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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
 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)
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Articles
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
1) How Guyana Is Feeding the Profits of the Largest U.S. Oil Company
Exxon Mobil found a coveted growth engine in Guyana. Now it must navigate Guyana’s fractious politics and a territorial dispute with Venezuela.
By Simon Romero and Rebecca F. Elliott, Photographs by César Rodríguez, Sept. 19, 2026
Simon Romero, who has covered energy politics across Latin America, reported from Guyana. Rebecca F. Elliott, who covers the global energy industry, reported from New York.
The One Guyana offshore oil production platform this year
An hour by helicopter from Guyana’s capital, Exxon Mobil’s deepwater production hub in the churning Atlantic Ocean reflects the scale of the company’s wager that Guyana has the makings of a new world oil power.
The helideck comes into focus first, then the mazelike piping and multistory processing equipment that make up the floating, futuristic vessel anchored near the Equator, where more than 160 people work around the clock in 12-hour shifts.
“This could be the closest someone can get to living in an off-world colony,” said Faudia Ramjohn, 28, a Guyanese control room operator who races motorcycles in her spare time.
Exxon’s oil discovery in these waters more than a decade ago ranks among this century’s most significant finds, catapulting Guyana, a former British colony with 1 million inhabitants, into the world’s fastest-growing economy.
The country now produces almost 1 percent of the world’s oil, plugging holes left by geopolitical conflicts. Much of Guyana’s oil flows to Europe, replacing a portion of what the continent used to get from Russia, and some has been making its way to Asia during the Iran war, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm.
As important as Exxon has been for Guyana, the country has also been transformational for the largest U.S. oil company, giving it a lucrative new growth engine at a critical time. Rapidly accelerating production in Guyana helped push Exxon’s overall production to its highest level in more than 40 years last year, contributing an estimated 15 percent of the company’s operating income.
“It’s often said that Exxon saved Guyana,” said Richard Rambarran, a Guyanese economist. “One could also say that Guyana saved Exxon.”
But as Guyana’s oil industry has grown, so have the risks facing Exxon. They include infighting in Guyana’s political system and a territorial feud with neighboring Venezuela preventing Exxon and its partners from exploring in certain areas, as well as the potential for resource nationalism to flare.
Time and again across Latin America, private oil companies have been haunted by political movements seeking to assert greater sovereign control over oil riches.
“Guyana has a terribly bad deal,” said Thomas Singh, an economist at the University of Guyana, referring to the 14.5 percent take that Guyana was getting from the consortium Exxon leads. He and other critics point out that oil-producing countries like Norway or Brazil get a much higher cut.
Alistair Routledge, who leads Exxon’s Guyana operations, said the contract was fair.
“We take all the financial risk,” Mr. Routledge said. “If we don’t find oil and end up developing commercial projects, we never recover that money.”
Attractive as Guyana may now be, Exxon considered dropping the project before striking oil in 2015, worried that investing in a country riddled with failed wells wasn’t worth it, former employees said.
Mr. Routledge also emphasized that while Guyana’s initial take may seem low, the deal includes an escalation mechanism: Exxon’s consortium recently recouped development costs, meaning Guyana’s proceeds will rise, potentially doubling or more from earlier levels.
As for the feud with Venezuela, the United Nations’ top judicial body is expected to rule on the dispute by early next year. However, the decision will address only the land border, according to lawyers representing Guyana. Where that border meets the ocean will determine the beginning of the maritime border, but where it goes from there will be left to the countries to negotiate, they said.
Even as that feud clouds prospects in Guyana, Exxon is considering returning to Venezuela, where it lost control of assets two decades ago in a nationalization.
Mr. Routledge said he expected Venezuela to remain a “very complicated story,” and that returning would hinge on contract terms and conditions allowing Exxon to plan operations as far as 30 years in the future.
Still, citing Venezuela’s colossal oil reserves, which are far more bountiful than Guyana’s, Mr. Routledge added: “We should be there. I mean, this is a large resource. We were an operator there in the past.”
Exxon is also on the hunt for oil and gas in the waters off Trinidad and Tobago, a nearby island nation that has been getting more attention from the world’s biggest oil companies since U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January. Like Guyana, Trinidad shares a maritime border with Venezuela.
In the meantime, expectations have been growing in Guyana for Exxon to do more to raise living standards. Exxon already supports biodiversity research and efforts to boost food production. The company and its partners are also investing $100 million to develop the local work force and improve health care.
Calls for Exxon to expand such initiatives point to a delicate balancing act.
If Exxon refrains from taking on a greater role in assisting Guyana’s government, the company could be seen as neglecting its responsibilities in the country. But if it adopts a more assertive role, Exxon could be accused of infringing on national sovereignty.
“It’s not our job,” Mr. Routledge said regarding the nation-building question. “We’re not elected. We’re not representatives of the people.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) Millionaire Activist Seeks Asylum in Spain
Jailed in Madrid on an extradition request from the United States that his lawyer says is tied to pro-Palestinian activism, James Chambers fears persecution if returned.
By Ephrat Livni, Sept. 19, 2026
James Chambers in a cafe in Tunis in 2024. He was arrested in Spain this year and is fighting an extradition request from the United States. Credit...Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto, via Getty Images
James Chambers is a former heir to a media fortune who broke with his family a few years ago in a deal he said was worth “hundreds of millions.” He reveres Stalin and Mao, and calls the United States a “murder-for-profit scheme.”
After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel ignited the war in Gaza, Mr. Chambers championed the Palestinian militant group. He attended some protests and paid bail and legal fees for people arrested at actions targeting American branches of Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense contractor, including members of the Berkshire Communists, his Massachusetts collective.
Now, Mr. Chambers, 41, is in jail in Spain, fighting an extradition request from the United States. He was arrested in Ibiza in July, and a council of Spanish government ministers is expected to consider the issue on Tuesday.
The extradition request comes amid high tensions between Spain and the United States. President Trump and Pedro Sánchez, the left-wing Spanish prime minister, have clashed over trade, military spending and the war in Iran. Mr. Sánchez has called Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza a genocide, and Spain recognizes the state of Palestine, positions the United States has not taken.
Mr. Chambers’s arrest this summer generated international headlines and has become a cause célèbre for some prominent political and cultural figures in Spain and other parts of the world.
The United States has not unsealed the charges against Mr. Chambers, but Baltasar Garzón, his lawyer in Spain, said the government was claiming disorderly conduct and conspiracy to riot related to the 2023 protests, as well as money laundering to ultimately fund terrorism.
Mr. Garzón, a former judge who achieved global fame for his aggressive efforts to extradite human rights abusers to Spain, dismissed the U.S. case as “strictly political,” saying through a translator in an interview that it was part of a wider U.S. campaign against “people who have a concrete stand on Palestine.”
The U.S. money laundering accusation is tied to a transfer of more than $7 million to Tunisia after Mr. Chambers left the United States, funds that paid debts and salaries for a Tunisian soccer team, his lawyer said. Mr. Chambers has also contributed more than $1 million to humanitarian organizations in Gaza that help orphans and other children, as well as provide food and water in the devastated enclave, the lawyer said.
His client’s money comes from the deal he made with his family to cut ties in 2023 with its conglomerate, Cox Enterprises, and was spent on legal causes, Mr. Garzón said.
The defense contends that the United States aims to taint Mr. Chambers’s legitimate donations based on his stated opinions, criminalizing aid to Palestinians. It has submitted a brief to the Spanish government contesting the charges and arguing that the claimed offenses do not meet extradition criteria and risk chilling free speech, among other issues, Mr. Garzón said.
“We suspect, if he were extradited, he would not be granted a fair trial,” he added.
The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment, and representatives of Spain in Washington did not respond to queries.
Pressure is growing in Spain to limit cooperation with the United States.
Ione Belarra, a member of Spain’s Congress of Deputies and secretary general of the left-wing Podemos party, said that Mr. Chambers, known as Fergie, “is the first political prisoner in Spanish history being imprisoned because of his support for Palestine.”
About 150 prominent artists, activists and academics from around the world on Friday joined a letter calling on Spain to reject the extradition request and protect Mr. Chambers. The actors Richard Gere, Cynthia Nixon, Natasha Lyonne and Viggo Mortensen, the activists Angela Davis and Greta Thunberg, and the philosopher Judith Butler are among them.
Mr. Chambers’s wife, Stella Schnabel, an actor and daughter of the artist and director Julian Schnabel, has also been campaigning for her husband’s release. “Fergie is a devoted philanthropist committed to supporting global humanitarian efforts,” she said in a statement to The New York Times. “I am urging the Spanish government to reject Fergie’s political persecution and send a message that solidarity with Palestinians is not a crime.”
