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We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) At the U.N., Trump Lays Out a Winner-Takes-All Vision of U.S. Power
President Trump’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly amounted to a rejection of the founding concept of the United Nations.
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and David E. Sanger, Sept. 22, 2026
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and David E. Sanger cover the White House and reported from the United Nations.
President Trump spoke at the United Nations on Tuesday, threatening to “annihilate the Islamic republic” if a deal to end the war against Iran did not come to pass. Dave Sanders for The New York Times
The podium of the United Nations was an unusual setting for the leader of a global superpower to threaten to “annihilate the Islamic republic” of Iran or to declare that, in another conflict, “to the victor belong the spoils.”
Yet that was exactly what President Trump did on Tuesday, in threatening Iran if it failed to make a deal to end a war that had stretched far longer than Mr. Trump anticipated, and justifying his claims on Venezuelan oil reserves after American forces deposed its leader.
Mr. Trump has long made clear that he has little use for the United Nations, one of the post-World War II institutions that he has dismissed as outdated and ineffective. But his speech at the annual opening of the General Assembly amounted to a pure American rejection of the concept behind the U.N.’s founding in 1945: to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
The global body’s charter, written largely by the United States, expressly prohibited members from threatening or using force against a country’s territorial integrity unless acting in self-defense, or with the U.N.’s authorization.
On Iran, Mr. Trump made it clear that he, and he alone, would decide whether to strike a deal with Tehran’s leaders or “annihilate the Islamic republic.”
It may have been largely a negotiating tactic. A little later in the morning, American officials quietly met with Iranians who were also in New York for the opening session, though it was unclear whether any progress was made or whether Mr. Trump himself would meet top Iranian officials.
But his threats were not limited to the war that has consumed his presidency for months since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran. He promised that Cuba’s government would fall, one way or the other. And if his “to the victor belong the spoils” line seemed drawn from the days of American gunboat diplomacy more than a century ago, that did not seem to bother the president. Mr. Trump has made it clear that he is willing to use the power of the U.S. military not only for the benefit of securing critical resources, like Venezuela’s huge oil reserves, but also to turn a profit.
Mr. Trump’s comments came at a moment when he appeared more isolated than ever from traditional allies, and when Americans were telling pollsters they overwhelmingly disapproved of his foreign policy. But none of that seemed to lead Mr. Trump to back away from the fiery threats that he has combined with military action in his second term.
Even by Mr. Trump’s standards, the speech seemed to disregard the foundational purpose of the U.N., an institution he has long derided as ineffective and unsuited to deal with the contemporary issues of the world.
It echoed a social media post earlier this year in which he threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization. But it was startling to hear such explicit threats from the podium of the United Nations. That seemed to be the president’s intent, as he celebrated taking actions that past presidents and the U.N. itself shied away from.
“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world?” Mr. Trump asked, before raising a far different prospect, with no apparent effort to differentiate between the country’s leadership and military and its civilians. “Or do I annihilate the Islamic republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?”
“Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Mr. Trump said from the General Assembly podium, where world leaders typically present themselves as champions of peace. He made no mention of his frustrations that a war he boasted would last only days or weeks had now stretched to just shy of seven months.
His speech, in short, seemed to embrace the core doctrine of his second term: that the United States would use a combination of overwhelming military and economic power to suit its own ends — and to bolster the national economy — rather than work through the painful, often slow diplomacy of deal-making and economic coercion. But he made no acknowledgment of the role of international bodies like the U.N., and seemed to suggest that they should simply line up behind the United States.
Later in the speech, he changed course, ticking off the list of conflicts he claimed he personally resolved, boasting that he saved millions of lives by intervening to prevent a war between Pakistan and India. And shortly after Mr. Trump threatened Iran with annihilation, his own aides met for three hours with Iranian officials. It was unclear what, if anything, was accomplished.
This celebration of power over principle built upon a belief that Mr. Trump talked about in an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, when he dismissed international law as a constraint on his actions. The only limit on his power, he said, was “my own morality, my own mind — it’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Venezuela was perhaps the most conspicuous example. He celebrated the swiftness with which Special Operations forces swept into Caracas, seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their bed, and delivered them to a detention center in Brooklyn, just a few miles from where Mr. Trump spoke.
Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, criticized Mr. Trump for promoting himself as both a president of peace and one that could wipe out a nation.
“Trump never misses a chance to humiliate himself in front of the world,” Mr. Kim said in a post on social media. “His war in Iran is a complete failure, and the American people are paying the price.”
And from the podium, other world leaders criticized Mr. Trump without mentioning his name. President Emmanuel Macron of France, a nation allied with the United States since the American Revolution, denounced a global retreat to the “law of the jungle.” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, the first world leader to speak on Tuesday, said that democracy was “once again under threat” and — without mentioning the U.S. operation against Mr. Maduro — insisted that the Venezuelan people had the right to self-determination. Mr. Trump has insisted that it is not the right time for an open election in the country.
Recent polling shows Americans are not on board with Mr. Trump’s approach. A CNN poll conducted last week showed that 29 percent of American adults approved of Mr. Trump’s handling of foreign affairs; 71 percent said they disapproved — reaching or exceeding levels of disapproval President George W. Bush faced in 2006, when the Iraq war was unraveling.
But to Mr. Trump, actions like seizing Venezuela’s leader and making claims on its oil were clear victories. “It was a war, but it’s perhaps the biggest deal ever made,” he said. “If necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States.”
Mr. Trump also described Cuba as a “failed state” that would soon fall. “We’ll not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep,” Mr. Trump said, prompting Cuban officials to walk out of the General Assembly.
“The US government proves incapable of accepting that #Cuba is, and has the right to be, a fully independent and sovereign country,” Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Cuba’s foreign minister, later said on social media. “Cuba is not a threat to the US nor to any country.”
Mr. Trump also celebrated his administration’s recent deal on Greenland. Earlier this year he threatened a total takeover of the huge island, which is believed to have large underground reserves of rare-earth minerals used for making batteries, electric vehicles and other high-tech products.
Yet the prospect of the U.S. seizing a semiautonomous territory spurred intense backlash from European leaders and nearly upended the Western alliance.
After reaching a deal with Denmark and Greenland over the territory, Mr. Trump told the gathered crowd he planned to build two new military bases on Greenland — something the United States could have done in previous decades under an existing treaty.
Mr. Trump’s speech was also a pivot from his past remarks to the U.N., which were spent insulting world leaders and scolding them on their own policies. “Your countries are going to hell,” Mr. Trump said from the podium last year.
But now faced with a war in Iran with little sign of ending soon that has fueled discontent among his own supporters in the United States, Mr. Trump shifted from lecturing the international body to effectively selling them on his own actions — which have proved to be deeply unpopular with many Americans and allies overseas.
“I hope the Europeans realize that Iran’s goal was to complete their mad dash to a nuclear bomb,” Mr. Trump said in what amounted to a response to some of the world leaders that had criticized the war in Iran. “If they had succeeded, that wicked regime would have been free to spread terror and death forever.”
The declaration that Iran was building missiles that could reach Europe didn’t square with his earlier boasting of obliterating Iran’s nuclear program.
Mr. Trump claimed credit for ending the war in Gaza, even as humanitarian conditions there remain dire and a plan for disarming Hamas and withdrawing Israeli troops has been stalled for months.
Mr. Trump also attacked the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel over the war in Gaza, as a “rogue institution.”
The I.C.C. was established in a 1998 treaty to investigate and try people for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. The court cannot enforce its rulings and relies on its member states to detain people who are accused of crimes.
Mr. Trump called on all members of the International Criminal Court to resign immediately.
While the U.N. has said climate change is an existential threat and propelled the issue of artificial intelligence to the top of its agenda, Mr. Trump once again took a different approach. Climate change was nothing more than a “hoax,” Mr. Trump said.
And the United States rejected “any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control” artificial intelligence.
Mr. Trump did have one suggested change to the way the world approached A.I., one that made use of his penchant for branding.
“From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term ‘super’ as opposed to ‘artificial,’” Mr. Trump said. “So it’s super intelligence.”
