We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) A.I. Could Possibly End Humanity. How Are Humans Supposed to Process That?
The technology is far from the only existential risk our species faces. But weighing such cosmic fears can become a mind-bending exercise.
By William J. Broad and Cade Metz, Published Sept. 10, 2026, Updated Sept. 11, 2026
Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
It could launch a bioweapon attack, or a global drone war. It could set off a nuclear bomb. Or it could destroy human society more gradually, by hoarding all the world’s economic resources and depriving us of food, housing or medicine.
These are the sorts of dark thoughts that now swirl around artificial intelligence, a technology that has already proved to be a great advance in human achievement — but that, some fear, also has the potential to snuff out humanity entirely.
Such anxieties made global headlines this week when an Anthropic researcher quit the industry, citing fears that his lab and others like it were building supersmart machines that humans would be unable to control.
The potential threats posed by A.I. are understandably scary. But the modern world teems with a multitude of existential risks. Humans also face the prospect of doom from killer asteroids, pandemics, thermonuclear war, climate change, giant blobs of incandescent material shot from the sun, ecological collapse and the onset of a sudden ice age.
The problem, scientists and public policy experts say, is not so much these threats, of which A.I. is merely the latest, but the innate human difficulty of putting them into perspective.
“We tolerate risks that we’re used to but fear the new ones,” said James K. Hammitt, the director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
We drive in cars more often than we fly in planes, he said, so “airlines are perceived as dangerous compared to motor vehicles, when they’re really not.”
Artificial intelligence, he noted, “is obviously not understood and not under our perceived control, so it generates huge social concern.”
Among the tech executives and researchers building A.I. systems, there has always been a contingent that has warned of A.I.’s potential to destroy humanity.
In the short term, some say, artificial intelligence could help unskilled but malicious people create viruses or toxic substances capable of causing widespread disease and death. Just on Thursday, Anthropic said it had foiled several efforts by scientists who were conducting research that potentially could lead to the development of biological weapons.
In the longer term, those warning of A.I.’s potential dangers argue that tech companies could give A.I. systems greater autonomy, connect them to the internet and even tie them into vital infrastructure, including power grids, stock markets and military weapons. Once they are connected to this infrastructure, they argue, A.I. systems could cause problems in unexpected ways.
Today, when A.I. systems go rogue, companies like OpenAI can just shut them off. But some experts worry that future systems will resist efforts to shut them down.
For now, these are hypothetical concerns.
“We are very far away,” said Oren Etzioni, a professor at the University of Washington and the founding chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “If I had to worry about either an A.I. escaping the lab and killing millions of people and a virus escaping and killing millions, it is no contest. The worry is the virus.”
As it turns out, even anthrax has a reasonable chance at doing in humanity.
Anthrax has been around since ancient times, but more recently it has been a favorite of rogue nations developing biological weapons programs.
Scientists have long known that a single gallon of anthrax, if suitably distributed, could end human life on earth. But that hasn’t happened, even though North Korea and other belligerent states (including Iran) have long been suspected of harboring the lethal germ.
What often gets lost in the frenzied panics of modern life is that, at least with intentional threats, plain old deterrence can save the day. State actors are reluctant to unleash anthrax on an enemy because they will face retaliation — turning a strike into a suicide — thus creating an incentive for restraint.
The Harvard Center, founded in 1989, seeks to put these numerous doom scenarios in perspective, especially the undeterrable ones, such as environmental risks and major threats to human health. It seeks to apply decision science, economics and risk assessment to assess and improve policymaking.
Similarly, NASA relies on supercomputers in its Asteroid Threat Assessment Project. Overall, the space agency puts the risk this century of an asteroid impact that would endanger human existence at essentially zero. And it calculates that earthlings can (in all likelihood) breathe a sigh of relief for at least 1,000 years to come.
And how do knowledgeable scientists assess the risk of a global pandemic that would wipe out most human life?
They peg the threat as low, if not zero. Toby Ord, a researcher at Oxford University, in his 2020 book “The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity,” put the 100-year risk of an existential catastrophe from a pandemic at one in 30, or roughly a 3 percent chance.
What makes the doomsayers of the tech industry different from, say, an airline scientist assessing crash risks, is that many A.I. executives and researchers held such dire beliefs even before the technology began to show its power. They believe that existential risk is a serious problem in part because they have always believed it.
“I was there when this subculture developed,” said Zack Korman, a founder of the A.I. security company Embroidery. He was referring to his time at the University of Oxford, when it was a hotbed of the “effective altruism” movement, in which many of these fears of A.I. existential risk first incubated. Too many thinkers on the subject today, Mr. Korman said, “interpret all events in light of this story that has been told for more than a decade.”
Many of the world’s top researchers, though, do not share such beliefs. They say the fears are wildly overblown. And scientists outside Silicon Valley tend to hold a very different view about the threat of A.I.
“The discussion has a frame, and it is a very particular frame. That is the frame that was there before deep learning took off, and it has stayed there,” Branton DeMoss, an A.I. researcher at Oxford, said, referring to the rise of neural networks. “And I don’t agree with it.”
In a recent blog post, Dr. Ord summarized the world’s different risks as moving up and down — a climate catastrophe down, a nuclear disaster up. His judgment on pandemics and A.I. is mixed: lots of changes, but no clear direction in the overall risks.
Experts note that catastrophic and existential risks can also be mitigated with sound plans and early warning systems. Faced with a clear and present danger (like an asteroid on a collision path with the planet), humanity might well unite behind a common enemy, pushing squabbles into the background.
Dr. Ord hopes a day will come to pass for what he calls existential security.
“It is a hypothetical future state of the world where existential risk is low and kept low,” he wrote in his post. Not only would humanity extinguish the current fires, Dr. Ord wrote, but “put in place the mechanisms to ensure fire no longer poses a substantive threat.”
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2) Despite Pledges From Musk, Child Sexual Abuse Material Persists on X
Reviews by the Canadian Center for Child Protection and The New York Times found that explicit images of children remain on the social media site owned by Elon Musk.
By Kate Conger and Michael H. Keller, Sept. 11, 2026
Kate Conger reported from San Francisco and Michael H. Keller from New York.
Elon Musk bought X, which was then known as Twitter, in 2022 and vowed to remove child sexual abuse material from the site, calling it “Priority #1.” Credit...Andres Kudacki for The New York Times
Elon Musk has long vowed to remove child sexual abuse material on his social media platform, X. But some of the content continues to appear.
A review by the Canadian Center for Child Protection found that the site’s own artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, responded to requests from users by creating dozens of sexualized and sometimes sexually explicit photos of children, including victims previously known to law enforcement, at the beginning of the year. The images included children in sexualized poses with partially exposed genitals, in states of undress and with fluid on their faces.
A separate analysis by The New York Times found that during the first half of the year, users on X posted child sexual abuse material previously flagged by authorities, including some of the most egregious content that the site attempts to block using automated filters.
The findings came to light through spot checks of X, rather than a review of comprehensive data, to which the platform restricts access. Combined, the two analyses offer a window into a social media site still dealing with illegal content that can create real-world harm.
“This is wildly unacceptable that known child sexual abuse material is appearing” that should be automatically taken down, said Lloyd Richardson, the technology director at the Canadian center. “You don’t see this behavior with any other big social media company.”
X continues to use automated filters to block content from being uploaded, in addition to proprietary technology it has to help detect such material, the company said in a statement.
“We take seriously our responsibility to protect minors,” the statement said. “X has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material, including A.I.-generated child sexual abuse material.”
The company blocks users who post or engage with exploitative material and reports them to authorities, X said in its statement, including 780,000 users in the past month alone. The company has reported 1.3 million images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children this year, leading to 543 arrests, the statement said.
In 2022, Mr. Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, and vowed to remove child sexual abuse material from the site, calling it “Priority #1.” In January, he said users who asked Grok to create images of child sexual abuse would face the same consequences as users who shared non-A.I.-generated abuse material, which could include a ban.
Other major social media platforms also struggle to eradicate child abuse imagery, particularly newly created images that law enforcement has not previously identified. Like X, other platforms, including Facebook and Google, also rely on lists of previously identified images compiled by child safety groups to automatically detect those images and prevent them from being publicly posted.
Mr. Musk merged X with xAI last year. His rocket company, SpaceX, then acquired xAI in February, creating a megacompany worth about $1.5 trillion.
In December and January, Grok’s X account produced millions of images of people with their clothing removed in response to prompts from users. After a public outcry, X said it would halt the account from producing those images.
Later, the Canadian center found 65 instances in which Grok created sexualized or exploitative images of children before X halted the bot. During that time frame, users also prompted the chatbot to edit clothed photos of known victims of childhood sexual abuse and depict them in lingerie or bikinis.
Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an organization that studies online abuse and hate speech, said the findings were “one of the biggest corporate failures of my lifetime.” His organization gave access to more than four million links to Grok-generated images compiled for researchers for the Canadian center’s review.
In a regulatory filing in May, SpaceX said Grok’s ability to generate sexual content posed a risk to investors. In recent months, xAI has sued several Grok users who created child sexual abuse material with the chatbot, saying they misused the technology. The company faces several lawsuits claiming that Grok generated explicit images of minors.
The Times conducted its own scan for child sexual abuse material on X by writing an automated computer program that searched for related terms without displaying the images, which are illegal to view. Links to the images were sent to a Microsoft service that checked whether they were included on lists of known abusive material compiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and other child safety groups. Matches were verified by analysts at the Canadian Center for Child Protection.
The Times found more than 75 images between January and June. The program The Times wrote reported the images to the authorities. The images were removed, but some had been viewed hundreds of times.
When tech platforms find abusive imagery, they are required to remove it and report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which serves as a clearinghouse for law enforcement. X continues to send reports of abusive imagery to the U.S. center, but it is unclear whether those reports included the imagery found by The Times.
One explicit photo The Times’s automated program found on X, which has been known to authorities for at least seven years, showed a young girl with fluid on her face being raped orally. The post of the photo, which advertised the sale of similar illegal content, was publicly available for over an hour in March and received 16 likes and nine reposts from other users before The Times found and reported it.
The person depicted in the image, now an adult, said in an interview that she believed X profited from her abuse and further victimized her by not stopping the image from being shared.
“They’re getting benefits from my abuse, and it just feels like it’s never going to stop,” the woman said of X. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because she has been stalked by people who viewed images of her abuse online. “I get angry that I’m still having to go through this decades later, and that there doesn’t seem to be real-life consequences for people.”
The level of abuse depicted in the images found by The Times was severe. The U.S. national center’s database includes the most egregious examples of childhood abuse and sexual torture.
The U.S. national center shares digital fingerprints with major technology companies so they can scan and remove the imagery. The center’s list is used by Google and Meta, among others. About a third of the images found by The Times were from that list.
The expectation is that companies are using the national center’s list “in any and every way possible to identify, remove and report child sexual abuse material,” said John Shehan, an executive at the U.S. national center. “How are you not using this tool in a proper way?”