Mr. Garzón argues that, while his client has expressed opinions that are unpopular with the U.S. government and has supported activists and humanitarian causes, he has committed no crimes. Though some members of his collective faced prosecution for an action causing damage at Elbit Systems in New Hampshire in November 2023 and pleaded guilty to criminal mischief and criminal trespassing, Mr. Chambers was not arrested or charged, Mr. Garzón noted.
If the extradition request were rejected, Mr. Chambers would be freed. If it were accepted, there would be additional steps, including going to the judiciary and perhaps back to the government, which could take a year or more, Mr. Garzón said.
But Mr. Chambers has no intention of going home, his lawyer said, and has begun seeking asylum in Spain, arguing that he will face political persecution if extradited.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) Pa. Measles Outbreak Met With Both Defiance and a Rush to Vaccinate
As the outbreak grows to more than 700 confirmed cases, the largest in the country, some people remain opposed to vaccines and others are rushing to get the shots.
By Pooja Salhotra, Mark Bonamo and Kevin Williams, Sept. 20, 2026
Mark Bonamo reported from Lancaster County, and Kevin Williams from western Pennsylvania.
Lancaster County is at the center of a measles outbreak that has sickened hundreds and killed four people in Pennsylvania. Credit...Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times
Children played softball on a postcard-beautiful day. Business owners sold homemade doughnuts and fresh apple cider. And students studied on grassy lawns outside Westminster College.
The daily activities of life continued unabated in Pennsylvania, which is in the throes of a widespread measles outbreak that has killed four and hospitalized 150 since April.
The surge of cases has been met by a surge in vaccinations, with an 84 percent increase in August, state health officials say. But there has also been defiance and resignation, as the state becomes the latest to contend with the once-eradicated disease.
As the virus spreads through Pennsylvania, so have political and community tensions, stoked by a distrust of vaccines long proven safe and a disconnect between state and federal health agencies.
More than 3,400 measles cases have been reported this year across 45 states, with Pennsylvania at the top of the list. Measles has been reported in 38 of the state’s 67 counties.
Still, many remained undaunted about the spread of the highly contagious disease.
In Lancaster County, about 60 miles west of Philadelphia and the center of the outbreak, hundreds of people filled a farmers market on Friday. On the streets was a steady flow of horse-and-buggy carriages, a primary mode of transport for many of the area’s Amish and Mennonite communities.
“I’m not scared of measles,” said Mervin Zook, 37, an Amish dairy farmer in Gordonville, Pa., who was selling his wares at the market. He said his brother and several nieces and nephews had gotten measles but had all recovered. “My family is not vaccinated because I don’t feel that there is an advantage.”
Neither the Amish nor Mennonite groups have a universal rule prohibiting vaccines, but their adoption has not been widespread.
According to one survey from 2022, 30 percent of Amish families in Lancaster County had their children vaccinated and believed vaccinations were safe and effective. Pennsylvania has the largest number of Amish in the country, according to the Young Center at Elizabethtown College.
“People are overloaded with all of the vaccinations coming at once,” said John Riehl, 65, an Amish business owner who said he was vaccinated but added that outsiders do not understand the community’s lifestyle. “They feel like they can’t trust medicine anymore.”
More outbreaks as vaccine rates decline
Declining vaccination rates across the country since the Covid-19 pandemic have helped fuel dozens of outbreaks of measles, a respiratory illness that can cause serious health complications including pneumonia and brain swelling. Vaccination coverage among U.S. kindergartners declined to about 92.4 percent in the 2025-2026 school year, below the 95 percent needed to obtain herd immunity.
The United States has recorded more measles cases in 2026 than in any other year since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, toppling last year’s record, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed three people.
A large outbreak in South Carolina took root in a close-knit evangelical Slavic community earlier this year, and outbreaks are ongoing in several other states.
The largest and deadliest outbreak is now in Pennsylvania, where measles had sickened 767 people as of Friday, including 93 over the past week.
Those case numbers, reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, are most likely an undercount, since many people with mild symptoms do not get tested, and some areas with high case counts are home to large Mennonite and Amish communities that tend to avoid modern medicine.
“What worries me about the outbreak is just how widespread it is,” said Dr. Holmes Morton, who has worked with the Amish and Mennonite communities of Pennsylvania for decades. He warns people that if they call him seeking help for a child suffering the effects of measles, he will be blunt: “All I can say is, ‘Too late. I will call the emergency room and tell then you’re coming,’” he said.
A political disconnect
The outbreak has become political, with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disputing whether measles directly caused the deaths reported by state health officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not include those deaths in the national tally, a departure from the typical practice of accepting data reported by states.
Dr. Debra Bogen, Pennsylvania’s health secretary, said in a letter to the director of the C.D.C. last week that the agency’s choice not to publicly recognize the deaths “undermines our response.” She said the state would accept emergency aid from the C.D.C. only if the agency recognized the four deaths — two infants in Lancaster County, a 40-year-old in Jefferson County and an 18-year-old in Mifflin County, all of whom were unvaccinated.
“Instead of leading with facts and reality, R.F.K. Jr. has sowed distrust in science, stoked anti-vaccine sentiment by baselessly questioning their effectiveness and misled the American people with his phony narrative,” a statement from the state’s health department read. “Pennsylvanians have died because of it.”
On X, Mr. Kennedy accused the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, of “fabricating” the measles deaths. He later seemed to attribute the state’s measles outbreak partly to the governor for “refusing to cooperate with the C.D.C.”
In a statement, the C.D.C. said it was working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to establish a standardized definition for measles deaths “to ensure consistent reporting across jurisdictions.” The C.D.C. also said it had supported the state with outbreak epidemiology, vaccination and contact tracing.
Bill Wolfe, 73, from Douglassville, Pa., said that the Covid pandemic had politicized the debate about vaccinations in an already divided country.
“I thought everybody had the common sense to get their child vaccinated, but now there is too much negative stuff on the internet about it being unsafe,” Mr. Wolfe said. “For anybody who isn’t vaccinated yet, I say rethink yourself before your child is lying in the hospital or in the morgue.”
Cases reported across the country
Warnings of possible exposures to measles are surfacing well beyond Pennsylvania.
California health officials said on Friday that an unvaccinated passenger who traveled on trains and buses through at least six counties was hospitalized with measles, potentially exposing hundreds of commuters to the virus. In Colorado, health officials said an unvaccinated out-of-state visitor who tested positive for measles could have also exposed people.
The Indiana Department of Health reported six confirmed cases in Wayne County, Ind., which houses an Amish “daughter settlement” with close ties to Lancaster County, where 324 cases were recorded.
Philadelphia health officials warned that people may have been exposed to measles at a children’s hospital last week; health officials said they were working to protect infants in the hospital from the virus.
Measles is particularly worrisome for babies and young children, who are more likely to be unvaccinated and suffer from complications. The first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is typically given at 12 to 15 months and the second dose at 4 to 6 years. But Pennsylvania health officials are encouraging children as young as six months in counties affected by the outbreak to get vaccinated.
State health officials said they had seen a surge in interest in the vaccine since the outbreak started in late April. Typically, state health care providers administer about 25,000 doses of the M.M.R. vaccine in a month; in August, more than 46,000 vaccines were administered.
Worry over vaccines
But some remain steadfast in their position to avoid vaccines.
Jason Yoder, 33, an Amish man in Lawrence County, about 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, incorrectly claimed there had been more deaths from the measles vaccine than from measles.
“I won’t get the vaccine, no way,” he said. “The vaccine is worse than the measles. I’d rather get the measles.”
The M.M.R. vaccine is widely considered safe and effective, and there are no documented cases of it causing death in healthy individuals.
Tammy Martz, a reflexologist with a busy practice in the heart of the Amish community in Hazen, Pa., said the Covid-19 pandemic had cast a shadow over this rural slice of Pennsylvania. Some people said they suffered harm after getting Covid shots and were therefore wary of other vaccines.
Others wondered if the vaccine was necessary, having seen neighbors recover from measles.
“The Amish tell me that they’re down for three days with it and then they get on with their lives and it’s just like the flu,” said Ms. Martz, who is not Amish.
George Retherford, 64, who was selling fruits and vegetables at the farmers market, said that although he was vaccinated as a child, he had not vaccinated his daughter. He doubted the vaccines were effective and said eating healthy would ward off illness.
“You want my advice about measles?” he said. “Eat more beets. Eat more peppers. Eat more watermelon. Nothing is going to kill me.”
Campbell Robertson and Teddy Rosenbluth contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) Russia Barred Their Party, but These Antiwar Voices Are Still Standing
The liberal party Yabloko is fielding 98 candidates in this weekend’s elections, a small miracle for antiwar Russians who cannot openly express their views.
By Valerie Hopkins and Paul Sonne, Sept. 20, 2026
Valerie Hopkins reported from Moscow, and Paul Sonne from Berlin.
