed the determination of Mr. Trump and his appointees to ram through maximalist measures with minimum outside scrutiny at a moment when they still have uncontested control of government.
The provision was the latest in a series of maneuvers this week that blurred the all-but-vanished boundary between official department business and the private interests of a president intent on using his power to extract financial gain from the federal government for himself and his allies.
A day earlier, Mr. Trump agreed to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S. in exchange for the establishment of a fund for people he believes were wronged by federal investigations or prosecutions.
Justice Department officials had in part defended the creation of the fund by pointing to the fact that Mr. Trump and his family members would not be paid by it.
But protection from audit could be quite financially beneficial for Mr. Trump, who has always said that there was no wrongdoing in his tax filings. In 2024, The New York Times reported that a loss in an I.R.S. audit could cost Mr. Trump more than $100 million.
It is unclear if that examination has concluded or if Mr. Trump, his family members or affiliated entities are under other audits. I.R.S. procedures call for the mandatory audit of the president’s tax returns annually.
Neither the Justice Department nor the I.R.S. responded to requests seeking comment. The top lawyer at the Treasury, Brian Morrissey, resigned on Monday after the Justice Department announced the deal with Mr. Trump.
Federal law prohibits the president, vice president and other executive officers from instructing the I.R.S. to start or stop specific audits. But that broad prohibition appears to include a carve out for the attorney general.
Brandon DeBot, a senior attorney adviser at New York University’s Tax Law Center, said in a statement that the audit protection may still be illegal.
“The I.R.S. would need to act to make the release of claims effective, which could raise additional questions about whether there has been unlawful political interference in the audit process,” he said. “The settlement and general release of claims is a breathtaking abuse of the tax and legal system.”
The disclosure of the provision came as blowback appeared to be mounting over the creation of the fund, including from a few Republican lawmakers typically wary of incurring Mr. Trump’s wrath.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, offered rare criticism of the president, saying he “was not a big fan” of the fund and adding that he did not see a “purpose” to it.
The Times reported last week that Mr. Trump’s talks with the Justice Department and the I.R.S. had included a measure calling on the I.R.S. to drop any audits of the president, his relatives or businesses. But that provision did not appear in the nine-page agreement laying out the terms to dismiss the lawsuit, which the department released on Monday.
In January, Mr. Trump, along with two of his sons and the Trump family business, sued the Internal Revenue Service for at least $10 billion over the leak of their tax returns during the president’s first term. The Trumps argued that the I.R.S. should have done more to prevent a former contractor from disclosing tax information to The New York Times and ProPublica.
Even as the original nine-page agreement offered scant details of how disbursement would work or who would be eligible, it said that claimants could seek money from the government for having faced reprisals for “personal, political and/or ideological reasons.” It stated that a five-person commission would consider claims based on criteria like damages a person had incurred or any time they spent in federal custody.
The main agreement also indicated that claims would largely be handed out in secrecy, requiring the fund managers to provide the attorney general on a quarterly basis with a “confidential written report” of those who received any money. The fund would stop processing claims no later than Dec. 1, 2028, just weeks before Mr. Trump is scheduled to leave office.
Frank Bisignano, the chief executive of the I.R.S., signed the original, nine-page deal. The provisions granting Mr. Trump immunity from existing audits, though, was signed only by Mr. Blanche, who has stepped up carrying out Mr. Trump’s campaign of retribution against his enemies.
During an appearance before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, Mr. Blanche defended the fund.
At one point, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, repeatedly accused Mr. Blanche of behaving more like a Trump defense lawyer than an independent guardian of the public interest.
Mr. Blanche pushed back, asserting that he was “the acting attorney general.”
Mr. Van Hollen replied, “Mr. Attorney General, you are acting today like the president’s personal attorney, and that’s the whole problem.”
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8) Prison to Pardons to Payouts: Jan. 6 Rioters Are Elated at Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund
The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol could get money from the government they attacked is the latest head-spinning twist in President Trump’s effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6.