Mr. Trump then appealed for the leaders to refer to the rising technology as “S.I.” Whether they did, he said, would be a test of influence on the world stage — a question that has appeared to be consistently on the mind of the president.
“Let’s see if I have any power,” Mr. Trump said. “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. We’re going to find out pretty soon.”
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2) Trump Officials May Undo Nursing Home Mandates for Reporting Covid
The agency led by Dr. Mehmet Oz is proposing an end to weekly tracking of respiratory infections at the facilities where thousands of elderly residents died in the pandemic.
By Christopher Rowland and Carolyn Y. Johnson, Sept. 23, 2026
A nursing home in Worthington, Pa. During the peak years of the Covid pandemic, more than 200,000 nursing home residents and staff died after being infected by the disease. Kristian Thacker for The New York Times
Nursing homes would no longer be required to report each week how many residents were stricken by Covid and other respiratory diseases, under a Trump administration plan to repeal a key public health response to thousands of pandemic deaths.
A draft summary of the proposed rule obtained by The New York Times outlines how the administration agrees with the industry’s objections to weekly reporting of viral caseloads, calling it burdensome. In its waning days, the Biden administration made Covid reporting rules permanent, adding influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.) to the list of threats that facilities also must track and record. The policy took effect in January 2025.
Advocates for nursing home residents reacted with dismay to the proposed rollback. Elderly, frail residents are especially vulnerable to infections, and they live in close quarters, where viruses can spread rapidly.
“That’s crazy,” said Sam Brooks, director of public policy at the nonprofit National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “We know, if anything, that respiratory disease has a disproportionate and deadly impact on nursing home residents.”
He said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or C.M.S., which regulates nursing homes, would be blinding itself to an important method for tracking infection control and pinpointing problems.
The administration has cut back on data updates at other agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where a study published this year found that databases related to vaccine and respiratory diseases had gone dormant.
Nursing home industry representatives declined to comment on specifics, because the changes have not been announced. They contend infection reporting consumes too much staff time and is duplicative, because infection data is reported to the federal government and states in other ways.
C.M.S., which drafted the plan, declined to discuss the proposal or disclose when it would be made public.
During the peak years of the pandemic, from early 2020 through early 2022, more than 200,000 nursing home residents and staff members died after being infected by coronavirus, according to KFF, an independent health policy organization, which cited C.D.C. data.
The high death toll has been attributed in part to a lack of preparedness and weak infection controls. The Government Accountability Office said in 2020 that inspectors had cited 82 percent of nursing homes for infection control deficiencies from 2013 to 2017, and that half of those were found to be repeat violators.
In the internal document obtained by The Times, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of C.M.S., recommended to his boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that the agency pursue steps to undo the mandate.
“The agency does not comment on purported internal or pre-decisional deliberative materials,” a C.M.S. a spokesman said in an email. He said the agency evaluated regulations to ensure they “allow providers to focus time and resources on delivering care rather than unnecessary administrative burden.”
The draft memo from Dr. Oz to Mr. Kennedy said C.M.S. would reserve the power to reinstate weekly reporting if another public health emergency occurred.
The plan also would end a requirement that nursing home staffs be educated about Covid vaccines and offered the shots. Groups representing residents called the move unwise, pointing out that frontline caregivers were a key pathway for the coronavirus to enter nursing homes during the height of the pandemic. Covid vaccine rates among staff members in recent years have been below 10 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.
The administration plan would continue to mandate that facilities offer the Covid vaccine to residents.
The nursing home industry has already achieved its biggest goal of President Trump’s second term: After a heavy lobbying blitz, the administration last year scrapped Biden-era minimum staffing rules that were intended to improve resident care.
Biden officials, in pushing the staff minimums, had cited Covid deaths along with decades of concerns about poor care, including deaths from bedsores, falls and medication errors. But the Trump administration said too many nursing homes, especially in rural areas, could not find enough staff to satisfy the requirements. Many workers who care for the elderly are typically paid less than janitors and retail employees, and the work can be grueling.
With the proposed change on infection reporting, the administration anticipates favorable reaction from the industry, according to the draft memo.
Two main nursing home lobbying groups — the American Health Care Association and LeadingAge — reiterated their opposition to weekly respiratory infection reporting, saying that other government programs track Covid infections and that respiratory illnesses are reported to many local health departments.
“This outdated reporting requirement is only adding hours of unnecessary administrative tasks to caregivers each week” said Holly Harmon, the American Health Care Association’s senior vice president of quality, regulatory and clinical affairs. “It’s time to streamline public health reporting and put patients over paperwork.”
But industry critics contend that operators are failing to heed the lessons of the pandemic. With low staffing levels and high turnover, infection control efforts are most likely in line with the prepandemic patterns flagged by the G.A.O., said Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy.
“I don’t think there is any reason to believe they have beefed up what they are supposed to be doing,” Ms. Edelman said.
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3) The Democrats’ Policy on Palestine Is Detached From Reality
By Peter Beinart, Sept. 23, 2026
Mr. Beinart is a contributing Opinion writer.
Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times
The debate inside the Democratic Party over Israel has changed more in the last two years than in the previous 30. In 2024, the party platform boasted that Joe Biden had given the Jewish state $14 billion in military aid. These days, among the Democrats jockeying for the 2028 presidential nomination, the prospect of eliminating all military aid appears likely to be a centrist position. Progressives will probably call for stopping most arms sales as well.
As dizzying as this transformation has been, something essential is still missing. While Democrats are rethinking their approach to Israel, they haven’t yet rethought their approach to the Palestinians.
As the party looks toward the midterms and beyond, Democrats should do more than pledge to stop subsidizing Israel’s crimes. They must also stop supporting Palestinian authoritarianism — whether practiced by Hamas or by Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah — and champion the right of Palestinians to choose their own leaders.
Today, unfortunately, top Democrats often ignore that right. In a speech at Tel Aviv University this summer endorsing American pressure to create a Palestinian state, the likely presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel advised Arab countries to be “the adult in the room with the Palestinian leadership” and “stand up a governing authority capable of accepting the historic Jewish connection to this land.” He noted that “corrupt Palestinian leadership has never lived up to the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations for sovereignty and self-determination” but said nothing about the need for Palestinian people to choose their own leaders.
This absence made Mr. Emanuel’s advice both patronizing and detached from reality. No Palestinian leader can legitimately commit his people to a vision for peace — be it two states, one state with equality for all or something in between — absent a mandate from Palestinians themselves.
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That mandate requires allowing Palestinians to vote. Under pressure from the European Union and the United States, Mr. Abbas has promised to hold elections for the Palestinian Authority’s Parliament in November, and for its presidency early next year. Unless Washington commits to fully supporting the effort, however, Israel may throw up roadblocks, which Mr. Abbas could use as an excuse to cancel the vote.
American presidents of both parties have been enabling Mr. Abbas’s dictatorial tendencies for the past 20 years. In 2006, the last time Palestinians held elections for the Parliament of the Palestinian Authority, which encompasses the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, Hamas won a majority of the seats. The Bush administration responded by demanding that Hamas endorse a series of conditions set by international interlocutors and accepted by its rivals in Fatah as part of the Oslo Accords — which included forswearing violence and recognizing Israel.
During negotiations brokered by Saudi Arabia, Hamas still refused to recognize Israel but agreed to “respect” those commitments. That wasn’t enough for Washington. So, the United States reportedly tried to overturn the election results by force. It developed a plan that called for allies in the region to funnel weapons to Fatah fighters in the hopes that they would oust Hamas from its stronghold in Gaza. (The Bush administration denied this). The plan backfired and the Islamist group seized control of the Strip.
Mr. Abbas then declared a state of emergency. This allowed him to suspend Parliament, eventually seize control of the judiciary and rule as an autocrat. He’s been doing so ever since, and has transformed not only the Authority, but also the Palestine Liberation Organization — which historically included all Palestinian parties — into his personal fief.