Grigory Grishin, a Yabloko candidate running for the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament, in Moscow. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
They have almost no chance of winning. Their party, Yabloko, was formally removed from the nationwide ballot in this weekend’s elections. Their fellow party members have been sentenced to years in prison for their antiwar positions.
None of that is stopping them.
The fact that Yabloko, Russia’s oldest liberal opposition party, is fielding 98 candidates in 42 regions feels like a small miracle for antiwar Russians whom restrictive laws have prevented from openly expressing their views. As wartime repression deepens, the country may not see such candidates on the ballot again.
“There were times in Russian history that were worse,” said Grigory Grishin, a Yabloko candidate running for the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament, in Moscow. “So, as the saying goes, ‘The eyes are afraid, but the hands do the work’ — we are participating. What else is there to do?”
The fate of Yabloko has been the most consequential story line in an election the Kremlin engineered to be as uneventful as possible.
The party, long considered irrelevant by the Russian authorities, became a Kremlin target this summer after it unexpectedly turned into a vessel for antiwar sentiment. The Russian Supreme Court barred the party at the last minute, citing minor copyright infringements and indirect foreign financing that it said violated the law.
Still, the decision left open one avenue for Yabloko candidates to run.
At the ballot box, Russians choose a party and then a candidate from their district. Half of State Duma seats are filled through the party vote — parties must clear a 5 percent threshold — and the other half through the votes for candidates in districts, as in elections for the U.S. Congress.
While the Supreme Court barred Yabloko from the party-list vote, many of the party’s candidates in individual districts remained on the ballot. The authorities later disqualified them in several regions, but as voting began on Friday, nearly 100 were still standing.
Why they were allowed is unclear. There may not have been enough time to drum up cases against every one of them, analysts said. Or the authorities may feel confident that they have disqualified all of the Yabloko district candidates with a good chance of winning and that any unforeseen victories could be fixed with ballot falsifications.
Recent data from ExtremeScan, a Russian pollster, suggested that the authorities may have had reason to fear rising support for Yabloko, the only party running on an antiwar platform.
In a survey this month, 18 percent of respondents said they would have voted for Yabloko on a party-list ballot. It was a surprising figure for a party that has not cleared the threshold to enter the Duma since 1999. The idea that any Yabloko candidate would be allowed to take a seat in the legislature and use the platform to question the war openly is considered unthinkable in today’s Russia.
Aleksei Minyailo, an opposition activist in Moscow and the founder of the independent pollster Chronicles, said one of the most important steps that autocratic authorities took to shape election outcomes was limiting the field of candidates.
“This is the essential thing,” he said. “It’s more essential than who gets what result.”
The Kremlin could ultimately try to use the remaining Yabloko candidates to its advantage, Mr. Minyailo said, presenting a poor showing by them as evidence that antiwar Russians are a marginal minority.
In recent polling, the share of Russians who say they do not support the war has ranged from about 20 to 35 percent.
While the mere presence of Yabloko candidates on the ballot may be a victory for them, Mr. Grishin, the district candidate in Moscow, said it was always going to be an uphill battle.
The candidate running against him from the pro-Kremlin governing party, United Russia, had a budget that Mr. Grishin estimated at 40 million rubles, or $500,000. His own budget, raised through donations, was about one-tenth of 1 percent of that.
“We could only print 5,000 leaflets,” he said, proffering one with his portrait and a dove carrying an olive branch. It bore the party’s campaign slogan: “For peace and freedom! For a life without fear!”
Financial troubles were just one of Mr. Grishin’s worries. This month, a day after his newborn daughter arrived at home from the hospital, Mr. Grishin was detained and taken to a police station. He was later accused of “displaying extremist symbols,” a common pretext for removing candidates from the ballot. In Mr. Grishin’s case, the charge referred to a reference he had made on Telegram to the deceased opposition politician Aleksei A. Navalny, whom the Russian authorities branded an extremist.
Had the accusation come three months earlier, Mr. Grishin would have been automatically disqualified from running in the election. But because it occurred so late in the election cycle, the authorities could not remove him from the ballot.
Some candidates have been disqualified after parties loyal to the Kremlin brought cases against them. Iya Boronina, who leads Yabloko’s regional branch in the central Russian republic of Udmurtia, was barred after being accused of copyright infringement, echoing the case that the party itself faced in the Supreme Court.
Her campaign video featured the 1982 rock anthem “Bad to the Bone.” Representatives of the nationalist party A Just Russia contended that Ms. Boronina, because of sanctions against Russia, could not have paid in U.S. dollars for the legal right to use the song.
Eight Yabloko members are currently in prison for their antiwar stances. One deputy chairman, Maxim Kruglov, is serving a seven-year sentence, and another deputy, Lev Shlosberg, is serving 11 years.
Yabloko’s leader, Nikolai I. Rybakov, said that despite the harsh penalties faced by its leaders, the party had become a beacon for Russia’s youngest voters, who dislike the increasing government restrictions on the internet, speech and culture. More than 13,000 people applied to become party members during the election cycle, he said.
“They removed us from the election list because real support belongs to Yabloko, and they cannot defeat us in an election,” Mr. Rybakov said in an interview in his party’s library as his shelter dog, Morty, sat quietly by his side.
Mr. Rybakov pulled a book from the piles around him. It was Roberto Carnero’s essays on the gay Italian filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini. About 15 percent of its words were blacked out. On some pages, only a few words were visible.
“The young people who come here are absolutely free people,” said Mr. Rybakov, who himself was disqualified from the election because of a post he wrote after Mr. Navalny died in prison in what five European countries said was a poisoning.
“They want nobody telling them what color their hair should be, what clothes to wear, what to say, what to think, who to love, where to work, or which professor to study with,” he added.
Several young people who attended Yabloko meetings spoke of the psychological solace of speaking with others who opposed the war.
Many of the questions Mr. Rybakov fielded addressed a growing rift between the opposition forces inside Russia centered around Yabloko and those forced into exile, including Mr. Navalny’s team. They have differed over the best strategy for voters to try to express discontent in the election.
As Mr. Rybakov was speaking on a recent night, news broke that another Yabloko candidate, Aleksandr Muravyov, had been barred from the election. Another party had filed a complaint alleging that Mr. Muravyov’s use of the slogan “For a free internet without blocks” created a negative image of other candidates and parties.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) Israeli Tourist Trap ‘Herod’s Pool’ Is Draining Palestinians’ Land Dry
Israeli lawmakers have promoted visits to an ancient reservoir in the West Bank that was refilled this summer with water diverted from Palestinian-owned farms.
By Natan Odenheimer and Gabby Sobelman, Sept. 20, 2026
Natan Odenheimer and Gabby Sobelman visited the ancient reservoir near Fasayil, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
On a hot August morning in the West Bank’s desert, an Israeli teenager performed a backflip into the cool water of an ancient reservoir. It was filled with water diverted from Palestinians’ farms.
The farmers used to grow watermelons, eggplants and cucumbers in the arid Jordan Valley. But in June, their main irrigation source — a pipeline that brought spring water to their crops and a surrounding community — was severed and redirected to the reservoir, according to the farmers and the Israeli military.
During a visit last month, water gushed from the pipe into the pool, where dozens of Israelis were splashing around while others picnicked nearby, trespassing on private land.
“One morning nothing came out of the pipe,” said Saad Nemer, a soft-spoken 69-year-old farmer, who owns the land the pool sits on with his siblings, and who has since watched his livelihood wither under the desert sun.
Within days, the pool became a summertime magnet for Israelis, drawing hundreds of visitors a week who traipsed over the Nemers’ land. A lawmaker in Israel’s Parliament on social media promoted visiting the site as an enjoyable means of “occupying the land.”
In the West Bank, where water is already limited, settlers have vandalized water and sanitation systems at least 80 times so far this year, according to United Nations data. Settlers have also built illegal outposts close to springs, and then intimidated Palestinians who come to bathe or water their livestock there.
The attacks, which often cut off entire communities from running water for days or even weeks at a time, are part of a surge of settler violence in the West Bank. Over the past three years, extremist settlers have violently driven thousands of Palestinians from their homes and set fire to cars, houses and mosques.
Mr. Nemer sought help from the Civil Administration, an Israeli military body overseeing civilian affairs for Palestinians in parts of the West Bank. In a letter to his lawyer in July, viewed by The New York Times, the administration said that the pipeline would be reconnected, but it did not respond to his demand to have the trespassers evicted from his property.
Israeli forces reconnected the pipeline and made “efforts to prevent further damage to the water line,” a military statement said, adding that a fence was erected “to prevent lawbreakers from entering the area.” The military also said that the pool was on private land and that the water diversion was “unauthorized.”
Water did flow back to Mr. Nemer’s fields — but only for a day before it was sabotaged again, he said. On a recent visit to the site, much of it remained unfenced.
