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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.
Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a member of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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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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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. Atler 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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 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 *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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) Israel Strikes Southern Lebanon After Pulling Back From Threat to Beirut
Under pressure from President Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel held off from attacking Beirut. But he vowed to continue Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, which could threaten peace talks with Iran.
By Aaron Boxerman, Christina Goldbaum, Farnaz Fassihi and Hari Raj, June 2. 2026
People fleeing the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday, after the Israeli military was ordered to attack targets there. Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Israel launched fresh strikes in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appeared to pull back from a threat to strike Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, under pressure from President Trump and the United Nations.
Mr. Netanyahu paused the attacks on Beirut but made no mention of a cease-fire in Lebanon and vowed to maintain the military offensive in the south. Iran has said that among its conditions for a peace agreement with the United States is an end to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon.
The Israeli military issued a new evacuation order on Tuesday for Nabatieh, one of southern Lebanon’s largest cities, which has been heavily bombarded in recent days.
Hours later, officials from the Lebanese government and Israel met for a new round of U.S.-mediated talks in Washington aimed at defusing the conflict.
On Monday, diplomats at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council were nearly unanimous — with the exception of the United States — in calling for Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and refrain from launching more attacks.
Israel had warned earlier on Monday that it would strike Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Mr. Trump later said on social media that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop their attacks on each other, while the Lebanese government — which does not include or control Hezbollah — said a new truce was taking shape.
Mr. Netanyahu then issued a statement that appeared to move away from his immediate threat to attack Beirut, suggesting it would depend on Hezbollah’s actions.
“I spoke with President Trump tonight, and told him that if Hezbollah doesn’t cease its attacks on our cities and civilians — Israel will strike terror targets in Beirut,” he said. He added that the Israeli military would “continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.”
There was no direct comment from Hezbollah. Lebanon’s government said it had “received confirmation that Hezbollah had agreed to the U.S. proposal for a mutual cessation of attacks.”
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2) Kenyan Court Deals New Blow to Plans for U.S. Ebola Unit
The court further delayed the Trump administration’s proposed quarantine unit for Americans exposed to the virus. The plan has sparked angry protests in Kenya.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Brian O. Otieno, Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya, June 2, 2026
Demonstrators in Nanyuki, Kenya, on Monday, protesting plans to create an Ebola quarantine center for Americans. Andrew Kasuku/Associated Press
Kenya’s high court on Tuesday effectively delayed by three more weeks the Trump administration’s plan to set up a quarantine unit in the country for Americans exposed to Ebola, dealing a new setback to a project that has sparked angry protests among Kenyans.
A judge at the court, the Hon. Lady Justice Patricia Nyaundi, said in a ruling that the next proceedings in the case would not take place until June 23, at which point a date for a full hearing would be set — delaying any action on the matter until then. The court suspended the plan for the facility last week, after the Katiba Institute, a Kenyan civil society group, filed a petition challenging its constitutionality.
The court on Monday also ordered Kenya’s government to provide, within seven days, full details of the agreement it struck with the United States to set up the facility, including any financial arrangements and measures to protect the Kenyan population.
As part of its response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Trump administration announced last week that it would prevent any American citizens exposed to the virus from returning to the United States for observation and treatment. That decision, a departure from U.S. policy during previous Ebola outbreaks, has shocked many health experts.
U.S. officials also said that a 50-bed quarantine unit would be set up at Laikipia Air Base in central Kenya, for Americans exposed to Ebola.
That proposal has become a political headache for President William Ruto of Kenya. His opponents have accused him of bowing to U.S. pressure and risking the spread of Ebola in Kenya, which has never registered a case of the virus.
Critics are particularly incensed because U.S. officials said last week that the unit would only treat Americans. The top civil servant in Kenya’s health ministry, Dr. Ouma Oluga, said on Monday that the facility would also be open to Kenyans. U.S. officials did not immediately comment on that statement.
Mr. Ruto has defended his decision to agree to the facility, arguing that Kenya is well prepared should it have to deal with a potential Ebola case, and that Kenya’s health care system has long benefited from U.S. support.
“I gave the OK because it was an agreement and a partnership with friends who have walked with Kenya for 30 or 40 years,” Mr. Ruto told journalists in the northern town of Wajir on Monday.
“The American government has supported us,” he added. “They have deployed huge resources in Kenya to work with us on H.I.V., AIDS, to work with us on other diseases.”
In practice, health experts say any public health risk from the Ebola unit would likely be negligible, because it would follow stringent international health protocols under which any person suspected of being infected is isolated.