This authoritarianism, argues Omar H. Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, has left Palestinians “saddled with a weak yet highly repressive leadership, buoyed by external support” but “unresponsive to its constituents.” Mr. Abbas’s despotic rule has clearly proved convenient for the United States and Israel, since a democratically elected Palestinian leader would be less likely to cooperate with the Israeli military while Palestinian territory remains occupied. When Mr. Abbas flirted with holding elections in 2021, the Biden administration did not publicly endorse the idea. A State Department spokesman at the time said the decision to hold elections was a “matter for the Palestinian people and for the Palestinian leadership to determine,” thus implying that elections were a prerogative of Mr. Abbas. Mr. Abbas claimed that Israel was stonewalling efforts to allow Palestinians to cast ballots in East Jerusalem and used that as a justification to cancel the vote.
Democrats must learn from Mr. Biden’s mistake and support Palestinian elections now. But presidential elections will be hollow if the candidate most likely to win them remains in jail. According to a poll conducted in August by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Mr. Abbas’s popularity is dwarfed by that of Marwan Barghouti, a longtime Fatah activist who, if elections were held freely, would receive more than twice as many votes as the current leader of Hamas, Khalil al-Hayya, and almost four times as many as Mr. Abbas.
Mr. Barghouti has been in prison for more than two decades. As a Fatah leader in the West Bank, he came to be seen by many Israelis as a key planner of the second intifada, which killed more than 1,000 Israelis. He was indicted in 2002 on charges of masterminding attacks that killed 26 people; he was ultimately convicted in the murder of five and for membership in a terrorist organization. Mr. Barghouti denied the legitimacy of the proceedings, and the ruling was criticized for containing “numerous breaches of international law” by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the global organization of national parliaments.
The same year he went to prison, Mr. Barghouti said that while he had “the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom,” he has also sought “peaceful coexistence between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine.” His son, Arab Barghouti, told A.F.P. in April that despite being repeatedly tortured by his Israeli captors, his father still supports a Palestinian and Israeli state living alongside each other in peace.
Democrats should make Mr. Barghouti’s release a central part of their agenda in the run-up to 2028. They should also go further and call for allowing Palestinians to choose who runs in their elections, even though that probably means letting Hamas compete, either on its own or as part of a broader coalition. That prospect would outrage Israel’s supporters, and prove unpopular among many Americans. But no Palestinian election can be credible if the United States and other outside powers dictate who can take part. And the Fatah dominated P.L.O. can never regain its position as the representative of all Palestinian people if Hamas — one of the two largest Palestinian parties — remains outside of it.
This call will not be easy for many Democrats to make. Hamas has committed horrifying atrocities against Israeli civilians, has brutally repressed dissent in Gaza and has not recognized Israel. Democrats should not excuse Hamas’s crimes. But they should, finally, treat Israelis and Palestinians the same way. In both societies, political leaders have overseen grave violations of human rights and rejected the concept of two states. America’s principle should be this: The United States will not tell Israelis or Palestinians how to vote. And it will impose sanctions on anyone, Israeli or Palestinian, who violates international law.
Decades ago, the Palestinian American critic and activist Edward Said wrote an essay titled “Permission to Narrate” about the challenges Palestinians faced in being heard. Democrats need to support Palestinians’ right to do so where it matters most: at the ballot box.
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4) The Former Fracking Executive Selling Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ Vision
Energy Secretary Chris Wright is pitching a future of fossil fuel abundance. It’s not always an easy sell while war drags on and oil prices surge.
By Brad Plumer, Sept. 23, 2026
Brad Plumer reported this story from Washington and Houston.
Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary, speaking before the G20 Ministerial Meeting on Energy Abundance in Houston last week. Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
With oil and gasoline prices spiking amid President Trump’s war with Iran, it was an awkward moment for optimism about the world’s energy situation.
But Energy Secretary Chris Wright brought a sunny message to Houston last week at a gathering of energy ministers from the G20 nations. The Trump administration, he said, was ushering in an era of energy abundance by expanding oil and gas supplies in places like Alaska and Venezuela.
That pitch was often overshadowed by the effects of the conflict in the Middle East. Between lauding oil and gas deals, Mr. Wright fielded questions about a damaged Saudi oil pipeline and sparred on social media with Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, over surging gasoline costs.
Mr. Wright acknowledged some tension, though he insisted it was temporary.
“Everyone’s frustrated with higher energy prices,” he said of the mood at the meeting. “But I’ve not met one person who’s comfortable with a nuclear-armed Iran. So everyone gets what we’re doing and this is a critically important mission. It creates dislocations in the short term. But the only answer to short-term dislocations is the energy abundance agenda.”
The situation was familiar for Mr. Wright, 61, one of the most forceful defenders of Mr. Trump’s vision of “energy dominance.”
Over the past two years, the administration has dismantled efforts to tackle climate change and ended support for wind and solar power. Instead, officials have sought to expand the use of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy — sources they see as more reliable. The aim, they say, is to reduce consumer prices, increase U.S. fuel exports, and provide enough electricity to win the artificial intelligence race against China.
Mr. Wright, a former fracking executive, has been out front in articulating that shift.
Whereas Mr. Trump speaks bluntly about energy — chanting “drill, baby, drill,” calling wind turbines ugly, or claiming that global warming is a hoax — Mr. Wright gives his arguments an intellectual gloss.
He cites figures on how solar panels underperform during winter storms. Or he argues that global warming is not as big a problem as energy poverty, which he says can only be alleviated with more oil, gas and coal, even if that means more planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.
Administration allies say that has made Mr. Wright invaluable.
“He has been one of the most consequential picks for energy secretary I’ve seen,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a research group that promotes fossil fuels. “He’s very experienced, brings a lot of substance, and he articulates President Trump’s vision clearly.”
Critics say Mr. Wright’s approach ignores the real risks of climate change and dismisses two of the world’s fastest-growing power sources, wind and solar. They also point to rising energy costs — diesel prices have hit record highs and electricity rates are still increasing faster than inflation — as evidence that the administration’s policies aren’t working.
During his Senate confirmation hearing last year, Mr. Wright appeared to reassure lawmakers that he supported all energy sources, including renewables. He cited his graduate work on solar power and called climate change a “global challenge that we need to solve.”
But since taking office, he has been more combative, deriding wind and solar power as a “parasite” on the grid, blasting Democratic-led states for environmental policies that have shut down coal and gas plants, and accusing Europe of being in thrall to a “climate cult” that is crippling economic growth.
The Energy Department infuriated Democrats in Congress last October by canceling nearly $8 billion in Biden-era clean energy grants located almost entirely in states that didn’t vote for Mr. Trump. Asked about the decision at a June congressional hearing, Mr. Wright said political considerations had nothing to do with the decisions.
But in court filings in July, administration officials conceded that the cancellations were targeted in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.
Energy Department officials have said that they recommended that grants be canceled in red and blue states alike but that the decisions on which terminations to announce were made by the White House.
Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico was one of eight Democrats who voted to confirm Mr. Wright last year but has since become a vocal critic.
“Of all the Trump nominees, I am particularly disappointed in his conduct,” Mr. Heinrich said. “He obviously had an oil and gas history, but he also had a clean energy history. And he just threw all of that away to be a partisan mouthpiece.”
In response, Ben Dietderich, an Energy Department spokesman, said in a statement: “Secretary Wright doesn’t have preferred energy sources. He just believes in being honest about math and energy security. Unfortunately, many in the climate lobby don’t like that. The Department is proud to have ended energy subtraction policies that lead to higher prices, less energy security and human impoverishment.”
Mr. Wright first gained prominence as the founder of Liberty Energy, a Denver-based oil-field services company that was heavily involved in the fracking boom.
Even among oil and gas executives, Mr. Wright stood out as an evangelist for fossil fuels. In 2021, as world leaders and even many oil companies were pledging to slash emissions, Mr. Wright published a 180-page report criticizing what he saw as a “myopic focus on climate change.”
He argued that people in developing countries still lacked enough energy to enjoy a decent standard of living and that renewables couldn’t replace oil, gas and coal to provide that power.
“At the height of this era when everyone was saying energy policy should just be about climate, Chris Wright was one of the few C.E.O.s that ran oil and gas firms who clearly and vocally spoke out,” said Arjun Murti, a partner at the energy research firm Veriten.
Mr. Wright also had a flair for the dramatic. He once drank fracking fluid on video to show it was safe. In 2021, he rented billboards around Denver to heckle The North Face after the company declined to work with an oil firm.