“It breaks my heart to see them in our pool,” Mr. Nemer said. He added that he was worried about what would happen if he attempted to reconnect the pipe himself. “I’m afraid that if I go there they will beat me up,” he said.
Settlers from a nearby outpost refused to answer questions about the reservoir.
Some former senior Israeli generals and officials say that Israel’s right-wing government is not doing enough to stop the violence in the West Bank, aimed at ultimately driving most Palestinians out of the territory, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Most of the people The Times spoke to at the pool said they were Israeli settlers. Many said that knowing the water came at the expense of local Palestinian farms was part of the draw. No one claimed responsibility for cutting the pipe. But Israeli settlers have celebrated the refilling of the pool in videos shared on social media, while one Israeli lawmaker said that “heroic settlers” had returned the pool to “Jewish hands.”
In the West Bank, where water is already limited, settlers have vandalized water and sanitation systems at least 80 times so far this year, according to United Nations data. Settlers have also built illegal outposts close to springs, and then intimidated Palestinians who come to bathe or water their livestock there.
The attacks, which often cut off entire communities from running water for days or even weeks at a time, are part of a surge of settler violence in the West Bank. Over the past three years, extremist settlers have violently driven thousands of Palestinians from their homes and set fire to cars, houses and mosques.
Mr. Nemer sought help from the Civil Administration, an Israeli military body overseeing civilian affairs for Palestinians in parts of the West Bank. In a letter to his lawyer in July, viewed by The New York Times, the administration said that the pipeline would be reconnected, but it did not respond to his demand to have the trespassers evicted from his property.
Israeli forces reconnected the pipeline and made “efforts to prevent further damage to the water line,” a military statement said, adding that a fence was erected “to prevent lawbreakers from entering the area.” The military also said that the pool was on private land and that the water diversion was “unauthorized.”
Water did flow back to Mr. Nemer’s fields — but only for a day before it was sabotaged again, he said. On a recent visit to the site, much of it remained unfenced.
“It breaks my heart to see them in our pool,” Mr. Nemer said. He added that he was worried about what would happen if he attempted to reconnect the pipe himself. “I’m afraid that if I go there they will beat me up,” he said.
Settlers from a nearby outpost refused to answer questions about the reservoir.
Some former senior Israeli generals and officials say that Israel’s right-wing government is not doing enough to stop the violence in the West Bank, aimed at ultimately driving most Palestinians out of the territory, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Most of the people The Times spoke to at the pool said they were Israeli settlers. Many said that knowing the water came at the expense of local Palestinian farms was part of the draw.
“It’s good that this makes life here harder for the Arabs — this country belongs to the people of Israel,” said Ori, 15, a high schooler from Asael, a settlement on the southern edge of the West Bank. “This place is a lot of fun,” he added, sitting with his friends and smoking a hookah pipe.
Israeli flags lined one side of the pool, while a large metal Star of David had been erected on the other. Some Israeli lawmakers are determined to turn the reservoir into a government-run tourist spot and have named the site “Herod’s Pool,” after a Jewish king who ruled the region in the first century B.C. Experts say the pool has never been properly excavated or dated, and its origins remain unclear.
Amichay Eliyahu, Israel’s minister of heritage, said his office would dedicate a million dollars to renovating the site. In a phone interview, he said that “if need be, we could expropriate” the pool and compensate the owners.
A few miles away, Mr. Nemer pulled up old deed documents on his phone that he said showed his grandfather had bought the property, including both fields, the pool and the spring that feeds it, over a century ago.
He also had more recent documents issued by the Israeli Civil Administration that appeared to show recognition of the family’s ownership from the authorities.
Mr. Nemer said the family used to get along well with their Israeli neighbors. In the early 1970s, he and his brother excavated, cleaned and filled the reservoir, he said, welcoming both Israelis and Palestinians to swim in the pool and allowing excess water to flow downhill to irrigate their crops.
The site remained popular for over 15 years, Mr. Nemer said. But after several people drowned there, the family decided in the mid-1990s to drain it, fearing they would be held liable for further accidents.
Then, in 2024, new settlers arrived, Mr. Nemer said, adding that around that time, someone sabotaged his water system. The newcomers spoke to him aggressively, Mr. Nemer said, and one of his workers, Jamal Jarwan, said he had been assaulted that year.
Mr. Jarwan lives on the edge of the Nemers’ property, in a community of about a dozen families.
“They want to kick us out of here,” said one resident, Ayed al-Hayas, 32, referring to the settlers.
A day laborer, Mr. al-Hayas said his family relied on the water for cooking, bathing and livestock. “Without water, there is no life,” he said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) Networks Suspend Pool Coverage of Trump After CNN Is Barred
CNN, MS NOW and Politico said they would sue to regain access to the White House. They argued in a joint statement that President Trump’s decision to block them violates the First Amendment.
By Michael M. Grynbaum, Erik Wemple and Ali Watkins, September 21, 2026
ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC said they would suspend television coverage of presidential events after CNN was barred from the White House grounds. Credit...Andrew Leyden for The New York Times
Major television networks agreed to suspend their pooled coverage of the president on Monday as CNN, MS NOW and Politico said that they would soon file a legal challenge against President Trump’s order barring them from the White House grounds.
The three outlets argue that Mr. Trump’s ban, which he declared over what he sees as negative news media coverage, violates the First Amendment. Reporters from each organization were denied access to the White House on Saturday and CNN was removed from its duties as the White House pool representative for television networks on Monday.
The White House press pool is a small group of correspondents, TV journalists and photographers who are the eyes and ears of the broader White House press corps for coverage of the president.
Four other networks that shared the responsibility for providing television coverage of presidential events with CNN — ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC — said on Monday that they would suspend those efforts, which entail distributing footage that is carried by news organizations worldwide.
CNN, MS NOW and Politico said in a joint statement that they had informed the U.S. government they would be filing a lawsuit on Monday. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” they said. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”
In a Monday post on Truth Social, the platform he owns, Mr. Trump wrote: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America.”
The news outlets are planning to ask the court to restore their access to the White House as quickly as possible. They will file a separate motion seeking an emergency order that would remain in effect while the litigation unfolds.
Here’s what to know:
· The outlets’ argument: The news organizations’ joint complaint, which the outlets released but have not yet filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that the “Constitution does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”
· Pool duties: The five networks have long performed the television duties on a rotation, and CNN had been slated to provide coverage for Mr. Trump’s travel on Monday to the United Nations General Assembly. The president’s activities on Monday are still expected to be covered by print, radio and wire journalists, along with still photographers.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) In the Land of Billionaire Barbarians
By Arielle Pardes, Ms. Pardes has covered the tech industry for the past decade, Sept. 21, 2026
“‘If you were Napoleon Bonaparte, you built a building that was meant to last forever, as a monument to your fame and achievement,’ said Fred Turner, a professor at Stanford University who studies media, technology and American cultural history. ‘Silicon Valley’s power is entirely different.’ This power is entirely inward-facing. Wealth is hidden within modest-looking homes and walled-off corporate campuses. If you can get inside, every privilege exists. But for those on the outside, the residue of wealth is virtually invisible. This sleight of hand is not an accident. The richest people in the tech industry have blocked policies that would raise taxes, increase wages or otherwise reduce their wealth to make life better for the people who live around them.”
Álvaro Bernis
A New York-based start-up founder I know recently visited Silicon Valley for the first time. He’d arranged to stay where the world’s richest people make the world’s most influential technology products. When he arrived, he was shocked to find a soul-crushing, car-choked suburban sprawl filled with office parks, auto dealerships and chain stores.
The part of Northern California we call Silicon Valley — a radius that includes the cities of San Jose, Mountain View, Cupertino, Menlo Park and Palo Alto — is home to four of the most powerful companies in the world. It has more combined wealth than most small countries, and at least 50 of its residents are billionaires. Yet by looking at it, you’d hardly know this place had any influence at all. Parts are pleasant, if provincial, with long avenues of low-slung ranch houses framed by eucalyptus trees. The rest is a placeless suburb, with aging infrastructure and cracks in the asphalt. Silicon Valley is one of the richest places on the planet, and it still has potholes in its streets. About a quarter of residents are struggling to survive there.
The tech elite have donated generously to scientific research and global health initiatives, but little of their money goes to improving their own backyard. The lack of investment in the cities where our tech lords work and live reveals a stark reality about how this wealth benefits a select few at the expense of everyone else. As the industry expands its footprint nationwide with data centers, the rest of America would be wise not to let the same thing happen again.
Throughout history, the world’s wealthiest and most powerful erected monuments that redefined their cities and communities. French monarchs built the Arc de Triomphe. Industrial tycoons funded the New York Public Library. The Medicis filled Florence with art.
