We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Abortion Rights Activists in Idaho Find Their Pitch: Bring Back the Doctors
Organizers of a referendum to repeal an abortion ban in deep-red Idaho are far more focused on how the ban has broadly affected health care in the state.
By Anna Griffin, Reporting from Boise, Idaho, Sept. 18, 2026
The Idaho Legislature enacted one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, criminalizing abortion for doctors. Since then, the number of ob-gyns has plunged. Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times
Supporters of the campaign to overturn one of the nation’s toughest abortion bans would rather not talk to Idaho voters about abortion. Instead, they want voters in their redder-than-red state to think about doctors.
Proposition 1, on the ballot in November, would establish a right to abortion until fetal viability and afterward in medical emergencies. But that’s not how the unlikely Idaho ballot measure is being sold in the conservative state.
Instead, as opponents of abortion focus on the ban’s success in ending the procedure, abortion rights proponents are talking about health care broadly, as Idaho weathers a steep decline in the number of doctors providing obstetrics care amid a population boom.
In the four years since Idaho criminalized doctors who perform the procedure, the number of obstetricians and gynecologists practicing in the state has fallen sharply. A study published last year found that Idaho had lost 94 of the 268 physicians who were practicing obstetrics when the ban took effect, a 35 percent decline in the first two years, even after accounting for doctors who arrived in the state. About half of Idaho’s 44 counties lack a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist.
The result, according to health care professionals: longer waits, higher costs and less access to preventive care for all Idahoans, not just pregnant people.
“Most of what obstetricians do is not obstetrics,” said Dr. Edward McEachern, who led the study. “It’s just taking care of women.”
Conservative lawmakers and activists who pushed the state’s anti-abortion laws focus on the intended result: The number of in-person abortions in Idaho fell to almost none, from around 80 a month before the laws.
“Idaho is a pro-life state, and our laws reflect that,” said Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center.
Idaho is a conservative state and growing more so. Over the past two decades, Republican supermajorities in the State Legislature, fortified by an influx of conservative voters from across the West, have enacted spending cuts and some of the country’s toughest restrictions on transgender health care, public restroom access and scholastic sports.
“We’ve been a lighthouse for the rest of the country,” said Mr. Conzatti, whose organization helped craft much of that legislation. He said he’s not at all worried about Proposition 1 passing.
But organizers believe they stand a chance. Other conservative states, including Kansas and Missouri, have overturned recent abortion bans or upheld abortion rights. More than 57 percent of Floridians voted in 2024 to legalize abortion over the will of the Legislature, but 60 percent was needed under that state’s referendum rules.
A Boise State University survey in January found that 60 percent of Idaho residents supported establishing a right to make private reproductive health care decisions, including abortion until fetal viability and in medical emergencies. More than 110,000 people signed petitions to put Proposition 1 on the ballot.
Beyond abortion, Proposition 1 would enshrine rights to contraception and fertility treatment. Organizers view it as a chance to rebuild Idaho’s health care system, and, more expansively, as a referendum on the state’s hard-right swing of the past decade.
“This is the one way we have to say ‘enough,’” said Melanie Folwell, the proposition’s campaign manager.
Idaho’s abortion restrictions date to before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The state’s 2020 law, designed to take effect after Roe’s repeal, criminalizes nearly all abortions. A separate law prohibits abortion after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected and allows certain family members to sue providers who perform prohibited abortions. Exceptions for rape and incest are limited to the first trimester and require that the crime be reported.
The legal burden falls on providers, not women seeking care.
“It makes the performance of an abortion a crime, a felony,” State Senator Todd Lakey, the sponsor of the ban, said when it came to a final vote in March 2020.
During legislative debates, Democratic lawmakers and health care groups warned that criminalizing abortion could cause doctors to flee. Republicans dismissed the concern; Lori Den Hartog, a legislator from Ada County, challenged “the notion that the taking of a human life is health care.” Idaho’s attorney general briefly threatened to prosecute doctors who referred patients to states where abortion remained legal.
Health care professionals say legislators misunderstood how pregnancy care works. Medical records, for example, can use terms such as “spontaneous abortion” to describe a miscarriage, even though Idaho law does not prohibit care during and after a miscarriage. That reality has created confusion and fear among doctors.
Amy Klinger, a physician assistant in rural Stanley, Idaho, described providers second-guessing their treatment plans for pregnant women in life-threatening situations — or pausing to call their hospital legal team. “If you can go somewhere else and just focus on caring for your patients, why wouldn’t you?” she asked.
Supporters of the ban are eager to focus the proposition fight on abortion, arguing that the referendum could allow them much later in pregnancy than Idaho did before Roe v. Wade was overturned. The proposition’s definition of viability as a “significant likelihood” of sustained survival outside the uterus “without extraordinary medical measures” could permit elective abortions into the seventh or eighth month, they say. Repeal organizers dispute that interpretation, noting that medical authorities generally place viability around 24 weeks.
During a legal fight over ballot language, Idaho’s attorney general and secretary of state, both Republicans, pushed to include references to the lives of “unborn” and “preborn” children. The final ballot features both.
Referendum opponents also argue the statistics on Idaho’s health care system do not stand out nationally. They cite a national study published last year that tracked more than 60,000 obstetricians and gynecologists and found no statistically significant difference in OB-GYN work force trends in the two years after the overturning of abortion rights between states with total abortion bans and states with abortion access protections.
“We have a rural health care problem all across the nation, not just in Idaho,” Mr. Conzatti said. “It’s not abortion laws that are driving physicians away. It’s the hard economics of aging populations in rural areas and consolidation in the health care industry.”
Active OB-GYN licenses in Idaho increased by more than 20 percent between 2022 and 2025, but doctors do not need to live or practice full time in the state to maintain one, and not all OB-GYN practices offer a full-range of women’s health care.
“The bottom line is that licenses do not equal access,” said Susie Keller, chief executive of the Idaho Medical Association, which represents 4,000 people in the field and has not taken a position on the repeal. “The lack of clarity has absolutely convinced some people to leave and reduced health care options in Idaho.”
If voters throw out the state ban, Republican state legislators could restore some version in 2027. Health care professionals say that even if state laws are loosened, it could be years before the state’s medical field returns to the levels it saw when abortion was legal.
“It’s a generational thing,” said Dr. McEachern, the chief medical officer at St. Luke’s Health Plan, an Idaho-based insurer.
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2) Why Israel Fears This Searing New Documentary
By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist, Sept. 18, 2026
Photo Illustration by The New York Times
Israel is treating the new documentary “NAZA,” by the Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, less like bad publicity than a national security crisis.
Eyal Zamir, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, pledged to use “every tool at our disposal” against the documentary, which features anonymous interviews with 24 intelligence officers and soldiers, most involved in remote strikes in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for legislation that would let the state strip Abraham and Szor of their citizenship. Israel’s culture minister has asked the Interior Ministry to investigate them for treason. Activists and staff members from the far-right party of Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir protested outside Szor’s parents’ house, where a speaker called for Abraham and Szor to be executed and their families’ homes demolished, as often happens to the homes of Palestinians.
The official calls for persecution of Abraham and Szor, who previously made the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” with two Palestinian filmmakers, seem strategically unwise, since they’re spurring heightened interest in “NAZA.” A press screening I went to on Wednesday, at New York’s 268-seat Walter Reade Theater, was at capacity, and I was told to arrive a half-hour early to get a seat. This is, in my experience, very unusual for documentaries of any sort, even those that, like “NAZA,” win a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
After seeing it, I can understand why Israel finds it so threatening. Its subjects described factory-scale targeting, enabled by artificial intelligence, in which little effort was made to avoid enormous numbers of civilian casualties. “The goal was quantity, not quality,” said one of the speakers. According to the sources in the film, the military chose to target members of Hamas, some low-level, at home at night rather than when they were out during the day because it was easier, even though it meant killing their families and neighbors. One man told of hacking into the phone of a 12-year-old girl to learn when her father arrived home, and then ordering a bombing in which she was killed.