By Alan Feuer, May 20, 2026
The pro-Trump mob at the Capitol in 2021. If all of the Jan. 6ers sought money from the fund and received the same amount, the payouts would be around $1.125 million each. Kenny Holston for The New York Times
Antony Vo was at a friend’s house on Monday morning when a fellow pardoned Jan. 6 rioter sent a message: The Trump administration had just created a fund to benefit people who believed they had been wronged by the federal government — including those, like him, who had stormed the Capitol five years ago.
Mr. Vo, who briefly fled the country to avoid his prison sentence stemming from the riot, said he did not know at first that the fund had come about as part of a larger deal by President Trump to withdraw an extraordinary lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service. But the origins of the fund, he said, were less important than how it made him feel: surprised, relieved and grateful all at once.
“I’m glad it turned into something,” he explained, “that could help people who have been hurting for quite a while now.”
That reaction, it turns out, appeared typical among the so-called Jan. 6ers who have long joined Mr. Trump in claiming that the efforts to hold them accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election amounted to mistreatment by the criminal justice system.
Some felt that the fund validated their self-image as victims of the government. Others felt elated — albeit somewhat stunned — at the prospect of a payout. And not a few felt a bit confused at how the process of filing claims and receiving checks could play out.
“So many questions,” said Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys who was sentenced to 22 years on a seditious conspiracy conviction arising from the riot. “But it’s a good direction.”
The formal decision of whether to offer restitution to the rioters had been kicking around the Justice Department for months, delayed by internal wrangling. But in some sense, it had appeared inevitable that the Trump administration would ultimately funnel money to those who joined the mob on Jan. 6 given the president’s relentless efforts to whitewash the events of that day.
In one of the first official acts of his second term, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping proclamation that granted pardons to — or dismissed the charges against — all of the nearly 1,600 people indicted in connection with Jan. 6. He then began an aggressive purge of the federal agents and prosecutors who were handed the task of building criminal cases against the people who took part in the attack.
The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol, smashing windows and fighting with the police, could get money from the same federal government they attacked was the latest head-spinning twist in the effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6. At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, did not rule out violent rioters receiving payouts from the fund.
It has not been lost on many Jan. 6ers that by deeming them worthy of reparations, the most powerful officials in the country have effectively validated their claims of having been wronged by the federal government — claims that, in many instances, were roundly rejected by the judges of both parties who oversaw their cases.
“This is the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE acknowledging the possibility that Americans were targeted through political abuse of government power,” Tommy Tatum, a Mississippi man who was charged with civil disorder for interfering with the police on Jan. 6, wrote on Monday in a post on social media. “That is historic.”
In a typical Trumpian move, the president has both played down his knowledge of the fund and praised it as necessary, telling reporters that while he did not know much about the proposal, it was put in place to reimburse people “that were horribly treated.”
“These were people that were weaponized and really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt with corrupt people running it,” he said.
The fund has spawned wide blowback, including criticism from some Republicans. Critics have said the real corruption comes from Mr. Trump and the Justice Department, which hashed out details of the fund in a deal that was never filed to the federal judge who oversaw the suit against the I.R.S.
At the same time, experts on far-right extremism have raised concerns that giving money to people who stormed the Capitol — especially to those who assaulted the police — would only bolster political violence.
“It proves that extremism pays — literally,” said Amy Spitalnick, the chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a nonprofit group that seeks to counter antisemitism and extremism. “Over the last decade, we’ve seen this trajectory of conspiracy theories on the fringes moving to the mainstream and being normalized because of Trump and other elected leaders.”
“Now,” Ms. Spitalnick added, “they’re not just being normalized, they’re actually being encouraged by financial incentives.”
At this early stage, many pardoned rioters have only started to muse on how they might spend a government payout. Among the ideas being kicked around: new cars, new houses, paying to get their names off Google and underwriting political campaigns.
The rioters are not, of course, the only people who could file claims to the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund. The deal that laid out how it would work specifically mentioned others who might seek payouts — including abortion protesters who faced prosecution during the Biden administration and organizations targeted by the I.R.S. “based on improper ideological criteria.”
There is, in fact, a long list of people in Mr. Trump’s orbit who have claimed they were wronged by federal investigations or prosecutions.
Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser, was jailed for four months after being found guilty of contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena from the House subcommittee that investigated Jan. 6. (The Justice Department has moved to drop his case.) Peter Navarro, the president’s former trade adviser, served a similar prison term on similar criminal charges.
Then there are the dozens of Trump aides and allies — including many serving in the current administration — who were witnesses in the two federal cases filed against Mr. Trump by the special counsel Jack Smith. The cases, which separately accused Mr. Trump of seeking to overturn the 2020 election and of mishandling classified materials, wound up being dismissed after he won re-election, but those who were interviewed or appeared before grand juries were forced to spend significant sums on legal fees.
Appearing at the Senate hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Blanche suggested that several Republican lawmakers whose telephone records were seized by Mr. Smith in 2023 might receive money from the fund. Even some of Mr. Trump’s political opponents have cheekily suggested that they might enter claims as well on the theory that the president had weaponized the Justice Department against them.
On Monday, for example, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director who has been indicted twice since Mr. Trump re-entered office, appeared on CNN, saying that — who knew? — he might ask the fund for money.
“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, personal, political or ideological reasons,” Mr. Comey said. “So I’m guessing I’ll be in line.”
For the moment, the fund has been capped at the patriotically symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, and many Jan. 6ers have already done the math in an effort to determine the maximum amount that each of them could get. If all of them sought money and received the same amount, the payouts would be around $1.125 million each.
But that, they are painfully aware, assumes no one else will file a claim.
“We’ve been trampled on so much, I think finally we feel like we’re getting a little something and maybe we’re relieved,” said Daniel Christmann, one of the rioters. “But this is chump change. Even when Trump divorced Marla Maples and he was getting interviewed on it, he admitted that a million dollars isn’t a lot of money.”
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9) Early War Goal Was to Install Hard-Line Former President as Iran’s Leader
An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power.
By Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman, Published May 19, 2026, Updated May 20, 2026
The reporters have been covering the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran registering as a candidate in the presidential election in Tehran in 2024. Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
Days after Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials in the opening salvos of the war, President Trump mused publicly that it would be best if “someone from within” Iran took over the country.
It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.
But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.
He has not been seen publicly since then and his current whereabouts and condition are unknown.
To say that Mr. Ahmadinejad was an unusual choice would be a vast understatement. While he had increasingly clashed with the regime’s leaders and had been placed under close watch by the Iranian authorities, he was known during his term as president, from 2005 to 2013, for his calls to “wipe Israel off the map.” He was a strong supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, a fierce critic of the United States and known for violently cracking down on internal dissent.
How Mr. Ahmadinejad was recruited to take part remains unknown.
The existence of the effort, which has not been previously reported, was part of a multistage plan developed by Israel to topple Iran’s theocratic government. It underscores how Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel went into the war not only misjudging how quickly they could achieve their objectives but also gambling to some degree on a risky plan for leadership change in Iran that even some of Mr. Trump’s aides found implausible. Some American officials were skeptical in particular about the viability of putting Mr. Ahmadinejad back into power.
“From the outset, President Trump was clear about his goals for Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles, dismantle their production facilities, sink their navy, and weaken their proxy,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in response to a request for comment about the regime change plan and Ahmadinejad. “The United States military met or exceeded all of its objectives, and now, our negotiators are working to make a deal that would end Iran’s nuclear capabilities for good.”
A spokesperson for Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, declined to comment.
U.S. officials spoke during the early days of the war about plans developed with Israel to identify a pragmatist who could take over the country. Officials insisted that there was intelligence that some within the Iranian regime would be willing to work with the United States, even if those people couldn’t be described as “moderates.”
Mr. Trump was enjoying the success of the raid by U.S. forces to capture Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and the willingness of his interim replacement to work with the White House — a model that Mr. Trump appeared to think could be replicated elsewhere.
In recent years, Mr. Ahmadinejad has clashed with regime leaders, accusing them of corruption, and rumors have swirled about his loyalties. He was disqualified from numerous presidential elections, his aides were arrested and Mr. Ahmadinejad’s movements were increasingly restricted to his home in the Narmak section of eastern Tehran.