Silicon Valley, on the other hand, has about as much cultural capital as an airport. Its greatest cultural institution might be the two-million-square-foot Westfield Valley Fair shopping mall, where people hang out on the weekends.
“If you were Napoleon Bonaparte, you built a building that was meant to last forever, as a monument to your fame and achievement,” said Fred Turner, a professor at Stanford University who studies media, technology and American cultural history. “Silicon Valley’s power is entirely different.”
This power is entirely inward-facing. Wealth is hidden within modest-looking homes and walled-off corporate campuses. If you can get inside, every privilege exists. But for those on the outside, the residue of wealth is virtually invisible.
This sleight of hand is not an accident. The richest people in the tech industry have blocked policies that would raise taxes, increase wages or otherwise reduce their wealth to make life better for the people who live around them.
Before the region became synonymous with the tech industry, it was an expanse of cherry orchards and plum trees known to locals as “the Valley of Heart’s Delight.” Then, in the 1950s, engineering talent began to arrive, lured in by Stanford and encouraged by military contracts from the Department of Defense. Soon, those fragrant orchards gave way to industrial office parks, and a cluster of companies producing silicon for computer chips and semiconductors gave the region its new nickname.
Those same companies also dumped chemicals used in manufacturing onto the surrounding land. These chemicals, which turned out to be highly toxic, seeped into the soil and groundwater and have been linked to severe birth defects. Santa Clara County, the southern part of Silicon Valley, has more Superfund sites — areas deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency as so contaminated they require years of cleanup — than anywhere else in the country. You could say that the tech industry has, from its inception, extracted value from the place where it exists while also actively poisoning it.
Today’s tech giants haven’t contaminated the region so much as colonized it. Over time, the Valley came to be organized, as Dr. Turner noted, like a series of feudal clusters: Google of Mountain View, Apple of Cupertino, Meta of Menlo Park, Nvidia of Santa Clara.
Each of these strongholds functions like a city in miniature, complete with cafes and dining halls, barber shops and dry cleaners, even health care clinics and day care centers. Apple’s campus — a glittering circle wrapped in the world’s largest panels of custom-made glass — includes a 100,000-square-foot wellness center with a two-story yoga studio. Meta’s 30 structures spread over 250 richly landscaped acres, which include a nine-acre rooftop park and its own main street with an arcade, barbershop and candy store. Much of this is free if you work there; the picture is less clear for the lower-wage custodians, cafeteria workers and security officers who often don’t work directly for the companies.
These luxurious domains leave most workers little reason to engage with the surrounding communities, and give the industry little reason to create anything for the public. Plenty of tech workers don’t even live in Silicon Valley; their companies provide employees free buses that shuttle them home north to San Francisco.
Isn’t this just capitalism? Companies aren’t charities. Yet plenty of companies outside Silicon Valley do invest in their surrounding communities, to the benefit of both their employees and everyone else. In Bentonville, Ark., Walmart’s founder and his family have spent considerable sums improving infrastructure, building museums, creating mountain biking trails and opening restaurants. In Midland, Mich., the Dow family (of Dow Chemical) financed extensive botanical gardens, miles of public parks and the Midland Center for the Arts. And in nearby San Francisco, Salesforce’s chief executive, Marc Benioff, helped fund the Presidio Tunnel Tops park, a beloved green space.
This type of philanthropy used to be much more common. The industrial tycoons of the Gilded Age bankrolled cultural institutions like the Met and Carnegie Hall as a way to soften their public image. The historian Margaret O’Mara referred to it as “reputation laundering.” By comparison, Dr. O’Mara told me, many of today’s tech tycoons are more capricious. Witness the way Mark Zuckerberg and his wife founded a free-tuition school through their foundation for low-income children in one of the poorest areas of Silicon Valley in 2016, only to abruptly close the school this year.
The cities of Silicon Valley do collect tax revenue from the companies that are headquartered there. Yet that revenue is wildly out of proportion with the actual volume of wealth in the region, which remains locked in untaxed gains. Some of the wealthiest people in Silicon Valley have become experts in avoiding certain tax liabilities.
In 2024 — when the regional economy hit $14.3 trillion in overall market capitalization — 70 percent of Silicon Valley residents said that their quality of life had grown worse over the past five years, according to a public opinion poll conducted by Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Today, there is some $1.17 trillion in liquid wealth among households in Silicon Valley, according to the latest Silicon Valley Index, an annual report on the economic status of the region. But researchers at San Jose State University, who publish the annual Silicon Valley Pain Index, found that 28 percent of local households “need outside assistance to survive in the region.”
Americans may not be aware of the struggles in Santa Clara County. But many have seen what our social media, internet search and e-commerce monoliths are doing to their families and their communities. Little wonder, then, that the tech industry’s push to build data centers across America — a sort of techno Manifest Destiny — is not being well received. Seven in 10 Americans oppose the idea of having a data center built in their community, according to a recent Gallup poll. That’s a level of resistance even greater than the opposition to building nuclear power plants.
“To some extent, these data centers are seen as a harbinger of technology that people don’t really want in their lives,” said Jeannette Estruth, an assistant professor of history at Santa Clara University, who is working on a book about social movements in Silicon Valley. She pointed to coalitions that banded together in the 1980s to pass laws to regulate the handling, storage and disposal of chemicals in the electronics industry in response to the dumping of toxic waste. Now, she said, people can do the same with data centers.
If these data centers are symbols, then they represent the growing bifurcation of wealth in America, where a select few stand to get much, much richer, while the rest of us are stuck with the ugly byproducts. Perhaps tech corporations shouldn’t be expected to treat the places where they build data centers as anything more than a utility closet. But as history has also amply shown, the people and politicians around them can compel them to, and should do so before it’s too late.
If they don’t, the future the tech industry builds will be a monument to their wealth — and to the rest of America’s ruin.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) ICE Agent Shoots Venezuelan Immigrant in Austin, Local Authorities Say
The shooting in the Texas capital is the latest by federal immigration agents as the Trump administration intensifies its deportation effort.
By Christina Morales, Lauren McGaughy and Devon Lum, Lauren McGaughy reported from Austin, Tex., Published Sept. 20, 2026, Updated Sept. 21, 2026
Bullet holes and car damage from a blue Toyota Corolla involved in the shooting. Credit...Shahrzad Rasekh/Reuters
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot an immigrant from Venezuela in the torso in Austin, Texas, local authorities said, the latest violent episode to occur as the Trump administration pushes to increase deportations.
The injured man, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, was taken to a hospital, but his wife was not allowed to see him, said Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an immigration lawyer who said at the hospital that she is now representing him and his family.
Later on Sunday evening, representatives from the hospital told Mr. Garces Perez’s wife that he had been released hours earlier into ICE custody. Ms. Lincoln-Goldfinch added that they did not know where he was.
Mr. Garces Perez was delivering for DoorDash at the time that he [was] shot inside of a blue Toyota Corolla by an ICE agent, his wife, Elizdar, said in an interview in Spanish.
After the shooting under a highway overpass in Northwest Austin, Mr. Garces Perez called his wife, crying, to say that he was in pain after immigration agents fired at him in the vehicle. When she got to the scene, officers investigating the incident told her he had already been taken to a hospital.
The Northwest Austin area is home to many Latino residents and has had a recent surge in immigration activity, Austin city officials said at a news conference about the incident.
Local authorities said that many details about what led up to the shooting and in the moments after remained murky. Officials from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to several requests for comment.
In a statement, the Texas Department of Public Safety said they received a request for assistance from ICE at around 12:50 p.m. local time regarding a vehicle pursuit involving a blue Toyota Corolla. The shooting took place before troopers arrived.
It was unclear whether Mr. Garces Perez had been the target of an immigration operation, but Lisa Davis, the Austin police chief, said at the news conference that the shooting had occurred after a “small foot pursuit.”
Videos on social media that were verified by The Times did shed some light on the incident.
A video live streamed on Facebook at approximately 12:48 p.m. local time captured audio of sirens blaring and tires screeching as the camera whips around to show Mr. Garces Perez’s blue Toyota Corolla and an unmarked Ford SUV driven by a federal immigration officer. Both vehicles are stopped and facing in opposite directions.
The video then shows an officer exiting the driver’s side of the unmarked SUV and circling around to the back passenger side of the Toyota Corolla. The immigration officer remains to the side of the vehicle and does not appear to move out of the way as it rolls forward slightly.
Three gunshots rang out, and the Toyota continued rolling forward slowly before coming to a stop. The video then shows the officer running to the driver side of the vehicle.
Footage recorded moments later shows two bullet holes in the Toyota’s back passenger window, as well as a large dent on the front passenger side door. It showed that Mr. Garces Perez remained seated in the driver’s seat, where he applied pressure to his left shoulder with his right hand.