“NAZA” is Hebrew military shorthand for nezek agavi, or collateral damage. One of the speakers described a computer interface showing how many people would be killed if a particular site were bombed. Typically, said one, “20 NAZA” was a benchmark — meaning it was OK to kill 20 civilians for one Hamas target. (That figure was previously reported by The New York Times.) An interviewee said that for one bombing, a NAZA figure of 500 was approved, which the I.D.F. has denied.
Part of what makes “NAZA” so devastating is the way it shows that mere indifference to civilian deaths can shade into deliberate mass killing. To Israel’s defenders, after all, the fact that the military puts limits on acceptable collateral damage shows that it’s not trying to kill as many people as possible and thus can’t be genocidal. The Israeli journalist Ariel Oseran argued, for example, that the very word NAZA is exculpatory, writing, “If Israel’s specific objective were to destroy the Palestinian population, Palestinian deaths would not be categorized as collateral damage; they would be the intended goal.”
But “NAZA” suggests that the system Israel created had mass death built into it. In the frantic days following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Israel was full of calls to annihilate Gaza, and the murderous rhetoric has persisted. After 50,000 Gazans had already been killed, the former head of Israeli military intelligence said, in leaked audio, “For every one person on Oct. 7, 50 Palestinians must die. It doesn’t matter now if they are children.” In this atmosphere of rage, grief and total self-justification, the Israeli military made a series of choices that ensured Gaza would become a killing field, whatever the specific motives of everyone involved. “When people talk about ‘flattening Gaza’, what do you mean if not executing people?” asked one of the subjects in “NAZA.”
At one point in the film, as one of the interviewees explained the rules of engagement, Abraham said, “But if you can kill 20 people per junior member, and there are tens of thousands of members …” To which the man responded, “You end up with all of Gaza, yes.”
Of course, we don’t know who these sources are. They were filmed on Tel Aviv rooftops at night, their faces shadowed, their profiles and voices digitally altered. Journalistically, the use of anonymous sources for explosive allegations isn’t unusual, but it makes some of the documentary’s claims impossible to check. The I.D.F. has emphasized the whistle-blowers’ anonymity in disparaging the film. At the same time, it’s opened a leak investigation to find out whether classified material was used in the production, a strange thing to do if its revelations are false.
Ultimately, Israel’s fury at “NAZA” — which has its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 26 — is almost certainly not about journalistic ethics. Part of the uproar is simply Netanyahu and his allies demagoguing ahead of next month’s parliamentary election, trying to cast the Israeli left as traitorous enemies of the military. (One Haaretz writer called the controversy a gift to Israel’s “fascist-nationalist bloc.”) But there’s also a broader sense of a taboo being smashed, of Israel being confronted with something it desperately doesn’t want to see.
“Israel has been in a state of denial now for close to three years,” said the Israeli American historian Omer Bartov, author of the recent book “Israel: What Went Wrong.” Until “NAZA,” he said, there’d been little debate in the country about the leveling of Gaza. Now, he said, people are “actually speaking about the issue of what happened in Gaza rather than refusing to speak about it.”
But it’s a conversation many cannot face. “In Israel you may be on the left, but your children go to serve in the army, and often you are proud of them being soldiers,” said Bartov. “And then you’re told they maybe were involved in a criminal war. That’s very difficult for people to accept, and they will find all kinds of ways to resist it.”
It’s hard to tell whether Israelis are enraged by “NAZA” because they think it’s full of lies, or because they know or fear it’s true.
Ms. Goldberg writes, "It's hard to tell whether Israelis are enraged by 'NAZA' because they think it's full of lies, or because they know or fear it's true." Israel has been the target of numerous lies over its existence, but the scorched-earth reaction is so different in degree it may have become different in kind. If the documentary were simply false, why not expose its falsehoods and move on? The Israeli government seems to be calling for the total destruction of the mirror because they can't live with the reflection.
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3) Civil Rights Groups Sue to Keep Armed Agents Away From Voting Sites
The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and suggestions that it could send agents to polling stations violate the Voting Rights Act.
By Amy Qin, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 18, 2026
The lawsuit was brought by a coalition of labor unions and Black, Asian and Latino civil rights groups. Credit...Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times
Civil rights groups and labor unions sued the Trump administration on Friday, asserting that its aggressive immigration enforcement and suggestions that it could send armed agents to polling sites amounted to voter intimidation and violated the Voting Rights Act.
Brought by a coalition of Black, Asian and Latino civil rights groups and unions, including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Service Employees International Union, the lawsuit seeks to block any effort by the Trump administration to deploy federal agents at voting locations, which the groups contend can deter citizens trying to legally vote.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that President Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and other members of the administration had created a climate in which “voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.”
They had done so, the suit says, by simultaneously pushing false narratives of rampant voting by noncitizens, conducting sweeping immigration enforcement in communities of color and repeatedly suggesting that they could send armed agents to polls.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent on Friday morning. But in the past, Mr. Mullin has said that opponents were fear-mongering and that ICE was not patrolling polling places. “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place,” he said, “or we’re serving a warrant.”
The lawsuit points specifically to the Trump administration’s recently expanded efforts to identify noncitizens registered to vote, despite no evidence of rampant voter fraud by noncitizens.
Taken together, the lawsuit argues, the actions and statements constituted a violation of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which broadly prohibits actual or attempted intimidation, threats, and coercion directed at voters and anyone helping to facilitate voting. This section of the Voting Rights Act was not affected by a recent Supreme Court decision weakening the landmark civil rights legislation.
The act, the lawsuit says, broadly protects against voter intimidation, and requires only that voters reasonably fear being subject to harassment or violence for casting a ballot. “The breadth of Congress’s words was by design,” the lawsuit says.
This is at least the second lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from deploying armed federal agents near polling stations. Last week, the City of Denver, Latino civil rights organizations and government watchdog groups argued in a lawsuit that allowing immigration agents at voting locations violates a separate federal law protecting free and fair elections.
For months, Democrats have voiced concerns that Mr. Trump is seeking to assert greater control over the coming elections and sow doubt about the outcome. While Trump administration officials have said there is currently no plan to deploy armed agents to polling sites, they have also not ruled out the possibility of doing so.
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4) A Central African Hotel Has Become a Nightmare Prison for U.S. Deportations
Witnesses say men were hooded and beaten in Equatorial Guinea. The autocratic government there is a partner in President Trump’s deportation program.
By Megha Rajagopalan and Pranav Baskar, Sept. 18, 2026
The Hotel Bamy, on the outskirts of Malabo, has been transformed into a makeshift prison. Credit...Monika Pronczuk/Associated Press
Two men deported to Equatorial Guinea by the Trump administration were hooded, bound, beaten with guns and shoved down a flight of stairs recently by police officers at a remote hotel where immigrants are being held indefinitely, according to witnesses and lawyers.
The deportees said the beatings and subsequent arrests were intended to stop them from telling the outside world about the deteriorating conditions and growing violence inside the hotel, which has become a de facto prison for 29 men and women from different countries.
Experts and human rights advocates predicted such abuse after the Trump administration began deporting people to authoritarian countries where they had no ties or, in many cases, legal rights. Equatorial Guinea, like other countries cooperating with the U.S. deportation program, is notorious for human rights violations, including torture and arbitrary arrest, according to the State Department.