That American and Israeli officials saw Mr. Ahmadinejad as a potential leader of a new government in Iran is further evidence that the war in February was launched with the hopes of installing more pliable leadership in Tehran. Mr. Trump and members of his cabinet have said that the goals of the war were narrowly focused on destroying Iran’s nuclear, missile and military capabilities.
There are many unanswered questions about how Israel and the United States planned to put Mr. Ahmadinejad in power, and the circumstances surrounding the airstrike that injured him. American officials said that the strike — carried out by the Israeli Air Force — was meant to kill the guards watching over Mr. Ahmadinejad as part of a plan to release him from house arrest.
On the first day of the war, Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. The strike at Ayatollah Khamenei’s compound in central Tehran also blew up a meeting of Iranian officials, killing some officials whom the White House had identified as more willing to negotiate over a change in government than their bosses.
There were also initial reports at the time in the Iranian media that Mr. Ahmadinejad had been killed in the strike on his home.
The strike did not significantly damage Mr. Ahmadinejad’s house at the end of a dead-end street. But the security outpost at the entrance to the street was struck. Satellite imagery shows that building was destroyed.
In the days that followed, official news agencies clarified that he had survived but that his “bodyguards” — in actuality Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members who were both guarding him and holding him under house arrest — were killed.
An article in The Atlantic in March, citing anonymous associates of Mr. Ahmadinejad, said that the former president had been freed from government confinement after the strike at his house, which the article described as “in effect a jailbreak operation.”
After that article, an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad confirmed to The New York Times that Mr. Ahmadinejad saw the strike as an attempt to free him. The associate said the Americans viewed Mr. Ahmadinejad as someone who could lead Iran, and had the capability to manage “Iran’s political, social and military situation.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad would have been able to “play a very important role” in Iran in the near future, the associate said, suggesting that the United States saw him as similar to Delcy Rodriguez, who took power in Venezuela after American forces seized Mr. Maduro and has since worked closely with the Trump administration, the person said.
During his presidency, Mr. Ahmadinejad was known both for his hard-line policies and his often outlandish fundamentalist pronouncements, such as his declaration that there was not a single gay person in Iran and his denial of the Holocaust. He spoke at a conference in Tehran called “A World Without Zionism.”
Western satirists lampooned these views, and Mr. Ahmadinejad became something of an unwitting pop culture curiosity, even the subject of Saturday Night Live parodies.
He also presided over the country at a time when Iran was accelerating the enrichment of uranium it could one day use for making a nuclear bomb should it choose to weaponize its program. An American intelligence assessment in 2007 concluded that Iran had, years earlier, frozen its work on building a nuclear device but was continuing the enrichment of nuclear fuel it could use for a nuclear weapon if it changed its mind.
After Mr. Ahmadinejad left office he gradually became something of an open critic of the theocratic government, or at least at odds with Ayatollah Khamenei.
Three times — 2017, 2021, and 2024 — Mr. Ahmadinejad tried to run for his previous job, but each time Iran’s Guardian Council, a group of civilian and Islamic jurists, blocked his presidential campaign. Mr. Ahmadinejad has accused senior Iranian officials of corruption or bad governance and become a critic of the government in Tehran. While he never was an overt dissident, the regime began to treat him as a potentially destabilizing element.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s ties to the west are far murkier.
In a 2019 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Ahmadinejad praised President Trump and argued for a rapprochement between Iran and the United States.
“Mr. Trump is a man of action,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “He is a businessman and therefore he is capable of calculating cost-benefits and making a decision. We say to him, let’s calculate the long-term cost-benefit of our two nations and not be shortsighted.”
People close to Mr. Ahmadinejad have been accused of having too close ties to the West, or even spying for Israel. Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s former chief of staff, was put on trial in 2018 and the judge in the case publicly asked about his links to British and Israeli spy agencies, an accusation publicized by state media.
In the past few years Mr. Ahmadinejad has made trips out of Iran that further fueled speculation.
In 2023, he traveled to Guatemala and in 2024 and 2025 he went to Hungary, trips detailed by New Lines magazine. Both countries have close ties to Israel.
The Hungarian prime minister at the time, Viktor Orban, has a close relationship with Mr. Netanyahu. During the trips to Hungary, Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke at a university connected to Mr. Orban.