An officer wearing a vest marked “ERO” — denoting the Enforcement and Removal Operations branch of ICE — then walked from the unmarked SUV back to the driver side of the Toyota Corolla, holding a phone to his ear. He did not appear to administer first aid to the driver.
Another video filmed minutes after the gunshots rang out shows Mr. Garces Perez still sitting in the Toyota, holding his shoulder without any signs of medical assistance. A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and an Austin police officer helped remove him from the vehicle, and an ICE officer placed him in handcuffs.
The video then shows officers sitting him down on the curb. He appears to be bleeding from a wound in his upper left back. An Austin police officer then put on gloves, but the footage does not show any of the officers providing medical care.
“I’m very angry about this,” Mayor Kirk Watson of Austin said at the news conference. But, he added, “I’m not surprised at all. It’s happened in other cities with the nature of ICE and the way ICE is doing its business these days and the chaos that we see it performing and fomenting.”
The violence in Austin was the second Texas ICE shooting in recent months. President Trump has intensified his deportation effort with more targeted operations, which attract less attention, since two civilians were shot and killed during a crackdown in Minneapolis in January.
In July, an ICE agent in Houston shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in the abdomen while he was on his way to work at a construction site with three other men. Mr. Araujo, a father, a husband and business owner who had moved to the United States 35 years ago from Mexico died at a hospital.
Federal officials later said that Mr. Araujo had not been the operation’s intended target.
Less than a week after Mr. Araujo’s death, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant, was shot and killed by an ICE agent while he headed to work in Biddeford, Maine. Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE has said publicly whether he was the target of an enforcement operation.
More than 20 people have been fired on by federal immigration agents since Mr. Trump took office in January 2025. Six people, including three U.S. citizens, have been killed in those shootings, nearly all of which involved officers firing at people in vehicles.
Months before the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, a 23-year-old American man named Ruben Ray Martinez was shot and killed by an ICE officer in South Padre Island, Texas.
Mr. Watson, the mayor, and other city officials called on federal authorities to be open and truthful about the shooting. Information initially reported by D.H.S. in other shootings has, in some cases, proven to be inaccurate.
Protesters quickly descended upon the scene of the shooting on Sunday, where more than 200 people shouted in English and Spanish at federal, state and local officers investigating the incident.
“There is a reason that people in Austin and across the country are deeply suspicious of anything that ICE has said, and there is a reason that people are hurting right now when they hear about this having happened in their city, even before they know all the facts,” said Rep. Greg Casar, who represents the area in Congress.
Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) ‘Way Too Hot’: Britain’s Hospitals Were Not Built for 96-Degree Summers
Patients and workers in one of the country’s largest hospitals sweltered in a heat wave last month. Experts say the whole country must urgently adapt.
By Megan Specia, Photographs by Andrew Testa, Sept. 21, 2026
Megan Specia and Andrew Testa visited a hospital in Nottingham, England, on one of the hottest August days ever recorded in the city.
Robyn, 2, recovering with her parents after an operation at Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham, England, last month during a heat wave. Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Megan Specia and Andrew Testa visited a hospital in Nottingham, England, on one of the hottest August days ever recorded in the city.
It was the fifth heat wave of the summer.
By late morning one day last month, the air inside Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham, England, was thick and uncomfortable. Sweat glistened on the faces of staff members hurrying around the sprawling hospital. Patients tossed in their beds.
“It’s just getting to be way too hot; I am saying my prayers waiting for it to stop,” said Celia Burgess, 78, who was in a geriatric unit with two portable fans blowing in her direction. “I mean, they are trying, but it’s not much good. It’s these old hospitals.”
By late afternoon, temperatures in the central English city had reached more than 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and the following day, Nottingham reached 96 degrees. It was the hottest August day ever recorded in the city.
As average temperatures rise in Britain, so do fears that the country’s aging hospitals, built for a cooler climate, are ill equipped to cope. Few have air-conditioning, and many become alarmingly hot in the summer while also struggling with an influx of patients arriving with heat-related problems.
Those who use these facilities are already among society’s most vulnerable and most at risk from the heat, like older people, babies and children, and people with chronic illness.
This summer has been Britain’s hottest on record. As human-caused climate change accelerates, experts warn that nearly all National Health Service hospital buildings in England are at risk of overheating as summer temperatures grow more extreme, stretching Britain’s taxpayer-funded health system to a breaking point.
The pressures are twofold. More people are suffering from the effects of extreme heat, which strains emergency rooms, and hospital buildings are not designed to deal with the rising temperatures. During heat waves in May and June, there were 2,877 heat-associated deaths, according to preliminary data from the U.K. Health Security Agency — almost double the figure reported for last year.
At least five hospital groups in England declared critical incidents, an emergency status used when severe pressures make normal operations impossible. Queen’s Medical Center was among them. Its emergency room was overrun with patients in late June, and nonemergency care had to be curtailed. Other areas in the hospital, originally built in the 1960s, have had to be closed at times this summer amid overheating.
“These buildings were built for English winters. They weren’t built for the kind of summers we get now,” said Anthony May, the chief executive of Nottingham University Hospitals N.H.S. Trust, which oversees Queen’s Medical Center. “It seems climate change is catching up with us perhaps quicker than we can combat,” he added.
While the hospital has introduced measures to mitigate the heat, leaders are constrained, he said, by limited funding and the difficulty of retrofitting old buildings. About 90 percent of N.H.S. hospitals are at risk of overheating, according to a 2025 study from the U.K. Health Alliance on Climate Change. Most were built decades ago with architecture that prioritized retaining warmth for Britain’s cold, damp winters.
The new summer conditions are intensifying pressure on the N.H.S., which was already struggling after a period of sustained underinvestment following the 2008 financial crisis. A government effort called the New Hospital Program began in 2020, with plans to build dozens of new facilities across England by 2030, but delays have hindered it.
Hospital workers face “impossible and inhumane” conditions during the heat waves, the Royal College of Nursing, a union, warned last month.
“It’s unbearable,” said Ellie Brook, 27, a nurse and ward manager in a geriatric unit at Queen’s Medical Center. “You literally come away from the patients dripping in sweat.”
Her shared office space has no windows. The staff keeps the lights off and fans running to try to cool down. “Trying to get fans is like trying to get gold dust,” she said.
The U.K. Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the government, urged the government in a May report to invest in cooling in hospitals and other critical settings. It warned that increasingly extreme and frequent heat waves posed the greatest risk to health in Britain from climate change, and it predicted that excess deaths could double or even triple by 2050.
Hospitals are scrambling to adjust. In Nottingham, a hodgepodge of measures were in place last month, including fans, some portable air-conditioning units, and cool towels to ease patients’ discomfort. In the past year, tinted film was placed over some windows. A team has been examining data from a thermal imaging camera to identify parts of the hospital that grew particularly hot over the past five years. That will inform a plan for how to handle high temperatures in the longer term.
There are pockets of respite in the hospital. In the geriatric assessment unit, which opened in 2024, the effect of an air-conditioning system is clear the moment the doors open.
Elsewhere in Britain, new buildings show how hospitals could be designed to cope with the changing climate. The National Rehabilitation Center in Loughborough, which opened this month, is just 12 miles from Queen’s Medical Center, but feels worlds away. Costing about 107 million pounds (around $145 million), it was funded by the New Hospital Program and includes a modern system that regulates the temperature inside, including with heat pumps and solar panels.
For now, though, most patients and medical professionals are in structures more akin to Queen’s Medical Center. In the pediatric outpatient unit on the day we visited, Robyn Roy, 2, rested her head on her father’s chest, her face flushed, as a fan lifted strands of her hair. Robyn, who has Down syndrome, had undergone a routine operation that morning, and the temperature in the shared recovery room was rising.
Her father, Sam Roy, 27, said the staff was doing its best to keep everyone comfortable, but he was eager to get Robyn home.
“It can be hard to know if she is overheating, and she has breathing issues,” explained her mother, Courtney Roy, 26. Like many people with Down syndrome, Robyn has difficulty regulating her body temperature and has underlying heart issues, which make the heat even more worrying.
High temperatures can worsen chronic conditions, and children are already at higher risk from extreme heat, along with elderly people. April Rowan, 14, has a feeding tube, and it is hard for her to stay hydrated as a result of her chronic condition. Her mother, Gillian Rowan, said her concerns about her daughter’s health were compounded by the hot conditions in the hospital.
“It’s just horrendous,” she said. “You don’t get any airflow in here,” she added. “Everything just bakes.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) The A.I. Party House Where Networking Has a Dark Side
Group tech houses have proliferated across the San Francisco Bay Area in the artificial intelligence boom. One of the most prominent has also racked up an extensive police record.