Equatorial Guinea, a small autocracy on Africa’s western coast, is one of many countries that have agreed to accept immigrants deported from the United States. With no legal status in the country, the deportees are being held in the Hotel Bamy — a dilapidated building on the outskirts of the city of Malabo. Armed police officers stand guard 24 hours a day and frequently harass and intimidate people there with impunity, deportees said.
“We are in imminent danger now and can’t keep living like this,” Ahmed Soliman, a deportee at the hotel, said in a text message to The New York Times this month. “I’m tired and genuinely afraid for my life.” He was one of the two men who were later beaten and hooded, witnesses and the human rights group Amnesty International said.
Though the hotel operates as a prison, none of the immigrants are charged with a crime in Equatorial Guinea. The indefinite detention reflects a contradiction at the heart of many arrangements between Washington and foreign governments. Equatorial Guinea agreed to take people but has given them no legal rights or documents that would let them live or work there, even temporarily.
American judges had ruled that a majority of the immigrants in the hotel could not be deported to their home countries because they were likely to be tortured or persecuted. For years, officials allowed many such people to stay in the United States by default, despite their lack of legal standing. The Trump administration ended that policy and is working to find countries, like Equatorial Guinea, willing to accept them.
Videos and interviews show that police aggression inside the hotel escalated in recent weeks and peaked on Sept. 11. The police put burlap sacks over the two men’s faces, tied their hands with rope, beat them with guns and shoved them down the stairs as several deportees watched. The beatings were recounted by multiple witnesses and lawyers.
The police officers shouted: “Where is the phone? Where is the phone!” witnesses said. The immigrants had been using cellphones to speak to journalists and lawyers about the lack of running water, nutritious food or medical care. The beating, witnesses said, followed the release of a video, first reported by Reuters, showing the deteriorating situation in the hotel.
Police also ransacked hotel rooms, searching for cellphones, deportees said.
The deportees spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the threat of retaliation. Western lawyers including Bella Mosselmans, Alexandra Smolyar and Meredyth Yoon, who represent some of the deportees, discussed details of the beatings and arrests. A local lawyer spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Messages seeking comment from the government of Equatorial Guinea, left with its embassies in London and Washington, were not returned.
The police arrested the two men, Mr. Soliman, originally from Egypt, and Samson Birhane, of Eritrea, ostensibly over a broken mirror in the hotel’s elevator. Ms. Mosselmans said that the authorities were retaliating because the two had tried to make their mistreatment known to the public. They were held in a local jail and then vanished for two days, their lawyers said, before being returned to jail.
The State Department did not respond to a message seeking comment early Friday morning. The government has said little about these so-called third-country-deportation deals. In court documents, the Trump administration has argued that once someone is deported to a foreign country, it cannot control what that government does.
Equatorial Guinea had promised the United States, in a diplomatic note, that it would not subject the deportees to torture or other maltreatment.
The New York Times interviewed four deportees in recent weeks who described abusive treatment from armed police officers. The officers, mostly young men, carry semiautomatic firearms and periodically arrive at the hotel. Sometimes, two of the deportees said, the guards are drunk.
In July, police officers stormed five hotel rooms, grabbed people by the necks and tackled them, according to deportees and lawyers. The officers took the immigrants outside the hotel, pointed guns at them and threatened to have them killed — and buried in a field across the hotel property — if they did not voluntarily return to their home countries, they said.
“They are telling us, ‘America doesn’t know where you’re at,’” one witness said. “They say, ‘We will put you on a plane, kill you all, throw you in prison, and nobody will see you again.’”
A video shared with The Times shows a separate incident in which a government official tells an Ethiopian man that his options are to “go back to your home country” or “go to prison.”
The government has already returned a least a dozen people to their home countries, despite the U.S. legal protections and the risk of abuse there, according to lawyers. Many of these deportees have since disappeared or gone into hiding, the lawyers said.
In May, United Nations experts appealed to Equatorial Guinea’s government for access to medical care and basic necessities at the hotel.
One video shared with The Times shows a bathroom tap that does not dispense water. A local lawyer who recently visited said he found no medical supplies even though several people had serious health conditions, including diabetes and a severe hernia.
The government also recently used the hotel to quarantine a suspected Ebola patient, one of the lawyers said. Videos shared with The New York Times show health workers in hazmat suits appearing to move patients to the hotel. Mr. Soliman, in interviews with The Times before he was arrested, said nurses and police officers told him that the patient had Ebola.
The two men who were beaten and arrested, Mr. Birhane and Mr. Soliman, were taken to a detention center that is called La Luna and known to be deeply overcrowded. A lawyer who was in touch with the men said they had been denied food and that their bodies were covered in bruises.
Mr. Soliman, 31, held a green card in the United States, where he had lived since he was 3, according to records submitted to the African Commission. He lost that status after being sentenced to prison in 2023 for drug possession and aggravated assault. While Mr. Soliman was serving a prison sentence, a judge ruled that he could not be deported to Egypt because, as a gay man, he would most likely be tortured there. He was deported to Equatorial Guinea this year.
Mr. Birhane, 47, came to the United States America as a refugee at 13. He was deemed deportable after a second-degree robbery conviction in 1998, while he was in high school. A judge ruled he could not be returned to Eritrea given the risk of torture there.
He had lived in the United States since then, checking in regularly with immigration officials. At one of those check-ins this year, he was arrested and then later deported.
Lawyers have sent several emails to David Gilmour, the U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, and others at the U.S. Embassy, according to correspondence they shared with The Times. The emails have not been answered, they said.
On Sept. 11, the day that Mr. Soliman and Mr. Birhane were beaten and arrested, Mr. Gilmour met with the vice president of Equatorial Guinea, who is also a son of the president.
The vice president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, also made a phone call to Stephen Miller, a White House adviser and key driver of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. The two discussed “different issues related to migration,” according to a statement posted on the ruling party’s website.
Hamed Aleaziz contributed reporting.
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5) Iran War Will Make Winter More Expensive for Some Americans
The cost of heating oil, which is similar to diesel and used extensively in Northeastern states, has climbed sharply because of the war in Iran.
By Aruni Soni, Sept. 18, 2026
The price of heating oil, which is mostly used in the Northeast and Alaska, is up around 60 percent since the war in Iran started. Andrew Rush/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Associated Press
Jonathan Robidoux, a Long Island resident, calls his heating oil supplier every fall to have his tank filled for the coming winter. He spent $1,200 on the fuel last winter.
This year, he will likely pay a lot more.
The price of heating oil, a fuel that is very similar to the diesel used in trucks, is up roughly 60 percent since Israel and the United States started attacking Iran on Feb. 28.
The war has sent oil and fuel prices soaring, leaving Mr. Robidoux and many others facing difficult financial decisions. About 3 percent of U.S. households use heating oil, and most of them live in the Northeast or Alaska.
Mr. Robidoux, who rents a home in New Hyde Park, N.Y., is trying to decide if he should buy heating oil now or wait until the weather gets colder, in the hope that prices will drop.
“I might just buy some now, but I don’t have that much liquidity, so it’s a tough decision,” said Mr. Robidoux, 41.
People who use natural gas or electricity to heat their homes are expected to face more modest increases in heating bills but many of them could also find it hard to make ends meet, energy experts said.
Many Americans are heading into a “much more expensive” winter, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents state officials that help dispense government aid to residents who meet certain income-based qualifications. The organization urged Congress in July to offer more financial assistance to families struggling with rising energy costs.
“Those numbers, if you’re middle class, that’s a significant hit to your budget,” he said.
Who will face higher costs and why?
As with gasoline and diesel, heating oil prices can vary a lot based on where you live. The national average, which was $4.10 a gallon the week before the war, jumped 35 percent to $5.54 just a month later, according to weekly data from the Energy Information Administration, which will begin releasing weekly price data for heating oil in the fall.
