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Families First in SAN FRANCISCO!
Saturday, July 26
11am – 12pm PDT
Ocean Beach, Stairway 7
Great Highway & Balboa Street
San Francisco, CA 94121
On July 26, Americans in every corner of the country will come together in peaceful marches, rallies, and actions to say: our families come first—not billionaires, not authoritarians, and not corrupt politicians.
From rural towns to major cities, Families First actions will bring people together to collectively demand an end to policies that harm children, seniors, and our families. We reject the Administration's actions that have gutted essential programs like Medicaid, FEMA, food stamps, school lunches, and more, all so a handful of billionaires can get tax giveaways.
We are coming together to say in unity: our families come first.
A core principle behind all Families First events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.
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A Trial Date Is Set on August 26 for Alejandro Orellana, Join the Call for National Protests to Drop the Charges!
https://stopfbi.org/news/a-trial-date-is-set-on-august-26-for-alejandro-orellana-join-the-call-for-national-protests-to-drop-the-charges/
A trial date of August 26 was set for immigrant rights activist Alejandro Orellana at his July 3 court appearance in front of a room packed with supporters. Orellana was arrested by the FBI on June 12 for protesting against ICE in Los Angeles. He faces up to 5 years in prison for two bogus federal charges: conspiracy to commit civil disorder, and aiding and abetting civil disorder.
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is calling for a national day of protests on the first day of Orellana's trial, August 26th, to demand that the charges be dropped. To everyone who believes in the right to free speech, to protest ICE, and to say no to deportations, we urge you to organize a local protest on that day at the nearest federal courthouse.
Orellana has spent much of his adult life fighting for justice for Chicanos, Latinos, and many others. He has opposed the killings of Chicanos and Latinos by the LAPD, such as 14-year-old Jesse Romero, stood against US wars, protested in defense of others targeted by political repression, and has been a longtime member of the activist group, Centro CSO, based out of East LA. His life is full of examples of courage, integrity, and a dedication to justice.
In contrast, the US Attorney who charged him, Bilal Essayli, believes in Trump's racist MAGA vision and does a lot to carry it out. He defended Trump's decision to defy the state of California and deploy the California National Guard to put down anti-ICE protests. Essayli has charged other protesters, including David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was held on a $50,000 bond.
Another Centro CSO immigrants rights activist, Verita Topete, was ambushed by the FBI on June 26. They served her a warrant and seized her phone. Orellana and his fellow organizers like Topete stand for the community that protested Trump last month. Essayli represents Trump’s attempts to crush that movement.
This case against Orellana is political repression, meant to stop the growth of the national immigrants rights movement. The basis for his arrest was the claim that he drove a truck carrying face shields for protesters, as police geared up to put down protests with rubber bullets. People of conscience are standing with Orellana. because nothing he did or is accused of doing is wrong. There is no crime in protesting Trump, deportations, and ICE. To protest is his - and our - First Amendment right. It’s up to us to make sure that Essayli and Trump fail to repress this movement and silence Orellana's supporters.
Just as he stood up for immigrants last month, we call on everyone to stand up for Orellana on August 26 and demand the charges be dropped. On the June 27 National Day of Action for Alejandro Orellana, at least 16 cities held protests or press conferences in front of their federal courthouses. We’ll make sure there are even more on August 26. In addition to planning local protests, we ask that organizations submit statements of support and to join in the call to drop the charges.
You can find protest organizing materials on our website, stopfbi.org. Please send information about your local protests and any statements of support to stopfbi@gmail.com. We will see you in the streets!
On August 26, Protest at Your Federal Courthouse for Alejandro Orellana!
Drop the Charges Now!
Protesting ICE Is Not a Crime!
Copyright © 2025 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
PO Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
——
Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
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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 Kagarlitsky
We, 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 authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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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.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
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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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
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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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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1) As Iran Deports a Million Afghans, ‘Where Do We Even Go?’
Afghans being forced out of Iran are grappling with an uncertain future in Afghanistan, where widespread poverty and severe restrictions on women and girls await.
By Elian Peltier, Farnaz Fassihi and Yaqoob Akbary, Visuals by Jim Huylebroek, July 16, 2025
Elian Peltier, Yaqoob Akbary, and Jim Huylebroek reported from the Islam Qala border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran; Farnaz Fassihi has reported on Iran and Afghanistan for more than two decades.
Afghans expelled from Iran arrived at a processing center in the border town of Islam Qala, Afghanistan, last week.
At the sand-swept border between Iran and Afghanistan, nearly 20,000 are crossing every day — shocked and fearful Afghans who have been expelled from Iran with few belongings in a wave of targeted crackdowns and xenophobia.
More than 1.4 million Afghans have fled or been deported from Iran since January during a government clampdown on undocumented refugees, according to the United Nations’ Refugees agency. More than half a million have been forced into Afghanistan just since the war between Israel and Iran last month, returned to a homeland already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis and draconian restrictions on women and girls, in one of the worst displacement crisis of the past decade.
They are being dumped at an overcrowded border facility in western Afghanistan, where many expressed anger and confusion to New York Times journalists over how they could go on with few prospects in a country where some have never lived, or barely know anymore.
“I worked in Iran for 42 years, so hard that my knees are broken, and for what?” Mohammad Akhundzada, a construction worker, said at a processing center for returnees in Islam Qala, a border town in northwestern Afghanistan, near Herat.
The mass expulsions threaten to push Afghanistan further toward the brink of economic collapse with the sudden cutoff of vital remittance money to Afghan families from relatives in Iran.
The sudden influx of returnees also piles on Afghanistan’s already grim unemployment, housing and health-care crises. More than half of Afghanistan’s estimated population of 41 million already relies on humanitarian assistance.
With a cane by his side, Mr. Akhundzada was waiting with his wife and four children, all born in Iran, for a bus to take them to Kabul, the crowded Afghan capital. He was hoping that some relatives could host them, despite the lack of spare rooms.
“We don’t have anything,” said Mr. Akhundzada, 61, “and we have nowhere to go.”
Driven Out by Abuse and Suspicion
Iran hosts the world’s largest refugee population, and about 95 percent — estimated to be around four million — are Afghans, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. Iran says the real number is closer to six million, after decades of war and upheaval in Afghanistan.
Tehran limits where Afghans can live and work — only in 10 of the country’s 31 provinces — and they are usually allowed only arduous, low-skill work.
Iran’s government has said that it can no longer absorb Afghan refugees given its own economic crisis and shortage of natural resources, including water and gas.
In March, the government said undocumented Afghans would be deported and set a July 6 deadline for voluntary departures. But after last month’s 12-day conflict with Israel, the crackdown intensified.
Security forces have raided work places and neighborhoods, stopped cars at checkpoints set up throughout big cities, and detained scores of Afghans before sending them to overcrowded deportation centers in sweltering heat.
Officials and state media, without providing evidence, have claimed that Afghans were recruited by Israel and the United States to stage terrorist attacks, seize military sites and build drones.
Kadijah Rahimi, a 26-year-old cattle herder, echoing many Afghans at the border crossing, said that when she was arrested in Iran last month, the security agent told her, “We know you’re working for Israel.”
Abolfazl Hajizadegan, a sociologist in Tehran, said Iran’s government was using Afghans as scapegoats to deflect blame for intelligence failures that enabled Israel to infiltrate widely within Iran.
“Mixing Afghan deportations with the Iran-Israel conflict underscores the regime’s reluctance to acknowledge its security and intelligence shortcomings,” Mr. Hajizadegan said in an interview.