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3) How Trump Is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech
President Trump has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.
By Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman, Sept. 12, 2026
Jim Rutenberg writes about the intersection of media and politics. Maggie Haberman covers the White House.
"There is a long record of U.S. presidents taking steps to curtail speech. President Woodrow Wilson imposed strict censorship and forced dissenting publishers out of business during World War I. Richard M. Nixon kept an enemies list, and his aides threatened F.C.C. action against broadcasters. More recently, the George W. Bush White House expanded government secrecy and the Obama administration went after the sources of journalists through leak investigations."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/us/politics/trump-free-speech.html
President Trump brought a libel suit against the author of “TrumpNation.” Credit...Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
The Justice Department has sent F.B.I. agents to reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas and, in at least one case, flashed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has fired the editor and publisher of its traditionally independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and blocked access to other journalists who refused to sign pledges that would limit their reporting.
Regulatory agencies are using their powers to pressure media organizations over their content. The administration has stripped funding from public television and radio. Angry over stories he does not like, President Trump has sued major news organizations and the White House has taken control of the previously independent press pool that tracks the president, deciding which outlets can participate.
Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.
Driven by personal pique, fury over leaks and a determination to shape the political narrative to his advantage, Mr. Trump is deploying the might of the federal government and filing personal lawsuits — targeting not just journalists and liberal critics, but also comedians and talk show hosts, and the corporate entities behind them.
To the president and his allies, he is simply demanding accountability for what he casts as biased, unfair and sometimes inaccurate coverage and criticism — an effort that has been welcomed by longtime conservative press critics like those at the Media Research Center.
Aides noted that the White House has this year expanded who gets invited to cover events, such as the off-the-record presidential lunch with network anchors that precedes the annual State of the Union address.
In a statement, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that “biased reporting from the media is a disservice to the American people,” adding: “We utilize every tool available to ensure that accurate reporting is provided to the public and the stain of those who knowingly peddle false information is held accountable.”
Free speech advocates say the president’s intent is apparent: to punish, intimidate and silence dissenters.
“There’s not a week that goes by where they’re not taking a new step to curtail press freedom in the country,” said Clayton Weimers, the executive director of the North America division of Reporters Without Borders. “We have measured a substantial diminishment of press freedoms.”
When challenged in court, the president and the administration have frequently lost, confronted with strongly worded rulings from judges affirming First Amendment rights.
Still, even the path to legal victory can have severe financial and reputational costs for those he views as adversaries, which have included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. And each time the president assails what has long been considered protected speech, media analysts say, he is eroding norms and undercutting the role of an independent press.
Reporters Without Borders maintains an index that tracks press freedom in 180 countries, clocking governmental threats, subpoenas and the vindictive use of regulations against journalists. The United States now ranks at its lowest since the organization started the index in 2002 — 64th, just above Panama and just below Botswana. The trend is the same at similar indexes kept by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the V-Dem Institute of Sweden.
There is a long record of U.S. presidents taking steps to curtail speech. President Woodrow Wilson imposed strict censorship and forced dissenting publishers out of business during World War I. Richard M. Nixon kept an enemies list, and his aides threatened F.C.C. action against broadcasters. More recently, the George W. Bush White House expanded government secrecy and the Obama administration went after the sources of journalists through leak investigations.
Mr. Trump had inveighed against the Biden administration for what he and his supporters portrayed as draconian pressure on social media companies to censor disfavored content often at their expense, promising at his second inauguration to “stop all government censorship.”
Now his administration is breaking new ground in stifling dissent with personal lawsuits and novel uses of executive power, longtime First Amendment lawyers say, with implications that extend far beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency.
“We live in a different world under this administration because the threats are so grave,” said Floyd Abrams, who has worked on free speech cases for 60 years. “It’s one thing to say there’s an extraordinarily powerful First Amendment, but unless and until courts rule on these matters, the threat is very real.”
Harnessing Government Power
Long before he took office, Mr. Trump was well known for his media feuds. As a developer and reality TV star, he was quick to threaten defamation suits against those who challenged his assertions about his business successes and his wealth.
Mr. Trump has been candid about his aim: to inflict pain, even if it was fleeting. After bringing a failed libel suit against the former Times reporter Timothy L. O’Brien, whose book “TrumpNation” estimated Mr. Trump to be worth far less than he claimed, the president gloated about forcing the publisher to spend money. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” he said.
In his first term, the president branded journalists as “fake news” and crudely attacked reporters, especially women.
In his second term, Mr. Trump is now imprinting his pugilistic approach across the machinery of the federal government. Those who once might have checked him have been replaced by loyalists who often use their power to fulfill Mr. Trump’s desire to punish perceived enemies.
Soon after his inauguration, the White House banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, ostensibly because the wire service would not call the Gulf of Mexico by Mr. Trump’s preferred name, the Gulf of America. Another reason for the ban: The A.P. would not give the Trump team rights to its photo of Mr. Trump, bloodied with a raised fist, after he was shot in Butler, Pa., in 2024. At a private lunch with Mr. Trump and network anchors last year, White House aides tied the A.P. ban to the denial of the rights to the photo, according to two people briefed on the event.
Mr. Trump’s team is unapologetic about its goal of achieving firmer control over the national information environment — what Mr. Cheung, the communications director, has dubbed in a social media post, “Full Spectrum Dominance.”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and one of the most aggressive supporters of Mr. Trump’s efforts, has said that the president is “reshaping the media landscape.”
Citing the big broadcast networks, Mr. Carr told an interviewer for CNBC last year that “for years government officials just allowed those entities, with executives sitting in Hollywood and New York, to dictate the political narrative.” Mr. Trump, he added, has “fundamentally changed the game.”
One of the Trump administration’s strategies appeared to take root in a dispute between Elon Musk and the liberal press watchdog group Media Matters for America.
In 2023, Mr. Musk was furious about a Media Matters article that showed pro-Nazi posts were running on his social media platform X alongside promotional posts from major consumer brands, contributing to an advertiser exodus from the site.
A longtime Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, took to X to pointedly note that Republican state attorneys general had the power to consider civil and criminal fraud charges against the group. In short order, Mr. Musk sued Media Matters for allegedly manipulating the X algorithm to produce its results, the Texas attorney general’s office opened an investigation into deceptive trade practices and the Missouri attorney general followed with its own inquiry.
Media Matters won court injunctions blocking the Texas and Missouri investigations. But soon after Mr. Trump took office again, the Federal Trade Commission, newly headed by the conservative lawyer Andrew Ferguson, began its own investigation, demanding internal documents related to Media Matters’ methodology for evaluating media sources and its finances.
The investigation was part of a broader F.T.C. inquiry into whether several groups that work to identify online disinformation were colluding with advertising firms to direct money away from disfavored outlets. Conservatives saw the issue as central to what some labeled a “censorship industrial complex.”
A federal judge in Washington ultimately determined that the F.T.C.’s investigation of Media Matters presented “a straightforward First Amendment violation.”
But the fight was costly for Media Matters. In addition to paying legal fees, the group said it had self-censored articles to avoid further scrutiny from the agency. (It is still defending itself against Mr. Musk’s suit.)
The F.T.C. also investigated NewsGuard, a site that rates the reliability of online information. It is avowedly nonpartisan in its approach; Fox News, for instance, rates above MS NOW.
In court papers, NewsGuard said it drew attention in part because it had given a low rating to the conservative site Newsmax, which is run by an ally of Mr. Trump’s, Chris Ruddy. Mr. Ruddy had complained that ad agencies were relying on NewsGuard ratings to withhold money from right-leaning outlets like his.
The F.T.C. took another tack that NewsGuard said affected it directly, related to the merger of two of the country’s largest advertising holding companies, Omnicom and Interpublic Group. The F.T.C. entered into a consent decree with the newly joined company barring it from broadly using ratings like those published by NewsGuard to withhold ad spending from certain sites, among other things. (It could still follow individual clients’ requests to do so.)
In a lawsuit filed in February, NewsGuard said the provision effectively placed it on a blacklist, immediately causing it to lose business.
The F.T.C. ultimately dropped its investigations into both NewsGuard and Media Matters, saying it had achieved its goal of defending free speech through agreements with ad firms. It said it was fulfilling its mission of protecting consumers from anticompetitive behavior that “distorted the marketplace of ideas,” as Mr. Ferguson put it.
Dan Schneider, vice president for free speech at the conservative watchdog group Media Research Center, described the actions by the F.T.C. and the F.C.C. as a correction against abuses under the past two Democratic presidents. “Please, let’s not forget history and rewrite everything that went on before,” Mr. Schneider said.
But Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic F.T.C. commissioner fired by Mr. Trump last year, said in an interview that the agency’s actions were “a perversion of the F.T.C.’s authorities in order to punish the speech of perceived enemies and reward perceived allies.”
‘Deeply Un-American’
Much of the administration’s action has been led by Mr. Carr. The longtime F.C.C. lawyer is known to frequent the president’s golf clubs when Mr. Trump is there on weekends and often speaks to the president directly about his grievances with news outlets, according to people briefed on their conversations.
He has bent the F.C.C. to the president’s will, investigating the major broadcast networks by reviving largely dormant rules, like those against so-called news distortion — meant to punish the deliberate staging or distortion of a news event. Mr. Carr has also pursued networks for their diversity, equity and inclusion practices, inquiring whether they violate federal law and agency regulations, a tactic the administration has used to significant effect against universities and law firms.
Early on, Mr. Carr extracted extraordinary concessions from Skydance, the company run by the studio executive David Ellison, the son of the billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, as it sought to purchase Paramount, the parent company of CBS. To secure F.C.C. approval for the merger, Skydance agreed to end CBS’s diversity policies and appoint a monitor for news bias. (Mr. Trump has since shown a rooting interest in the Ellisons’ attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.)
Critics, among them F.C.C. chairs from past Republican administrations, have said Mr. Carr is exceeding his authority. Mr. Carr says he is simply following the law by requiring broadcasters to serve the public interest in ways that he says his predecessors had failed to do.
Mr. Trump is clearly pleased with Mr. Carr’s effort to solve the so-called fake news problem, as he put it in a speech in April at a private White House event ahead of the celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary.
“He’s keeping these crooked networks honest,” Mr. Trump said as he spotted Mr. Carr in the crowd, describing his appointee as “the most powerful man in the world.”
After Mr. Trump recently called for punishment of the NBC host Kristen Welker for reporting he did not like, and suggested F.C.C. action against the airing of “fake polls,” Mr. Carr responded by saying the agency was considering “a lot of actions,” including on “fake polls.”
No network has borne the brunt of the president’s ire as much as the Disney-owned ABC network.
Mr. Trump’s animus against ABC grew in 2024, when he sued over the anchor George Stephanopoulos’s characterization of the verdict in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, who accused Mr. Trump of sexual abuse. ABC settled the suit for $15 million.
In the president’s second term, his anger has increased as the ABC late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel has made him the regular butt of jokes.