In New York, the average price of heating oil was $6.14 a gallon the week of Sept. 14, up from $3.70 a year earlier, according to the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority.
More than 80 percent of U.S. heating oil is used in the Northeast. In the winter of 2023 to 2024, 4.79 million households used oil as their primary heating fuel, according to the E.I.A.
Despite skyrocketing prices, investors are expecting them to fall. Futures contracts for heating oil delivered in December were trading at $4.61 a gallon on Thursday afternoon, compared with $5.10 a gallon for the October contract. Retail prices paid by residents are higher than those for futures contracts.
Of course, traders have been wrong before. Oil and fuel prices dropped sharply after President Trump and Iranian officials announced a tentative agreement to pause the war in June. But prices began climbing again when hostilities resumed.
The uncertainty about what heating oil will cost in a few months is prompting many people to make anxious calls to oil suppliers like the Energy Co-op of Vermont.
“There’s definitely been people trying to hold off that way or make plans of getting a minimum amount of gallons delivered at this point, hoping to stretch it till the next time, hoping that’ll be a little bit lower in cost,” said Rose Friedlander, the co-op’s marketing manager.
What other options are available to stay warm?
Many people use oil because switching to a different source of heat can be expensive or difficult.
Natural gas is not an option in many rural and suburban areas because laying pipelines over long distances is often financially unfeasible. Some states have offered incentives to get residents to switch to electric heat pumps, which are much more energy efficient and contribute much less to climate change, but installing the devices can still cost residents thousands of dollars.
Consider Vermont, where 35 percent of homes use heating oil. Of its 285,000 homes, about 80,000 have heat pumps, said Philip Picotte, a utilities economic analyst with the Vermont Department of Public Service. Around 8,000 to 10,000 heat pumps are installed in Vermont every year.
That said, the use of heating oil has been dropping. In 2010, about 6 percent of Americans used it. Some states have weaned a lot residents off the fuel. Maine has decreased the number of homes that primarily rely on heating oil from 62 percent in 2018 to around 50 percent in 2025.
One hurdle to heat pumps is that electricity rates tend to be higher and homes tend to be older in the Northeast than in other regions. That means using heat pumps may not lower heating costs unless they are paired with other home upgrades like insulation and sealing that help minimize energy use.
Another option is propane, a fuel made from the processing of natural gas or crude oil. Around 5 percent of American households use it, and prices for the fuel have climbed modestly this year — in New York, they’re up about 5.7 percent compared with last year. But switching to propane also requires replacing home heating equipment, which can be beyond the means of many people.
Natural gas and electricity prices are up less.
Households outside the Northeast and Alaska generally will not face as big a financial shock this winter. That’s because about 47 percent U.S. homes heated with natural gas as of 2024 and the United States has plenty of it on hand, unlike Europe, where the price of that fuel has been rising sharply.
“We’re really, very well supplied for natural gas, and that’s where you see prices where they are,” said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler.
The wholesale price of natural gas in the first week of September for natural gas have actually been lower than prices in September last year, according to the E.I.A.
But the price of gas delivered to homes, which also includes the cost of maintaining pipelines, has been rising. In June, the average retail price was $24.09 per thousand cubic feet, up 3.6 percent from a year earlier, according to to the E.I.A.
About 42 percent of U.S. homes used heat pumps or other electric heaters as of 2024, according to RMI, a research group formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. These people will likely also pay somewhat more this winter. In June, the national average residential electricity rate was 18.34 cents per kilowatt-hour, up about 5 percent from a year earlier, though rate increases vary a lot by state and utility.
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6) What I Found Out About Organ Donation Shocked Me
By Greg Segal, Sept. 18, 2026
Mr. Segal is the founder and chief executive of Organize, a nonprofit focused on reforming the organ donation system.
Kensuke Koike
For two years, I stopped answering my mother’s phone calls.
My father was waiting for a lifesaving heart transplant, and I feared she was calling to tell me he’d run out of time. I’d let the call go to voice mail, hoping the tone of her voice would give me enough warning to steel myself before calling back.
He survived, but only barely. At his sickest, his heart was pumping at just 8 percent capacity. After five years and three open-heart surgeries, he was on his way to meet an end-of-life counselor when a new heart finally became available.
He received his transplant on Feb. 10, 2009. Four days later, our family celebrated Valentine’s Day with a new heart. Our joy was unequivocal; we didn’t yet know that the system that saved my dad could also produce so much harm.
My dad blamed his lifelong Boston Red Sox fandom for his heart troubles. Genetic testing revealed the real cause: a fatal mutation that weakens the heart muscle and is so rare that no other family besides ours has ever been found to carry it. In the years that followed, my dad’s younger sister also received a heart transplant, while his older sister died waiting for one.
Two of my siblings and three of my cousins also carry the mutation and will almost certainly need heart transplants. I don’t carry the mutation. My mother made me promise that I would always take care of them.
I founded Organize, a nonprofit making it easier to register to become an organ donor. In 2015, Organize was selected for a role embedded inside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which put us on the radar of whistle-blowers. I soon became inundated with allegations from people working inside the organ donation industry who felt they had nowhere else to turn.
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I know as well as anyone that organ donation saves lives — over 40,000 annually in the United States in recent years. But I was stunned to learn that organ procurement organizations — the federal contractors that coordinate organ donation from the deceased — that made those transplants possible were routinely violating ethical standards and putting patients at risk.
I heard allegations of negligence and financial fraud, including industry executives’ billing taxpayers for joyrides on private jets meant to transport organs; of organizations performing unnecessary procedures as part of a scheme to overbill Medicare. (Organ procurement organizations are nonprofits, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to maximize financial reimbursements.) I’ve heard of poorer Americans waiting to receive organs passed over in favor of wealthier ones.
But one case in particular led me to remove myself from the donor registry and testify before Congress.
Anthony Thomas Hoover II was 33 when he arrived at a hospital in Kentucky, unresponsive after a drug overdose. Doctors told his family he was brain-dead, and the family agreed to remove him from life support. A procurement organization was called in to collect his organs.
While being evaluated for donation, Mr. Hoover opened his eyes and thrashed on the bed. The case should have been stopped. Instead, Mr. Hoover was sedated and given a paralytic drug. Hours later, he awoke again and moved his toes on command; his family was told he was merely exhibiting reflexes.
In the operating room, Mr. Hoover pulled his knees to his chest and shook his head “no.” Tears rolled down his face. The surgeon refused to proceed. Whistle-blowers say procurement executives called their staff member on-site at the hospital and demanded she find another surgeon to take the organs. No surgeon would.
Mr. Hoover survived, though he still asks his older sister, “Why did they try to kill me?”
It would be reassuring — and, for some, convenient — to treat Mr. Hoover’s experience as an exaggeration, even some macabre campfire tale. After all, a strict firewall is supposed to separate treating physicians (who are charged with decisions around the removal of life support and declaring when a patient is dead) and organ donation teams.
But a federal investigation found that firewall is often ignored. And The New York Times reported that health care workers in several states said they had witnessed procurement staff members “persuading hospital clinicians to administer morphine, propofol and other drugs to hasten the death of potential donors.” A former Obama White House official testified before Congress that she had heard directly from whistle-blowers at procurement organizations that they were trained to target inexperienced physicians, especially in rural areas, who may be less likely to push back.
Investigators have documented procurement organizations’ retaliating against whistle-blowers, withholding documents from federal investigators, manipulating medical records and engaging in fraud. That is not mere dysfunction. It is corruption.
Many of these cases have been documented by federal authorities and are under investigation by state and federal law enforcement.
For decades, the organ donation industry’s most visible failure was the opposite one: Most procurement organizations were not motivated enough to recover lifesaving organs.