But the speed and the scale of the latest outbreak, and images circulating on social media of people sick with Ebola in other African countries, have raised powerful fears in Kenya. The World Health Organization on Tuesday confirmed 330 cases and 49 deaths from the outbreak, and many more cases are suspected. Almost all of the cases and deaths have been in Congo, with a handful in Uganda.
On Monday in Kenya, hundreds of people marched through the streets of Nanyuki, the town closest to the air base, protesting against the plan to build the quarantine unit. The police fired tear gas, and the military deployed an armored personnel carrier to prevent demonstrators from approaching the base.
Patrick Wahome, the community leader who organized the protest, said in an interview on Tuesday that two people had been shot and killed, apparently by the police, in the hours after the demonstration ended, under circumstances that he said were unclear.
A spokesman for Kenya’s police, Muchiri Nyaga, said that it had no record of the shootings.
Criticism of the Ebola unit proposal reflects broader voter antipathy toward Mr. Ruto, who faces a tough re-election battle next year for a second and final term. His government has faced a series of corruption scandals and protests led by young people in which the security forces killed dozens.
Tom Mboya, a Kenyan political analyst, said a lack of transparency over the deal between Kenya and the United States had fueled suspicion.
“You ask yourself, even objectively, what is the upside for Kenya and it is unclear,” he said.
Still, Mr. Ruto’s decision to set up the Ebola unit reflects a strategic partnership between the two countries that has deepened in recent years.
President Joseph R. Biden designated Kenya a major non-NATO ally in 2024, and Mr. Ruto’s government deployed hundreds of police officers to Haiti that same year, in a U.N.-sanctioned mission largely financed and organized by the United States.
The Kenyan decision also shows how African leaders have tried to cultivate ties with the Trump administration, even at the risk of domestic blowback. Several African countries have participated in the administration's so-called third-country deportation policy, in which countries take in immigrants deported from the United States even though they are not nationals of the receiving country.
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3) Lebanon Is Fed Up, and Ready to Remake Itself
By Lydia Polgreen
Photographs by William Keo, June 3, 2026
Lydia Polgreen is an Opinion Columnist reporting from Lebanon. Mr. Keo is a photographer based in Paris.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/03/opinion/lebanon-israel-iran-war.html
Photographs by William Keo
Fresh from his evening shower on May 15, Ibrahim Nehme was settling onto the couch to watch the news in a quiet neighborhood in Tyre, an ancient city in southern Lebanon. There was a lot to catch up on. A Lebanese delegation had just met with Israeli officials in Washington, part of the first direct negotiations between the two countries in decades. In theory, the talks had been positive: The two sides had agreed to meet again in June and to extend the month-old cease-fire between them for 45 days.
But just as he tuned in, he heard a crackle of nearby gunfire.
“I started hearing people shouting and screaming, and people started shooting in the air,” Nehme told me. The shooting could mean only one thing: An Israeli strike was coming. He grabbed his shoes, his teenage daughter and their cat, and hurtled down the stairs.
Minutes later, a missile crashed into the building next door. The blast sheared off the wall of the room Nehme had been sitting in; the sofa tumbled onto the ashen debris five stories below. Shards of glass blanketed the twin beds in his daughters’ bedrooms, and deep fissures snaked up the apartment’s exterior walls. He and his family had no idea why this placid, upscale neighborhood of elegant apartment blocks was bombed. It was a tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone, and the notion of Hezbollah fighters being among them was absurd.
“We are civilians,” Nehme, an architect, told me the next afternoon as he surveyed the damage to his home of 25 years, where he and his wife had raised four daughters. “Why attack us?”
Like Nehme and his tumbling sofa, Lebanon has found itself in the wreckage of an epic battle not of its own making. Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite militia group, has been in conflict with Israel, on and off, for decades. After it fired rockets into Israel in March as vengeance for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Israel launched a brutal counterattack, killing almost 3,500 people and wounding more than 10,000, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
There is a cease-fire in place but also a war on. Israel regularly bombs residential areas it claims harbor Hezbollah militants, and Hezbollah attacks Israeli troops, who occupy an ever-expanding swath of Lebanese territory. Last week, Israel widened its ground assault and pushed deeper into Lebanon. This week, Benjamin Netanyahu ordered strikes on the Beirut suburbs, before pausing them apparently at Donald Trump’s behest. Peace talks are underway between the Lebanese and Israeli governments, even though Lebanon is not fighting Israel.
The result is an atmosphere of unreality, a bewildering and surreal condition I saw again and again in my travels across the country. It was there on Beirut’s famed corniche by the glittering Mediterranean, where shirtless men played hard-fought games of padel as young women in hijabs looked on, puffing away on fragrant shisha pipes. The roar of military aircraft and the low buzz of drones drowned out the gentle lapping of the sea.