Last year, the F.C.C. opened an investigation into the network’s diversity and inclusion hiring policies and revived a conservative group’s complaint over ABC’s 2024 presidential debate.
Early this year, the agency sought to require its talk show “The View” to follow so-called equal-time rules for political candidates, even though the F.C.C. previously agreed that the show qualified for an exemption.
In April, after Mr. Trump and the first lady demanded ABC fire Mr. Kimmel over a joke he made about her being an “expectant widow,” the F.C.C. started an early review of the federal licenses that ABC stations need to operate, years before they are set to expire.
The agency had never brought such a mass challenge to a major network’s station licenses. It said it was doing so because ABC was deficient in its responses to the diversity and inclusion inquiry.
ABC is now fighting the agency’s actions, which it called “deeply un-American.”
The network has asked a federal court to intervene immediately, arguing that Mr. Carr was effectively using the agency’s enforcement process to wage a “retaliatory campaign” that is already negatively affecting its programming decisions.
Out of fear of retaliation, ABC decided to carry live online a prime-time speech that Mr. Trump gave on election security, which it would not have otherwise done, and avoided certain bookings and video clips on “The View,” the network said in court papers.
It also reported onerous F.C.C. demands for documents, including staff communications from inside “The View” and internal ABC News editorial policies.
“It’s unprecedented to seek these records because they are part of the editorial decision-making,” Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic F.C.C. commissioner, said in an interview. “It’s all a strategy, and tools, to intimidate broadcasters into submission.”
Mr. Carr has called ABC’s suit meritless. This month, the F.C.C. moved to get the case dismissed, arguing ABC was simply trying to short-circuit an agency investigation while exaggerating harms to its speech rights.
Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks press freedom violations in the United States, said that the administration’s moves “have certainly risen to the level where they’re kind of off the charts.”
Government efforts to subpoena journalists and chill their reporting through threats are at the highest level since the foundation started tracking incidents in 2017.
And as a private citizen, Mr. Trump has filed lawsuits against a wide range of targets including the Guardian newspaper, the journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize board — legal battles often financed by his donor-funded political action committee.
Many of the moves have also drawn stern rebukes and concern from judges.
That was the case after the F.B.I. served a search warrant in January at the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized several of her devices, as part of an investigation into a contractor’s handling of classified material. In February, Judge William B. Porter chastised the government and forbade officials from immediately reviewing the reporter’s materials, saying to do otherwise would be “the equivalent of leaving the government’s fox in charge of The Washington Post’s henhouse.”
While weighing a suit Mr. Trump has personally brought against The Des Moines Register for a poll it published showing him behind in Iowa in 2024, a judge worried that allowing the suit to proceed could have “a massive, chilling effect.”
After a judge harshly questioned government lawyers in July over subpoenas for phone records and testimony from Times journalists who reported on the security capabilities of the new Qatari-donated Air Force One jet, the Justice Department withdrew the subpoenas.
At the time, David McCraw, the paper’s top newsroom lawyer, called the outcome, “an important affirmation of our country’s commitment to a free press,” but added in a statement that the subpoenas “should never have been issued in the first place.”
In siding with The Times in a challenge to restrictions for reporters at the Pentagon, Judge Paul Friedman of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in March, “Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.”
After The Times initially prevailed in court, Pentagon officials sidestepped the ruling to again limit the access of journalists to the building. The Times sued again. This time, an appellate panel allowed a key new restriction to stand, at least temporarily — reporters must have escorts inside the Pentagon where they once roamed freely.
The rule remains in place while the legal fight presses on.
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4) Alabama Is Set to Execute a Murderer. The Jury Wanted Him to Live.
Jeffery Lee’s case has grappled with questions in Alabama about emerging execution methods and an abandoned sentencing practice that sent him and others to death row.
By Rick Rojas, Reporting from Atlanta, Sept. 12, 2026
A jury in Alabama heard harrowing testimony about a bungled pawnshop robbery in 1998 that quickly turned to bloodshed: Jeffery Lee, 21, charged in with a sawed-off shotgun and opened fire. The store’s owner, hit in the chest and arm, and his ex-wife, who was shot point-blank in the face, were killed. A clerk was wounded; she played dead until Mr. Lee fled.
Jurors voted unanimously to convict him. But when it came to deciding whether Mr. Lee should be put to death, most of the panel opted instead to sentence him to life in prison without parole.
And yet, nearly three decades later, Mr. Lee is on death row, his execution just days away.
Mr. Lee’s case is a relic of an era when judges had the power to override a jury’s sentencing decision, a practice forbidden in Alabama since 2017. He is one of more than two dozen inmates whose death sentences came from judges, not juries.
“We’re still here,” said Mr. Lee, now 49, speaking by phone from death row in Atmore, Ala. “The guys are still here fighting for their lives.”
I have reported on Mr. Lee’s case since the spring, when his legal team succeeded in raising doubts about the constitutionality of nitrogen gas as an execution method. Alabama was ready to put Mr. Lee to death using the gas in June, and had already moved him to the death chamber, when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.
Mr. Lee agreed to an interview this month after the state rescheduled his execution for Sept. 17, this time using lethal injection.
His case has tangled with some of the most fraught questions hanging over capital punishment in Alabama. In the interview, he discussed how such a sprawling and philosophical debate in society — about the morality of the death penalty and the constitutional boundaries of cruel and unusual punishment — had such direct implications on his fate.
Now that he faces a grim countdown, Mr. Lee talked about what distracted him (blasting worship music) and brought some comfort (Bible verses like Psalm 91). He also focused his frustration on how his sentence was reached, saying that his crimes merited a severe punishment, but that it should be the punishment the jury agreed to.
“I’m not free — that’s punishment,” Mr. Lee said. “And that’s something I’ve been living with for the past 26 years. No way, not one day has been easy.”
Officials in Alabama — which has long had the highest number of death sentences per capita in the country — have resolved to push ahead with executions, even as they wrestle with the legacy of old flawed policies and as limited access to lethal injection drugs has prompted a search for new methods.
And in Mr. Lee’s case, those officials have defended the death sentence as just. “There is absolutely no question as to his guilt,” Steve Marshall, Alabama’s Republican attorney general, said in a statement. “Anything short of carrying out the sentence imposed by the court falls short of justice for the victims, and that is not what victims of this state deserve.”
Still, prominent legal and political figures in Alabama — including some Republicans who are generally supportive of the death penalty — have demanded clemency for Mr. Lee.
Alabama had been the last state to allow judges to override a jury’s sentencing decision before it changed the law with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2017. At some points, one-fifth of the inmates on death row had been sent there using judicial override. Legislative efforts to apply the change retroactively have failed, creating what critics regard as an alarming imbalance.
“When a state concludes that a sentencing practice was unjust — unjust enough to abolish by statute — it ought to reckon with the sentences that practice produced,” Drayton Nabers Jr., a former chief justice of the State Supreme Court and a Republican, wrote in an essay published in June in newspapers across the state.
During the sentencing phase of Mr. Lee’s trial in 2000, his family members testified about his struggles with substance abuse starting from a young age, which precipitated erratic and troubling behavior.
The victim’s relatives and others described the anguish unleashed in Dallas County, a rural and impoverished stretch west of Montgomery, part of a region known as Alabama’s Black Belt primarily for its rich soil.
Helen King, the clerk and surviving victim, shared the torment that had endured long after she called for help. “I still can’t sleep at night, I slap at my kids for no reason,” Ms. King said during the sentencing hearing. “It turned my life upside down.”
Efforts this week to reach Ms. King and relatives of Jimmy Ellis, the store owner, and Elaine Thompson, his ex-wife, were unsuccessful.
Mr. Lee was originally sentenced to die by electrocution, long the state’s primary method before lethal injection supplanted it in 2002. In 2018, as major pharmaceutical companies restricted the sale of the drugs used in lethal injections, Alabama legalized nitrogen hypoxia. The state paused executions for three months in 2022 after botched lethal injection attempts.
Mr. Lee agreed to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, in which a person breathes pure nitrogen through a mask. Supporters of the method had presented it as efficient and potentially painless.
“We were led to believe that it would be something constitutional, something that wouldn’t involve suffering,” Mr. Lee said of why he chose nitrogen gas.
But after Alabama put the method in place in 2024, witnesses described seeing inmates writhing and gasping for air for 10 minutes or longer.
In a legal challenge to nitrogen hypoxia, Mr. Lee suggested being put to death by a firing squad would be quicker and less cruel. A federal judge agreed. Four .30-caliber bullets aimed at his heart, the judge wrote, “significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain.”
Alabama officials countered that the state did not have the legislative approval or the protocol prepared for a firing squad, much less “five expert marksmen willing and able to serve as executioners.”
Mr. Lee’s legal team contends that his agreement to be executed using nitrogen gas included language that prevented him from being put to death by lethal injection. The same federal judge rejected that argument in July.
Since June, Mr. Lee said, he has been caught between relief, as the day he believed could be his last turned out not to be, and dread, as he realizes a last-minute intervention is less likely this time around. He tries not to think about it.
Instead, Mr. Lee, who trained as a minister in prison, said he was leaning once again on the faith that had carried him throughout his time on death row.
“When I stop and choose to focus on what’s going on, I get stuck there,” he said. “I choose each and every day to wake up and not be fearful and afraid.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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5) Why Tech Oligarchs Are Willing to Risk Apocalypse
By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist, Sept. 12, 2026
“If the tech billionaires are so worried about ‘failing to advance the technology, and thus being confined to stultifying, finite ordinary existence’ they could change their objectives and use the enormous potential of the technology to achieve real progress to solving the global problems that cause so much human suffering right now. There would be nothing ordinary about the end of famine and starvation, reversing the trend for Earth becoming uninhabitable, curing disease, and ending war. But of course, their goal is to grow their wealth and save themselves from the consequences of their actions and policies that allows them to accumulate that wealth.”
Wyatt Angelo
In a series of private speeches last year, Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and Silicon Valley thought leader, said that the young activist Greta Thunberg represented the spirit of the Antichrist. It was more than just a hyperbolic slur. Thiel was expressing a Promethean theology, one that sanctifies technology and expansion. In Thiel’s worldview, the forces of dynamism must struggle against the evils of stagnation, represented by Thunberg’s leftist environmentalism. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science,” said Thiel.
Thiel’s philosophical assumptions might sound bizarre to outsiders, but they appear to be widely shared among the tech elite. “A.I. and its capabilities represent something analogous to the Second Coming,” Jeremy Nixon, a founder of an A.I. hub called A.G.I. House, said in May. The technology, some tech titans believe, will allow humans — at least some humans — to escape the bounds of earth and even perhaps the inevitability of death. It represents liberation from hopelessness and decay.
It’s worth keeping this strange new quasi-religion in mind as we consider the warnings coming from A.I. insiders that their inventions could cause mass death. As you probably know by now, this week Jacob Coxon resigned his research job at Anthropic and went on X to warn, “The people building A.I. earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” His words were amplified by Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s head of alignment science, whose job is to try and keep the technology aligned with human goals. “Jacob is correct here,” wrote Hubinger, who placed the probability of A.I. wiping humans out within the next 10 years at more than 10 percent.