He returned from Budapest just days before Israel began attacking Iran last June. When that war broke out, he kept a low public profile and posted only few statements on social media. His relative silence about a war with a country that Mr. Ahmadinejad had long viewed as Iran’s main enemy was noted by many on Iranian social media.
Discussion of Mr. Ahmadinejad on Iranian social media picked up after reports of his death, according to an analysis by FilterLabs, a company that tracks public sentiment. But the discussion declined in the weeks following, mainly amounting to confusion about his whereabouts.
At the outset, Israel envisioned the war unfolding in several phases, starting with air assaults by the United States and Israel plus the killing of Iran’s supreme leaders and the mobilization of Kurds to fight Iranian forces, according to two Israeli defense officials familiar with the operational planning.
Then, the Israeli plan foresaw a combination of influence campaigns carried out by Israel and the Kurdish invasion creating political instability in Iran and a sense that the regime was losing control. In a third stage, the regime, under intense political pressure and the weight of damage to key infrastructure like electricity, would collapse, allowing for what the Israelis referred to as an “alternative government” to be established.
Other than the air campaign and the killing of the supreme leader, little of the plan played out as the Israelis had hoped, and much of it appears in retrospect to have profoundly misjudged Iran’s resilience and the capacity of the United States and Israel to exert their will.
But even after it became clear that Iran’s theocratic government had survived the first months of the war, some Israeli officials continued to express belief in their vision of imposing regime change in Tehran.
David Barnea, Mossad’s chief, told associates in several discussions that he still thought that the agency’s plan, based on decades of intelligence collection and operational activity in Iran, had a very good chance of succeeding had it received approval to move forward.
Christiaan Triebert contributed research for this article.
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10) Iran Threatens to Strike Beyond the Middle East if the U.S. Resumes Attacks
The warning was issued as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance say progress is being made toward a deal, while keeping open the threat of renewed strikes.
By Euan Ward and Jenny Gross, May 20, 2026
Euan Ward reported from Beirut, Lebanon and Jenny Gross from London.
Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps stand near a drone display at a government-organized march in Tehran last month. Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned on Wednesday that any new attack on the country would provoke them to spread the war beyond the Middle East, raising the stakes of diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.
In a statement reported by Iranian state media, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a powerful military force that answers directly to the country’s supreme leader, said that if “aggression against Iran is repeated,” it would deliver blows “in places you cannot even imagine.”
President Trump said this week that he had postponed a “very major attack” against Iran after the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had asked for more time to pursue an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program. There was a “very good chance” that a deal could be reached, he said, but he was vague when asked how long Tehran had to return to the negotiating table, saying only “a limited period of time.”
The dueling messages underscore the fragile state of diplomacy between the two countries, and the Guards’ threat echoed growing fears in Washington that Iran or allied groups could seek to strike Western interests outside the Middle East.
A criminal complaint unsealed in the United States last week accused an Iraqi man — described as a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia in Iraq — of helping to plan attacks in the United States, Europe and Canada since the start of the war.
Negotiations to end the conflict have stalled over the fate of Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit point for oil and gas. Iran has effectively closed the waterway, while the United States has imposed its own blockade on Iran-linked shipping, throttling maritime traffic and rattling global energy markets.
On Monday, the American military seized an empty Iran-linked oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The Pentagon declined to comment.
It was at least the third Iran-linked tanker that the United States has detained since the war began in late February.
The Guards said on Wednesday that 26 vessels, including “oil tankers, container ships, and other commercial ships,” had passed through the strait over the past 24 hours “under the coordination and security protection” of the Iranian navy. That claim could not be independently verified.
South Korea’s foreign minister, Cho Hyun, said on Wednesday that a South Korean oil tanker was transiting the strait following consultations with Iranian authorities.
The standoff over control of the crucial shipping lane has strained a monthlong cease-fire that mediators are scrambling to keep alive. Pakistan has been involved in those efforts and its interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, arrived in Tehran on Wednesday for his second visit to the country in a week, according to IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster.
In recent days, Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance have both talked up the possibility of a deal, even as Washington and Tehran have continued to trade threats.