He landed appearances on Fox News and won the job of energy secretary on the recommendation of Harold Hamm, a fellow fracking pioneer and major donor to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Wright quickly transformed the department. Out were programs to develop novel technologies to fight climate change, like green hydrogen or low-emissions steel. Instead, federal funds went to help utilities finance gas plants, nuclear reactors and transmission lines or upgrade older coal plants, which officials say are essential for meeting rising electricity demand.
Mr. Wright also lifted a Biden-era pause on expanding exports of liquefied natural gas, now the nation’s fastest-growing export, and has pressured Europe to ease rules on methane, a potent greenhouse gas, saying they could hurt U.S. exports.
“He brought a whole new attitude to the agency,” said Scott Segal, an energy lobbyist at Bracewell. “It’s all about how do we produce enough energy to support A.I. and economic growth.”
Some changes have attracted bipartisan support, such as Mr. Wright’s promotion of nuclear and geothermal energy, which don’t produce planet-warming emissions. His agency has dangled billions of dollars in loans to kick-start the largest expansion of nuclear power in a generation, while a program to help start-ups develop small reactors has moved faster than many expected.
Other moves have been more contentious.
To rescue the declining coal industry, an obsession of Mr. Trump’s, the Energy Department used emergency powers to keep plants running past their scheduled retirement dates, which could cost ratepayers billions. (This month, a federal judge struck down one such order, saying the agency had overstepped its authority.)
Last year, Mr. Wright picked five skeptics of mainstream climate science to write a report arguing that concerns about global warming were overblown. That report prompted furious pushback from hundreds of scientists, who denounced its findings as riddled with errors. A federal judge later ruled that Mr. Wright had acted unlawfully by secretly convening the authors.
Mr. Wright, who often criticizes wind and solar for not running at all hours, has cut renewable energy programs and renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory as the National Laboratory of the Rockies. While experts agree that the variability of wind and solar poses real challenges, many say it goes too far to call the sources “worthless.” Texas gets roughly one-third of its power from renewables and has kept costs low.
“It’s borderline petty how anti-renewable this Energy Department is,” said Samantha Gross, a director at the Brookings Institution. “Especially since we’re still building more renewables, particularly solar, than any other form of energy in the U.S. right now.”
Roughly 2,700 staff members have left the agency, which analysts and former employees said could make it difficult to carry out its mission.
Mr. Wright’s supporters say he has helped steer the country away from what they saw as the Biden administration’s unrealistic plans to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.
Some say the debate is shifting in his direction. Many states and businesses are backing off ambitious climate targets, and Democrats are less vocal nowadays about climate change. Tech companies are using more natural gas to meet exploding demand for data centers. The International Energy Agency, after some browbeating by Mr. Wright, is revising up its projections for how long fossil fuels will stick around.
“There’s been a real shift in how investors and others now talk about energy,” said Travis Fisher, a director of energy and environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute who worked with Mr. Wright to organize the agency’s climate report. “Climate has become a lot less salient.”
The administration’s strategy faces its biggest test yet with the Iran war. While The Times reported that Mr. Wright was excluded from the decision to launch the war, he has been busy managing the energy fallout. He often appears on television to discuss U.S. military escorts of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. And he is quick to counter that Democratic-led states face high energy costs because of decisions to close refineries or oppose pipelines.
In the short term, the war and resulting energy shortages have benefited many U.S. suppliers, which are exporting more oil and gas than ever before. But in the long term, some experts and companies worry the chaos could hurt the market for fossil fuels, as countries seek to reduce reliance on energy imports.
Mr. Wright, for his part, says fossil fuels are too useful to recede anytime soon.
“We will never, ever come remotely close to running out of hydrocarbons, which means you need better technology and innovations to eventually eat into their market share,” Mr. Wright said at a Cato event in May.
He said he was excited about recent breakthroughs in areas like fusion. But, he added, “the biggest innovations the rest of my lifetime in energy are almost certainly going to be in oil, gas, and coal, because they are what matter.”
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5) Kennedy Keeps Finding New Ways to Undermine Trust in Vaccines
By Jessica Grose, Opinion Writer, Sept. 23, 2026
Eleanor Davis
According to the state of Pennsylvania, four “total confirmed measles-associated deaths” have resulted from an ongoing outbreak of the incredibly infectious disease. These are the first deaths from measles in the state in 35 years. Measles has spread to nearly 800 Pennsylvanians this year, making the state the epicenter of the national outbreak. Ninety-nine percent of those infected in the state are unvaccinated, as were all four of the deceased.
There have been over 3,400 documented cases of measles and over 300 hospitalizations across the country since the beginning of 2026. The numbers are more than in 2025, which was a banner year for measles. But instead of trying to quell the spread, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump and other vaccine-skeptical ideologues in charge of our federal public health system have sought to distance the four Pennsylvania deaths from measles. As of Tuesday afternoon, the official national death count from the disease was zero.
In response to a news conference in August by Gov. Josh Shapiro about the first two deaths, Kennedy posted a bizarre and paranoid screed on X, where he claimed that the governor’s “performance was a replay of the Democrats’ COVID playbook: fearmongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain.”
I’m not quite sure what if anything a politician gains from announcing two tragic and likely preventable deaths. But there have been two more deaths since then. On Sept. 16, Pennsylvania’s health secretary, Dr. Debra L. Bogen, wrote to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Erica Schwartz, to express her displeasure. “The C.D.C.’s choice not to publicly recognize the deaths undermines our response,” Bogen said.
Quibbling with state health officials is a novel tactic in the Trump administration’s anti-vaccine arsenal. Perhaps realizing that it’s difficult to fully block Americans from attaining the basic set of childhood vaccines, and that those vaccines remain popular, the administration has settled on partisan attacks, general chaos and conflicting messaging to continue undermining the public’s trust in one of the most effective disease-preventing tools we have.
Dr. Debra Houry and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, two former C.D.C. officials, explained in an opinion piece for Stat News in early September that when there were measles-related deaths in Texas in 2025, there was no such pushback from the federal government. Texas determined that these deaths were from measles, and the C.D.C. added them to its dashboard, even though at the time, Kennedy underplayed the risks of the virus. “It is unclear what was different other than the state being ‘blue’ and its governor’s criticism of the administration,” wrote Houry and Daskalakis, who quit their C.D.C. jobs last year in protest over political interference.
What appears to be a new strategy to undercount deaths comes after Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations about vaccines, last year. He replaced some of those experts with his vaccine-skeptical cronies. Kennedy continues to make the same false or misleading statements about the risks of common childhood vaccines that he has been making for decades.
Last week, Kennedy was the keynote speaker at the anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defense conference in Washington. He founded the organization, and though he spoke for over an hour, he did not mention the current measles outbreak once. According to The Washington Post, the speaker who preceded Kennedy, the MAHA Institute president, Mark Gorton, said he wanted to end the government’s vaccine program. He added, “The time has come to stop caveating every introduction with, ‘I’m not an anti-vaxxer,’ but … vaccines are a nightmare.”
Trump issued an executive order last month recommending that the single measles, mumps and rubella vaccine be split into three separate shots, even though there is no evidence that the combined shot is riskier, and no other country offers the shots separately anymore. The executive order also pared the recommended list of diseases to vaccinate against down from 17 to 11, though it does not cite new evidence to explain this suggestion.
When he signed the executive order, Trump claimed, incorrectly, that the combined MMR shot was “quite lethal.” Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and an actual doctor, had to go on “Face the Nation” to clean up after Trump’s mess. “The MMR vaccine is not a lethal vaccine, and it is offered in other countries,” Oz said. The White House is reportedly now working on an executive order that would give the president even more control over scientific grant funding at the National Institutes of Health, which is a terrifying prospect.
If we had a normal federal government, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be maximally cooperating with states and laying the groundwork to prevent future outbreaks. Accurate reporting of deaths is one way to properly sound the alarm about the consequences of not being vaccinated.
That’s what happened in the aftermath of the last major measles outbreak in Pennsylvania, in 1990. Dr. William Roper, who was head of the C.D.C. from 1990 to 1993, wrote in 2007 about his tenure at the agency.