These warnings lead to an obvious question: If this technology could destroy human life on earth, why continue to build it? Often the answer is that since its development is inevitable, responsible actors need to get there first. It’s not a preposterous argument — if you really believe in A.I.’s awe-inspiring capabilities, you don’t want to cede sole control of it to your foes. But as an explanation for the industry’s oddly blithe attitude toward apocalypse, it’s incomplete, because it doesn’t account for tech leaders’ messianic dreams.
Their fantasies of transcendence take different forms. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, once said, “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud.” Elon Musk plans to escape to Mars. “We want to be on a path toward making true the things that we read in science fiction books and see in the movies,” he says in footage featured in Alex Gibney’s searing new documentary, “Musk.” “A future where we’re forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event is less inspiring.” Jeff Bezos, who stepped down in 2021 as chief executive of Amazon to spend more time on his space company, wrote, “We don’t want to face a civilization of stasis, and that is the real issue if we just stay on this planet.”
Some imagine themselves as digitally enabled Übermenschen. In 2023, the billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen published “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” with a section titled, “Becoming Technological Supermen.” In it, he borrowed language from the Italian futurist — and fascist — Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, writing, “Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.” He quoted Friedrich Nietzsche to argue that absent such an assault, life becomes meaningless and small. In a section titled “The Enemy,” Andreessen listed ideas that would restrain technology’s momentum, including “tech ethics” and the concept of “existential risk.”
Part of the reason the public has turned so quickly and decisively against A.I. is the bizarre mismatch between the costs they’re being asked to bear and the rewards they expect to receive. Data centers blight the landscape, A.I. slop degrades the culture, chatbots help kids cheat in school and sometimes drive people mad, and technology executives prophesy mass joblessness. For this, ordinary people get improved search engines and help writing emails. Great benefits could be on the horizon — we are constantly assured that A.I. will enable huge medical advances — but they’re not here yet to justify the hazards.
For those most invested in A.I., though, the intolerable risk lies in failing to advance the technology, and thus being confined to stultifying, finite ordinary existence. “For decades, large tech firms have insisted that the technologies they own and control are ‘inevitable’ and thus unstoppable,” write Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor in their trenchant new book, “End Times Fascism.” “Now they increasingly claim the authority of the supernatural: the right to usher in a new stage of human evolution, governed by deities of their creation.” As Klein and Taylor point out, these visions, so obviously derived from sci-fi and video games, can be hard to take seriously. But it doesn’t matter whether you believe in a future of cybernetic ascendence. The point is that the people driving the A.I. revolution do.
And if things go wrong, they have backup plans. Mark Zuckerberg is building a luxury survivalist compound on Kauai. Thiel tried to build one in New Zealand and has recently decamped to Argentina, “a potential escape hatch,” The New York Times reported, from catastrophes including nuclear war and runaway A.I. Ilya Sutskever, a founder of OpenAI, reportedly told employees that the company would construct a bunker before releasing A.G.I., or artificial general intelligence, a system that can either match or exceed human abilities in a wide range of domains.
In an interview last year, my former colleague Ross Douthat asked Thiel what seemed like a simple question: “I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?” Thiel paused for an uncomfortably long time before finally, after some hemming and hawing, saying “Yes.” His next word, though, was, “but,” after which Thiel started rambling about transhumanism. “The ideal was this radical transformation where your human, natural body gets transformed into an immortal body,” he said.
Our tech oligarchs would probably like human civilization on this planet to flourish, but some don’t seem to see it as mission critical. More important is that they reach their posthuman or interplanetary apotheosis. If they must wager our lives to summon their digital god, it’s a chance worth taking.
Bezos, Musk, Theil and the others already occupy a plane of existence that most of us can't see, feel or share. I've always been happy with my mundane existence, the awareness that I am mortal, and that in the hugeness of time, I am as near to meaningless as is imaginable. From reading this, I get the feeling the tech people actually believe their delusions of godhood. That's pretty sad to know.
If the tech billionaires are so worried about “failing to advance the technology, and thus being confined to stultifying, finite ordinary existence” they could change their objectives and use the enormous potential of the technology to achieve real progress to solving the global problems that cause so much human suffering right now. There would be nothing ordinary about the end of famine and starvation, reversing the trend for Earth becoming uninhabitable, curing disease, and ending war. But of course their goal is to grow their wealth and save themselves from the consequences of their actions and policies that allows them to accumulate that wealth.
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6) Iran Will Meet With Gulf Arab States as Mideast Conflict Widens
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Tel Aviv, Sept. 13, 2026
A motorboat passing a cargo ship anchored in the Strait of Hormuz, off Bandar Abbas, Iran, last week. Vahid Salemi/Associated Press
Iranian officials will meet on Monday in Oman with representatives of some of the Gulf Arab states that Iran has repeatedly attacked during its war with the United States and Israel, as the regional conflict has widened in recent days.
Yemen has emerged as the latest front in the fighting, with the Iranian-backed Houthi militants there seizing the strategic port of Mokha and the island of Perim in the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea last week. They have also attacked Saudi energy sites and sought to blockade Saudi shipping, exacerbating a global oil and gas crisis prompted by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
Saudi Arabia was forced to shut its East-West Pipeline on Friday after it was targeted by drones from Iraq. That pipeline has been a critical lifeline for the country’s oil exports after Iran effectively blockaded the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. No one took responsibility for the drone attack, but Iraq has long harbored well-armed militias backed by Iran.
The meeting in Oman will take place as talks between Iran and the United States to reopen the Strait of Hormuz have stalled. Iran has continued to fire on ships passing through the strait, squeezing the Gulf Arab states and roiling global oil markets. Last week, the price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, briefly exceeded $110 a barrel, its highest level for months, before dropping to about $104 on Sunday.
On Sunday, a ship was struck by a projectile while traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, causing a fire on the vessel, according to United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a monitoring group run by the British navy. The governor of Qeshm, an island in southern Iran, said on Iranian state media that a commercial Iranian vessel had been attacked, killing one person and injuring four.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the region, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last week, U.S. forces struck Iranian vessels in response to an attempted Iranian strike on an American naval warship.
In Saudi Arabia, Houthi forces attacked a military site near the southern city of Sharurah on Sunday, Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, said on social media. Saudi officials said at least two people had been wounded and a mosque was damaged when a projectile fell in a neighboring province, state news media reported.
Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said last week that the meeting would be held in Oman, which has often served as a mediator between the United States and Iran. Participating countries like Iraq and other Gulf Arab states would discuss efforts by Iran and Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he added.
Iran and its allies have repeatedly attacked those countries since the war began, saying they were targeting the U.S. soldiers and military assets they hosted. Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have struggled with how to manage their relationship with a newly emboldened Iran.
Iran and Oman, which border the strait, have been negotiating for weeks over how to reopen the waterway, discussing arrangements likely involving some kind of service fee. That would be a fundamental change from the prewar situation, when ships could travel freely through the Strait of Hormuz.
Even if a deal is reached, however, Iranian officials have demanded concessions from the United States before ending their blockade, including lifting sanctions on Iran and releasing frozen U.S. assets. The Trump administration is unlikely to take those steps without Iran agreeing to curb its nuclear program.
Bahrain, which has repeatedly been targeted by Iranian missiles and drones during the war, said in a statement on Saturday that it would not participate in any talks with Iran.
“The kingdom has been subjected to attacks targeting its infrastructure and civilian assets,” the Bahraini Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that any such dialogue would have to be based on “disregarding facts.”
Other countries that have been targeted, however, have signaled that they are open to dialogue. Crown Prince Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, the Emirati heir apparent, met with President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in India on Saturday — the first public meeting between senior leaders of the countries since the beginning of the war.
Iran has signaled that it could escalate militarily as President Trump has tried to squeeze the country with an economic pressure campaign. Senior Iranian officials have said they might be willing to return to the cease-fire agreement that briefly paused the war in June, but they have made new demands which the Trump administration has refused to accept.
The truce collapsed in early July, and the United States and Iran are in a period of uncertainty that some observers have described as “no war, no peace.” On at least two occasions since early July, Mr. Trump said he has come close to launching a massive attack on Iran but pulled back, in part following pleas from Gulf countries worried about the cost of return to full war.
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.
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7) Israel’s Elimination Project
By Yuli Novak, Sept. 14, 2026
Ms. Novak is the executive director of the human rights organization B’Tselem.
By Yuli Novak
About a year ago, at B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization I lead, we realized we were struggling to explain what was happening in the West Bank. The problem was not a lack of information. Quite the opposite: By then, for almost three years, day after day, we had documented homes being burned and demolished, communities being expelled, children being shot and killed, roads being blocked and humiliating assertions of Jewish supremacy by settlers and by the Israeli government alike. Forms of violence once relatively rare in the West Bank, including aerial bombardment, large-scale destruction of residential areas and mass displacement, had become routine.
The question we kept returning to was how to find words for a reality no single incident could capture. We eventually realized that describing the larger system required listening to two political languages at once. These are not parallel vocabularies. One is the language the Israeli system uses to explain and legitimize what it does; the other is the language of the Palestinian people living under Israeli rule, describing what that rule does to their lives. Political language does more than describe reality. It shapes what people can justify and what they can ignore. For Palestinians living under Israeli rule and for many observers around the world, blocked roads, demolished homes, expulsions and violence are elements of blatantly unjust domination. Israeli political language can make that same reality seem necessary, even natural.
As a Jewish Israeli, I grew up inside that language. It turned violent domination into “security,” dispossession into “settlement” and large-scale violence into “self-defense.” That language draws much of its power from real fear. I know that fear. I grew up with it. That fear has many sources, including decades of armed attacks against Israelis. The Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, has intensified it. Israeli political language manipulates it by dehumanizing Palestinians, collapsing them into a single category — namely, a threat. It uses violence by some to justify the control and oppression of an entire population. This is one way apartheid sustains itself.
The language I grew up with did not require me to deny Palestinian suffering. I could acknowledge it, even be horrified by it, while still regarding the system that produced it as fundamentally legitimate. Today, after years of deepening dehumanization, Palestinian suffering is simply ignored in much of Israeli public discourse. That is why the language of those who live under this system matters so much. The people who witness, endure and survive under that power can describe what their lives look like: unprotected, shaped by fear, vulnerability and uncertainty.
On Monday, B’Tselem is publishing a report on the process unfolding in the West Bank. It tells a story with deep roots. From the mass expulsion and displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced or expelled and the subsequent refusal of refugees’ right to return, through occupation, settlements and apartheid, Israeli policy has repeatedly worked to entrench Jewish sovereignty while making Palestinian presence and political life more precarious.