Mr. Vance said at a White House briefing on Tuesday that “a lot of progress” was being made in the talks, adding that Washington believed “the Iranians want to make a deal.” But Tehran’s latest proposal appeared to include demands that Washington has previously rejected, such as reparations for war damage and guarantees for Iran’s right to enrich uranium.
“There’s an option B, and the option B is that we could restart the military campaign,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “But that’s not what the president wants, and I don’t think it’s what the Iranians want either.”
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said on Wednesday that the kingdom “highly appreciates” Mr. Trump’s decision to “give diplomacy a chance to reach an acceptable agreement to end the war.”
”Saudi Arabia looks forward to Iran seizing the opportunity to avoid the dangerous implications of escalation,” he said on social media.
Despite being left battered by months of strikes, there are concerns among American military officials that Iran still remains a resilient adversary able to impose heavy costs on the wider region and the global economy.
If Iran were attacked again, analysts say, it could seek to exert control over the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a narrow waterway linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden through which about a tenth of global maritime trade passes. The strait runs alongside territory in Yemen held by the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia that has previously fired on ships traversing the Red Sea.
Iran could also intensify its attacks on the Gulf Arab states and their energy infrastructure. Striking Gulf oil fields, refineries and ports has been one of the most potent ways for Iran to inflict pain on the global economy and put pressure on Mr. Trump.
“The threat of Iranian retaliation against major oil producers remains one of the very few factors restraining U.S. behavior toward Iran,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Yeganeh Torbati and Vivian Nereim contributed reporting. Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London, Leily Nikounazar from Leuven, Belgium and Eric Schmitt from Tampa, Fla.
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11) High Gas Prices Are Squeezing America’s Food Banks
The organizations that feed millions were already dealing with cuts, inflation and more people seeking help. Now the war in Iran is forcing groups to make hard choices.
By Chris Hippensteel, Photographs by Jordan Gale, May 20, 2026
Every morning, semi trucks from the Oregon Food Bank’s fleet load up at its central warehouse in Portland, carrying tons of canned goods, frozen meats, and fruits and vegetables to supply food pantries across the state. Some of their nearest destinations are churches and soup kitchens just miles away. The furthest is along the Idaho border, a six-hour drive away across mountains and shrub lands.
Those delivery runs have become more expensive since the war in Iran sent the cost of diesel soaring, said Andrea Williams, president of the food bank, which has had to budget for roughly $20,000 extra in monthly fuel costs. And the additional expense is starting to affect how much food her organization can afford to place on those trucks.
“It’s an opportunity cost,” Ms. Williams said. “It could be going to food for people, but instead it’s going into the price of gas.”
Most Americans have already felt the war’s impact at the pump. But as rising fuel costs ripple through the economy, the effects are appearing in less-obvious places — including food banks helping supply pantries nationwide.
Annually, as many as 50 million Americans need emergency food assistance and turn to their local food pantry or soup kitchen for help, according to a 2024 Feeding America report. Those organizations rely heavily on the support of food banks, which acquire and deliver food to vast swaths of rural America.
Much of that operation runs on diesel fuel, which, compared with normal gasoline, has seen even steeper price increases.
Before the war, one food bank serving northern New Mexico faced a monthly fuel bill of around $10,000. Now, it’s $22,000.
Food bank directors from across the country say those spikes have forced them to weigh difficult trade-offs, including the amount and quality of food they provide.
In West Virginia, a food bank’s chief executive said she was planning to substitute meat and other protein sources — which are costly, and often have to be shipped in — with low-cost local produce.
In eastern Arizona, a food bank is slowing its plans to bring in more fresh fruit across the U.S.-Mexico border. It was initially a cost-saving measure, but the price of gas has made those shipments expensive enough to reconsider.
And in Montana, a state food bank network — whose deliveries can take several days — is reducing the amount of food it orders and how often it sends out trucks.
“It touches us in so many different ways,” said Brent Weisgram, vice president and chief operations officer of Montana Food Bank Network. “You could almost call it a perfect storm.”
Brian Barks, president and chief executive of Food Bank for the Heartland, which covers much of Nebraska and western Iowa, said cutting the amount of food provided would be a last resort.
But, he said, apart from defraying costs through additional donations, there are generally only two other places food banks can look to meaningfully trim expenses: staff and food.