Surge in Hate Crimes
The spying accusations have fueled racist attacks on Afghans in Iran in recent weeks, according to interviews with more two dozen Afghans living in Iran or those who have recently returned to Afghanistan, reports by aid and rights groups, and videos on social media and news media.
Afghans have been beaten or attacked with knives; faced harassment from landlords and employers who are also withholding their deposits or wages; and have been turned away from banks, bakeries, pharmacies, schools and hospitals.
Ebrahim Qaderi was riding his bicycle to work to a cardboard factory in Tehran one morning last month when two men stopped him. They shouted “Dirty Afghan” and demanded his smartphone. When Mr. Qaderi refused, they kicked him in the leg and slashed his hand with a knife, he recounted at a relocation center in Herat. His mother, Gull Dasta Fazili, said doctors at four hospitals turned him away because he was Afghan, and that they left Iran because of the attack.
In Iran, many Afghans said they lived in constant fear and were staying home. Farah, 35, a computer engineer, in Tehran said in a telephone interview that neighborhood youth attacked her and her 4-year-old son as they were walking home one day last week and repeatedly kicked the child.
Last week, Farah, who like others interviewed by The Times asked that her last name not be published out of fear of retribution, saw an Afghan woman being beaten while riding the metro. “I sat there paralyzed and shaking because I knew if I said a word I would be also beaten,” she said.
Even Afghans who are legal residents say security guards have ripped their documents and deported them anyway. Ali, a 36-year-old who said he had been born and raised in Iran and had legal status, was stopped at a checkpoint along with an Iranian friend recently.
“He told me, ‘I’m going to tear up your residency card, what are you going to do? You are going to a deportation camp,’ ” Ali said. “I was shaking with fear. I begged and argued with them, saying all my life I have lived in Iran, please don’t do this to me.”
Struggling to Meet the Need
Jawad Mosavi and nine of his family members stepped off the bus from Iran last week, scrambling under the sweltering heat of Islam Qala to gather his thoughts and the family’s dozen suitcases, rugs and rucksacks.
“Where do we even go?” he called out.
His son Ali Akbar, 13, led the way to the building where they could get their certificates of return. His half-open backpack carried his most precious belongings — a deflated soccer ball, a speaker and some headphones to listen to his favorite Iranian hits, in Persian. “The only kind of music I understand,” he said.
Like the Mosavi family, between 20,000 and 25,000 people were left to navigate a maze of luggage, tents and fellow returnees every day last week, trying to find their way through crowded buildings and warehouses run by Afghan authorities and U.N. agencies.
Mothers changed their babies’ diapers on filthy blankets amid relentless gusts of wind. Fathers queued for hours to get their fingerprints taken and collect some emergency cash under temperatures hovering over 95 degrees. Outnumbered humanitarian workers treated dehydrated returnees at a field clinic while others hastily distributed food rations or dropped off large cubes of ice in water containers.
Afghanistan was already grappling cuts in foreign aid from the United States and other donors before Iran began expelling Afghans en masse. Even before then, nearly a million Afghans had been ejected or pressed to leave from Pakistan. Organizations have been able to fund only a fifth of humanitarian needs in the country this year, and more than 400 health care centers have been shut down in recent months.
Uncertain Futures, Especially for Girls
Afghan officials have pledged to build 35 townships across the country to cope with the influx of returnees, many of whom have been deported without being allowed to collect belongings or cash from the bank.
Afghanistan’s prime minister, Muhammad Hassan Akhund, has urged Iran to show restraint in the deportations, “so as to prevent the emergence of resentment or hostility between the two brotherly nations.”
“We have to recognize that Iran has accommodated lots of Afghans and has the right to decide who can stay and who cannot,” said Miah Park, the country director for the U.N. Migration agency in Afghanistan. “But we demand that they be treated in a humane and dignified manner.”
In Islam Qala, many Afghans said they were coming back to a country they hardly recognized since the Taliban took control and imposed strict rule in 2021.
Zahir Mosavi, the patriarch of the family, said he dreaded having to halt education for his four daughters because the Taliban have banned girls’ education above sixth grade.
“I want to keep them busy, I want them to learn something,” he said.
One daughter, Nargis, was in eighth grade in Iran. Now, she said she would try to focus on the tailoring skills she had learned. “I’m not good at it, but at least there’s that,” she said.
That evening, after a day at the processing facility in Islam Qala, the family boarded a van bound for Herat, the largest city in western Afghanistan, 70 miles away from the border.
Ali Akbar, the boy with the deflated soccer ball, cried throughout the trip when he realized he had lost his phone, and with it the only way to listen to his favorite Iranian music.
The family dropped off their suitcases at 1 a.m. in a public park that had been transformed into a tent city hosting 5,000 people. Single men slept outside, using tree trunks as pillows. The family’s women and children received two tents.
A journey of hundreds of miles still lay ahead, to their home province of Helmand, in the rural south. Few opportunities were there, but they decided it was all they could afford.
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting from Brussels, and Safiullah Padshah from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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2) At Least 20 Killed in Stampede Outside a Gaza Food Site, Aid Organization Says
There were conflicting accounts from Palestinian and aid officials over what happened at the food distribution hub run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
By Lara Jakes and Nader Ibrahim, July 16, 2025
Casualties are brought into Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza on Wednesday after a stampede at a food distribution site. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
A stampede outside an aid distribution center in southern Gaza killed at least 20 people who were waiting for food on Wednesday, according to Palestinian and aid officials, the latest in a string of deadly episodes around sites run by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
The deaths bring the number of people killed while trying to get food from the organization to about 700 since late May, according to data provided this week by the United Nations.
There were conflicting reports about the melee, which started on Wednesday morning on the outskirts of Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.
The Gaza Health Ministry said tear gas was fired into a crowd gathered at the distribution site, causing a stampede. It said 21 people were killed, 15 of whom suffocated.
The aid organization said that 20 people were killed after armed agitators among a gathering crowd at its Khan Younis distribution site created a “chaotic and dangerous surge.” Nineteen of the victims were trampled and one was stabbed, the organization said in a statement, adding that it was “heartbroken.”
It was not immediately possible to explain the discrepancy in the death toll.
In the statement, the aid organization asserted there was “credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd — armed and affiliated with Hamas — deliberately fomented the unrest.” Those claims could not be independently verified.
In a follow-up message to The New York Times, the aid group called claims that it had shot tear gas into the crowd “completely false.” It said it had used a “limited” amount of pepper spray, but “only to safeguard additional loss of life.” At one point, it said, an American worker had to enter the crowd to rescue a child from being trampled.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the episode and referred questions to the aid organization.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was created to distribute food in Gaza as Israel faced widespread international condemnation for a two-month aid blockade that brought the enclave to the brink of famine. Israeli officials had said the blockade was an attempt to force Hamas to surrender and release the remaining hostages held in Gaza.
Since the organization started operations in late May, thousands of desperate and hungry Palestinians have come to its four aid sites early each morning hoping to obtain food. Hundreds have since been killed by gunfire that eyewitnesses and Gaza health officials have blamed on Israeli forces shooting into the crowds.
On Wednesday, Gaza’s Health Ministry described the distribution sites as “death traps” in a statement that blamed Israel and the United States for “deliberately committing massacres in a systematic manner and using various methods against the starving people.”