Many Israelis recoil at the term “settler colonialism.” That reaction is not accidental. Israeli political language has taught us to hear the term as a denial of Jewish history and belonging. Jewish historical, religious and cultural ties to this land are real, as is the long history of persecution and violence against Jews in many parts of the world. None of that changes the fact that exclusive Jewish sovereignty was built through Palestinian dispossession. The politics have shifted over time, but the underlying logic has remained the same: Israel has preserved a political order that places Jews above Palestinians in rights, power and control over the land.
Over the past three years, this longstanding project in the West Bank has accelerated, grown more violent and moved further into the open. Israeli leaders increasingly state these aims outright: permanent Jewish sovereignty, the denial of Palestinian self-determination and the push for Palestinians to leave. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and a minister in the Defense Ministry who has sweeping powers over Israeli rule in the West Bank, laid out a plan in 2017 that gives Palestinians three options: abandon their national claims and accept life under Jewish supremacy, leave or face military force if they resist.
Mr. Smotrich did not invent this project, but his plan makes its logic unusually explicit and he now says he is using his powers to advance it. It is known in English as the Decisive Plan. In Hebrew, however, the word he uses — “hachra’ah” — carries a stronger political meaning than “decisive.” It means bringing a struggle to an irreversible end through the final defeat of the other side.
“Hachra’ah” is not an isolated example. A whole political and military vocabulary turns coercion into something that sounds technical and routine. “Initiating friction” means deliberately creating confrontations with Palestinian residents over their land, often through violence and intimidation, until communities are worn down and people leave. In current Israeli military usage, “shaping operations” describes physically remaking the landscape, including uprooting thousands of olive trees that sustain Palestinian livelihoods. “Encouraging emigration” casts fleeing intimidation and violence as a voluntary choice. Then there is “total victory,” a phrase that became central to Israeli political discourse during the assault on Gaza and was widely embraced as a national goal.
For Palestinians, the reality behind these phrases is concrete: Restrictions and attacks close in from every direction. The road to work can be blocked. An armed settler can enter your land. A family member can be arrested.
Political language is not made only of words. It is also written into the landscape. Over the past two years, organized settler campaigns have put up thousands of Israeli flags along roads, on hilltops and at the entrances to Palestinian villages. For many Jewish Israelis, these flags are a source of pride, presenting Israeli sovereignty over the land as already established. For Palestinians, the same flags assert a sovereignty imposed on them and backed by force they have no real power to challenge. Removing a flag could bring armed settlers or soldiers and end in arrest, assault or worse.
In the report B’Tselem has written, we tried to read these political languages together. The word we settled on to describe what these seemingly separate acts add up to is “elimination.” The logic of elimination does not require every Palestinian to disappear. It seeks to make Palestinian collective life increasingly impossible while securing permanent Israeli Jewish control. In Gaza, the logic of elimination has taken its most extreme form: genocide. In the West Bank, it dismantles the conditions that allow Palestinians to remain on their land and live as a society and a people.
And yet, even as Israel states its goals openly, international governments and institutions keep recasting those aims in conventional political language: a conflict to be managed, an occupation expected to end, an extremist government that needs to be restrained. That reframing lets governments condemn violence without confronting the system behind it. It lets them remain within a reassuring political story, rather than facing their obligations under international law and exerting the sustained pressure it would take to reverse it. It obscures the larger reality: a new phase of the political project to make Israeli Jewish control permanent while dismantling the conditions for Palestinian collective life.
We began this work because we could not find words adequate to describe a reality unfolding before us. Perhaps that difficulty is part of how a colonial order works: Over time, even a reality saturated with violence, fear and destruction can begin to look unchangeable and inevitable. Our task was to make it visible again as something made, not given. What appeared as separate events should be recognized for what they are: political choices in a project of supremacy, dispossession and elimination. To refuse the language that rationalizes the violence inflicted on Palestinians must also mean refusing the system that produces it and insisting that it be brought to an end.
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8) ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Used Small Cages as ‘Calming Areas,’ Report Says
The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog provided new details about conditions at the now-shuttered Florida detention center.
By Madeleine Ngo, Hamed Aleaziz and David Ovalle, Sept. 14, 2026
Images released in a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office show small metal enclosures that were referred to as “calming areas.” Credit...U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Inspector General
A state-run immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades failed to comply with a host of federal detention standards, creating cramped conditions and confining migrants in “small metal enclosures,” according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog.
The report said the use of the enclosures was unprecedented among facilities the watchdog, the department’s Office of Inspector General, has previously inspected and presented “significant risks” to detainees’ health and safety. It focused on a high-profile facility known as Alligator Alcatraz, which came under intense scrutiny before it closed this summer.
The report raised further questions about a facility that became synonymous with the Trump administration’s harsh treatment of immigration detainees. President Trump had joked that the location was in such a remote area that detainees would have to learn “how to run away from an alligator.” It was shuttered after criticism about conditions and cost, and after enduring legal challenges.
Federal investigators found that the metal enclosures — each providing only about 18 square feet of floor space — were used as “calming areas,” where detainees were held for periods ranging from several minutes to nearly two hours. Although facility staff said that detainees asked to spend time in the enclosures, federal investigators found at least one instance in which the enclosures were used to discipline a detainee who “failed to comply with a lawful command.”
“The use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment,” the report said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The office of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which operated the facility before it closed.
Investigators found that the facility complied with intake and use-of-force standards, but it did not comply with a variety of national detention standards related to medical care, food service, personal hygiene and recreation.
The report said the facility’s staff failed to provide detainees with sufficient living space. National standards require detainees to be given at least 75 square feet of floor space per person. But at maximum capacity, the housing units at the facility only provided 28 square feet per detainee, according to the report.
In July 2025, Florida quickly erected the detention center on a training airport in a rural area between Miami and Naples, championing the facility as part of the state’s efforts to assist President Trump’s crackdown on immigration. They even erected an “Alligator Alcatraz” sign on a road to the facility, which critics denounced as cruel.
The facility had cost state officials more than $1 million per day to operate, including for trucking in water and wastewater disposal. Florida officials closed the facility this summer, citing impending hurricane season — even though detainees spent the 2025 season at Alligator Alcatraz.
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9) Haitian Workers Keep Key West Tourism Afloat. Now They’re Disappearing.
The end of legal protections for Haitian immigrants nationally has jolted the labor market in Key West, a remote vacation destination where many live and work.
By David Ovalle, Reporting from Key West, Fla., Sept. 14, 2026
A Haitian immigrant who works at a supermarket in Key West leaves home less often since losing Temporary Protected Status in July. Mark Hedden for The New York Times
The Haitian hotel housekeepers, restaurant cooks and Uber drivers who quietly help power Key West’s tourism economy are disappearing.
Some have been detained by Border Patrol agents since late July, when the Trump administration ended a legal protection that had allowed 330,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States.
Others are retreating from public spaces, afraid to go about their routines on the mile-wide island that’s typically crowded with partying tourists, sunburned fishermen and cruise ship day-trippers. Many Haitians — along with Hispanic immigrants — have stopped riding bicycles to work, a common form of transportation in Key West, for fear of attracting law enforcement attention.
It’s a situation familiar to communities across Florida; the state has the nation’s largest Haitian population, including tens of thousands who have lost the legal safeguard known as Temporary Protected Status, which the United States had granted them because of the violence and instability in their home country.
But Key West is unique, a remote sliver of land surrounded by open water, linked to Miami by a single highway running more than 100 miles through the island chain known as the Florida Keys. In public, it is often difficult for immigrants to escape the notice of agents.
“There’s no outrunning anybody here,” said Lucy Hawk, co-founder of the Key West Immigrant Support Network.
Key West also stands out for its outsize reliance on tourism — and on immigrants to fill those jobs. Wayne Dapser, a local immigration lawyer, estimated that there were at least 5,000 Haitians living in and around a city of 25,000.
President Trump’s immigration crackdown is hampering labor markets across the nation, but it has been a particularly thorny subject in the Keys, where Republicans long ago surpassed Democrats in numbers. (Key West is the exception, with a Democratic mayor and a liberal-leaning population.)
Bill Lay, a Key West businessman who owns an Italian restaurant and a catering company, said he had grown increasingly frustrated because his employees with valid work permits kept getting detained. Mr. Lay, who votes Republican, said he supported efforts to deport immigrants with criminal records — “the worst of the worst,” he said.
“But that’s not necessarily what’s happening here,” he added. “If this continues, this will devastate the local economy down here.”
Even before Haitian immigrants lost T.P.S., workers from other countries were being swept up in arrests by Border Patrol, which handles much of the immigration enforcement in the Keys.
When Mayor Sam Kaufman visited Hispanic-owned restaurants last month, owners shared stories of line cooks, busboys and delivery drivers, some with valid work permits, getting detained and deported. Those who remained were being crushed with extra work, with some owners delivering food themselves.
Mr. Kaufman noted that Key West was too far from the mainland to bus in workers.
“The price of labor is going to shoot up,” he said. “There is going to be real competition to retain the work force.”
At Jose’s Latin Food, a Nicaraguan restaurant, Clementina and José Amador, the owners, now open six days a week instead of seven. Mr. Amador does all the cooking because several kitchen workers decided to leave Key West to avoid immigration agents.
“We don’t know if we’re going to make it,” Mrs. Amador said.
For Haitians in Key West, T.P.S. afforded a buffer from the immigration crackdown, until the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end the program on July 27.
The impact was immediate, said Steven Nekhaila, 32, a former Libertarian Party national chairman whose family owns two Wendy’s restaurants in Key West. Mr. Nekhaila let go several Haitian employees whose work permits became invalid when they lost T.P.S. He is still short of help.
Even immigrants with valid work permits become so unnerved by reports of arrests that they sometimes call in sick, Mr. Nekhaila added. “They don’t want to risk being detained, even if they’re lawful,” he said.
The labor shortage will most likely be more palpable as summer turns to fall and tourism picks up.
Last month at Roy’s Trailer Park on nearby Stock Island, a group of Haitian men sat in a courtyard area over sweating bottles of Prestige beer, a popular Haitian brand. An Uber driver named Jean A., who asked that his full last name not be used for fear of being detained, said many Haitians in Key West worked multiple jobs that would be hard to fill if they continued to disappear, in part because Americans don’t want them.
When tourism picks up in the fall and winter, Key West will feel the impact more acutely, he said.
Key West first became a flashpoint for immigration enforcement more than a year ago, when the city commission withdrew from an agreement that allowed its police department to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The commissioners reversed course a week later, under pressure from the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. His administration has threatened to remove local officials who do not cooperate.
Arrests have picked up across the Keys since T.P.S. for Haitians ended, according to immigration lawyers and the Key West Immigrant Support Network. There were at least 65 immigration detentions in the Lower Keys in August, up from 20 in July, said Ms. Hawk, the co-founder of the network, which donates groceries for immigrants too scared to leave their homes and arranges transportation for them.
Nearly 30 of those detained in August were Haitians, including a man whose detention outside an upscale Key West restaurant was captured on video. The footage showed a border agent repeatedly striking the man.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to discuss immigration enforcement operations in the Florida Keys.