He described the 1993 passage of the Vaccines for Children program, which provided free vaccines to uninsured and underinsured children, as a triumph. He strongly endorsed vaccination, writing that “the lifesaving and health-preserving impact of immunizations exceeds almost all other public health interventions.” Now, the C.D.C. appears to be slow-rolling the delivery of the latest Covid-19 vaccine to the states, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
It is perhaps cliché to point out how abnormal, how tragically dysfunctional Trump’s leadership is. This has been clear for almost a decade now, and more and more Americans are finally waking up to it; Trump’s approval ratings are at a record low. But somehow, Kennedy’s favorability rating is still above water.
According to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll of 2,100 registered voters from late August, 43 percent of voters have a net favorable view of Kennedy and 39 percent have a net unfavorable view — which makes him more popular than nearly any other politician the poll asked about. Kennedy remains somewhat popular because he’s been so successful at communicating his misinformation on social media over the years. The original 2024 bargain he made in endorsing Trump has paid off handsomely with a cabinet position, and the president’s ongoing support for Kennedy’s bad science means right-wing media have readily taken up the anti-vaccine cause.
The spread of disease will be a lasting stain, even after both of these men are out of office.
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6) New Matrix, Meet the Old Matrix
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, Sept. 23, 2026
“The Hand of Man,” 1902. Alfred Stieglitz, via the J. Paul Getty Museum
At a fundamental level, artificial intelligence leaders, evangelists and their allies want you to believe that their novel technology demands a novel political approach.
Calls for self-regulation from the chief executives of Anthropic, OpenAI and other such companies rest on the idea that the A.I. labs and their funders are the only people equipped to handle and regulate this potentially dangerous technology. This is why, for example, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, recently called for antitrust waivers to allow “industrywide coordination” around A.I.
As my colleague Tressie McMillan Cottom observed in a recent column, the ostentatious panic around the prospect of superintelligent A.I. seems to cash out, politically, in a call to abdicate democratic authority to the companies in question. “They want us to panic, instead of seriously deliberating at the polls, in community meetings and in Congress,” she writes. “Panic is chaos without direction, affect set free from the discipline of curiosity, debate and accountability.”
Even potential regulation is framed as a collaboration between government and the A.I. companies rather than a relationship of oversight and control. It is noteworthy, too, that as framed by these leaders, the conversation around A.I. safety is more about science-fictional scenarios and future apocalypses — rooted in a set of questionable assumptions about the nature of intelligence, among other things — than it is about more immediate concerns like the impact of A.I. on jobs, mental health and the environment.
But novel technologies do not actually require novel political solutions, especially when those technologies either evoke, replicate or recapitulate age-old problems of political and economic life.
There is, in fact, an American tradition of fighting to bring collective and democratic authority to bear on disruptive technologies — of using politics to try to shape and direct the impact of major economic transformations.
The United States of the late 19th century was an unimaginably fast-moving society in which new technologies enabled a theretofore unknown degree of connection between peoples. The railroad stood, in particular, as the innovation that disrupted the very fabric of American life.
In its vast scale and tremendous ability to produce wealth and power, the railroad was, the diplomat and historian Charles Francis Adams Jr. wrote in the late 1860s, “an incalculable force practically let loose suddenly upon mankind; exercising all sorts of influences, social, moral, and political; precipitating upon us novel problems which demand immediate solution; banishing the old before the new is half-matured to replace it.” It might be, he concluded, “the most tremendous and far-reaching engine of social change which has ever either blessed or cursed mankind.”
Railroads, which were wrestled and consolidated by industrial titans such as J.P. Morgan into national corporations of mammoth proportions beginning in the 1880s and 1890s, amassed enormous profits, most of which flowed to small cadres of creators and financiers at the top. As bureaucracies, railroads rivaled the federal government in size; as political entities, they rivaled most state governments in power. They could extract immense subsidies and shape the direction of economic development across entire regions. They incurred large debts, produced huge losses and grew to such size that when one or more collapsed, they took the whole economy with them.
Railroads were also politically powerful. “Their influence,” wrote William Larrabee, a former Republican governor of Iowa, in 1893, “extends from the township assessor’s office to the national capital, from the publisher of the small crossroads paper to the editorial staff of the metropolitan daily. It is felt in every caucus, in every nominating convention and at every election.”
The often oppressive power of the railroads invited hostility and critique from a broad cross-section of the American public. The novelist and critic William Dean Howells channeled these doubts in his 1888 reflection on the Burlington railroad strike of that year: “Shall the railroads fulfill their public obligations by agreement with their employees, or shall the government take possession of them and operate them? It is folly to talk of the withdrawal of capital and the consequent ruin of the country. The country belongs to the people and they are not going to let it be ruined.”
Still more dramatic was Ignatius Donnelly, a Minnesota populist who denounced the state of the nation and demanded reform in what would become the preamble to the platform of the People’s Party. “We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin,” he said, speaking at the 1892 St. Louis Industrial Conference. “Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the Congress and touches even the ermine of the bench.”
“The fruits of the toil of millions,” he continued, “are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes, unprecedented in the history of the world, while their possessors despise the republic and endanger liberty.”
For the Populists, railroads were not just any business — they were public highways that allowed for public communication and public transportation. They were financed by public loans and built on public lands. The solution, then, was public ownership and democratic control. “The time has come,” reads the 1892 platform of the People’s Party, “when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads.”
“Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity,” it continues, “the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people.”
A.I. is not equivalent to railroads. For one, rail travel met an immediate need whereas, outside of highly technical fields, artificial intelligence is still a product looking for a market.
But like the railroads, the infrastructure of A.I. marks the built landscape; like the railroads, the wealth of A.I. companies shapes the overall political arena; and like the railroads, the sheer economic power and force behind A.I. is in tension with democracy and self-government. If A.I. promises to transform the entire society, then the entire society is entitled to have a say, even a decisive one, over the use, development and direction of the technology. And crucially, this does not require new and novel forms of accountability. The old ways, even the old laws, still apply.
“Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their C.E.O.s for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted or defective products,” observed Lina Khan, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, on X. “We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no A.I. exemption from laws already on the books.”
Rather than allow self-regulation or build some bespoke new regime, we can treat the A.I. companies like the powerful businesses of the past. If the laws apply, they should be enforced, and if these companies break them, they should be punished accordingly. Above all, the public must demand a role and a say in the future of this technology. New technologies must serve our needs, not the other way around.
Writing on the eve of the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the economist Henry George asked from his perch in San Francisco whether the railroad would bring misery or prosperity to the people of California, and whether anyone could resist the consequences of a great new concentration of wealth and power. “Can we rely upon sufficient intelligence, independence and virtue among the many to resist the political effects of the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few?”
Well, can we?
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7) U.S. Citizen Injured After Mistakenly Detained by ICE Near Chicago
The Department of Homeland Security said agents released the man after he identified himself. He was taken to the hospital on Sunday with head and neck injuries, local police said.
By Billy Witz, Sept. 23, 2026
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and wounded a man in Austin, Texas, on Sunday. Joel Angel Juarez/Associated Press
A U.S. citizen in suburban Chicago was left with injuries to his head, neck and teeth after he was mistakenly detained by federal immigration agents over the weekend, according to local police.
The police in Evanston, Ill., who responded to the incident on Sunday morning, said in a news release that the federal agents later determined that the man was a citizen and left the scene after he identified himself.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Wednesday that the agents were with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The man, who has not been identified, was taken to a hospital on Sunday, the police said. It was unclear on Wednesday the extent of his injuries and whether he had been released.
The confrontation — the latest in a series of violent episodes involving immigration agents as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign — happened the same day that ICE agents shot an immigrant in Austin, Texas.
In Evanston, just north of Chicago, the police said a man who identified himself as a federal agent told them that five federal agents had been operating in the area. The agents were seeking a person who had addresses in the Chicago area and had a warrant for that person’s arrest, the police said.
The federal agent told the police that the detained man had resembled the person they were seeking and that he had initially refused to provide identification. After a police officer observed that the agent had blood on his hands, the agent said he was injured while trying to handcuff the man, the police said.
The agent told police officers that the federal agents left the area after protesters gathered because they feared they would be attacked, the Evanston police said.