Video footage posted by local journalists on social media and verified by The New York Times showed people rushing several men in the back of a vehicle, some appearing lifeless, to the emergency entrance at the Nasser Medical Complex, the main medical facility in Khan Younis.
“Let the world see!” one man shouted in the video as the vehicle sped toward the hospital.
In another video, also verified by The Times, a man, who could not be independently identified, said aid workers at the Khan Younis site had refused to open the gates for the people who had gathered at the distribution center and were overcrowded as they waited. Some people then climbed over the gate to get to the aid, according to the man, who was covered in dust and helping carry a man who he said had suffocated to death to the hospital.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said this week it has distributed more than 76 million meals since May. But the group said false information circulating online about access to some of its sites have driven large crowds to closed centers, fueling confusion and disorder.
Many Gazans have had to walk for miles and cross Israeli military cordons to obtain aid from the group’s distribution sites, most of which have not been operational on most days. The sites are in southern and central Gaza, which critics said would help Israel’s attempts to displace residents from the northern part of the territory.
The United Nations has said the group’s supplies constitute a mere trickle of assistance compared with the needs of a population of about two million people at risk of famine.
Some U.N. aid trucks are still making their way through a single border crossing into southern Gaza. But U.N. officials say that distribution to warehouses and bakeries inside Gaza has been hampered by the lack of secure routes, and that negligible quantities of food are reaching the people who need it.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that U.N. trucks carrying medical supplies were expected to enter the territory on Thursday, and called on the public to protect them from attacks and ensure their safe passage to hospitals.
Not far from the site of the stampede, the Israeli military said it had opened a new security corridor to divide the city of Khan Younis into eastern and western sectors to isolate Hamas units. Some areas of the city have been evacuated several times, displacing thousands of people and pushing them into crowded zones near the Egyptian border.
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
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3) Migration Fears Turn Europe’s Borderless Dreams Into Traffic Nightmares
Germany’s new government-imposed border checks to demonstrate toughness on migration, though crossings started slowing years ago.
By Jim Tankersley and Christopher F. Schuetze, July 16, 2025
Reporting from the twin border towns of Slubice, Poland, and Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany
German border guards stop cars crossing from Poland last week. Credit...Lena Mucha for The New York Times
The No. 983 bus braked shortly after it crossed the Oder River from Poland into Germany, easing inside a large tent and stopping. German police officers boarded, pulled off a man with gray hair and stuffed luggage for further inspection, then sent the driver on his way.
The delay took about eight minutes. It was an example of a headache that has quickly become routine for people crossing between the two countries as Germany makes a public show of cracking down on migration.
Amid a voter backlash over the millions of asylum seekers who entered the country over the past decade, German officials have thrown up checkpoints to search vehicles crossing their borders from all sides. Neighboring countries have followed suit, including Austria and, starting last week, Poland.
The checkpoints are beginning to undermine the ideal of free movement in the European Union. In a series of agreements beginning 40 years ago, members of the European Union effectively declared they would allow each other’s citizens to cross without having to clear border security.
But the pacts allow countries to temporarily reimpose border controls “as a last resort” in the event of a serious threat to national security or public policy. Germany, Poland, Austria, France, Italy and the Netherlands have all cited immigration concerns when reinstating border checks this year.
Enhanced checks have stopped 110 migrants per day on average from entering Germany since early May, when the new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz tightened border security procedures, interior ministry officials said. That’s up from 83 per day in the first four months of the year.
The increased checks are snarling traffic and annoying commuters, long-haul truckers and other travelers. They are squeezing, at least temporarily, the tendrils of commerce that have grown between towns like Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, and Slubice, Poland, which lie on opposite banks of the Oder River.
The additional security has spawned protests, often from citizens angry that the Germans are searching cars coming in from their countries. Police union leaders complain checks have diverted officers elsewhere. Dutch citizens acting as vigilantes have stopped cars on their way in from Germany to check them for migrants. In Poland, right-wing groups have vowed to turn back any migrant that Germany rejects at its border.
Federal government officials in Germany and elsewhere have embraced the checks. This week, Germany will convene a summit with ministers from Poland, France and elsewhere to discuss plans for stricter migration policies. And immigration enforcement is set to be a key point of discussion when Mr. Merz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are expected to meet in London on Thursday.
German officials say their enhanced controls signal to potential migrants that Germany’s border enforcement is much stricter, though migration levels have been falling steadily for two years, well before many of the checkpoints were installed.
“The policy shift has begun,” the interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said in a speech to Parliament last week, in which he claimed credit for plunging migration numbers. “And it’s working.”
In the twin cities on the Oder River, many locals disagree.
“We do not have a migration crisis here,” Tomasz Stefański, Slubice’s deputy mayor, said in an interview. “The idea of the European Union is really quite shaky at the moment, as is freedom of movement across borders.”
The city’s migrant population is largely Ukrainian refugees, Mr. Stefański said, and few others are attempting to enter or leave via the bridge to Germany. But the heightened checks are stressing economic activity between the towns, according to interviews with shop owners and city officials.
Officials from the German interior ministry did not respond to questions about the economic effects of border controls.
The bridge is the main cord that connects Slubice and Frankfurt an der Oder, which before the end of World War II were a single German city. After Poland joined the E.U.’s free-movement zone in 2007, officials removed the border installations that had stood on the bridge. The cities grew so economically interwoven that locals now call them “Slubfurt.” One of the few reminders that the river is a border is the price of cigarettes, which are much cheaper on the Polish side.
“Although they speak two different languages, the cities are like two organisms that have become completely entwined,” said Marek Poznanski, the Polish-born director of a logistics hub on the German side of the river.
Mr. Stefanski, the deputy mayor, first came to Slubice to attend university on the German side. When he had children, he sent them to day care on the German side, a common practice.
Nearly a quarter of Slubice’s 16,000 residents commute to Germany to work, and roughly half of the town’s income comes from cross-border shopping and services, Mr. Stefanski said.
Local shops appear to be suffering from the traffic jams caused by border checks. The city says its businesses have lost about 20 percent in revenue from the checks.
Mr. Poznanski said controls are eating into his logistics business.His drivers spend hours waiting to cross the border into Poland, so trips that used to take two hours, he said, now take five.
On a recent afternoon, Polish soldiers briefly stopped the sedan we were driving, with German license plates, to check our identification. On the return trip, German border police simply waved the car through. Driving toward Berlin, we passed a line of cars and trucks stretched for miles on the other side of the road, stalled by the Polish checks.
Germany started patrolling its border with Poland in October 2023, in a previous government’s effort to signal it was in control of migration. The checks increased significantly under Mr. Merz, who had campaigned on deterring migration. The Merz government has vowed to turn away asylum seekers who entered Europe somewhere outside Germany.
This past week, Poland followed suit. After weeks of protests by far-right activists along the border, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland ordered his own checks on the Polish borders with Germany and Lithuania.
“Border controls are a popular political tool for signaling to the population that they are safe,” said Norbert Cyrus, an expert on the German-Polish border region at the European University of Viadrina at Frankfurt an der Oder. “But in practice,” he added, “the desired effects cannot actually be proven.”
Mr. Tusk was spurred to order border checks in part by a group known as Ruch Obrony Granic, the Civic Border Defense Movement. The group’s members are both protesters and vigilantes. They have vowed to turn back what they believe to be large numbers of migrants being pushed by German authorities into Poland, citing fabricated news reports and videos circulating online.
A handful of them, clad in Day-Glo yellow warning vests, still stood at the crossing in Slubice last week, days after official Polish border guards took their post.