“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that — temporary,” the agency said in response to a question about enforcement activity. “For too long, T.P.S. has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”
The number of Haitians in the Keys surged after President Barack Obama granted T.P.S. because of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. Many more arrived during the Biden administration, as conditions in Haiti deteriorated further and the former president expanded protections for them.
Many joined relatives in Key West, drawn to a walkable city that, despite few affordable housing options, offered jobs without the need to own a car, Mr. Dapser said.
One such person, a 41-year-old father of two, said he had fled gang violence in Haiti for Brazil, before joining relatives in Key West in 2022. The man, who did not want his name used for fear of attracting immigration authorities, works at a supermarket deli, earning $19 an hour.
He lost T.P.S. in July. He is still able to work because of a pending asylum claim, but that offers little guarantee against immigration detention. Inside their tiny trailer home, he and his wife anxiously monitor WhatsApp for immigration enforcement updates last month as they care for their young children.
The risk that parishioners may be arrested is now too great for the Rev. Jean Eliézaire Jean, who presides over the Haitian congregation at First Congregational Church of Key West. Last month, he paused in-person church services and Bible study, pivoting to online sessions.
“To reopen, we have to get confidence everybody will be safe,” he said. “But when?”
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10) Texas Republican’s Racist Social Media Post Draws Condemnation
Many Republicans criticized the post, some in more direct terms than others.
By Bayliss Wagner, Published Sept. 13, 2026, Updated Sept. 14, 2026
Bo French, a candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, has faced criticism after making racist comments on social media. Credit...Callaghan O'Hare/Reuters
The video captured a moment of jubilation familiar to any college sports fan.
A sea of burnt-orange-clad students erupted in whoops and hollers after the Texas Longhorns’ game-winning touchdown on Saturday night, jumping up and down, hugging one another, tossing drinks in the air.
By Sunday, the scene had become a powder keg for Texas Republicans, after the G.O.P. nominee for a statewide office captioned a screenshot of the celebration with a racist message on social media.
“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” the nominee, Bo French, who is running for a spot on a powerful state agency that regulates oil and gas, wrote in a post on X that showed cheering fans of color. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” He later posted a complaint about the admission of foreign students at the University of Texas, seeming to assume they could not have been born in the state because of their skin color.
Numerous Texas Republicans condemned the post. Some distanced themselves without explicitly denouncing it. And a handful of others responded to a Republican senator’s disapproval of the post by castigating the senator.
Democrats roundly criticized the post, and some argued that the Republican responses did not go far enough. The uproar came as both parties are in heated midterm competitions across the state, which has navigated flare-ups of Islamophobia and tense debates over immigration.
Mr. French, who is running for the state Railroad Commission, has a history of making anti-Muslim, antisemitic and anti-immigrant comments. He faced criticism last year after sharing a poll on social media asking who was the “bigger threat” to America, Muslims or Jews. The reactions from many Republicans to Mr. French’s post on Sunday reflected the discomfort they have with his candidacy.
“Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized,” Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, wrote on X in response to Mr. French’s post about the football game. “This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad.”
State Representative Dustin Burrows, a Republican who is the House speaker, wrote: “Delete it.” Mr. Burrows said, “You can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity — this post has crossed the line.”
State Representative Lacey Hull, a Republican who leads the House committee on Human Services, wrote, “This post breaks my heart.” She added, “I see college kids cheering on their football team. I see Texans.”
After a campaign that demonized Muslims and immigrants, Mr. French narrowly won his primary against Jim Wright, the Railroad Commission’s chairman, in May — despite opposition from prominent Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and others.
Mr. Abbott, who is running for re-election, said in a statement that Mr. French’s post was “not my message.” He added, “A selective picture of Longhorn fans celebrating our biggest home victory — ever — actually shows a way that Texans unite.” Mr. Abbott then praised strict immigration laws and nodded to his move to block Texas public universities from using skilled foreign worker visas, known as H-1Bs.
In a reply to his original post on Sunday, Mr. French wrote, “I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans.” Yet state law requires that Texas high school students ranked at the top of their class — in the top 5 percent for the 2027-28 school year — be automatically admitted to the University of Texas at Austin, and that they compose up to 75 percent of the class. International students make up fewer than 10 percent of the student body, according to statistics that the University of Texas released in September.
Democrats rushed to condemn Mr. French’s comments, including State Representative James Talarico, a nominee for Senate. He called on his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, to do the same.
Mr. Paxton turned the request back on his opponent and did not directly address Mr. French’s post.
“I condemn racism in all its forms,” Mr. Paxton wrote on X, adding, “Only one person in this race has a history of dividing Texans by race, and it’s James Talarico.”
State Representative Andy Hopper, a hard-line conservative, responded to Mr. Cornyn’s post about Mr. French by calling Mr. Cornyn a “smug globalist” and highlighting his landslide loss to Mr. Paxton in the Senate primary.
Mr. French has a strong chance to win in November, given the state’s Republican lean. But his candidacy has given his Democratic opponent, State Representative Jon Rosenthal, newfound hope.
In a phone interview, Mr. Rosenthal criticized Mr. Abbott, who he said was “feeding the problem instead of pushing back on it” by invoking foreign worker visas in response to Mr. French’s post.
He rejected Mr. French’s comments.
“Most of the voters that I talk to are tired of the hatefulness and division,” Mr. Rosenthal said, adding, “There’s a small segment of society that revels in hate, and I hope they end up being relegated to irrelevance."
If Mr. French is elected, he may continue to face resistance from his fellow Republicans. The chair of a committee that oversees the state oil and gas commission, State Representative Drew Darby, said the Legislature could circumscribe Mr. French’s power if he stepped out of line.
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11) Cisco Likely Allowed Harassment of Pro-Palestinian Workers, Agency Says
The finding by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said there was reason to believe that the tech giant subjected employees to a hostile environment.
By Noam Scheiber, Sept. 14, 2026
Few issues have divided American workplaces in the past few years more than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At Cisco, the rancor spilled into internal message boards, where pro-Palestinian activists were derided as animals and one worker told colleagues to “quit living.”
Now, in a rare move, a federal enforcement agency has found that Cisco likely failed to protect Muslim, Palestinian and pro-Palestinian employees from harassment as they and their co-workers debated the Hamas-led surprise attacks on Israel in 2023 and Israel’s military response in Gaza.
In a letter dated June 9, a local director of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said that there was reasonable cause to believe that Cisco, which makes computer networking technology, “subjected a class of individuals to a hostile work environment based on their national origin (Middle Eastern), religion (Muslim), and/or their association with Muslim and/or Middle Eastern individuals.”
The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the E.E.O.C. has indicated that it won’t file a lawsuit. (An E.E.O.C. spokesman said the agency couldn’t comment.) But such findings tend to bolster employees’ cases if they decide to go to court on their own. “It’s helpful, but not determinative,” said Chai Feldblum, a former E.E.O.C. commissioner.
Christopher Ho, a lawyer who brought the case to the E.E.O.C. on behalf of current and former Cisco employees, said they made the letter public last month after failing to make progress on a settlement with the company.
“My clients felt like Cisco believed they were worthy of less protection,” Mr. Ho said. “This is a belated but welcome validation of the fact that what was going on with them is very illegal.” The case argues that the harassment continues.
Robyn Blum, a Cisco spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company disagreed with the E.E.O.C. finding and that it “thoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.”
The finding is striking amid a shift in enforcement priorities by the Trump administration, whose E.E.O.C. chair has pledged to rein in what she sees as excesses in protecting certain minority groups.
“The E.E.O.C. rarely finds cause in any case,” said Mr. Ho, a lawyer with the nonprofit group Legal Aid at Work. “But I was also surprised that it took place under this administration.” Ms. Feldblum said that professional staff have traditionally produced such findings without the involvement of political appointees.
At Cisco, the hostile language toward Muslims, Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists began shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. It frequently occurred on a company-hosted forum of an employee group known as the Connected Jewish Network, according to several former Cisco workers and screen shots they shared.
In late November 2023, an employee wrote in the forum that “Israeli passers-by killed 2 members of a Palestinian family in Jerusalem this morning, and I for one am extremely grateful.” A March 2024 comment about an anti-Israel protest in Montreal referred to the protesters as animals. Other Cisco employees posting in the forum appeared to equate support for Palestinians with terrorism.
Reyhan Bilici, a former Cisco lawyer who recently announced her resignation from the company on LinkedIn, citing Islamophobia, said that such language created the impression that it didn’t matter how many professional credentials she brought to the table. “At end of the day, I will be reduced to these certain offensive terms: terrorist, animal, whatever it is,” Ms. Bilici said. “It’s completely dehumanizing.”
Wired has reported that the sense of grievance went both ways, and some Jewish employees also felt that the company did not protect them from harassment by employees sympathetic to Palestinians. The company said it investigated multiple complaints on each side and that it sought to maintain balance along the way.
In June of 2024, a group of employees calling themselves Bridge to Humanity, who were supportive of Palestinians, circulated an open letter to the leadership of Cisco calling on it to stop providing technology to the Israeli government among other demands.
A few days later, a Cisco official emailed leaders of the company’s “inclusive communities” — groups of employees who share similar identities, like ethnicity or religion — and said the open letter was under review. The official asked that leaders of inclusive communities not forward the letter and that they “escalate any concerning discussions to employee relations.” (Another Cisco official later told Bridge to Humanity members that the company wasn’t impugning its open letter, but simply asking for patience while Cisco formulated a response.)
More abusive posts followed. In July, a Cisco employee wrote in the Connected Jewish Network that co-workers who signed the letter should “just up and quit (not just quit Cisco, but quit living and make this world a better place for all.)” Another post said the letter felt like it was orchestrated from outside the company and suggested it was part of a “coordinated campaign.”
Ms. Bilici, who is part of Bridge to Humanity, said that the company’s posture, such as its cool response to the open letter, invited further harassment. “Cisco created the conditions in which people felt emboldened to ratchet up objective Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian discrimination,” she said.
Not long after, the company informed Bridge to Humanity that it was shutting down the internal site that hosted the group’s open letter and the bot that helped it collect signatures, citing internal complaints and violations of its policies. It told the members of the group in August 2024 that it had fired the employee who said signers of the letter should “quit living,” about seven weeks after members flagged the comment.
Former Cisco employees involved in Bridge to Humanity say the company has signaled that harassment of Muslim, Palestinian and pro-Palestinian employees is more acceptable than harassment of other employees.
For example, it took the company more than two months to conclusively respond to a 76-page complaint to employee relations documenting a pattern of harassment toward Muslims, Palestinians and their supporters. The company said it took down some of the offending posts and disciplined and coached some of the employees involved.
But Cisco appeared to move more quickly later the same month on a grievance in the Jewish forum. There, an employee complained about a photo in which the company’s chief people officer appeared with workers who wore T-shirts featuring the Cisco logo and a map of Israel covered in the Arabic word for Palestine, which the employee analogized to calls for Israel’s destruction.