Each procurement organizations, with its own distinct jurisdiction, is one of the few government-sanctioned monopolies. Historically, there were few consequences for their poor performance, which meant they left thousands of lifesaving organs unrecovered. They also often prioritized the recovery of skin, tissue, bone and corneas, which can be far more lucrative than organs. That meant that patients like my dad languished on waiting lists; patients like my aunt died for lack of available organs for transplant.
In 2020, the federal government strengthened rules to hold procurement organizations more accountable; for the first time, poor performance could cost them their government contracts. The reforms have worked, helping drive a 25 percent increase in transplants.
The organizations have lobbied to weaken these standards, arguing that pressure to recover more organs pushes them to be overly aggressive in harvesting organs and threatens patient safety.
That is a false choice: The problem is not that the government demanded procurement organizations do a better job collecting more organs; it is that it failed to impose equally rigorous measures to ensure patient safety. Both my aunt and Mr. Hoover deserved to live.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the leader of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and a former heart transplant surgeon, has promised to be “a new sheriff in town” on this issue. He should prove it by enforcing the 2020 performance rules, which more than a dozen procurement organizations have gone to court to shut down.
The centers should also use their patient-safety authority to immediately close any procurement organization that endangers patients. They recently did so in South Florida and have moved to do so in Kentucky. The organization serving New Jersey faces alarming allegations and should be next.
The White House should make procurement organizations a priority of its Medicare fraud crackdown. When he was a senator, Vice President JD Vance cosponsored 2023 legislation to break up the national organ monopoly, and he now leads the White House’s antifraud task force. He should push for more resources to expand the Justice Department’s organ donation investigations.
I spent years asking people to register as organ donors. I look forward to the day when I can add my own name back to the list. But first, the government needs to make the system worthy of that trust.
As a registered organ donor, I’m left disappointed and troubled, but intend to remain so. Not offering my organs won’t help repair a blighted, crucial resource delivery system, and I hope to have ways to leverage my participation in that system to create conditions that support and compel reform.
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7) CNN and MS NOW Reporters Barred From White House After Trump Announces Ban
The prohibition on certain journalists was a stark escalation in President Trump’s war on the media, and will probably face a legal challenge.
By Michael M. Grynbaum, Sept. 19, 2026
Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied access to the White House grounds on Saturday, a day after President Trump announced a ban on three news organizations because of reporting he disliked.
Akayla Gardner, a White House correspondent for MS NOW, said that her White House-issued access badge failed to work at the security entrance where reporters typically enter near the West Wing.
“The officer asked me to hand over my badge; he said that it was disabled,” Ms. Gardner said in an on-air interview. “I asked why I could not get inside; he said it was above him.”
A photographer for MS NOW was also asked to relinquish their badge, but a producer for the network was allowed into the White House, Ms. Gardner said.
Betsy Klein, a veteran CNN correspondent, described a similar experience that occurred about an hour later. She said that a White House security officer, whom she has known for years, informed her that her badge had been deactivated.
“I asked if he had any more details he could share with me,” Ms. Klein said in an on-air interview. “He said I should be referred to the White House press office for more information.”
Cheyenne Haslett, a reporter at Politico, was also denied access to the White House on Saturday morning, according to a note to staff from Jonathan Greenberger, Politico’s editor in chief, that was described in the publication’s Playbook newsletter.
Mr. Trump abruptly announced on Friday afternoon that he would ban MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House, a stark escalation in his ever-expanding battles with the news media.
The president attributed the ban to his displeasure with the outlets’ coverage of his administration. “There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon.
“Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine, but I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house,” the president added.
The White House press office declined to answer questions on Saturday about the ban, referring instead to Mr. Trump’s earlier comments.
MS NOW said in a statement that it “intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.”
In its own statement, CNN described Mr. Trump’s ban as “illegal,” and said it would continue its reporting on the U.S. government “regardless of any attempts to restrict physical access to the White House and other government buildings, or any other attempts to impede our journalism.”
Mr. Greenberger wrote in his note that Politico stands “by her and all reporters here covering the White House.”
First Amendment experts said Friday that Mr. Trump’s media ban was unlikely to survive a legal challenge, because the president explicitly connected his decision to bar CNN, Politico and MS NOW to the content of their reporting. That’s “textbook viewpoint discrimination,” Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, said, referring to a kind of First Amendment violation that courts have historically disallowed.
In Mr. Trump’s first term, the White House lost a similar legal battle after it revoked the press pass for the CNN reporter Jim Acosta, whose credentials were later restored.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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8) Gold Statues and Staff Cuts: How Trump Has Disrupted America’s Parks
Maintenance projects have been put off around the country and resources diverted to the president’s favored projects in Washington.
By Maxine Joselow, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 19, 2026
An unstaffed entrance station at Zion National Park in Utah. Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Ever since Theodore Roosevelt ventured into the wilderness of California’s Yosemite Valley in 1903 and emerged with a sweeping conservation policy, presidents in both parties have valued the country’s national parks.
The public has, too. Polling shows that Americans of all stripes and political persuasions overwhelmingly love their parks.
But President Trump’s administration has thrown the 433 sites managed by the National Park Service into turmoil, shifting funding and workers to pet projects in Washington, slashing staff across the country and scrubbing exhibits that it says “inappropriately disparage Americans.”
Moves like putting Mr. Trump’s face on some park passes have been largely symbolic. Others have upended the lives of Park Service workers and marred the experiences of some of the hundreds of millions of people who visit national parks each year.
The changes have come one after the other, affecting everything from the rugged shorelines of Acadia National Park in Maine to the high desert of Joshua Tree National Park in California.
Early last year, the Trump administration began making steep cuts to the Park Service work force, leaving at least 20 percent of parks significantly understaffed. This spring, the administration used at least $67 million generated by entrance fees from parks to help fund projects in Washington favored by Mr. Trump, like the botched Reflecting Pool repairs. As a result, hundreds of repairs and upgrades around the country may go unfunded this year, according to government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Then there is the contentious proposal to trade away a small parcel of land in Yosemite National Park, a crown jewel of the park system, to a private developer. A bipartisan group of 153 lawmakers pledged this week to block the land exchange, declaring that “public lands belong in public hands.”
“Any one of these changes could be catastrophic in its own right, especially as it relates to staffing and funding,” said Dan Wenk, who retired as superintendent of Yellowstone National Park after nearly 43 years with the Park Service. “When the next administration comes, Republican or Democrat, funding may be restored, but it’s going to be incredibly difficult to rebuild.”
Fran P. Mainella, who led the Park Service under President George W. Bush, said that Mr. Trump may not realize the value of parks to the public and the economy.
“We have to find a better way to tell that story to him, so he understands that these parks are here for current and future generations, and part of his responsibility is to make sure they stay that way,” said Ms. Mainella, a Republican.
It is unclear if Mr. Trump has ever visited a national park, either while in office or as a private citizen; his forays outdoors typically involve a golf course. Taylor Rogers, a spokeswoman for the White House, would not say if Mr. Trump had been to a park but said he “loves our national parks and is personally invested in making them great.”
Charlotte Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, said in an email that the agency “remains focused on its longstanding mission: protecting America’s natural and cultural resources, telling the nation’s history accurately and welcoming visitors to these extraordinary places.”
Senator Steve Daines, a Montana Republican who leads a subcommittee on national parks, said in an interview that Mr. Trump “has been an incredible supporter of the parks.” He dismissed reports of funding and staffing issues at parks as “fear-mongering” by the president’s critics before the midterm elections.
“You know, there’s always room for improvement, but I think some of this is just, it’s the political season,” Mr. Daines said.
Shifting Funding
As he tried to do on the facade of the Kennedy Center, Mr. Trump has left his stamp on the parks and monuments in the capital.