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4) Trump’s National Guard Troops Are Questioning Their Mission in L.A.
Thousands of National Guard members have served in the L.A. region since last month. Six soldiers spoke in interviews about low morale over the deployment.
By Shawn Hubler, July 16, 2025
Members of the California National Guard have protected federal buildings and accompanied agents on immigration raids in the Los Angeles region. Mark Abramson for The New York Times
When the California National Guard rolled into Los Angeles to respond to devastating wildfires in January, Southern Californians largely hailed the troops as heroes. Celebrities thanked them for their service in Pacific Palisades. Suburban homeowners competed to chat them up at traffic checkpoints in Altadena.
Seven months later, much of that good will is gone.
Protesters jeer the troops as they guard federal office buildings. Commuters curse the behemoth convoys clogging freeways. Family members grill members with questions about whether they really have to obey federal orders.
The level of public and private scorn appears to have taken a toll on the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles that President Trump announced last month, citing protests over immigration raids. Interviews with nearly two dozen people — including soldiers and officers as well as officials and civilians who have worked closely with the troops — show that many members of the Guard are questioning the mission. The deployment’s initial orders to quell scattered protests have given way to legally disputed assignments backing up federal immigration agents.
“They gave Disneyland tickets to the people who worked in the wildfires,” one soldier said. “Nobody’s handing out Disneyland tickets now.”
Six members of the Guard — including infantrymen, officers and two officials in leadership roles — spoke of low morale and deep concern that the deployment may hurt recruitment for the state-based military force for years to come. Those who were interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, because military orders bar Guard personnel from publicly discussing the federal deployment and they feared retribution for talking to the media.
All but one of the six expressed reservations about the deployment. Several said they had raised objections themselves or knew someone who objected, either because they did not want to be involved in immigration crackdowns or felt the Trump administration had put them on the streets for what they described as a “fake mission.”
The New York Times reached out to a broad pool of soldiers seeking interviews about the deployment. While a small sample, the six soldiers’ comments aligned with other signs of poor morale.
At least 105 members of the deployment sought counseling from behavioral health officers, and at least one company commander and one battalion commander who objected to the mission were reassigned to work unrelated to the mobilization, the Guard officers said. Some troops became so disgruntled that there were several reports of soldiers defecating in Humvees and showers at the Southern California base where the troops are stationed, prompting tightened bathroom security.
The California National Guard had 72 soldiers whose enlistment was set to expire during the deployment. Of those 72, at least two have now left the Guard and 55 others have indicated that they will not extend their service, according to the office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is fighting Mr. Trump’s deployment in court. That number, if troops act on it, would amount to a 21 percent retention rate, far lower than the Guard’s typical 60 percent rate, officials said.
“The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” one of the two Guard officials said. “This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”
The six soldiers are a fraction of the thousands of troops who have been deployed to Los Angeles. Many members of the Guard have had no trouble taking part in the operation and have voiced no personal conflicts or concerns. It’s not uncommon for soldiers in Guard deployments to complain about their assignments, question the reasons they were called up or seek counseling during deployments. Earlier this year, after National Guard soldiers were called in to keep order in the New York State prison system after corrections officers went on strike, some troops described feeling unprepared and took issue with not being provided pepper spray or other means of protecting themselves.
Officials with the military’s Northern Command, which is overseeing the president’s military response in California, said the deployment was more organized than the interviewed soldiers suggested. The officials declined to comment on the morale of the troops, their behavioral health, the reassignments or the deployment’s impact on re-enlistment.
Mr. Trump began deploying thousands of troops on June 7 to Southern California, making the case that the state’s Democratic leaders were failing to protect federal agents and property after immigration raids sparked protests. The president commandeered a total of 4,100 California National Guard members who ordinarily are controlled by Mr. Newsom, and dispatched an additional 700 Marines.
Since then, the military presence in California has been a flashpoint of debate, as armed soldiers have faced down protesters outside federal buildings and accompanied federal agents conducting raids in the Los Angeles region. Several operations have drawn intense backlash, including a show of force in MacArthur Park and an immigration raid on a cannabis farm in Ventura County where a fleeing farmworker fell from a greenhouse and later died.
The deployment has started scaling back. On July 1, the president agreed to release about 150 Guard troops in a specialized wildfire fighting unit, and on Tuesday, the Pentagon announced that 1,990 members of the Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team begin demobilization. It was unclear if the president would end the mission after 60 days, as his order initially suggested. The other half of the deployment — 1,892 members of the 49th Military Police Brigade — remains.
The six soldiers said that even though they are receiving higher pay and more benefits on a federal mission than they would under a state activation, they are eager to go home. The National Guard is ordinarily a part-time commitment, and many members have been on almost continuous duty since Mr. Newsom summoned them after the fires to assist local authorities.
The new mission has put them at odds with communities and families, several soldiers said. Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown has spread fear and panic in Hispanic immigrant communities in the Los Angeles region. A majority of the California National Guard’s 18,000 members are based in Southern California, and roughly 40 percent of them are of Hispanic heritage.
Not all the Latino soldiers who spoke with The Times objected to the mission. One Hispanic commander from the Central Valley said that his grandparents came to the United States legally and that he felt no conflict. He noted, however, that National Guard soldiers must obey orders either way.
Other Latino soldiers have raised formal and informal objections.
In one incident that several soldiers said occurred early in the deployment, 60 troops were awaiting transport to planned immigration raids in Ventura County when a Latino soldier approached officers in charge of the mission. He told them that he strongly objected, and he offered to be arrested rather than take part in the operation. Eventually, they said, he was reassigned to administrative tasks. Officials at the military’s Northern Command declined to comment about the incident.
Missions have come under intense scrutiny for potential constitutional violations. California authorities have challenged the legality of the deployment, citing a 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement on domestic soil unless there is an insurrection.
Trump administration officials and Justice Department lawyers have argued that troops are “not engaged in law enforcement” but are merely protecting federal agents. Civil liberties groups have disputed that portrayal, pointing to the temporary detention of one man by Marines early in the deployment.
A federal judge has set a trial for August to determine whether the use of the National Guard and Marines has violated federal law.
Most troops have been stationed at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, a federally-owned facility operated by the California National Guard near Long Beach. The soldiers said breakfasts are hearty — eggs, hash browns, sausage, pancakes — and accommodations are comfortable. Despite efforts to keep them busy, however, they reported long stretches of downtime and frustration with missions that leaked or were canceled by the time lumbering convoys reached their destinations.
MacArthur Park was all but empty on July 7 when federal agents arrived to show that they could “go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles,” as one immigration official told Fox News. About 80 National Guard members who arrived for backup mostly stayed in their trucks.
On the base, soldiers said, they received riot training, reviewed battlefield maneuvers and drilled to leap from their cots and gear up at a moment’s notice. But mostly, they said, they lounged in warehouse-sized tents, listening to music and playing games on their cell phones. Only about 400 of the 3,882 deployed Guard members had actually been sent on assignments away from the base, Guard figures showed.
A spokeswoman for the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North component said that the routine for service members “varies on a day-to-day basis.” Many assignments on the base involve “practicing de-escalation and crowd control techniques and fulfilling annual training requirements, all while maintaining cycles of rest and recuperation,” she added.