By Kirsten Grind, Reporting from Hillsborough, Calif., and San Francisco, Sept. 21, 2026
The entrance to AGI House in Hillsborough, Calif. AGI House is one of the most prominent and notorious tech group homes in the artificial intelligence boom. Minh Connors for The New York Times
The eight-bedroom Mediterranean-style mansion, which borders a golf course in the wealthy Silicon Valley town of Hillsborough, Calif., has gone through a lot in recent years.
A car flew through the air at one party on its grounds. At another event, titled “Midnight in Paris,” guests arrived in horse-drawn carriages to a replica of the Eiffel Tower. Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder, has given talks at the home. And Claire Boucher, the singer-songwriter known as Grimes and the onetime partner to Elon Musk, has performed there.
The mansion is one of the most prominent — and notorious — tech group homes, which have proliferated across Silicon Valley and San Francisco amid the artificial intelligence boom. Long gone are the fraternity-style rental homes popularized by Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of Facebook, where grungy engineers coded all day and crammed into shared rooms at night.
Today these so-called hacker houses are driven by missions, like the advancement of humanity, and have become critical nodes for the A.I. industry. Residents are often start-up founders or engineers working at OpenAI or Anthropic. Rent can hit $10,000 a month for a room.
But what has unfolded in them has sometimes gone far beyond socializing and networking. Some houses have become the sites for sexual harassment cases and rape allegations, as well as infighting among residents, according to previously unreported police reports obtained by The New York Times, court records and more than 20 people in the A.I. industry.
Parties featuring psychedelic drugs and sharing of sexual partners are common, the people said. One house threw lavish events for the A.I. community so often that its owner claimed more than $200,000 of damage, including for a rodent infestation.
At the mansion in Hillsborough known as AGI House — named for “artificial general intelligence,” a technology that can match the powers of the human mind — the local police have logged 37 incidents since 2022. At least 17 were related to complaints about large parties and events, according to the reports.
The others included an episode in December when a woman called the police and told them that a male AGI House resident had pressured her to have sex; she climbed over a gate to escape. Last year, the police were also asked at least four times to perform welfare checks, which typically happen when people experience mental health issues or are considered unsafe to themselves or others.
“He is making no sense at all,” a caller told the police about an AGI House resident in November.
Many group houses — The Times identified at least 10, with plenty of others operating quietly — are run by tech executives who see an opportunity to earn profits by creating gathering places. They host events day and night, attracting young people with the promise of connections. At some houses, there are wait lists more than 40 people deep for each room.
Some of the industry’s biggest names are involved. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has advised the Residency, which aims to be a global network of hacker houses for “ambitious builders” to live and work.
“We believe in the potential of young people to build a more abundant, innovative and peaceful future,” its website said.
Sofie Bukovska, 26, who works at the A.I. film production company Trippy Pictures, moved into AGI House last year for a few months and said she had quickly realized how helpful it was to her career. She met A.I. executives and personalities, including Grimes, whom she probably wouldn’t have otherwise, she said.
The atmosphere “was something very different from normal life,” Ms. Bukovska said.
Rocky Yu, a venture capitalist who has managed AGI House since 2023, has tried curbing the partying, he has claimed in court documents. Reached by phone, he said he was not aware of any police reports and declined to answer questions.
The mansion, which is connected to a venture capital fund, is backed by Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive, and Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist, according to its website. A representative for Mr. Andreessen said he was not involved.
The 18,000-square-foot property has become such a center of gravity for the A.I. industry that Mr. Yu and a former manager are embroiled in a court battle over who owns the rights to the AGI House brand. The home has become emblematic of the behind-the-scenes issues — often not publicly discussed — that group houses face.
‘An Epic Experiment’
AGI House’s roots trace back to Jeremy Nixon, 33, a former Google researcher who established other tech group homes before the A.I. boom. One that he co-founded around 2019 at a five-bedroom house in San Francisco was called Genesis.
Genesis was “an oasis for founders and dreamers,” according to its website, offering “a dynamic and inclusive environment that promotes personal and professional growth.”
The house quickly became a hub for events. Eric Zhu, 19, a tech entrepreneur, said he used to sneak into parties there when he was about 13. No one checked anyone’s age, he said, and “it was pretty crazy.”
Yehong Zhu, 30, who is not related to Mr. Zhu, filed a police report accusing a former Genesis house member of rape and assault in December 2021, according to a copy of the report. She has lived in four tech houses and initially viewed them almost as utopias where she could quickly meet other entrepreneurs, she said, before seeing a darker side.
Ms. Zhu’s case remains under investigation. The Genesis resident she accused has left the house and cannot be located, she said.
“I’m far from the only one this has happened to,” said Ms. Zhu, the founder of an A.I. start-up called Zette.
Mr. Nixon flouted the lease terms for the home by letting a string of people come and go, according to his former landlord, Mei Chiao. Genesis ended around 2021, with Mr. Nixon and his roommates leaving behind more than $60,000 of damage, Ms. Chiao said. In 2023, she sued Mr. Nixon and another Genesis house manager in San Francisco Superior Court for more than $9,000 in unpaid rent, recouping about $5,000, according to court records and Ms. Chiao.
“It was a nightmare for me,” Ms. Chiao said. Mr. Nixon declined to comment.
In 2022, Mr. Nixon rented a mansion in Hillsborough to create a new tech community, NeoGenesis, with Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI co-founder, court records show. Mr. Karpathy said in an email that he had paid “a chunk of the rent” during the house’s first year and attended a few events, but had not visited for years.
Mr. Nixon wanted NeoGenesis to be “a community house and space for some of the most exceptional founders, researchers, scientists and technologists,” according to court documents. It would be “an epic experiment,” he wrote.
Unlike other group houses where rent was cheap, NeoGenesis residents paid up to $10,000 a month for a room, people who lived there said.
Many were there for the connections. Mr. Nixon threw lavish events, including the “Midnight in Paris” party and an event honoring the future with the flying car. A-list techies including Mr. Brin sometimes showed up.
With little parking, event attendees often left their cars all over town. Music sometimes blasted all day and night. Neighbors complained to the Hillsborough police and other town officials, police and court records show.
After OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, Mr. Nixon said, he hatched the idea to rebrand NeoGenesis as AGI House, according to a lawsuit he filed last year in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Mr. Yu, the current manager.
Mr. Nixon said he planned to make AGI House even bigger. His concept involved “20 A.I. hackers, living in the same epic house for three months, 20 weekend hackathons, daily dinners with A.I. royalty, ship code again and again and again,” according to Mr. Nixon’s notes, which were released in court.
“This is a new golden age,” Mr. Nixon said, according to the court documents.
Mr. Yu, 43, a venture capitalist, contended in his own lawsuit last year that he had birthed the AGI House concept. Mr. Nixon could not keep up with house payments for NeoGenesis or with complaints from the town, said Mr. Yu, who took over the home.
Mermaids in the Pool
NeoGenesis was rebranded as AGI House in 2023, with Mr. Yu as the manager, according to court records.
Mr. Nixon returned to San Francisco, opening another group home in 2024, called AGI House SF, according to court records. The seven-bedroom property calls its residents “the PayPal Mafia of A.I.,” referring to the group of influential founders, including Peter Thiel and Mr. Musk, who helped found the payments company. AGI House SF’s residents have founded 13 companies valued at more than $1 billion, according to its website.
At AGI House in Hillsborough, Mr. Yu hired a manager to oversee residents and formed a venture capital firm, AGI House Ventures. He enticed Anthropic and OpenAI to co-host hackathons at the mansion and invited top executives to sponsor events, Mr. Yu said in court documents.
As the home’s profile rose, the police logged at least eight incidents there in 2023 and 2024 related to noise and crowding of residential streets. In November 2023, Hillsborough’s city manager sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mr. Yu warning him that his parties put him in danger of violating the town codes restricting commercial activity.
“Your events have become much more frequent, often several per week,” the letter said.
Less than two miles away, Hillsborough officials were dealing with another party house for the A.I industry: a 6,000-square-foot home run by Jimmy Chen, who goes by the social media handle “Spice King of Zanzibar.”
Mr. Chen threw elaborate functions, including one event where women waded into the pool dressed as mermaids. Another party had a jungle theme that included a wall painted with a Mayan mural, according to police records and attendees.
More than 20 complaints about the house were recorded by the police between late 2021 and 2024, mostly related to noise and parking. One report also noted a “possible kidnapping”; another said Mr. Chen had been beaten up at an event.
By last year, Mr. Chen had moved out and the house was destroyed, the landlord, Lena Chedid, claimed in a police report. The crystals adorning a chandelier had been replaced by plastic ones, the report said, with soundproof panels installed everywhere and lightbulbs painted in different colors “depending on tenants’ party theme.”
“A professional company needed to spray the entire house as it was found to be infested with rodents,” Ms. Chedid wrote in the report. She declined to comment.
Mr. Chen said that his landlord had been aware the house was used for events and that he had paid a damage deposit. He said he had also hired security guards and screened party attendees.