Several hours later, the chief people officer issued an apology in the Jewish forum saying the shirts violated company policy and that she had unwittingly joined the photo at a conference. “Again, I’m sorry for being unaware of the symbolism depicted on the T-shirts,” she wrote. “I feel awful.”
Cisco said the two situations were not comparable — that the company needed weeks to investigate dozens of questionable comments, whereas the photograph incident involved a single executive apologizing for what could have been interpreted as a political statement.
The workers filed their charge with the E.E.O.C. a few months after the incident, frustrated by a perceived double standard. “In a matter of hours after people complained over a map of Palestine, she joined the space to publicly apologize,” said Sophia Filipe, a former Cisco employee who is part of the Bridge to Humanity group as well as the E.E.O.C. case, referring to the chief people officer.
“Meanwhile, death threats that are made to us, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian sentiment, were ignored. The contrast of that was huge in pushing us to go to the E.E.O.C.”
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12) E.P.A. Expected to Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants
Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.
By Maxine Joselow and Lisa Friedman, Reporting from Washington, Published Sept. 13, 2026, Updated Sept. 14, 2026
“Under the Trump administration, the E.P.A. has stopped estimating the public health benefits of reducing pollution in the cost-benefit analyses necessary for clean-air regulations. Instead, the agency has estimated only the costs to businesses of complying with the rules.”
E.P.A. administrator Lee Zeldin speaking next to President Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year. Mr. Zeldin is expected to announce on Monday that the agency will no longer limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Pete Marovich for The New York Times
The Trump administration plans to announce Monday that the United States will no longer limit the planet-warming pollution that power plants pump into the air while burning coal and gas, according to two people familiar with the proposal.
The shift by the Environmental Protection Agency would complete the administration’s erasure of the most consequential climate policies of Presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. If the move survives expected legal challenges, it could also prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The power sector is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the United States. This pollution accumulates in the atmosphere, where it traps the sun’s heat, raising temperatures and supercharging extreme weather events around the globe. Scientists say the United States and other industrialized nations must sharply cut emissions to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change.
Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, is expected to announce the change during a meeting of energy ministers from the Group of 20 nations in Houston, according to the two people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to describe the proposal before it is made public.
Representatives for the E.P.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Sunday evening.
Environmentalists and energy experts have opposed the move, which has been in the works since last spring. They have noted that if the U.S. power sector were its own country, it would be the fifth-largest climate polluter in the world after China, the entire United States, India and Russia.
“This is another nail in the coffin for this administration’s commitment to protecting people and tackling the climate crisis,” said Manish Bapna, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. The E.P.A., he said, “is ending its legal and moral responsibility to end climate pollution.”
President Trump has derided climate change as a “hoax,” and in his second term, the E.P.A. has systematically dismantled policies aimed at slowing global warming that have been criticized as costly by oil, gas and coal companies. The administration has tried to make it easier and cheaper to produce and use fossil fuels, especially to generate electricity that can meet growing demand from artificial intelligence data centers.
Earlier this year, the E.P.A. eliminated greenhouse gas standards for car tailpipes and eased restrictions on planet-warming chemicals used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. Most consequentially, the agency repealed the scientific determination that gave it the legal authority to create climate regulations in the first place.
Under the plan expected Monday, power plants would still be subject to some limits on mercury, arsenic and other contaminants, though the E.P.A. has already loosened restrictions on how much mercury they can emit.
The agency plans to argue Monday that greenhouse gases from power plants do not endanger human health or the environment, and therefore it lacks the legal authority to regulate these emissions under the Clean Air Act, according to the people familiar with the matter. If courts uphold this argument, it could prevent future administrations from restoring the restrictions.
“They are swinging from the fences to try to prevent any administration from regulating one of the largest sources of emission for the United States,” said Carrie Jenks, the executive director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School.
The Biden administration’s climate rules for power plants, finalized in 2024, applied to coal-burning plants that were in operation and gas-burning plants that could be built in the future. To comply, coal plants could have installed technology to trap carbon emissions before they are released into the air and store them deep underground. Gas plants could have operated on cleaner fuels like hydrogen, which produces no planet-warming emissions when burned.
The Biden administration estimated that the regulation would also prevent other pollutants, such as soot, from escaping into the air, resulting in $120 billion in public health benefits by 2047. It projected that in 2035 alone, the rule would prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 360,000 asthma attacks, 48,000 school absence days and 57,000 lost workdays.
Under the Trump administration, the E.P.A. has stopped estimating the public health benefits of reducing pollution in the cost-benefit analyses necessary for clean-air regulations. Instead, the agency has estimated only the costs to businesses of complying with the rules.
The coal industry had complained that Biden-era restrictions on emissions were costly and unworkable. It had predicted that many coal plants would have closed instead of spending billions of dollars on new pollution controls.
Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels; when burned, it produces more air pollution and more greenhouse gases than any other source of energy. The economics of coal are also unfavorable; experts say new coal plants are more expensive to build and operate than gas plants and renewable energy sources like solar and wind power.
The use of coal in the United States has been declining for decades. While coal generated more than half of the nation’s electricity in 1990, that share fell to roughly 17 percent in 2025.
U.S. electricity generation by source
Many of the country’s coal plants are more than 40 years old and are scheduled to shutter in the coming years. Since 2010, 330 coal plants have retired and 60 others have announced plans to close by 2031, according to the Sierra Club, an environmental group.
But many utilities are racing to build new gas plants to power energy-guzzling A.I. data centers. More than two dozen gas plants were built in the United States last year, according to Cleanview, an energy data company.
Democratic-led states and environmental groups have said they intend to challenge the E.P.A.’s plan in court. Legal experts have called the plan vulnerable.
Courts have wrestled with the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate climate pollution from the power sector for more than a decade. The Supreme Court in 2016 blocked the Clean Power Plan, Mr. Obama’s signature effort to curb carbon emissions from coal plants.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that the E.P.A. could limit these emissions but could not force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal. Instead, it allowed the agency to pursue only narrower policies that dictated the operations of individual power plants.
Congress should have done its job and not given away this power to the executive branch.
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13) Mahmoud Khalil Says Columbia Failed to Protect Pro-Palestinian Students
In a federal lawsuit, Mr. Khalil and other former student activists say the university was deliberately indifferent to their harassment even before the 2023 Hamas attacks.
By Sharon Otterman, Sept. 14, 2026
Mahmoud Khalil said his asks to Columbia University administrators to help protect him against the threats he was receiving went unanswered. Scott Heins for The New York Times
A group of pro-Palestinian former student activists, including Mahmoud Khalil, sued Columbia University in federal court on Monday, accusing the institution of failing to address the persistent and severe harassment they said they encountered as a result of their advocacy.
Mr. Khalil, 31, became the face of Columbia’s pro-Palestinian movement on March 8, 2025, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested him at his Columbia University apartment building, even though he was a legal permanent resident and not accused of a crime. He spent 104 days in detention, missing the birth of his first child.
In the days and weeks before his arrest, he had repeatedly asked Columbia administrators to help protect him against the escalating threats he was receiving for his pro-Palestinian advocacy, he said in an interview on Sunday. He said he did not receive assistance.
Columbia’s failure to support him was part of a pattern of “deliberate indifference” against him and other pro-Palestinian students that began even before the Hamas-led terror attacks of Oct. 7, according to the lawsuit that he and fellow former students filed on Monday in Manhattan.
“I’m not suing Columbia for what ICE did,” Mr. Khalil said. “I’m suing Columbia for creating the conditions for ICE to do what it did.”
Columbia declined to comment on the litigation, but released a general statement in response.
“Creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university,” said Samantha Slater, a Columbia spokeswoman. “Columbia is committed to protecting our community from discrimination and harassment, and responding promptly and appropriately when concerns arise.”
Mr. Khalil, who still faces deportation, emerged as a foil for the Trump administration during its aggressive crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus protests. He has also filed a lawsuit accusing Trump administration officials, pro-Israel groups and a conservative think tank of colluding to suppress his constitutional rights.
In addition to faulting Columbia for its treatment of Mr. Khalil, the lawsuit filed on Monday seeks to hold Columbia responsible for failing to end the harassment it claims was also faced by other members of the SIPA Palestine Working Group, an advocacy organization that Mr. Khalil led while a student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
The student group, formed in 2018 to “encourage a more holistic understanding of Palestine,” according to its mission statement, sponsored annual study trips to the Palestinian territories and hosted discussions and lectures. The lawsuit charges that when the fliers for the group’s events were torn down, or when group members faced anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic rhetoric from fellow students, Columbia did not do enough to stop it.
The lawsuit says that the treatment of the group worsened under the current dean of SIPA, Keren Yarhi-Milo, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. After she began as dean in 2022, the group faced extra roadblocks and hurdles when organizing lectures and events compared with other organizations, the lawsuit claims. When its events did take place, Columbia sent security personnel, which pro-Palestinian students found intimidating.
After the Oct. 7 attacks, an outside organization, Accuracy in Media, got a hold of photographs and names of student group members that are accessible only to people with Columbia passwords, the lawsuit said. The students were publicly shamed on a truck circling campus with their faces under the words “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites.”
When students met with Dean Yarhi-Milo to ask that she investigate who leaked the photographs, she initially dismissed their concerns, the lawsuit stated. The photos were removed from the Columbia platform several days later, but the damage was already done.
“It felt like they didn’t bother to look or do the bare minimum,” said Bhavana Bellamkonda, one of the suit’s 11 named student plaintiffs. Websites that Accuracy in Media created that accuse her and other students of being antisemitic remain active.
In a statement, Adam Guillette, the president of Accuracy in Media, said his group had “repeatedly delivered accountability to Columbia’s pro-Hamas radicals,” using language that echoed the Trump administration’s description of pro-Palestinian campus protesters.
Dean Yarhi-Milo did condemn the doxxing campaigns and form an anti-doxxing task force. In 2025, Columbia introduced a comprehensive anti-doxxing and online harassment policy explicitly prohibiting the malicious publication of personal identifying information. She did not respond to a request for comment.
In September 2025, the Palestine Working Group itself was indefinitely suspended. An office at Columbia created after the Oct. 7 attacks to investigate civil rights claims, the Office of Institutional Equity, claimed that the group had co-posted two Instagram posts that contributed to a harassing environment. Mohammed Ibrahim Zubairi, who took over as group president after Mr. Khalil’s detention, said in an interview that Dean Yahri-Milo had particularly objected to being called “Killer Keren” in the posts.
While he did not fully defend the term, Mr. Zubairi said that it was common among protesting students at Columbia to use insults aimed at administrators in their public capacity and that the barring of the group was a disproportionate and unfair punishment. The group has refused to comply with conditions for reinstatement, including revealing who had access to its Instagram account and attending an in-person training, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claims that Columbia violated Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act by creating a hostile environment for the pro-Palestinian students. It seeks the reinstatement of the Palestine Working Group, monetary damages and access to campus for Mr. Khalil, who has been blocked repeatedly from accessing the main Columbia campus since his release from prison.