In Los Alamitos, a coastal suburb of about 12,000 people, the troops have crowded into a two-square-mile facility that is shared with other government agencies, which have balked at the encroachment. In emails obtained through a public records request, workers in a joint program to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly complained that troops shaving and brushing their teeth are crowding the bathrooms and that scientists are unsettled by nearby trucks full of explosives.
Soldiers meander down new walkways between a huge tent city and new semi-permanent buildings. “I’ve lived here 33 years and this is the first I’ve seen anything like this,” the mayor of Los Alamitos, Shelley Hasselbrink, said. “We call it the circus — they look like big circus tents.”
Two Democratic officials who were granted brief access to the base — Josh Fryday, a Navy veteran who leads community engagement for the governor’s office, and Representative Derek Tran, an Army veteran who represents Los Alamitos — said the massive military presence, which has been projected to cost $134 million, seemed excessive and extreme.
“If they can do this here,” Mr. Fryday said, “they can do it in any community.”
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5) The U.K. Plans to Lower the Voting Age to 16. Here’s What to Know.
The plan has been described as the largest expansion of voting rights in Britain in decades.
By Stephen Castle, Reporting from London, July 17, 2025
The British government said on Thursday that it would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, in what it called a landmark moment for democracy and some of its opponents decried as an attempt to tilt the electoral playing field.
Britain has more than 1.6 million people of age 16 or 17, in a total population of roughly 68 million, and the plan has been described as the country’s largest expansion of voting rights in decades. The last nationwide reduction in voting age, to 18 from 21, came more than 50 years ago.
“Declining trust in our institutions and democracy itself has become critical, but it is the responsibility of government to turn this around and renew our democracy, just as generations have done before us,” the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, wrote in an introduction to a policy paper that included the announcement.
The plan also includes promises to tighten laws on foreign donations to political parties, and to simplify voter registration.
Here’s a guide to the change and its implications.
Do many places give 16-year-olds the vote?
Several nations do, including Austria, Malta and Brazil, while in Greece the voting age is set at 17. Others allow 16-year-olds to participate only in some elections: In Germany and Belgium, they can help choose members of the European Parliament, but they cannot vote in federal elections. Britain has been in that category: Elections for the separate parliaments that control many policy areas in Scotland and Wales already had a voting age of 16.
Is this change a surprise?
No. The center-left Labour Party has backed votes for 16-year-olds for some time, and the idea was part of the official platform on which it won last year’s general election.
Will it definitely happen? How long will it take?
The move requires a law, which will have to get through both houses of Parliament, so this change is some way off. But Labour has a large majority in the elected House of Commons, and the appointed House of Lords traditionally restrains itself from interfering with election promises. There’s plenty of time, too: The next general election is not expected until 2029.
Is 16 a standard age limit in Britain?
The government points out that 16-year-olds in Britain can leave school, work, pay taxes and join the military. Critics of the voting age change note that 18 is the legal minimum age to run as a candidate in an election, to take part in armed combat in the military, to marry and to buy alcohol or a lottery ticket.
Does Britain need to worry about participation in elections?
There are some worrying signs. Turnout at the 2024 general election was 59.7 percent — the lowest since 2001 and 7.6 percentage points lower than in the previous general election in 2019. “Our democracy is in crisis, and we risk reaching a tipping point where politics loses its legitimacy. The government has clearly heard these alarm bells,” said Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director of the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research.
Who would 16-year-olds vote for?
Polls in Britain have long showed younger voters skewing left. So Prime Minister Keir Starmer will hope that his center-left party benefits — while the Greens might also expect a lift. Paul Holmes, a senior lawmaker for the main opposition Conservative Party, described the plans as a “brazen attempt by the Labour Party, whose unpopularity is scaring them into making major constitutional changes without consultation.”
But some recent polling has found growing support among young people for Reform U.K., a new right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage that is strongly anti-immigration. One survey earlier this year showed almost one in five of 18-to-24-year-olds favored Reform, although Labour was still ahead with this age group. Far-right parties in some other European countries, notably France, have claimed growing support among young people.
Also worth noting: The last cut in voting age, in 1969, was also implemented by a Labour government — which then lost the subsequent election.
How else could the plans increase voter participation?
The government says it will create a more automated voter registration system, reducing the need to provide personal details to access different government services. It will also expand the range of documents that voters can use as proof of identity to include payment cards issued by British banks.
Why does the government want to restrict foreign political donations?
There was speculation late last year that the technology billionaire Elon Musk might donate to Reform U.K., though he then cooled on Mr. Farage. But that episode raised concerns with some lawmakers about foreign interference in British elections. In the proposals outlined on Thursday, the government said it would tighten checks on some donations and prevent a foreign donor from setting up a shell company in Britain to channel cash to a political party.
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6) Handshakes or Airstrikes: What Does Israel Want in Syria?
For weeks, Israel has engaged in back-channel talks over a diplomatic agreement with the Syrian government. Its strikes on Damascus this week highlight a lack of strategic clarity.
By Patrick Kingsley, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 17, 2025
An Israeli airstrike damaged the entrance to Syria’s defense ministry headquarters on Wednesday. Ali Haj Suleiman/Getty Images
For weeks, Israel and Syria have engaged in secret back-channel talks, searching for a diplomatic resolution to decades of tensions, mainly over territory captured by Israel from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
The Israeli news media has been awash with optimistic predictions of a limited non-aggression pact, or even a landmark peace deal between the Jewish state and the former jihadists who seized control of Damascus last December.
Israel’s brazen strikes this week on Syrian government forces and infrastructure, including in the capital, Damascus, have highlighted the premature nature of such expectations in such a fluid geopolitical context. It has also exemplified how Israel, still traumatized by the surprise of Hamas’s attack in October 2023 but buoyed by its more recent successes against Hezbollah and Iran, is now more likely to use force to pre-emptively address perceived threats — even if it derails diplomatic efforts to achieve the same goal.
“It seems very discordant,” said Itamar Rabinovich, an Israeli historian of Syria who led Israel’s negotiations with Syria during the 1990s. “It runs against the effort to negotiate.”
The strikes reflect Israel’s post-2023 military doctrine, which combines, Mr. Rabinovich said, “a very strange mixture of paranoia following Oct. 7 and a sense of power following the success in Lebanon and in Iran. And the result is this preference for using force rather than diplomacy.”
The specific spur for Israel’s actions this week was the Syrian government’s deployment of forces to southwest Syria to contain fighting between Bedouin tribesmen and Syria’s Druse minority. Though much of Syria’s arsenal was decimated by scores of Israeli strikes last winter and years of civil war, the Syrian government was able to send a column of outdated tanks and troops in pickup trucks.
For Israelis, that posed two challenges. The first was a perceived security threat in southwest Syria, where Israel wants to prevent the buildup of potentially hostile forces, including Islamist former rebels in the Syrian military. The second: domestic unrest among members of Israel’s own small but influential Druse community, who held protests, blocked roads and in some cases forced their way into Syria after reports, unconfirmed by The New York Times, of extrajudicial killings there.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has demanded for months that southern Syria “must remain a demilitarized zone,” said Carmit Valensi, an Israeli expert on Israel-Syrian affairs at the Institute for National Security Studies, a research group in Tel Aviv. “So, when Syrian tanks began advancing into the area, Israel acted not only to defend the Druse but also to enforce its demand to keep the region demilitarized,” she added.
For now, it is unclear how committed Israel is to a prolonged military campaign in southern Syria, or if its strikes were mainly a short-term attempt to quell the fury of Israeli Druse. Roughly 150,000 Druse live under Israeli governance, including some 20,000 in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and later annexed. Unlike other Arab groups in Israel, the Druse usually serve in the Israeli military. Some of them have reached the rank of general and others died in combat during the Gaza war.