D.H.S. said in its statement that the man had refused to cooperate, but that “ICE officers relied on their training and later left the scene without further incident once the individual finally identified himself.” The agency added that ICE agents offered the man assistance but that he refused.
A man who said he witnessed the incident told a local TV news station that the detained man appeared to have been struck in the head and that he had said he was a U.S. citizen during the encounter.
Evanston police officers said they interviewed the man at the hospital. They said he was an Evanston resident and that they photographed his injuries.
Sanctuary Evanston, a community organization that assists immigrants, condemned the federal agents’ actions.
“As many families prepared for the week ahead, federal agents enacted a scene that is becoming terrifyingly familiar,” the organization said in a statement. “Our normalcy was once again quickly shattered and replaced with chaos and panic.”
Madeleine Ngo contributed reporting.
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8) Trump’s Signature Tax Bill Is Starting to Bite Before the Election
The tax cuts in President Trump’s signature achievement were the Republicans’ answer to voters’ economic struggles, but its health care and food assistance cuts are taking a toll.
By Audra D. S. Burch, Sept. 23, 2026
A free grocery store in Newark could help people cut off from food assistance by the Republicans’ signature achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
In a midterm election largely shaped by struggles with affordability, Republicans are hanging many of their hopes on President Trump’s signature domestic policy law, the sprawling package of spending increases and tax breaks dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
But to partially offset its largess, which totals more than $3 trillion, the law also cut social services, including Medicaid, health care subsidies and food assistance, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. How voters view the law depends largely on which side of the federal ledger they find themselves — recipients of tax cuts or beneficiaries of programs that have been cut.
“This legislation touches everything,” said Ashley Whitlock, a substitute teacher from Belmont, N.C., who lost her SNAP benefits in the summer. “If it doesn’t impact you, it impacts someone you know.”
More than a year after passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, public opinion about its impact is entrenched mostly along partisan fault lines. But personal experience is beginning to come into play.
Some praise larger tax refunds and tax breaks that allowed them to take home more money earned from tips and overtime. But at a moment when the cost of living is rising faster than wages, many say the law has plunged Americans into financial uncertainty with the law’s cuts to programs that helped put food on the table and provide affordable health care.
“Can you imagine going from a monthly premium of zero to $850?” asked Dina Rose Friedman, 64, who lives in Irvington, N.Y., and lost her health insurance subsidy. “I remember freaking out.”
For more than a decade, Ms. Friedman has worked as an early childhood educator and Sunday school teacher. The work is gratifying, she said, but does not command a high salary. She felt lucky to have found affordable insurance through the New York State of Health exchange, established by the Affordable Care Act, which provided comprehensive care for her diabetes.
But in July, she joined the nearly half-million New Yorkers who lost their low-cost health coverage, known as the Essential Plan, after expanded federal subsidies signed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were allowed to lapse.
Now, Ms. Friedman’s health care coverage takes a significant bite of her combined salary of about $41,000. To her, the changes felt like an attack on people who earn lower wages.
Losing insurance and trying to replace it with an affordable plan “has been overwhelming,” said Ms. Friedman, who now relies on help from family and her savings to pay the monthly premium.
The Big Beautiful Bill was supposed to be the Republican answer to frustrations with the rising cost of living. When Mr. Trump signed it, he said it would “turbocharge our economy” and “bring back the American dream.”
Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, says it has.
“Tens of millions of Americans took advantage of at least one of President Trump’s signature tax provisions: no tax on tips, overtime or Social Security,” he said in a statement. The tax provisions, he added, were “fueling investment and private-sector job growth — creating opportunities for Americans to get off government coverage with meaningful employment that provides health benefits.”
Last year, about 29 million workers claimed the law’s deduction for overtime, while about 7.5 million claimed the tip deduction, according to the Treasury Department. More than 35 million seniors claimed an enhanced deduction, which was passed to come close to making good on Mr. Trump’s promise to end taxes on Social Security, and nearly 40 million took advantage of an expanded child care credit.
Jeff Zepp, 67, a small-business owner, said he benefited from the new senior deduction, which lowers taxable income by up to $6,000 for individuals 65 and older or up to $12,000 for married couples filing jointly. He paid about $1,200 less in federal taxes in 2025.
“I think the One Big Beautiful Bill is wonderful,” said Mr. Zepp, who lives in Kittredge, Colo., a mountain community near Denver. “If it weren’t for the law, we would have paid a lot more in taxes.”
The savings helped reaffirm his support of Mr. Trump and the Republicans, he said.
“The Democrats really only have one platform, and that is that the orange man is bad and that the One Big Beautiful Bill was cruel,” Mr. Zepp said.
The legislation also made significant cuts, which Republicans said were necessary to combat government bloat, fraud and abuse.
About $1 trillion in federal spending was cut from Medicaid through 2034, and eligibility was tightened. New Medicaid mandates on work and volunteer requirements do not begin taking effect until January 2027, months after the election. Millions of people will eventually have to prove they meet the work, school or volunteer requirements to remain eligible.
About five million people in the country have already lost SNAP benefits — the government’s primary anti-hunger tool — because of tighter requirements enacted in the legislation, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which analyzed U.S. Department of Agriculture and state data.
One retiree in Ohio, who spoke on condition of anonymity to not bring attention to her situation, described SNAP benefits as a “lifeline.” Her benefits dropped to $44 from $250 in March.
Last year, Matti Puistolahti, a student at College of Lake County in suburban Chicago, relied on about $200 in monthly SNAP benefits. In October, he received a letter stating that he was no longer eligible; he did not meet the work requirements.
“I was working as a tutor for 12 hours a week at $15 per hour, but that wasn’t enough hours,” Mr. Puistolahti, 27, said. “You would think they would give some kind of leniency as a student, but they don’t.”
“All of a sudden,” he continued, “I had to think about food a lot more and be more cautious about what I was buying.”
Eventually, Mr. Puistolahti received a federal grant and scholarships, which freed up more of his part-time pay for living expenses.
Out of work and struggling, Ms. Whitlock, 46, the North Carolina substitute teacher, lost about $300 in SNAP monthly benefits in July because she didn’t meet the new work requirements. She found a substitute teaching job at a high school in April and worked a short time before the end of the school year.
She did not return to work until August. Since the benefits were cut, Ms. Whitlock has scrambled to find food.
“I have been going to churches and food pantries to survive,” she said.
She said she hopes the benefits will be restored after she submits her 2026 paychecks to document her work hours.
But another possible hurdle looms next year — Medicaid work mandates.
“This has been so confusing, trying to figure out how the legislation works and to make sure everything is documented,” Ms. Whitlock said. “I believe it is going to hurt a lot of people.”
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9) Wildfire Converted Me From Tree-Hugger to Tree-Worshipper
By Robert Moor, Sept. 23, 2026
Mr. Moor is the author of “In Trees: An Exploration.” He lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia.
Karin Bubaš
Thirteen years ago, I traded a shoe-box apartment on the east side of Manhattan for a cabin in the woods on the west coast of Canada. Like so many would-be Thoreauvians before me, I moved here in part because I craved an escape from the city’s pollution and noise. In that time, however, I have begun to feel the city — which is to say, the whole tangled system of advanced technology, industrial agriculture and hypercapitalism — crowding in on this little forest from afar.
Each wildfire season, the sky outside my cabin now turns a shade of nicotine yellow I associate with Los Angeles in the 1970s. On the smokiest days, news headlines declare that our air quality is “worse than New Delhi’s,” which is to say, worse than in one of the most polluted cities on earth.
The inverse is true, as well. One hot day this July, as clouds of smoke oozed south from Ontario, I drove through New York City and saw the buildings washed in the same sallow light I’m used to seeing during wildfire season back home.
As the climate continues warming, this spooky entanglement between the urban and the sylvan will only deepen. In doing so, it has revealed to me what is normally hidden from view: We all live under the same vengeful sky.
A lifelong, bone-deep atheist, I didn’t used to view the earth’s climate as some kind of god to be feared and placated. In fact, I tended to look askance at people who used religious language to make sense of the essential chaos of natural disasters. Often, the places hardest hit by catastrophic droughts, floods and storms are rural communities in nations where the average person’s carbon footprint is minuscule, like Nepal and the Philippines. Here in Canada, Indigenous people make up just 5 percent of the overall population, but in 2025 they made up more than 50 percent of wildfire evacuees. Such is the nature of what the climatologist Friederike Otto calls “climate injustice.”