Any issues were the result of normal wear and tear, he said, adding that the rats were there when he moved in.
Climbing Over the Gate
In December, a call came into Hillsborough’s police station at 2:22 a.m. A woman, who was riding in a Lyft at the time, was on the line. She said she had been trapped at AGI House by a male resident who tried coercing her to have sex.
The man told her that she was old and “would be alone forever,” according to a police report. He was “persistent in attempting to convince” the woman “to have sex with him, and she repeatedly declined,” said the report, which redacted both names.
The woman climbed over a gate and got away unharmed, the report said.
That came on top of a pile of other incidents. In June 2025, the police arrived at AGI House after someone called with concerns about a male resident, police records show. About three weeks later, they were called again for another welfare check. By November, the police had also sent an ambulance to the house.
In his lawsuit against Mr. Nixon, Mr. Yu said he had “gone to great lengths” to distance himself and AGI House from the “party house image.” In a follow-up email, he said AGI House was not a hacker house as it did not offer an official “residency” program.
This year, the Hillsborough police said, they have logged three incidents at the house.
AGI House is hosting a 10-hour event to build a “living internet” next month, according to its social calendar. A poker game night is also on the agenda.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
11) It’s Raining Boxes: Amazon Drones Overwhelm a Texas Suburb
In Richardson, a fleet of drones has started to deliver goods quickly. But the noise is drowning out life for some residents: ‘We can’t live like this.’
By Juliet Macur, Photographs by Jordan Vonderhaar
Juliet Macur reported from Richardson, Texas., Sept. 21, 2026
Amazon chose Richardson as one of the first cities to receive drone deliveries. Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times
It began as an unnerving high-pitched hum, like a mosquito flying around a dark room at bedtime, and it grew louder as it drew closer. A family lounging in a backyard pool in Richardson, Texas, just north of Dallas, couldn’t help but notice it.
“There’s another one coming this way!” shouted Eric Anderson from his pool float, pointing to an area above a tall line of trees. His 9-year-old daughter, Isla, removed her swim goggles for a clearer look at what could be a scene from science fiction.
Within a minute or so, an 83-pound drone with six blue arms and whirring propellers appeared in a corner of the sky before zipping over nearby houses, looking like a cross between a mechanical dragonfly and an X-wing fighter, and buzzing like a battalion of bees.
The drone’s mission: delivering an Amazon package.
The single cardboard box of cargo held a maximum of five pounds and was loaded into the drone at Amazon’s distribution center less than a mile from the backyard pool. It could have been bound for anywhere within a seven-and-a-half-mile radius of takeoff.
Richardson city officials gave Amazon zoning approval to start the drone delivery service in December as part of the company’s nascent Prime Air program. It promises customers tens of thousands of items — nail trimmers for pets, ankle bracelets, handcrafted, razor-tipped bread lames for scoring sourdough — in as little as 30 minutes. The delivery could be free or cost up to $4.99.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which governs U.S. airspace, gave Amazon clearance to fly its drones.
Now many other parts of the United States can expect their own drone deliveries, a welcome convenience for some, but an invasion for others.
Last month, Amazon announced that Prime Air deliveries would expand to 500 towns and cities by the end of the year. Other companies are also using drone deliveries, and the F.A.A. has forecast that by 2030 the number could explode to more than 3.5 million, up from the current number of 897,000 registered drones.
“What’s happening in Richardson is about to happen all over the country, and people are finally going to believe us that having all these drones flying around is actually a big, big problem,” said Scott Bratcher, who is the president of his homeowners’ association in a Richardson neighborhood that residents have called a drone highway.
He added, “The government and the F.A.A. have failed us.”
The agency said that it would soon be issuing new rules for drone flight. But in July, after studying the environmental impact of commercial delivery drones like Amazon’s, the agency decided that they did not pose a “significant impact.”
For some people, the futuristic novelty of the airborne deliveries has been something to celebrate. They have shared their delivery videos online, cheering as their packages are plopped, bounced and sometimes slid onto their yards and driveways.
Lindsay Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said on Friday that the customer response to the deliveries has been “overwhelmingly positive” and “so far this year, fewer than 1 percent” of inquiries into the program have been related to noise. She compared the drone noise to a window fan on low, and said, during delivery, it’s quieter than a passing car.
But in the Richardson neighborhoods near the Amazon distribution center, any joy about the innovation has been muted by the sound of dozens of drones, if not more than a hundred of them, flying by every day, sometimes so loud that they sound like flying lawn mowers. (Other companies, including Walmart, are also using delivery drones, but different types, in the area.)
Under city regulations, deliveries can operate from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m., and Amazon has assured residents that the drones would fly outbound at an average of 225 feet high. The maximum they can fly, according to the F.A.A., is 400 feet.
Before the drones arrived, Richardson was a suburb known as a hub for tech and telecom, and its residents were already living with technology’s intrusions. A massive new A.I. data center sits across the street from one neighborhood, and as recently as last month, 20 Flock cameras, which read license plates and track vehicles, were used at 14 major intersections.
But for those people living closest to the Amazon flight paths, the ever-droning deliveries pose the most serious threat to their private and peaceful life.
“We hear them zoom, zoom, zoom, back and forth from morning until past dinnertime,” said Nikki Anderson, whose extended family spotted the drone — and many more — one Friday earlier this month. She has long prized the serenity of her backyard, with its undulating pool and birds chirping from landscaping that included a shrub sculpted into the shape of a giant heart.
Now the drones have ruined that, Ms. Anderson said. She can hear them from inside, even with the television on, and especially on weekends, when deliveries seem to pick up.
She asked the city if Amazon could at least limit the hours or days that it flies drones but her requests were not granted. Greg Sowell, a city spokesman, said Richardson has not put any further timing restrictions on Amazon since the City Council approved the drones last year.
“Some people might think, wow, this is really, really cool, and the technology is really cool,” Ms. Anderson said. “But people around here, we’re thinking, ‘Ugh, is there anything we can do to stop this?’ We can’t live like this.”
During delivery, Amazon’s drones descend to about 13 feet above the ground and hover as the package tumbles out of an open door and onto a customer’s property — often with all the care of a bouncer tossing a rabble-rouser from a bar.
One online video shows an Amazon drone dropping a package into a pool. Another caught one smashing into an apartment building and crashing near a sidewalk. A recent video showed a drone atop a grassy median of a road in Baton Rouge, La., sitting there like a lost puppy.
Amazon said its program is always improving and Ms. Hamilton, the spokeswoman, added that the company had adjusted its operations, based on feedback from residents.
Kristi Graham, an administrator for a music education company, was one resident who complained to Amazon, upset about drones flying over her backyard, where her family swims and barbecues.
After her complaint, she said Amazon did change the route — to the front of her house.
She is now part of a neighborhood group fighting the company, but the appeal of fast delivery remains strong. Last May, Ms. Graham’s daughter ordered deli ham from Walmart using a coupon for drone delivery. She had been in a rush to make a sandwich.
Ms. Graham had only one thing to say: “How could you?”
She and some of her neighbors, including Ms. Anderson, are now sending emails to officials of other cities, including El Paso, Texas, and Richmond, Va., where Amazon’s drones are about to descend. Don’t trust Amazon’s claims, they say.
The drones, they write, “have been a disaster for the City of Richardson.”
Ms. Graham and others are also concerned with security.
According to Ms. Hamilton, of Amazon, its drones use multiple cameras and sensors for navigation. The images are stored on encrypted drives that only authorized personnel can access later, she said, adding that the data is solely used to improve safety and customer service.
Stephanie Puri, a researcher in the video game industry, is skeptical.
“Amazon hasn’t always been the most transparent with how they use and reuse data,” she said, wondering if she might start seeing ads for pool equipment after a drone spies her pool.
“If it’s your backyard and you want to sunbathe naked, that’s your property and you do you,” she said. “But, oh, Amazon can see you.”
Ms. Puri, like some of her neighbors, has set up a drone tracker. On Friday, she recorded what she called a slow day: 52 drones overhead, including three between 150 and 170 feet up, close enough to distract her while was inside. Her cat Eden growls when they fly that low.
When a protest was held in front of the Amazon distribution center in June, Ms. Puri took part. People waved signs like “Too low, too loud, too many.” And she said many Amazon delivery drivers, whose jobs may be at risk, honked their horns in support.
Brian Rowe, an executive in tech and cybersecurity, has shown up to City Council meetings to complain. He has considered many methods of clearing the drones above his home, even looking into commercial anti-drone technology. But that technology, mostly for military use, costs tens of thousands of dollars, he said.
“What can we do?” Mr. Rowe said.
He senses other problems looming. Nearly two weeks ago, a company began testing air taxis in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
They look like Amazon drones, but are much, much bigger.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