That has helped to forge a bond between Jewish and Druse citizens of Israel, even after a contentious law passed in 2018 angered many Druse because it undermined their status within the Jewish state.
Rafik Halabi, the mayor of Daliyat al-Karmel, one of the biggest Druse towns in Israel, said the Druse protests had put pressure on the Israeli government to act, particularly after roughly 1,000 Israeli Druse men reportedly crossed into Syrian territory. But Mr. Halabi said he remains unconvinced that the government wants to repeatedly intervene, particularly after meeting and speaking in recent days with Israeli generals and political leaders, including Mr. Netanyahu.
“Does Israel really want to interfere in the Syrian situation? I am not sure,” Mr. Halabi said in a phone interview. “As far as I could understand, they want to be in, and at the same time they want to be out.”
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7) Israeli Strike on a Gaza Church Kills Three
As cease-fire talks stalled, a deadly strike on a Catholic church in Gaza City prompted Pope Leo XIV to call for an immediate end to the fighting.
By Natan Odenheimer, Reporting from Jerusalem, July 17, 2025
Transporting a person who was injured in the strike on the Holy Family Catholic Church to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An Israeli strike hit a Catholic church in Gaza City on Thursday, killing three people and injuring at least six others, including the parish priest, according to church officials.
Several hundred Palestinians were sheltering at the Holy Family Catholic Church compound when the church roof was hit around 10:10 a.m., sending shrapnel and debris flying. Farid Jubran, a spokesman for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said it was unclear whether the munition that struck was dropped from an airplane or fired by a tank.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its official X account that Israel “expresses deep sorrow over the damage to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City” and that the Israeli military was “examining this incident.”
After the attack, Pope Leo XIV called for “an immediate cease-fire” in Gaza in a statement.
There has been no significant progress this week in the Israel-Hamas negotiations over a new U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal. Israel has continued its relentless assault on the Gaza Strip, which it says is aimed at incapacitating Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that has long ruled the enclave.
More than 7,750 Palestinians have been killed since the previous cease-fire collapsed in March, with around 100 confirmed dead in hospitals across the territory in just the past few days, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its casualty counts. Some were killed while searching for food at distribution sites.
In total, more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war that began with a Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The fighting has created a dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where hunger is widespread and many residents are struggling to find food, water and shelter.
After the strike on the church in Gaza City, Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the Israeli attacks on civilians in the strip “unacceptable,” adding that “no military action can justify such conduct.”
Among those injured in the strike was the church’s parish priest, Gabriel Romanelli, who regularly updated Pope Francis on events in Gaza — almost every evening during the pontiff’s final year, according to Mr. Jubran.
Saad Salameh, 60, the church’s janitor, was said to be in the yard when the strike hit, and Fumayya Ayyad was in a tent within the compound, according to Caritas Jerusalem, a Catholic aid organization operating at the church. Both died within hours.
The other person killed was identified as Najwa Abu Daoud.
Ameera Harouda and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
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8) Congress Agrees to Claw Back Foreign Aid and Public Broadcast Funds
President Trump’s request to claw back $9 billion in congressionally approved spending passed despite objections from Republicans who said it abdicated the legislative branch’s power of the purse.
By Catie Edmondson, Reporting from the Capitol, Published July 17, 2025, Updated July 18, 2025
Congress approved a White House request to claw back $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting, after Republicans bowed to President Trump in an unusual surrender of congressional spending power.
The House’s 216-to-213 vote early Friday morning sent the package to Mr. Trump for his signature. Two Republicans, Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Michael R. Turner of Ohio, opposed the measure.
The Senate approved the package in a predawn 51-to-48 vote the day before, overcoming the objections of two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who argued that their party was ceding Congress’s constitutional control over federal funding.
The bulk of the funds targeted — about $8 billion — was for foreign assistance programs. The remaining $1.1 billion was for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which finances NPR and PBS.
The debate on the measure laid bare a simmering fight over Congress’s power of the purse. Since Mr. Trump began his second term, the White House has moved aggressively and at times unilaterally, primarily through the Department of Government Efficiency, to expand the executive branch’s control over federal spending, a power the Constitution gives to the legislative branch.
Top White House officials, led by Russell T. Vought, the budget office director, have sought to rein in the size of the federal government, including by freezing funds appropriated by Congress. It is part of a wider campaign to claim far-reaching powers over federal spending for the president.
This time, the administration went through a formal process by submitting what is known as a rescissions bill. Those measures are rare and seldom succeed, given how tightly Congress has historically guarded its power over federal spending. The last such package to be enacted was in 1999, under President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Trump wasted little time in celebrating, singling out in an all-caps social media post early Friday the cuts to “atrocious NPR and public broadcasting, where billions of dollars a year were wasted.”
“Republicans have tried doing this for 40 years, and failed….but no more,” he added. “This is big!!!”
G.O.P. leaders said the vote was a symbolic victory that underscored the Republican-held Congress’s willingness to cut federal spending they viewed as inappropriate and wasteful.
“I appreciate all the work the administration has done in identifying wasteful spending,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, said in a speech ahead of the vote. “Now it’s time for the Senate to do its part to cut some of that waste out of the budget. It’s a small but important step toward fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue.”
But the process left even some Republicans who ultimately voted for the bill uncomfortable. A number of senators said the administration had not provided details about what specific programs would be affected.
“If we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds — that advisers to the president decide they are going to cut anyway,” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is retiring, said, “then there will be a reckoning for that.”
And even as G.O.P. senators agreed to cancel funding at the White House’s request, 10 of them signed a rare public letter to Mr. Vought demanding that he reverse a decision to withhold roughly $7 billion in congressionally approved funding to their states meant to bolster educational programs including after-school and summer programs.
“The decision to withhold this funding is contrary to President Trump’s goal of returning K-12 education to the states,” the Republicans wrote.
To win the votes of Republican senators who initially objected, G.O.P. leaders agreed to strip out a $400 million cut that Mr. Trump requested to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR. The White House signaled it would not contest the change.
They also shielded some funding for some specific programs, including aid to Jordan and Egypt; Food for Peace, a program that provides food assistance to other countries; and some global health programs.
Another holdout, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who had previously indicated that he would oppose the request because of the cuts to public broadcasting, decided to support the package. He said he had been assured by top Trump administration officials that they would steer unspent funds “to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption” for next year.
Ahead of the vote, the head of a network of Native radio and television stations privately appealed to Mr. Rounds to oppose the package, saying the deal he had made was unworkable.
“There is currently no clear path for redirecting these funds to tribal broadcasters without significant legislative and administrative changes,” Loris Taylor, the president of Native Public Media, wrote.
The vote incensed Democrats, who argued that Republicans were ceding Congress’s constitutional powers in the name of cutting a minuscule amount of spending, just weeks after passing their marquee tax bill that would add $4 trillion to federal deficits.
They warned that it could have dire consequences for future bipartisan negotiations to fund the government. Lawmakers are currently working to negotiate spending levels ahead of a Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.
“We have never, never before seen bipartisan investments slashed through a partisan rescissions package,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said. “Do not start now. Not when we are working, at this very moment, in a bipartisan way to pass our spending bills. Bipartisanship doesn’t end with any one line being crossed; it erodes. It breaks down bit by bit, until one day there is nothing left.”