Less than a mile away, just beyond a marina bobbing with gleaming yachts, hundreds of displaced people huddled in makeshift tents. They are the residents of border villages or suburban apartment blocks that have been reduced to rubble by Israeli air and drone strikes in the past three months, a mere handful of the more than 1.1 million Lebanese forced to flee their homes. In the south, makeshift gravesites dot the cities, their slapdash nature testifying to a stubborn vow to rebuild the ancestral villages razed by Israeli troops.
Those who are displaced run because of evacuation orders that arrive on social media from the Israeli Army’s Arabic spokesman. These orders have their own surreal quality. A foreign military, operating inside the territory of another nation, declares that “in light of the terrorist Hezbollah’s violation of the cease-fire agreement, the defense army is compelled to act against it forcefully.” These messages elide who, exactly, this “defense army” is defending.
The regional situation has never been so febrile. Each day brings news that seems to upend the news of the day before: The war in Iran is ending, or escalating, or both. Everyone, meanwhile, seems to be learning the hard lessons that only war can teach. Iran’s proxies did not protect it from American attack. Israel’s maximum force doctrine has, paradoxically, produced more resistance. America’s power was shown to stop short at the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody knows what comes next.
Yet what struck me, over the course of a week in Lebanon in mid-May, is how united so many Lebanese seem in their exhaustion. Whatever their creed, they can no longer stomach being in the cross hairs of foreign powers. Instead, there appeared to be a tentative consensus emerging, even among those most likely to blame Hezbollah for the country’s woes, that the people of Lebanon must find a way to share political and economic power. It was a hope, muted and precarious, that in place of absurdity and surrealism could come clarity and realism.
Elias Jarade typifies this changing mind-set. An Orthodox Christian member of Parliament from south Lebanon, Jarade defeated a Hezbollah politician in 2022 as part of a list of candidates seeking to break down sectarian divides. If he might once have been sympathetic to Israel’s fight against Hezbollah, that changed after Israel used booby-trapped pagers to attack Hezbollah leaders two years ago. Jarade, an eye surgeon, was horrified by the gruesome injuries he saw in civilian patients and disgusted by Israel’s celebratory response to the attack, which injured thousands.
“They congratulate Netanyahu for what he has done,” Jarade told me. “Let them come see the children, the elderly, that were blinded by these pagers. How come you are congratulating them? You know what the impact will be. There are two crimes that happened at the same time, the pager attack and the silent attitude of the whole world.” For Jarade, the atrocity put Hezbollah and Israel side by side as terrorizers of innocent civilians.
Tarek Mitri, an Orthodox Christian politician who serves as the deputy prime minister, also seemed keen to move past old divisions. He told me that efforts to portray Hezbollah as simply a tool of Iran, with no legitimacy in Lebanon, will backfire. “Hezbollah had a role, a major role, in driving the Israelis out of the south,” he told me, referring to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 after nearly two decades of occupation. “They were hailed in Lebanon, not just among the Shiite community, but among all of us.”
Hezbollah’s popularity certainly waned, even among Shiites, since the group decided to join Hamas in targeting Israel after Oct. 7, and again after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier this year. But the ferocity and indiscriminate nature of the Israeli assault have revived Hezbollah’s image as a protector of Lebanese sovereignty, for all its deep ties to Iran.
“I think we missed an opportunity in the year 2000 of restoring the full sovereignty of the state,” Mitri said. “From there on, Israeli incursions into Lebanese territory or Hezbollah operations into Israel have given each other pretext to interfere.” There is simply no military solution to the problem of Hezbollah, he told me. Instead, he said, its resolution will inevitably involve not just Iran and Israel but also other major players in the region. “Lebanon cannot be extracted from the conflict with Israel, unless there is a regional peace achieved.”
A couple of days later, I traveled to the region hardest hit by the conflict: the Shiite heartland of southern Lebanon. On my way south, I stopped in to visit a member of Parliament named Halima Kaakour in her ancestral village of Baasir. In a sprawling compound perched high above the sea, she made me a lunch of traditional Lebanese flatbreads topped with ground lamb, zataar, homemade cheese from a family dairy and freshly chopped tomatoes and herbs grown in a nearby garden.
“My ancestors used to do this, and now the new generation, they don’t want to work like that,” she said, stoking the glowing embers inside a wood-burning oven. “We are struggling to keep it alive.”