In one flashy example, the administration awarded a no-bid contract to cover four statues near the National Mall in 23.75-karat gold leaf before the country’s 250th birthday. It also repaired nine ornamental fountains in Washington that had been dry for years.
These cosmetic fixes siphoned money from urgent upgrades elsewhere.
While the administration added Washington sites to a list of White House priorities, it relegated about 1,500 other projects at more than 200 sites nationwide to a separate list labeled “low priority,” according to government documents reviewed by The Times.
Work was approved for many of those projects this year. But now most may not be funded before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, according to two former Park Service employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.
At Big Bend National Park in Texas, where the administration wants to build a border wall over the objections of local leaders, a project to pay “water haulers” to provide drinking water for visitors has been shelved, the documents show.
Another stalled project would replace enormous batteries that store power from solar panels that help supply electricity for visitors and staff members at Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah.
“These batteries serve as critical park utility infrastructure and failure to complete would impact health and life-safety as well as the ability to keep the park open and operational for visitors,” the documents say.
Emily Thompson, the executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, an advocacy group of current and former park employees, said the administration should be tackling the $24 billion backlog of deferred maintenance projects across the country.
“While the fountains look lovely and regilding statues has value, is that really more important than some of these other very strong needs at parks throughout the system?” Ms. Thompson said.
But Steve Coleman, the executive director of Washington Parks & People, a nonprofit group focused on urban parks, welcomed the influx of federal funding in the capital. He said the District’s many federally owned sites often get short shrift because the city lacks voting representation in Congress.
“It’s funny, because we have a lot to criticize about the ways that this Trump regime is attacking our parks, but even a broken clock is right twice a day,” Mr. Coleman said. “And it’s a long-overdue thing to have the country supporting the capital. If you look at other countries, they really invest in their capitals.”
In addition to funding, the Park Service deployed more than 1,000 employees from sites nationwide to Washington this year, according to government documents reviewed by The Times. The employees typically stayed for two to three weeks to assist with events related to the 250th anniversary, and about 40 remain this month, the documents show.
Politics in the Parks
Controversy is not entirely new for the Park Service. During the George W. Bush administration, the agency was accused of promoting religious or conservative content at parks, including on plaques bearing biblical verses at the Grand Canyon.
But Ms. Mainella, the Park Service director at the time, said the Trump administration had gone much further, pointing to Mr. Trump’s directive to remove or revise exhibits that “inappropriately disparage Americans.” To comply, Park Service workers dismantled an exhibit on slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, a sign about climate change at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and a sign about Indigenous people at Acadia National Park in Maine.
“Our parks tell the history of this country,” Ms. Mainella said. “You may not like the history, but it is the history, and so you should tell the story that did take place, not come in and edit.”
Ms. Rogers, the White House spokeswoman, said that Mr. Trump “has put an end to the radical left and the media’s divisive and inaccurate characterization of our nation’s history, which infiltrated our national parks and museums.”
In another contentious move, the Park Service canceled at least $25 million worth of proposed agreements with outside organizations, including nearly $13 million with the Great Basin Institute, a nonprofit conservation group, according to documents reviewed by The Times and first reported by The Washington Post.
Some of the scuttled agreements would have supported efforts to reduce wildfire risk and remove hantavirus-carrying rodents in Joshua Tree National Park in California. Others would have helped the Park Service research and address record-low water levels at Lake Powell, one of the nation’s largest reservoirs, within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area along the Utah-Arizona border.
Peter Woodruff, the chief executive of the Great Basin Institute, said he only learned of the cancellations through a two-sentence message relayed by staff members at partnering parks.
The funding requests were denied, the message said, because of a change in administration priorities.
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9) How DraftKings Uses A.I. to Target the Gamblers Likeliest to Lose
Data science helps determine who receives betting incentives, but the company has resisted using similar technology to protect gamblers at risk of addiction.
By Alex Klavens, Walt Bogdanich and Jenny Vrentas, Sept. 19, 2026
The reporters obtained internal documents and interviewed dozens of former DraftKings employees, many of whom worried that the company’s efforts were harming problem gamblers.
“DraftKings makes money when gamblers lose money. And the model sought to identify those it could get to lose the most. It scored each customer based on their habits: The higher the score, the more money a gambler was likely to lose for each promotion offered.”
Hokyoung Kim
The reporters obtained internal documents and interviewed dozens of former DraftKings employees, many of whom worried that the company’s efforts were harming problem gamblers.
About a year into his job as a data analyst at DraftKings, Jayden Butts received a new assignment.
The online gambling giant was spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on promotional incentives: “Free” betting money advertised through emails and phone alerts. But the company knew little about their effectiveness.
So in 2023, DraftKings took customer betting records and built a machine learning model, a form of artificial intelligence that seeks patterns in data, to answer the question: Who was more likely to respond to promotions by gambling — and losing — more?
Mr. Butts’s task was to test that model, prioritizing free bets and bonuses for those likely losers. Soon, a question began to gnaw at him: Aren’t many of these same people prone to addiction? “We are looking for traits and features that we can target that indicate a good investment,” he said. By strict financial logic, “the best investment would be a problem gambler.”
Mr. Butts had reason to be concerned. DraftKings makes money when gamblers lose money. And the model sought to identify those it could get to lose the most. It scored each customer based on their habits: The higher the score, the more money a gambler was likely to lose for each promotion offered.
Since Mr. Butts ran those tests, DraftKings has continued to hone its methods, using data science, to target losing gamblers with promotions that encourage more betting, according to six former employees who worked on them. At the same time, four other former employees said, DraftKings has stalled or squashed efforts to use similar technology to predict who might develop a gambling problem based on their betting activity.
Silicon Valley firms spent years analyzing every digital interaction to predict what will keep users clicking on advertisements. Now, as companies like DraftKings have made gambling accessible to millions on smartphones, they too have collected an extraordinary wealth of data.
An investigation by The New York Times shows what DraftKings has chosen to do — and not do — with that power.
The Times interviewed more than 40 former DraftKings employees, and obtained internal research memos, presentations and Slack messages as well as betting records from experiments conducted on customers.
The documents show how the model Mr. Butts worked on analyzed dozens of data points for each gambler, including how frequently they played, their daily account balances and how much they typically lost compared with how much they bet. It also incorporated another model that calculated how likely a user was to stop gambling.
This betting data may also contain signs that a person is headed for trouble. Yet when employees developed a machine learning model that would have assigned users “risk scores,” the company sidelined it, according to two former employees who worked on that project.
In late 2024, DraftKings fired Mr. Butts for performance reasons, he said, amid a short blip in business that led some in the company to believe its promotional experiments weren’t working as intended. The company briefly paused some of its data science work — before revving back up again with a flurry of new machine learning projects.
Mr. Butts and five other former DraftKings employees who worked on promotional targeting told The Times they regretted building technology they now viewed as dangerous.
“It is as predatory as it sounds,” said a former DraftKings analyst who, like many interviewed for this article, requested anonymity because he feared retribution. “If you lose more, we give you more, so you keep playing more.” He quit in 2024.
In a statement, DraftKings said it “rejects any implication that its marketing practices are unfair or improperly targets customers.” The company disputed how some former employees characterized its use of promotions, saying they are “directed toward customers who demonstrate sustained, engaged use of our platform, not toward customers based on their losses.” It also said it disagreed with Mr. Butts’s account of his firing, but did not elaborate.
Lori Kalani, who as DraftKings’s chief responsible gaming officer leads the company’s efforts to prevent problem gambling, said in an interview that its business depended on “customers who are betting within their means, are betting for entertainment and betting for fun.”
Ms. Kalani said DraftKings does monitor customers for “potentially risky behaviors.” But she acknowledged that the company has declined to use risk prediction technology, saying there wasn’t evidence that it was helpful.