The vote codified a number of executive actions the administration advanced earlier this year to gut foreign aid programs, many first undertaken by DOGE.
The effects on public media are yet to come, but the passage of the bill caused immediate alarm. Katherine Maher, the chief executive of NPR, said in a statement early Friday that the cuts represented “an unwarranted dismantling of beloved local civic institutions, and an act of Congress that disregards the public will.”
NPR and PBS will survive — only a small percentage of their funding comes from the federal government. But the cuts will force many local stations to sharply reduce their programming and operations as early as this fall. Many public broadcasters receive more than 50 percent of their budgets from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
That means the package could be a death sentence for some stations, which have survived several attempts to choke off funding over the decades. For other broadcasters, it will mean cutting back on local programming.
“We just don’t have a lot of fat to trim elsewhere,” Julie Overgaard, the executive director for South Dakota Public Broadcasting, said in an interview ahead of the vote.
“On the PBS side of things, I can’t just start cherry-picking which national programs I want and only pay for those,” she said. “So it really leaves me and many others with little choice but to look at the local programming that we self-generate.”
Benjamin Mullin and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
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9) Border Patrol Agents Raid a Home Depot in Northern California
The raid indicates a new strategy of going deeper into California after focusing on Southern California for several weeks.
By Jesus Jiménez, Reporting from Los Angeles, July 17, 2025
Gregory Bovino, center, the head of Border Patrol’s El Centro region, at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles last week. Mr. Bovino said that federal agents had begun operations in the Sacramento area. Credit...Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Border Patrol agents conducted an immigration raid on Thursday at a Home Depot parking lot in Sacramento County, in a sign that federal officials are heading deeper into California after focusing on the Los Angeles region in recent weeks.
Gregory K. Bovino, the head of Border Patrol’s El Centro region, said in a produced video that federal agents had begun operations in the Sacramento area, and that at least eight people had been arrested for being in the country without authorization. Sacramento is a nearly 600-mile drive northwest of El Centro, Calif., and the border with Mexico.
The raid came nearly a week after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop indiscriminate immigration arrests in the Los Angeles region. The ruling in the Central District of California did not apply to Sacramento.
The edited video, which was overlaid with the song “Power” by Kanye West, appeared to show people running away from masked federal agents in tactical gear in a Home Depot parking lot.
“Folks, there is no such thing as a sanctuary city,” Mr. Bovino said in the video. “There’s no such thing as a sanctuary state.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that at least 11 undocumented immigrants had been arrested in the Sacramento area as of Thursday evening. One person, Mr. Bovino said, was arrested on Thursday for impeding or assaulting a federal officer during the raid.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said that one man arrested on Thursday was a “dangerous serial drug abuser and dealer” who has faced 67 charges, including felony burglary.
“You would not want this man to be your neighbor,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
The department did not indicate a criminal history for most of the other immigrants who were detained on Thursday.
Kevin McCarty, the mayor of Sacramento, said in a statement on social media on Thursday that at least one ICE raid took place at a Home Depot on Florin Road, about eight miles southeast of the California State Capitol. The store is situated in an unincorporated pocket of Sacramento County adjacent to the city, in a neighborhood that is home to many immigrant communities.
The parking lots of Home Depot stores, which are common gathering spots for day laborers looking for work, have been the targets of numerous immigration raids over the past few weeks.
“These ICE raids are a violation of civil rights and an affront to democracy,” Mr. McCarty said. “There’s a difference between deporting criminals and targeting people at Home Depot looking for work to feed their families. These raids are immoral and inhumane. They are intended to instill fear and chaos and cannot be tolerated in our city.”
The federal ruling last week against indiscriminate raids came in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by immigrant advocacy groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Counsel, a nonprofit. The lawsuit accused federal immigration agents of making stops based on racial profiling often public spaces, such as Home Depot parking lots.
The federal government asked an appeals court to temporarily lift the restrictions on operations in the Los Angeles area. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied that request on Wednesday on procedural grounds.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said in a statement that the Border Patrol “should do their jobs — at the border — instead of continuing their tirade statewide of illegal racial profiling and illegal arrests.”
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10) Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Hits Senior Care Work Force
Nursing homes and home care agencies have lost workers as the Trump administration has moved to end deportation protections for migrants with temporary legal status.
By Madeleine Ngo, Reporting from Washington, July 18, 2025
Staff members serving food to residents of Sinai Residences, a retirement community in Boca Raton, Fla. Saul Martinez for The New York Times
President Trump’s immigration crackdown is beginning to strain the long-term care work force, raising concerns about how the effects could ripple across the nation’s senior population.
Providers that operate nursing homes and home care agencies say they have lost staff members as the Trump administration has moved to end deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants with temporary legal status. Republican critics of those programs say that they have allowed migrants to stay longer than intended, and that ending them “restores integrity” in the country’s immigration system.
But the long-term care industry already faces persistent challenges in recruiting workers. Providers say the reduction in staff could threaten the quality of services they are able to offer to the nation’s senior population. Some said they would have to raise wages to attract more workers to fill positions, and they were set to pass on cost increases to people receiving care.
The issue underscores the critical role that foreign-born workers play in the long-term care industry. Immigrants make up about 28 percent of the work force directly providing that care, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data from KFF, a health policy research group. In comparison, foreign-born workers account for about 19 percent of the entire U.S. civilian labor force.
Katie Smith Sloan, the president of LeadingAge, an association representing nonprofit aging services providers, said the Trump administration’s immigration policies were already starting to disrupt facilities across the country as providers moved to terminate some caregivers in recent weeks. She said some employees had stopped showing up at work out of fear for themselves and their families.
The biggest impact so far has stemmed from the Trump administration’s decision to end various programs that grant migrants temporary legal status, which authorizes them to live and work in the United States. In late May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration, for now, to end a humanitarian program that gave temporary residency to more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The administration has also tried to end a program for Haitians who have been living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, which is intended to help migrants who cannot return to their countries because of unsafe conditions.
Before he left office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had extended those protections through next February. Although the Trump administration moved to end those protections by September, a federal judge recently blocked the administration from doing so. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the administration expected “a higher court to vindicate us in this.”
Ms. Smith Sloan said the impacts across the long-term care industry could become more pronounced as the administration ramps up efforts to restrict migrants from entering the United States. If there are fewer immigrants to fill positions, that could lead to nursing homes and assisted living facilities shutting down wings or closing their doors entirely, she said. Cuts to Medicaid, which were included in the domestic policy bill that Republicans recently passed, could further strain providers, she added.
“The services just won’t be available for people when they need them because we won’t be able to staff them,” she said.
Ms. Smith Sloan said the Trump administration’s efforts to limit refugee admissions, for instance, has made it more difficult for some providers to fill job openings.
White House officials said Mr. Trump would ensure that sectors “have the work force they need to be successful.”
“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force, and President Trump’s agenda to create jobs for American workers represents this administration’s commitment to capitalizing on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
The administration’s attempt to clamp down on immigration comes at a time when the industry faces another challenge: the growing number of seniors. The U.S. population age 65 and older has been increasing at a rapid clip, meaning the long-term care industry will need more workers in the coming years to keep up.
“Barring some major change in fertility rates, we’re going to need immigrants to continue to supply the work force that the country needs for aging care,” said Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute.
Lower staffing levels at nursing homes, assisted living facilities and home care agencies could have substantial effects on the health of seniors, potentially leading to lower quality of care and life, said David Grabowski, a health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School.