The spike in fuel prices has hit at what was already a perilous time for these organizations, as the rise in the cost of living has contributed to more people seeking help over recent years.
Last year, the Trump administration slashed funding for programs supporting food banks around the country. Major cuts to the federal food stamp program followed, blocking millions of Americans from assistance, a change that food bank leaders insist their organizations can’t make up for.
High fuel prices have left Americans with even less to spend on other essentials like groceries. Already, some are turning to food pantries to make up the difference, said Milt Liu, president and chief executive of St. Mary’s Food Bank, whose coverage area extends from Phoenix to Arizona’s northern border.
“It feels like gas prices have kind of put folks over the edge,” Mr. Liu said.
For now, Mr. Liu said, his food bank has opted not to cut back on service, instead pulling more from its savings to weather the higher prices.
“That’s not sustainable year over year over year,” he said.
The costs could worsen as more companies pass higher gas prices on to their consumers. Already, some food bank directors said they were paying more for the food they acquire.
Dan Parks, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Food Bank, said fuel costs haven’t cut into his budget, at least so far. Instead of relying on semi trucks, his staff members typically deliver food by public ferry to the isolated island communities they serve. Still, he’s bracing for a hit when supplies run low and he has to order another shipment of food from down south.
But cutting back on food doesn’t seem like an option. In April, the pantry his food bank operates served 500 people per week, a new high, he said, which was especially concerning for this time of year, when the spring thaw normally brings tourists who bolster the region’s economy.
“At some point, food banks are just not going to be able to keep up,” Mr. Parks said. “And we’re getting closer and closer to that point every day.”
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12) Doctors Asked Officers to Unshackle a Patient. They Refused for 26 Days.
A lawsuit challenges the police practice of shackling mentally ill arrestees in New York, sometimes for long periods, while they await arraignment in locked psychiatric wards.
By Andy Newman, May 20, 2026
A homeless man with a long history of mental illness was kept shackled to a bed by the police at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx for 26 consecutive days while awaiting arraignment, his lawyers say. Mark Vergari/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK
One May afternoon in 2024, a 49-year-old homeless man with a long history of mental illness stood in the middle of a street in the Bronx, talking to himself, screaming at traffic and nearly getting hit by cars.
The police were summoned, checked his record and found he had three outstanding warrants, including one for felony weapon possession. The man was arrested after resisting, court records show, and was taken to a locked psychiatric ward at Jacobi Medical Center, a city hospital in the Bronx, to await arraignment.
There, the man, identified in the records only as Louis M. to protect his privacy, was handcuffed to the bed, shackled at the legs and guarded by a police officer.
His arraignment was delayed, but the restraints stayed on. After three days, his psychiatrist asked police officers to remove them; they declined, repeatedly. He remained chained to his bed around the clock, except for one or two bathroom trips a day.
His lawyers say it took 26 days after his arrest for his restraints to finally be removed. Several months later, all the criminal charges against him were dropped.
The length of Louis M.’s immobilization was unusual. But shackling mentally ill people awaiting criminal arraignment has long been standard police procedure in New York City.
The Police Department’s patrol guide instructs officers: “Do not remove handcuffs or leg restraints, unless requested by attending physician.” Such requests are almost never granted, legal service lawyers and psychiatrists say.
The practice is being challenged in a suit to be heard in Albany on Wednesday at the State Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court. The suit argues that it is unnecessary for the police to shackle people in locked psychiatric wards because the wards are already set up to deal with potentially violent patients.
More than that, the suit says, the practice is psychologically and physically harmful, and violates patients’ due process rights and state mental hygiene law, which places strict limits on shackling.
Keeping Louis M. chained to a bed for weeks “offends the most basic notions of justice,” says the suit, brought on his behalf by the Mental Hygiene Legal Service, a state agency that represents psychiatric patients.
While people who are arrested are supposed to be arraigned before a judge within 24 hours, the legal service says longer delays are routine. A recent analysis by the Legal Aid Society found that arrestees held in hospitals were disproportionately likely to face delayed arraignments, for a variety of reasons.