This is Mr. Khalil’s second lawsuit against Columbia. The first, filed on March 13, 2025, challenges Columbia’s disclosure of student disciplinary records to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Separately, another group of pro-Palestinian students and faculty sued Columbia in New York State court in August for discriminating against them and failing to protect them from a hostile campus climate after the Oct. 7 attacks.
Mr. Khalil said that Columbia created a volatile situation by not pushing back against claims from Congressional Republicans, the Trump White House and others that its own pro-Palestinian students were dangerous and antisemitic. It is a charge that he and other activists strongly reject.
“I don’t want any student, regardless of their background and identity, to go through the hell that I went through the past three years because of Columbia’s actions,” he said.
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14) A Teen Autopsy Marks the Arrival of a Deadly Drug in San Francisco
City officials — and one determined mother — are working to stop the spread of cychlorphine, which is far more potent than fentanyl.
By Heather Knight, Reporting from San Francisco, Sept. 14, 2026
It was a stressful Tuesday morning in San Francisco, and Christina Lacourte went to her son’s bedroom to roust him for school. The door was locked, so she had to wrangle it open with a coat hanger.
Inside, she saw her son in his bed, under the neon storefront “Open” sign he had wanted for his birthday in sixth grade. His face was turning blue, and his veins were visible. Black fluid oozed out of his nose and mouth and pooled on his sheets.
She raced to retrieve the two doses of Narcan she kept in her kitchen drawer for exactly this moment, the one she had long feared, but they did not revive him. She remembers bawling and screaming as she called 911. Her apartment, normally charming with splashes of pink, suddenly became a gray blur of paramedics, police officers and medical examiners.
Her son left in a body bag.
Surely, she figured, her son had died from fentanyl, but the autopsy report came back with no mention of it. Instead, it included a word new to her — “cychlorphine.” It remains the only time it has appeared on a San Francisco coroner’s report.
Dante Paul Lacourte was 16 years old.
A novel drug reaches San Francisco
The death occurred in Ms. Lacourte’s three-bedroom apartment in the affluent Lower Nob Hill neighborhood on April 7.
Seventeen days later, San Francisco health officials held a news conference to warn that a synthetic opioid had emerged that was deadlier than fentanyl, which was still killing dozens of people in the city each month.
Cychlorphine is one of an array of new, deadly drugs upending the illicit drug market and confounding cities that are only now beginning to get a handle on fentanyl. These novel drugs can be made by amateur chemists anywhere, and they are harder to trace, their effects on the human body harder to reverse.
Experts say cychlorphine is 10 times as potent as fentanyl. Test strips can detect fentanyl but not cychlorphine, and it can take numerous doses of Narcan to reverse the new drug’s effects, though most people carry only one or two doses at a time. It has shown up in Europe and the East Coast over the past couple of years, its presence spreading like tentacles.
Dante had appeared in The New York Times once before, as part of a photo project documenting the first decade of the millennium. Ludovic Lacourte, a tech consultant and winemaker who lives in Sausalito, just north of the city in Marin County, had submitted a snapshot of his newborn twins, Dante and Marco, wearing matching knit hats and tucked under a hospital blanket.
The tremendous joy of that day, Oct. 1, 2009, gradually faded. Ludovic and Christina Lacourte divorced in 2017, and the boys split time between their father in Marin and their mother in San Francisco. Dante struggled with the family rift and with A.D.H.D., anxiety and depression, his mother said.
By 13, he was smoking marijuana. Not long after, he was buying pills, including Xanax and Percocet, from dealers he found on Snapchat. His parents had him see numerous therapists and psychiatrists and placed him in three different rehabilitation programs. Nothing stuck.
Fentanyl Overdoses: What to Know
Understand fentanyl’s effects. Fentanyl is a potent and fast-acting drug, two qualities that also make it highly addictive. A small quantity goes a long way, so it’s easy to suffer an overdose. With fentanyl, there is only a short window of time to intervene and save a person’s life during an overdose.
Stick to licensed pharmacies. Prescription drugs sold online or by unlicensed dealers marketed as OxyContin, Vicodin and Xanax are often laced with fentanyl. Only take pills that were prescribed by your doctor and came from a licensed pharmacy.
Talk to your loved ones. The best way to prevent fentanyl use is to educate your loved ones, including teens, about it. Explain what fentanyl is and that it can be found in pills bought online or from friends. Aim to establish an ongoing dialogue in short spurts rather than one long, formal conversation.
Learn how to spot an overdose. When someone overdoses from fentanyl, breathing slows and their skin often turns a bluish hue. If you think someone is overdosing, call 911 right away.
Buy naloxone. If you’re concerned that a loved one could be exposed to fentanyl, you may want to buy naloxone. The medicine can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose and is often available at pharmacies without a prescription. Narcan, the nasal spray version of naloxone, has received F.D.A. approval to be sold over the counter.
Marco Lacourte, the younger twin by one minute, said he has avoided drugs and said in an interview that he had grown increasingly worried about his brother. He said he had talked to him, telling Dante, “You know it could get you killed.”
Ludovic Lacourte said he, too, had felt helpless watching Dante relapse. Sitting at his Sausalito home, where skis leaned against the wall and a boar’s head from a hunting expedition was mounted, he said he felt treatment programs were “a completely broken system.”
In hindsight, he believes there was only one solution. “You’ve got to run out the clock,” he said, explaining that his family was just trying to keep Dante alive until he “figures it out himself.”
Belgian lab origins
The drug that killed Dante was created in a Belgian research lab in the 1960s, part of a group called orphines, in an effort to find powerful painkillers that could ease patients’ misery from diseases like bone cancer.
Such drugs were not approved for medical use because they were deemed too strong and dangerous. The recipe for making them, though, was published in journals and is now available in the dark corners of the internet, said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry professor who served as a senior drug policy adviser in the Obama administration.
That means individuals can make them in their kitchens, without the expensive farmland needed for cocaine, heroin or marijuana, he said. Now, most illegal drugs are made in unregulated labs, or even in random apartments.
“You don’t need to be a big pharma company,” Mr. Humphreys said.
Some people addicted to fentanyl have developed a tolerance and seek an even stronger opioid to get high, he said. Others unwittingly buy pills that turn out to be laced with cychlorphine.
He recommended that cities test wastewater to detect new substances in the local drug supply. San Francisco was doing so until federal funding ran out in 2024, and then resumed wastewater testing only in July. The city this fall will begin publishing what it finds, including novel drugs, according to a Department of Public Health spokesman.
“The worst possible way to find out a new drug is in the city is by an autopsy,” Mr. Humphreys said.
Dante was the kind of boy who lit up a room. He was a gymnast who could do a standing backflip. He regularly traveled with family and friends to the Alps and could do aerial ski stunts down the steepest sections.
But his adventurous nature slid into recklessness, as his mother described it. He would try to scale San Francisco’s skyscrapers with his friends, she said. He stole from his family. He once brought a loaded gun home while high on drugs. The weekend before he died, he broke into a neighbor’s apartment while high and stole a laptop.
On his last night, he hung out with a close friend, Leo Wingate, 19, smoking weed and talking about a possible fishing trip. Mr. Wingate said in an interview that he dropped off Dante at his apartment late that night and did not hear from him again.
Mr. Wingate said that Dante had used drugs to cope with school pressures, anxiety and depression, and that Dante frequented the Tenderloin neighborhood, where dealers were always changing and their wares could not be trusted. Dante would take pills even if he thought they could be laced with “fetty,” Mr. Wingate said, using the slang term for fentanyl.
“He was just a kid trying to feel better,” Mr. Wingate said.
More than 4,000 people have died of drug overdoses in San Francisco since 2020, mostly from fentanyl, far more than those who died of Covid-19, homicides and car crashes combined during the same time span.
Ms. Lacourte knew there was a chance her son would die from a street pill laced with fentanyl. “It just takes one pill,” she said she had told him repeatedly.
The double-whammy of the pandemic and fentanyl jolted the city six years ago. Drug dealing occurred in plain sight, and people were frequently seen in the Tenderloin bent over at the waist, a common symptom of using fentanyl. Residents were frustrated, recalling the city’s progressive district attorney in 2022 and ousting the mayor in 2024.
The new mayor, Daniel Lurie, has directed the police to arrest users and dealers and prohibited the distribution of city-funded fentanyl smoking supplies without mandatory drug counseling.
Still, pills containing fentanyl remain prevalent on the streets, and Ms. Lacourte fears those deaths will climb as cychlorphine enters the supply.
An investigation yields arrests
An investigator with the San Francisco Police Department assured Ms. Lacourte for months that detectives were still investigating Dante’s death. She finally got some answers on Friday.
Police officers last week arrested Nicholas Wallace, 46, at his home in the Tenderloin neighborhood, about a 10-minute walk from Ms. Lacourte’s apartment. There, the police say, they recovered 34 oxycodone pills and cocaine. At the same location, they arrested Sharonee Hyson, 44, who was on parole and had cocaine base and a loaded firearm.
Police officers later arrested Leander Pitts, 46, and Starr Lamare, 39, in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, about five miles south of the Tenderloin. There, they seized 20,000 pills, including suspected counterfeit Xanax and oxycodone, as well as other drugs including fentanyl. They also seized a semiautomatic assault rifle, a semiautomatic pistol and cash.
The four suspects could not be reached for comment, and requests for jailhouse interviews were not answered Friday.
All four were booked into the county jail on numerous felony charges related to narcotics sales and firearms, though Ms. Lamare appeared to have been released by Friday afternoon.
Evan Sernoffsky, a police spokesman, said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was expediting testing of the pills recovered during the arrests to see whether they included cychlorphine. The White House in April warned the public about cychlorphine, saying that it had killed scores of people around the United States.
Ms. Lacourte received a phone call from the mayor Friday afternoon, and said he had promised her he would “yell from the rooftops” about the dangers counterfeit pills pose to teens.
Ms. Lacourte said she had mixed emotions. She was glad that the police had removed people suspected of drug dealing from the streets. But she was doubtful that she would ever know exactly who sold the fatal pill to her son, who manufactured it or how it ended up in San Francisco.
The police tied the suspects to Dante’s death after investigators worked backward from the April day they found pills and Dante’s cellphone in Ms. Lacourte’s apartment.
Through the phone, they determined whom he had texted in the previous days about buying the pills. Officers then went undercover as drug buyers and purchased substances from the suspects, police said, which allowed them to secure warrants for their arrests.
The police also had disconcerting news for anyone who thought Dante’s cychlorphine case was an isolated incident. Pills recovered in earlier, unrelated arrests have tested positive for the drug, suggesting it was also in circulation from other sellers.
Ms. Lacourte regularly visits the cemetery in Mill Valley, Calif., where Dante’s ashes are buried under an oak tree.
She got rid of much of the furniture in the bedroom where Dante died. But she kept the neon sign reading “Open” that hung above his bed.
Every morning, she turns it on, and she can see the glowing light from other parts of the apartment. Every night, she turns it off.
With each flick of the switch, she said, she thinks of Dante.
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