So when the smoke descends upon us each summer, I can’t find much wisdom in talk of “ecological sin” or “climate karma,” which presumes a tidy logic of personal comeuppance. In a time of climate chaos, the religious language I find myself drawn to is far older, wilder and more mysterious.
Every year, I undergo a kind of baptism by wildfire. This religious conversion always follows the same arc. First the smell of burned wood — sauna-scented, not altogether unpleasant — floats in on the breeze. Then the sky begins to mutate. In the warm, Egglestonian light cast down by an alien red sun, everything takes on an old-timey quality. Before long, the vibes are decidedly acrid: Smoke seeps into the house, leaving me headachy and short of breath. By Day 3, my husband and I find ourselves squabbling over nothing. By Day 5, my thoughts vacillate between apoplectic rage and apocalyptic despair.
After a week of yellow skies, I reach my breaking point. In these moments, I often fantasize about agreeing to give up one of my guilty pleasures — drinking expensive coffee, say — if only it would clear the air. I suspect this desperate pleading is similar to what my ancestors, living in the dark greenwoods and damp peatlands of Iron Age Britain, experienced in times of woe. The ancient Celts were known to discard precious objects into rivers and lakes to appease the gods. I don’t own a sword, but when the smoke gets really bad, I would gladly relinquish my espresso machine to be able to breathe freely again.
In these moments, I stop seeing the sky as a blank backdrop. I see it as a living thing, and an angry one. I see the spirit of the forest rising up, rageful and trickstery, to hurl down thunderbolts and sicken us while we sleep. Put differently, I feel myself drawn away from scientific atheism, and toward a creed that philosophers call “scientific animism.”
Animism, put very simply, is the belief that the natural world is inhabited by spirits who can either punish us or bestow favors. Scientific animism applies this ancient lens to modern science, showing how forces in the natural world (plants, rivers, entire planets) are self-organized, self-perpetuating and self-willed. In this view, nature is not an inert, passive backdrop to human progress. It actively responds to our actions — though not always in the way we would predict.
Take trees. Until fairly recently, I tended to view trees as ecologically angelic beings that purified our air, shaded our homes and helped stabilize our climate. But today, the halo around trees is rapidly dimming. One wide-ranging study found that Canada’s forests, thanks in large part to wildfires, officially became a net source of carbon emissions rather than a carbon sink around 2021. (Canada’s heavily logged “managed” forests” passed a similar tipping point all the way back in 2001.) This means that, in one of the largest and most forested nations on earth, trees are now releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they absorb.
A similar metamorphosis seems to be taking place in the Amazon and Congo rainforests. Moreover, the soot produced by wildfires can float up into the atmosphere and settle back down on snowy regions elsewhere, darkening them, which further contributes to global heating. It appears that a terrible feedback loop could be forming: Trees burn, warming the world; the world warms, and more trees burn.
Put another way, I worry our forests are now acting as amplifiers of our ecological actions; that if we continue to heat the climate, trees will only accelerate the warming.
This phenomenon jibes with the teachings of many Indigenous cultures, which hold that certain trees are inhabited by spirits who, if the tree is unceremoniously killed, will exact their revenge on you or your relatives. The kodama of Japan, the aos si of Ireland, the radande of Sweden, the yaksha of India, the jumbies of the Caribbean, the Iroko-Man of Nigeria, the kumaka akiri of the Amazon — all are variations on this theme.
The ancient Greeks and Romans held a similar belief regarding nymphs and dryads. In one of history’s most haunting ecological fables, Ovid recounts how the arrogant king Erysichthon, having felled a sacred oak inhabited by a dryad, is cursed by the gods with an eternal and all-consuming hunger. Trying to fill his bottomless belly, he eventually sells his daughter into slavery and then gnaws off his own limbs.
The Nuu-chah-nulth philosopher Umeek, rather than referring to nature “spirits,” sometimes substitutes the word “powers,” which is easier for us in urbanized cultures — who are raised with scant ecological knowledge, but a rich understanding of power relations — to grasp. For me, this tiny semantic shift is transformative. Looking at the natural world as a mosh pit of powers, I find it violently, gloriously reanimated. I understand that I am just one small frail human body, pushed around by larger powers, in a crowded universe.
The world’s forests are one such divine power — a god so vast it can be seen from outer space, a god so powerful it can scorch the planet, a god so wily that, even when it dies, it can turn to smoke and sneak into our homes, our lungs, up into the very vessels of our brains. Like all gods, the forest demands respect. It demands care. And, from time to time, it demands sacrifice.
Talk of “sacrifice” has fallen almost entirely out of the environmental discourse of late. After all, what good is personal sacrifice when A.I. data centers and crypto mining outfits are busy polluting the atmosphere at the same rate as entire nations? Many people have come to feel helpless before the demigods of the tech industry, and understandably so. But wildfires — and heat waves and hurricanes and droughts — remind us that there are powers much higher than any corporation.
The prophets of scientific animism — ecologists and climate researchers — are in near-unanimous agreement that, to save ourselves from ecological collapse, what is needed are not just small everyday acts of sacrifice, like forgoing a morning latte. We need to sacrifice something big. We need to replace the fossil fuels of coal and oil with wind and sun, and we need to transform a system based on maximizing profit into one aimed at balancing ecological, communal and personal well-being. In other words, we need to sacrifice carbon capitalism itself.
Otherwise, the forests, and the other awesome powers that inhabit this wild planet, will continue to punish us. This is no mere metaphor. It is a literal, bodily truth. The choice is clear: Either we give up carbon capitalism to appease our earthly gods, or our world will continue to burn.
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10) When U.N. Protesters Denounce Netanyahu, Mamdani Won’t Be Among Them
Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York continues to call the Israeli prime minister a war criminal. But Mr. Mamdani won’t join demonstrations against the prime minister on Thursday.
By Liam Stack and Sally Goldenberg, Sept. 24, 2026
Outside the United Nations on Wednesday, some ultra-Orthodox Jews were among those protesting against Mr. Netanyahu. Credit...Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor of New York last year vowing to carry out an international arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, the next time Mr. Netanyahu visited the city.
But when the Israeli leader addresses the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan on Thursday, with protesters expected to fill the streets to oppose him and Israel’s war in Gaza, the mayor will not be there to make good on his promise. He plans to be with the prime minister of the Netherlands, visiting an L.G.B.T.Q. center.
Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has made advocacy for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel’s government central to his political identity, and he has repeatedly called Mr. Netanyahu a war criminal. The mayor’s backing away from his promise to have Mr. Netanyahu arrested — which he conceded in July is outside the city’s legal authority — and his decision not to appear at any protests reflected an apparent shift in his approach to an issue that remains deeply important to many New Yorkers.
Ruth Messinger, an ally of Mr. Mamdani’s who has served as Manhattan borough president and as the president and chief executive of the American Jewish World Service, acknowledged that the mayor had been speaking less about Israel recently.
“I think the mayor has made his feelings on Mideast issues clear,” Ms. Messinger said, adding that the mayor “doesn’t need to stir up enmity in and among New Yorkers on issues that may be really important to him, but are not central to the governing of New York City.”
City Hall aides would not share any details about the mayor’s thought process regarding his response to Mr. Netanyahu’s presence in New York. But allies and confidants of the mayor, as well as some who disapprove of his focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said the change became clear after he released a video in July in which he acknowledged that the city could not arrest Mr. Netanyahu.
In the video, he again called the prime minister a war criminal and the architect of a genocide in Gaza and urged the federal government to arrest him.
Mr. Netanyahu was accused of war crimes in 2024 by the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for his arrest. He has denied the charges.
Some progressive Jewish groups praised the video, which has so far been viewed more than 103 million times. But it broadly worsened the mayor’s already poor relationship with the leaders of the city’s largest Jewish organizations, who believe that Mr. Mamdani’s criticism of Israel has inflamed growing antisemitism.
The relationship between Mr. Mamdani and those groups reached a low point a few days later with the stabbing of a visibly Jewish man and an Asian man on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Some Jewish leaders accused the mayor of bearing some responsibility.