In court filings, the city maintains that hospital wards “are designed for different purposes than holding cells focused on preventing the flight of someone accused of a crime.” It argues that keeping arrestees in restraints is a necessary safety precaution, and that limits on shackling do not apply to the police.
The suit raises fundamental questions of jurisdiction. An arrestee held involuntarily in a psychiatric ward is simultaneously in the custody of the police and the hospital. Each is subject to different rules and laws. What happens when the two dominions clash?
The suit predates the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on a pledge to sharply reduce the police’s role in dealing with people suffering from severe mental illness. A spokesman for Mr. Mamdani, Sam Raskin, said on Tuesday that the mayor’s administration could not comment on the specific circumstances of the case, but that it was “committed to improving the city’s approach to helping New Yorkers facing mental health challenges by advancing an all-of-government, holistic approach to the issue.”
The policy laid out in the patrol guide applies equally to people accused of murder and those charged with burglary or simple drug possession. The legal service said it had one client who was shackled for a week after her arrest on charges of sending a threatening text message to her sister.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, two senior psychiatrists at Mount Sinai Medical Center with a combined 40 years’ experience in emergency psychiatric units identified “exactly one instance” in which they remembered police officers agreeing to remove a patient’s shackles.
The brief cites the case of a 60-year-old woman with a urinary tract infection who was shackled in 2020 and “frequently urinated on herself and constantly cried over the odor and embarrassment” because officers were slow to take her to the bathroom.
According to the suit and psychiatric literature, extended shackling can cause PTSD, “general mental state deterioration,” bedsores, bleeding, blood clotting and infection. The Mount Sinai psychiatrists write that the practice can “cause immense and severe physical and psychological harm to patients and impact clinicians’ abilities to provide appropriate treatment at a time of acute and particular need.”
Dr. Elizabeth Ford, a psychiatrist who in recent years oversaw New York City hospitals’ care for people under arrest, said that shackles are so stressful to patients that they cause the very outbursts they seek to control.
“There’s this general sense that if you take the cuffs off, someone is going to be more aggressive,” she said. “My experience has been the opposite.”
Formally, the lawsuit being argued on Wednesday appeals a judge’s denial of a writ of habeas corpus, the basic legal safeguard for challenging improper detention.
Louis M.’s lawyers filed the habeas motion in 2024 against the Police Department and Jacobi Medical Center to seek his unshackling. Two lower courts held that habeas did not apply because the motion sought only release from restraints, not total release from the hospital.
After Wednesday’s hearing, the Court of Appeals is not expected to rule for weeks, at least.
The city notes that when Jacobi initially sought a court order to have Louis M. involuntarily held, a psychiatrist testified that he had a history of aggression and paranoia that could recur. He also grew “extremely angry” when asked why he had stopped taking medication, according to court records.
But the legal service says that while Louis M. was in the ward, his clinicians found him “calm and cooperative.”
State mental hygiene law and guidelines say that psychiatric patients should generally be restrained only on a doctor’s orders. Restraints must typically be removed after two hours, and kept off except for patients who are making “overt gestures” threatening themselves or others.
Marcia Richard, a woman with a history of mental illness and drug addiction, said in an interview that she was often shackled by the police in locked wards in New York City, for periods of up to a week.
“When I went into the bathroom, that’s the only time they took the handcuffs off, but they’d keep the shackles on,” said Ms. Richard, 56, who now works as a peer counselor. “I showered in the shackles. I washed up in the shackles.”
Sometimes, she said, the restraints injured her: “I had cuts on my wrists, I had cuts on my ankles. Sometimes they were too tight, and your feet are swollen.”
The city argues in its court papers that shackling prevents patients from being violent to hospital staff.
But Louis M.’s lawyers argue that locked, guarded psychiatric wards are “staffed and equipped to manage behavioral outbursts.” Techniques used in these wards to calm patients include verbal de-escalation, medication and seclusion.
Laureena Novotnak, the Mental Hygiene Legal Service lawyer who is arguing at the Court of Appeals on Wednesday, said that by definition, people are placed in locked psychiatric wards because they’re “having trouble controlling their behavior.”
She added, “Maybe it would be safer if you chained all the patients around the clock, but nobody would ever get better.”
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