In 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could legalize online sports gambling, it ushered in a new era in which betting has moved beyond casinos and racetracks. Professional sports games are now saturated with celebrity advertisements, encouraging people to wager on their phones.
DraftKings and its rival FanDuel dominate this new industry, which has expanded into online casino games and, more recently, prediction markets. DraftKings says it has 11 million customers, compared with five million in 2022.
Health experts have long recognized gambling as addictive, but many critics see this modern version, where people can bet from their couch on the outcome of a single baseball pitch, as especially dangerous. A study published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine cited a rise in Google searches like “Am I a gambling addict?” Calls about sports betting to Ohio’s problem gambling help line have more than quadrupled since the state legalized it in 2023. The state’s outgoing governor, Mike DeWine, told The Times that signing that law was his biggest regret.
Promotions, which take on forms like a free bet, a “profit boost” or a deposit bonus, play a vital role in DraftKings’s business: The company brought in around $8.7 billion in gross revenue from sports and casino gamblers last year, and gave out about $3 billion in promotions, according to research by Citizens Bank.
DraftKings and some competitors, including FanDuel, have boasted publicly about their use of customer data for promotions — without disclosing what those efforts entail. A DraftKings executive recently told investors that data science and analytics helped it improve its margins on promotion-driven sports bets by 13 percent in 2025 and that it used A.I. to personalize hundreds of millions of promotional dollars.
One former DraftKings data scientist who worked on promotions, Jacob Shulkin, said that they were effective because they take advantage of gamblers’ psychology. “I feel I’m getting free money,” he said, “but really it’s dragging me back in.”
Several gamblers told The Times that promotions fueled their addictions. Bryan Biehl lost nearly $70,000 gambling online, more than half of it at DraftKings. Mr. Biehl recalled how in late 2024, when he started therapy for his addiction, his email inbox began to feel like a relapse risk.
“I would get flooded with bonuses and deposits,” Mr. Biehl said. “If you are in addiction, you are not going to say no.”
In the first two weeks of December 2024, Mr. Biehl received 40 promotions from DraftKings, emails show. He succumbed to temptation one last time on Christmas Day before putting himself on self-exclusion lists, which blocked him from gambling apps.
DraftKings declined to comment on Mr. Biehl’s account.
Asked whether promotions contribute to problem gambling, Ms. Kalani said they are “a marketing tool that every company out there uses,” comparing DraftKings to businesses like Amazon. Other industries face similar issues, she said. “Shopping can be problematic for people.”
‘Open the floodgates’
Jayden Butts grew up watching his grandfather’s gambling addiction play out — three trips a week up I-95 to Oxford Casino in Maine.
Fresh out of college and eager for a high-paying tech job, he joined DraftKings’s casino division in May 2022 as a data analyst. He initially didn’t think much about customers like his grandfather. Then he had his own string of losses playing online slots through an offshore website. He later quit gambling with a new appreciation for people who might be struggling.
DraftKings is famous for sports betting, but its online casino games, including slots and blackjack, bring in nearly one-third of the company’s revenue, even though it offers them in only a handful of jurisdictions.
The online casino is where, in mid-2023, DraftKings set out to build a model for predicting how promotions would translate into a user’s eventual wins or losses.
The core question was, “Is this person going to give us more than we’re giving them?” Mr. Butts said. “And if the answer is yes, open the floodgates.”
DraftKings already had a system that weighed factors like a gambler’s skill, how much they bet and tax rates on gambling revenue in the state where they lived.
But it was relatively crude. According to one internal memo, it offered “no information or insight on expected user-level profitability of reinvestment dollars” — in other words, DraftKings did not know how effective its promotions were at inducing gamblers to lose.
Figuring this out required machine learning. Unlike traditional data analytics, where researchers decide which patterns to look for, machine learning models can sift through hundreds of variables on their own to find combinations that help predict particular behaviors.
Data scientists had trained the new casino model on historical data. It was Mr. Butts’s job to test it on real customers. Each week, the model vacuumed up information about a user’s recent activity. The score it calculated was known internally as “elasticity,” a term borrowed from economics.
Users with below-average scores were deemed “inelastic” and marked for fewer incentives. The “elastic” bettors remained.
In September 2023, Mr. Butts tested using the elasticity model to influence promotions for about 5,000 casino players. He later expanded the tests to a larger population.
He initially thought DraftKings aimed to save money by avoiding people who were unlikely to be profitable. But he said his supervisors told him that the company did not want to reduce its promotional spending but rather to “redeploy” it. He understood this to mean the goal was to direct more promotions toward the biggest losers.
Mr. Butts said he also worried that his experiments might lead DraftKings to send more promotions to players who played more addictive games, including his own former vice: online slots, widely regarded by public health experts as among the most addictive forms of gambling.
It’s not clear the extent to which DraftKings has targeted slots players more than others. But in a 2023 internal memo, researchers reported that slots revenue was “more elastic” than earnings from other casino games, meaning that promotions were particularly effective at driving users to those games. A Times analysis of internal DraftKings casino betting data from early 2024 also found that bettors with high elasticity scores gambled more on slots, on average, than those with low scores.
DraftKings said that it could not provide a “definitive response” to Mr. Butts’s tests, the 2023 memo or the Times analysis because it had not “seen or verified” the material. But it said Mr. Butts’s test “appears preliminary and inconclusive,” and that his views do not “reflect DraftKings’ approach to promotional investment.”
Around the same time that Mr. Butts ran his tests, DraftKings began building similar models for sports betting promotions, according to eight former employees. It has continued to develop techniques for targeting sports and casino bettors as recently as this year.
One former employee said he had worked on a system that looked for people at risk of leaving the platform and tried to coax them back. Another said he helped develop a program that ramped up promotions for people gambling more aggressively than usual.
Two other former analysts who worked on targeting projects told The Times that they independently raised concerns with their superiors that these models would identify vulnerable gamblers as promotional targets, and asked to put protections in place.
Both received the same response: no. That would be handled by another part of the company, they said they were told.
Ms. Kalani, DraftKings’s responsible gaming head, said she was not familiar with those requests.
‘At Odds With the Rest of the Company’
The job of limiting problem gambling at DraftKings largely falls to its responsible gaming division, a group of around 50 employees at the 5,000-person company.
DraftKings offers a variety of tools for gamblers who need them. Its advertisements feature phone numbers for 24/7 gambling help lines. “Cool-off periods” let people turn off access to the app for up to a year, and those with a longer-term problem can put themselves on self-exclusion lists for years — or indefinitely.
Gamblers with a high degree of self-awareness may find these tools helpful. But they put the onus on the gambler. “When someone is struggling with an addiction, a rational suggestion that this is not in your best interest is falling on deaf ears,” said Mark Gottlieb, a lawyer who has sued DraftKings and other internet gambling companies, accusing them of practices that lead to addiction.
Although many at DraftKings feel proud of their work to protect problem gamblers, their efforts have created friction with the wider business, according to six former employees who worked on responsible gaming projects. One described the responsible gaming group as “at odds with the rest of the company,” because it aims to slow gamblers down, which in turn makes them less profitable for DraftKings.
DraftKings said there was “no tension” between its business goals and its responsible gaming efforts.
But Hassel Velasco, a former member of DraftKings’s customer service team, told The Times that on about a dozen occasions he heard complaints from problem gamblers who continued to receive promotions.
“It pushes people to almost chase their losses,” Mr. Velasco said. “They’re going, ‘Oh, I’m getting a bonus so I can make up whatever I lost.’” Troubled by these conversations, Mr. Velasco struggled to sleep. He quit in 2024 after five months on the job.
DraftKings said its representatives were required to report problem gambling concerns to the company. Ms. Kalani said the company did not send promotions to bettors who have been flagged or who have taken themselves off the platform.