The mayor and his supporters have vigorously rejected that claim. But the events helped catalyze a meeting convened by the mayor’s office in August, where a group of Jewish leaders urged Mr. Mamdani to soften his rhetoric about Israel and pay greater attention to the effect it could have on Jewish New Yorkers’ safety.
New York City mayors typically do not attend protests, which can be unpredictable and unruly.
But when Mr. Mamdani admitted that the city could not arrest Mr. Netanyahu, he all but encouraged protests against the prime minister, prompting questions about whether he might make an appearance at any of the demonstrations.
Some of Mr. Mamdani’s progressive critics, including the Palestinian American protest leader Nerdeen Kiswani, have questioned his approach to the issue.
“Mamdani ran on arresting Netanyahu,” said Ms. Kiswani, the co-founder of the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime. “If Mamdani believes that he is responsible for genocide and should be arrested, I don’t understand sitting out the protests when he comes to our city.”
But Ms. Kiswani said it would be “a mistake” to treat the controversy over the Israeli prime minister’s visit as “a personality dispute between Mamdani and Netanyahu” when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bigger than any one man.
Others criticized the mayor for not joining demonstrations against antisemitism that are taking place around the city this week to coincide with the General Assembly.
“Mayor Mamdani should be standing with us,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. “Instead, his demonizing language about Israel hasn’t stopped. The Jewish community needs leaders who will make our safety a priority.”
Even though the mayor will not participate in protests, he and Mr. Netanyahu have traded public barbs this week.
In a CNN interview clip posted online Monday night, Mr. Mamdani called again for Mr. Netanyahu’s arrest and reiterated his belief that the prime minister is a war criminal. The remarks were the mayor’s strongest commentary on Israel in recent weeks.
The next day, Mr. Netanyahu released a video of his own, falsely accusing Mr. Mamdani of supporting Hamas and inciting anti-Jewish riots in New York and vowing to “tell the truth” about the mayor during his speech at the United Nations on Thursday.
Asked about Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday morning, Mr. Mamdani said, “We all know that what the prime minister has said in that video is not true.”
Mr. Mamdani has condemned Hamas as a terrorist organization and described the attacks it led against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as “a horrific war crime.” But the day after the attacks, when he was a state lawmaker, Mr. Mamdani condemned “Netanyahu’s declaration of war” in Gaza, and immediately called for Israel to take steps toward achieving peace in the region.
The mayor has also faced criticism for describing Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza as genocide. That claim has also been made by a United Nations commission as well as international and Israeli human rights groups. It has nevertheless outraged many pro-Israel Jewish leaders, who believe the mayor’s rhetoric on the matter is divisive and one-sided.
The last time Mr. Netanyahu visited the United Nations, Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, a staunch supporter of Israel, attended the prime minister’s speech and praised him. Mr. Mamdani, then the Democratic nominee for mayor, sharply rebuked Mr. Adams for greeting Mr. Netanyahu “as a friend.”
Mr. Mamdani has met this week with several other world leaders, including the presidents of Brazil, Spain, Austria and the European Council, as well as the prime ministers of Barbados, Norway and Ireland.
Brad Lander, an ally of Mr. Mamdani’s and the Democratic congressional nominee in a Brooklyn and Manhattan district, said he planned to protest against Mr. Netanyahu alongside progressive Jewish groups “because we don’t want war criminals in our city.” But he said the mayor’s decision not to join the demonstrations was the right one.
“For the week of the U.N. General Assembly, New York City has an extremely important role to play,” Mr. Lander said, “and the first job of the mayor — or any mayor — is to make sure the city can play that role.”
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11) From 16,000 to 185 to Zero: Trump’s Claims of Illegal Voting in Nevada Fizzle.
It was the Trump administration’s latest stumble in its effort to find proof of widespread noncitizen voting, despite decades of evidence that it is extremely rare.
By Nick Corasaniti, Sept. 24, 2026
Despite its claims, the Trump administration has not yet offered evidence of a single instance of a noncitizen on Nevada’s voter rolls. Above, people cast their votes in Las Vegas in 2024.Credit...Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work.
On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen.
“As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens,” Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials obtained through open records requests. “You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.”
Mr. Ott also stated that D.H.S. officials had still not provided enough data for election officials to investigate their claims. Nor have they turned over the list of nearly 16,000 individuals they claim may be noncitizens.
“Our records do not support DHS’s claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” Francisco Aguilar, the Democratic secretary of state in Nevada, said in a statement. “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.
It was the Trump administration’s latest stumble in a broad campaign to find proof of widespread noncitizen voting in American elections, despite decades of evidence that it is extremely rare.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Nevada’s characterization was “false” and “the list of 185 were simply a subset of individuals that had gone through a rigorous manual review process” at the time of the last meeting between the two agencies.
The back and forth began in July, when President Trump and Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said they had identified more than 270,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in just four states: Nevada, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Both men stated the claims as fact, yet letters sent to election officials in the four states in the days that followed indicated that the numbers may have been inflated. Each letter qualified Mr. Trump’s concrete assertions with the phrase “there may be as many as.” None offered actual proof of noncitizens on voter rolls.
In Nevada’s case, Mr. Mullin initially claimed that there were as many as 15,903 noncitizens on the voter rolls. But in a meeting between Nevada election officials and the Department of Homeland Security last month, department leaders admitted that their initial claim was unsubstantiated. That prompted some pointed questions from Nevada election officials, according to a video recording of the virtual meeting.
“So what you’re saying is the 15,000 number has not been vetted?” asked C. Murphy Hebert, the chief deputy in the Nevada secretary of state’s office.
“I probably wouldn’t use the sentence, ‘It hasn’t been vetted,’” replied Kimberley Vogt, an official with Homeland Security. “Because definitely we’ve done something with it to get down to 15,000. So I wouldn’t say that. But it hasn’t had a full manual review of each one.”
Following the meeting, Ms. Vogt sent a clarifying email to Nevada officials. “I also wanted to be sure I clarified that we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185,” she wrote. “We’ve manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. Citizens.”
Now, Nevada officials are saying even that 185 number is wrong. They also took issue with a letter D.H.S. sent them in early September, in which the agency reiterated its initial claims about nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the rolls and pressured state officials to review each case in a letter to Nevada officials in early September.
“Each one of the 15,903 individuals identified should be carefully reviewed by your state to determine eligibility for voting in a federal election,” read a letter from the Department of Homeland Security sent on September 9.
But Nevada election officials said in their letter that D.H.S. “has never provided Nevada with a list of 15,903 individuals.” Instead, they said, the department sent them a smaller batch of roughly 6,000 individuals, identified only by what Homeland Security called a voter case number.
“D.H.S. still has not provided any additional verifiable information for the individuals it suggests are noncitizens,” they wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the 6,218 individuals had “the highest number of matching attributes” to a potential noncitizen in their records, and that the smaller tranche of voters “was at the request of Nevada. They wanted to start with a subset less than the 15,903 registrants DHS originally identified.”
Nevada officials disputed that claim, and records reviewed by the Times did not show Nevada making that request.
Mr. Ott also said the use of so-called voter case numbers, which Nevada officials took to mean voter registration numbers, was imprecise.
Using only “voter case numbers” without any other information such as a name, date of birth, address, or another verifiable data point, could lead to the identification of multiple individuals, Mr. Ott said. This is because Nevada recently transitioned to a statewide voter-registration system that was previously run by counties. So an individual may have been assigned one number by a county in the past and a different number under the new statewide system.
“The number also doesn’t tell us whether an individual was born in the United States, naturalized, derived citizenship through a parent, or holds any particular immigration status,” Mr. Ott wrote. “A number that matches a voter record thus establishes only that a number exists in, or once existed in, a voter registration system.”
Mr. Trump’s demand for evidence of fraud has prompted multiple governmental efforts. The New York Times this month reported that hundreds of agents with Homeland Security had been temporarily pulled from their duties investigating international crimes and terrorism for a roughly three-week intensive search noncitizens on voter rolls. The methodology was criticized by Democrats as faulty and potentially illegal, and the Virginia attorney general wrote a letter demanding more information.
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