That is not the only thing Kaakour, a professor of international law and a Sunni Muslim, hopes to preserve. She has dedicated her life to the dream of a pluralistic, secular and united Lebanon. She was first elected in 2022, pledging to bring secularism, feminism and an emphasis on human rights to Lebanese politics. She has long been critical of Hezbollah but, like the deputy prime minister, rejects attempts to paint it as an alien force bent on destroying Israel. Her focus, instead, was on Israel.
“Israel tells us that it is going to transform Lebanon to Gaza, it’s going to occupy our land, destroy our land,” she said, referring to the approach laid out by officials including Israel’s defense minister. “Under international law, the threat to violence, not only the violence, is a crime itself.” Israel’s right to self-defense cannot come at the expense of Lebanese civilian lives, she argued, and killing a handful of Hezbollah fighters cannot justify the occupation and destruction of vast tracts of a foreign country.
I left Kaakour’s home, driving toward the coast and then south, crossing a half-destroyed bridge over the Litani River that demarcated the most active zone of Israeli military strikes. Turning off the busy north-south coastal highway, I headed inland toward Nabatieh, a city nestled among rocky hillsides that Israeli strikes had pummeled for weeks despite the cease-fire. Suddenly, I was in the only car on the road, speeding past shuttered storefronts and ghostly piles of rubble. Almost everyone had left, heeding Israeli evacuation orders.
I drove to a hilltop hospital to speak with the skeleton crew of medical workers that remained behind, tending to those who were unable to flee or who chose not to. Among them was a paramedic named Hussein Dakdouk. A few days before, he told me, in the aftermath of an airstrike, a man pulled up to the paramedics’ headquarters, his leg badly injured by the blast. Two paramedics rushed toward the man with their emergency gear, and Dakdouk ran to the ambulance to prepare it to transport the man to the hospital. As he turned the key in the ignition, he saw a rocket tear into his colleagues.
“I saw them being blown into pieces,” he said.
Two medics and a member of the administrative staff were killed in the strike, he said, three of more than 116 people killed by Israeli strikes on health-care facilities since March, according to the World Health Organization. Rescue workers and journalists across southern Lebanon have been killed in so-called “double tap” strikes, in which an Israeli rocket hits a target, and then another rocket is fired once people arrive to provide medical aid and document the scene. Such strikes were a hallmark of the Gaza war.
“Whenever separate previous incidents follow the same pattern, this makes us believe that this is not something random that is happening,” Dakdouk told me.
He sent the rest of his family north for safety, but felt compelled to remain to help those left behind. His house had been destroyed in the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah, in 2024, along with his small farm. But no amount of force could compel him to leave.
“This is our land,” he said. “We are not immigrants.”
About a week after my visit to Nabatieh, strikes on the area intensified as Israeli forces appeared to be encircling the city. Among the many buildings leveled was the headquarters of Dakdouk’s ambulance team.
In theory, the Lebanese Army should be in control of this terrain. But it is underfunded and underequipped. Partly this is a result of Lebanon’s own shambolic economic situation, but it is also a product of American policy that seeks to keep regional armies weaker than Israel’s. The notion that this feeble force could completely disarm Hezbollah — as Israel and America demand — strikes many Lebanese as laughable. If Israel’s high-tech army, backed by the United States, cannot defeat Hezbollah, how would the Lebanese Army be able to achieve it?
I asked a senior Lebanese Army official if the army could disarm Hezbollah. He waved his hand in dismissal, saying that would split the military, many of whose members are Shiite, and lead to a new civil war. “It is not a military question; it is a political one,” he said, requiring deep reform of the country’s sectarian political system and full implementation of the country’s constitution. “Arrangements dictated by the occupier will never work,” he declared, referring to Israel.
Back in Beirut, I met with a man named Nawaf Moussawi, a longtime Hezbollah politician who was a close ally of Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s charismatic leader, who was assassinated by Israel in 2024. Moussawi was once a central figure in the movement, serving as the head of its foreign relations department, but has an independent streak that has led to clashes with the current leadership.
Moussawi sat flanked by the Lebanese flag and Hezbollah’s yellow banner, festooned with a green fist holding an assault rifle, a symbol of the group’s militant bona fides and its claim to be the only reliable guarantor of Lebanese sovereignty. Despite the relentless Israeli assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon, he argued that the aftermath of the Iran war has left Israel weak and isolated, as well as revealing powerful truths about the limits of American military power.
“We see that the international developments and the regional developments are going to be in the interest of the Lebanese people and its national resistance,” he told me. “Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, they feel the danger of Netanyahu becoming victorious in this war.” He continued: “The world has to come to grips with the fact that the problem does not lie with the Lebanese or the Palestinians or the Syrians. It’s with this settler-colonial, aggressive, expansionist Israel.”