The company does monitor for vulnerable customers, even if they don’t reach out for help. DraftKings follows guidelines from New Jersey regulators, who have instructed operators to set automatic triggers for specific indicators of potentially reckless betting, such as a customer depositing more than a certain amount during a set time period or a notable spike in time spent gambling.
DraftKings said that it does this nationwide, watching for more than two dozen such indicators. The company declined to share the thresholds it uses to prompt a response — how much someone would have to deposit, for instance — “because doing so could enable customers to circumvent our systems.”
When a customer trips one of these triggers, DraftKings can take three escalating steps. It first sends a message about responsible gaming, then an educational video and finally a questionnaire about gambling habits. Sometimes, DraftKings will close a gambler’s account.
But there are limitations. Intervention is based on customers demonstrating a specific behavior, and even if that happens, they can deny that they have a problem.
DraftKings described the system as “advanced technology” and said that it allowed the company to reach out to gamblers who have not yet asked for help. The company declined to share how many accounts it had suspended using this system.
A Collision Course
Inside DraftKings, some employees believed the company could go much further.
One was a data scientist named Nestor Hernandez, who in mid-2024 began building a system that would help the responsible gaming division identify gamblers in trouble.
Mr. Hernandez, a computer science Ph.D., had spent years using algorithms to detect unusual patterns in large amounts of data.
He reviewed academic research into problem gambling, then developed a machine learning model to analyze the betting records — the same used for promotional targeting — of customers the company had already flagged for risky behavior.
His model scanned, among other things, deposits and withdrawals, attempts to chase losses and even age and gender, for patterns that might anticipate a gambler’s impending crisis. The risk score it assigned each user could theoretically help the company step in early with warnings or an outright ban.
“The idea of this model is to be more proactive instead of being reactive,” Mr. Hernandez said. “You will basically predict that a user will be in trouble, let’s say, a few days or a few weeks in advance. And you can act accordingly.”
Mr. Hernandez left the company that November for personal reasons, his model still unfinished. A new team of data scientists continued the work. Just a few months later, he received news from two former colleagues: The project had been shut down.
One member of that team was Jake Shannin. “Our conclusion was that it is possible even with simple rules to get a better-than-guessing sense” of whether a customer would end up needing an intervention, Mr. Shannin said.
In early 2025, Mr. Shannin said, the team prepared to share the new model with company officials, including Ms. Kalani. But the day of the presentation, the meeting was canceled. Two other attempts by DraftKings employees to build similar algorithms have also been shelved, according to two former employees.
Ms. Kalani said that company leaders made a “collective decision” not to use predictive technology for problem gambling. “We evaluated that it wasn’t evidence-based,” she said. The company decided that its existing system was a “better methodology.”
Several third-party firms offer their own versions of risk scoring. Other gambling companies say they have signed up for this, including two of DraftKings’s largest rivals, FanDuel and Fanatics.
Phil Sherwood, senior director of responsible gaming at PrizePicks, another competitor, said his company had a “moral obligation” to use these tools. “Frankly, without technology like this, I can’t look you in the eye and say, ‘We’re doing our best,’” he said.
DraftKings does not use any of these tools. “We’re always considering our options,” Ms. Kalani said. The company said its “primary commitment is to approaches that demonstrably help customers, not simply to adopting technology for its own sake.”
DraftKings shared one example of its using A.I. for responsible gaming: It deploys large-language models, the technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT, to monitor communications from gamblers to company representatives for signs of distress.
But the technology cannot flag customers who say nothing.
Georgia Gee and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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10) ‘Nervous and Skeptical,’ Greenlanders Question the New Deal With Trump
The U.S. president’s threats to seize Greenland left its people on edge, and with details scarce, the news of an agreement didn’t seem to be putting minds at ease.
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli, Sept. 19, 2026
Jeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli have been covering Greenland closely since President Trump threatened to annex it last year. Ms. T‘ekeli reported from Copenhagen.
Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, this month. Credit...Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix, via Associated Press
First, President Trump wanted to buy their homeland.
Then he threatened to seize it by force.
On Friday, he announced that he had worked out an “Infinite Life” deal between the United States, Denmark and Greenland, the gigantic Arctic island and semiautonomous Danish territory that has been an obsession of Mr. Trump’s for years.
As news of the deal spread across Greenland on Saturday, some Greenlanders expressed relief. But there also seemed to be confusion, anxiety and a nagging question: What, exactly, had been agreed to?
“My immediate reaction is that it makes me nervous and skeptical,” Ellen Frederiksen, a retired teacher in Narsaq, a town in southern Greenland, said by telephone.
“The way Trump presents it, it sounds as if he is being given a monopoly over Greenland,” she said. “I sincerely hope that isn’t the case.”
For months, Mr. Trump’s aides had been tasked with finding a way to defuse a crisis the president himself provoked last year among America’s NATO allies, especially Denmark, when he threatened to take over the island. On Friday, American officials said the new deal would expand the U.S. security presence on the island. But the details of the agreement are not expected to be revealed until next week.
Mr. Trump asserted that the United States had secured “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in Greenland. But Greenlandic and Danish officials were much more measured about what the deal portends, and they have said little about it.
On Saturday, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister, said the agreement could end “a long period of uncertainty” and that “next week could be a good week.”
Some analysts suggested that Mr. Trump could be exaggerating the deal’s importance. Under a defense treaty that dates to the 1950s, the U.S. military already enjoys sweeping access to Greenland. Greenlanders and Danes have never questioned that. And Greenlanders had already said they were interested in doing more business with Americans.
“In terms of rights, they were already allowed quite a lot under the original agreement,” said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.
Mr. Trump said on Friday that the new deal would prevent Russia and China from ever establishing military bases in Greenland. But Mr. Olesen made the point that since Greenland is a NATO territory, there had never been a realistic possibility that China or Russia would put troops there.
“Is there anything here that one could not have achieved without this crisis?” Mr. Olesen asked.
It’s been an exhausting year and a half for Greenlanders. Ever since Mr. Trump threatened to seize the island in early 2025, his administration’s threats and warnings have seeped into everyday life.
Many people became newshounds, constantly scanning the headlines for any word out of Washington. Some said they struggled to sleep, worried about what might happen next.
Aka Hansen, a filmmaker and member of an opposition political party in Nuuk, the capital, said that earlier this year she had been told to prepare for the worst. She even stored five days’ worth of water, in case the Americans invaded.
“Now, suddenly, everything is fine,” she said. “What happened in between?”
The answers matter deeply in Greenland, where questions about sovereignty and outside influence have never been abstract. The island is bigger than Mexico but home to fewer than 60,000 people.
For more than 300 years, it has been part of the Danish kingdom, and today, many Greenlanders follow a blended lifestyle — part Scandinavian, part Indigenous Inuit culture. Many people still hunt seals, for instance.
Large parts of the island, with their glistening snowfields, dramatic fjords and icebergs and ice mountains, are stunningly beautiful. Protecting the environment has always been a priority, which is why some Greenlanders said they didn’t feel comfortable with Mr. Trump’s talk of expanding America’s military presence.
Already, the Pentagon has taken the first steps toward a bigger buildup. Just this week, American soldiers were spotted surveying an airstrip in Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland.
“If it becomes a daily routine for them to fly around here near us, then it will be a complete change,” said Aana Uulat Bach, a retired teacher living in Nuuk. “We are not soldiers. We are people of nature, and we want to preserve that.”
Still, some people were hopeful.
“If the agreement is finalized, it will create all the conditions needed to restore more normal relations,” said Naaja Nathanielsen, one of two Greenlanders in Denmark’s Parliament. “I don’t think there can be much disagreement that this would be a good thing.”
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11) 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.”
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12) 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.
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