For instance, a lack of caregivers could create unsafe conditions by increasing the risk that someone falls or becomes dehydrated, he said. Staffing shortages could also lead to lower quality of care if there are fewer workers to ensure that residents are engaged or living a meaningful life, he added.
Some proponents of tighter immigration laws said that providers should focus on hiring U.S.-born workers or immigrants with legal status already in the country. Steven Camarota, the research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restricting immigration, said providers should increase wages and benefits to attract workers.
“It’s the kind of job that we need people to do, but it’s better if it pays more and it’ll attract more Americans,” Mr. Camarota said.
Some experts said it was challenging, however, for providers to recruit Americans who could work a less strenuous job and receive a comparable wage in industries such as food service or retail. Direct care workers earned a median hourly wage of $16.72 in 2023, according to PHI, a research and advocacy organization focused on long-term care for seniors and people with disabilities.
“They don’t want the job,” said Rachel Blumberg, the president and chief executive of the Toby and Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Fla. “That’s why we’re so reliant on immigrants.”
Ms. Blumberg said she already had to terminate 10 workers from Cuba and Haiti last month after the Trump administration ended the humanitarian parole program that had given them temporary residency. She said she expected to terminate another 30 workers from Haiti in the coming weeks. Collectively, those 38 staff members represent about 9 percent of her work force.
Ms. Blumberg said her facility had raised wages for those roles by an average of 10 percent in order to fill the positions, and they planned to pass on some of those cost increases to residents.
Colin O’Leary, the executive director of the Laurel Ridge Rehabilitation and Skilled Care Center in Boston, said it was preparing to lose as much as 10 percent of its work force in the coming months, in large part because many of the facility’s certified nursing assistants are Haitians with Temporary Protected Status.
“I’m not confident that I can fill those positions,” Mr. O’Leary said.
He said the facility would have to raise wages to attract more caregivers, but finding the funds to offer higher wages would be challenging. It could resort to cutting funding for certain activities or deferring maintenance costs, meaning that older beds might not be replaced as often, he said.
If the center cannot find enough workers to fill positions, more staff members would have to work overtime, Mr. O’Leary said. That could result in higher expenses and further strain employees, affecting the level of care the facility is able to provide, he said.
Immigrants also play an outsize role in the home care industry, making up about 32 percent of that work force, according to KFF.
John Sneath, the chief executive of Tribute Home Care, an agency that largely operates in Massachusetts, said he had to terminate nine caregivers after the Trump administration ended the program that gave temporary legal status to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. He said he also expected to lose another six workers from Haiti in the coming months.
Mr. Sneath said the loss of those workers had been upsetting for the agency’s clients, many of whom have built strong relationships with their caregivers.
“It compounds all of the other things one has to think about as they’re getting old,” Mr. Sneath. “It’s hard enough to invite somebody into your home to get care. And once you have these relationships, it’s very hard to see them end.”
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11) Gaza Health Ministry Says Israeli Military Killed 32 Near Aid Site
The latest deaths add to U.N. figures showing that more than 670 Palestinians have been killed since May near sites built under a new Israel-backed aid system.
By Patrick KingsleyBilal Shbair and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem; Bilal Shbair from Khan Younis, Gaza; and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad from Haifa, Israel, July 19, 2025
"The United Nations said this past week that more than 670 Palestinians had been killed in similar episodes near sites built under the new system."
Mourners at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Saturday with the bodies of two people killed near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site. Credit...Mariam Dagga/Associated Press
Israeli soldiers opened fire near a food distribution site in southern Gaza on Saturday morning, according to survivors and the Israeli military, in a series of incidents that the Gazan health authorities said had collectively killed at least 32 people.
The bloodshed was the latest violence connected to a new and deeply contentious food distribution system in Gaza that was introduced by Israel nearly two months ago. The United Nations said this past week that more than 670 Palestinians had been killed in similar episodes near sites built under the new system.
“This has become my terrifying daily routine,” said Luay Abu Oda, 24, who described in an interview how he had survived the violence on Saturday. “I dropped to the ground and pretended to be dead just to survive. I couldn’t even reach for my phone to check the time.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that its troops, positioned about 1,000 yards from a food site in Rafah, southern Gaza, had fired “warning shots” on Saturday morning after people approached them and did not comply with an order to halt. The site had not yet opened for the day, the statement added.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a private Israel-backed group that manages the new system and oversees the site closest to the violence on Saturday, said that there were “no incidents at or near any of our aid distribution sites today.” But it acknowledged that some deadly Israeli military activity had “occurred hours before our sites opened,” most of it “several kilometers away from the nearest G.H.F. site.”
Though the foundation has told civilians to avoid the sites before they open, many often head there early, sometimes walking for hours to reach the aid points, because food is so scarce in Gaza and the handouts often run out quickly.
Israeli soldiers have in recent months repeatedly shot at crowds of Palestinians making that journey, seemingly as a crude and lethal form of crowd control. Survivors of Saturday’s incident described a similar pattern.
Mr. Abu Oda, 24, said that he had walked for miles to get close to the front of the line before the site opened on Saturday. After he joined large numbers of civilians several hundred yards from the entrance, the crowd lurched chaotically toward it, prompting soldiers to fire without warning, he said.
“Someone screamed, ‘It’s open now!’ and the crowd surged forward,” Mr. Abu Oda said in an interview near the hospital where the wounded were taken. “I was near the front when gunfire broke out,” he added. “One man ahead of me and two beside me were shot.”
Later, Mr. Abu Oda said, he helped to load wounded people into two tuk-tuks, or three-wheeled taxis.
“The injured were packed like fish in a box — bleeding, screaming, stacked on top of each other,” he said.
Another survivor, Mohammed al-Hato, said he had been shot in a separate incident, about two miles away, after he had joined a fast-moving crowd of people trying to reach the site via an access road. As the crowd ran down the road, soldiers nearby suddenly opened fire, he said.
“I ran like everyone else, and then, halfway down the road, the shooting started,” Mr. al-Hato, 33, said in an interview in the hospital. “I saw people dropping around me.”
After Mr. al-Hato tried to flee, he was shot in his right leg, he said.
“I’m still here at the hospital since 8 a.m., waiting for a bone specialist,” Mr. al-Hato said. “All I wanted was a sack of flour.”
Such deadly incidents have become common since late May, when Israel allowed the foundation to distribute food to Palestinians from a handful of sites in areas under Israeli control.
For now, the system has largely replaced one run by the United Nations, which previously distributed food from hundreds of points, mainly in areas controlled by Hamas.
The foundation says it is happy to work with the United Nations, but U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions make it hard to operate.
Israel says the new system is necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing, stockpiling and selling the food at high prices to civilians. Aid groups say it has turned the process of seeking food into a near-daily death trap because it brings crowds of desperate and hungry civilians into regular proximity with Israeli troops.
Israeli officials have acknowledged that troops have fired on crowds approaching the aid sites, but suggested that the death tolls have been inflated. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has said that violence rarely occurs at the sites themselves and has accused Hamas of encouraging the unrest and attacking Palestinians employed at the sites.
More generally, aid groups say that the new system has yet to prevent widespread hunger, which surged in Gaza after Israel’s 80-day blockade on all food and fuel from March to May.
This past week, one of the main United Nations agencies in Gaza, UNRWA, said that it screened about 10,600 children in the second half of June and found that around 900, or nearly one in 10, was suffering from malnourishment.
Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.
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