But at times in our conversation, he sounded almost conciliatory. At one point he interrupted his translator to correct her: Instead of the common Hezbollah formulation of “the Israeli enemy,” he had said “the Israeli occupier.” This might sound like a small distinction, but — as one Arabic speaker explained to me — the difference between these words in Arabic is stark. An enemy is categorical and eternal, something that must be defeated. “Occupier” is a more legalistic term, suggesting a state of affairs that can be remedied. Unlike Sheikh Naim Qassem, the current secretary general of Hezbollah, Moussawi did not predict the demise of the state of Israel.
“The bigger picture of finding a solution in the whole region is a one-state solution, one democratic pluralistic state, where all coexist,” he said.
This formulation, in the eyes of the Israeli government and its supporters in America, is hardly a concession. It would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state, and so, some might say, it is merely a more politely phrased version of the Iranian chant of “Death to Israel.” But Israel’s maximum-war doctrine in the aftermath of Oct. 7 has eroded its standing across the globe, making Moussawi’s position — that Israel should be a single pluralistic, democratic state with equal rights for Palestinians — something closer to an emerging global consensus.
To other powerful figures in Lebanon, the broader regional questions are none of their business. Late one afternoon toward the end of my visit, I met with Ghassan Hasbani, a leading member of the Lebanese Forces party, the political descendant of a Christian militia that demobilized at the end of the country’s brutal 15-year-long civil war, which ended in 1990. A guard ushered me through a locked gate and between the elegant stone columns of a hilltop mansion, into a wood-paneled office. Hasbani, a former telecom executive and an Orthodox Christian, laid the blame for Lebanon’s current troubles squarely on Iran.
“Things were quite good until Hezbollah, under the instruction of Iran, decided to enter the war in support of Hamas,” he told me. “This Iranian regime has been building its position to hijack the world for the last 40 years, and the world had left them unchecked for too long.”
I asked him if he worried about Israel becoming a hegemonic power in the Middle East or the plight of the Palestinian people, including Palestinian Christians. “It is not the job of Lebanon,” he replied.
“Lebanon,” he said, “has paid as much, if not more, than the Palestinians themselves in terms of price for this conflict.”
The spiraling crisis in the Middle East could produce many outcomes.
Iran’s stubborn endurance in the face of American and Israeli attacks could produce an even more dangerous and empowered Islamic republic; or Iran could yield to new agreements with its Gulf neighbors that require it to scale back its regional ambitions.
Israel’s inability to force regime change in Iran could lead it to lash out even more ferociously at its neighbors; or it could find itself exhausted and isolated, hemmed in by a loss of unstinting American support. Trump could fully return to his reckless war on Iran, abandoning faltering peace talks in search of an elusive military victory, whatever the cost; or he could face the reality that Americans have no wish to continue this tragic misadventure.
Whatever happens next, the Lebanese will be ready. Of everyone I spoke to, only Hasbani in his mansion seemed wedded to old hard-line positions. From Mitri, the deputy prime minister, and Jarade, the independent lawmaker, there was a recognition that Hezbollah — for all its problems — could not be excised from the body politic. For Kaakour, the professor, and Dakdouk, the paramedic, this recognition was paired with a commitment to a kind of national pluralism, rooted in care and conciliation. Even parts of Hezbollah seemed keen to find a route to a better political settlement forged on common ground.
Lebanon’s decades of war and strife have made it a reliable source of clichés: about ancient sectarian divides, rapacious elites bent on self-enrichment and a tragic fatalism etched in the country’s geography. But no other cliché is as persistent as the idea of Lebanon’s fabled “resilience” in the face of all these troubles. It is a word outsiders often use to describe Lebanon’s people, offered with seeming admiration.
But to my ear it is a backhanded compliment, carrying more than a whiff of condescension. By celebrating Lebanon’s ability to endure the unendurable, it both exonerates the external authors of this nation’s many troubles and strips its citizens of their agency to claim some mastery over their destiny. Despite the bloodletting and destruction, there are clear signs on the horizon that Lebanon could heal and remake itself on its own terms. It just needs to be given the chance.
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4) Israel Trades Strikes With Hezbollah After New Cease-Fire With Lebanon
Hezbollah’s leader said the Iran-backed group, which was not included in U.S.-brokered talks, had rejected the deal.
By Lara Jakes, Hwaida Saad and Dayana Iwaza, June 4, 2026
A pro-government demonstration in Tehran on Saturday. Despite a cease-fire announced between Iran and the United States in early April, both countries have continued to trade strikes. Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
Israel and Hezbollah fighters traded attacks on Thursday in southern Lebanon, hours after the Trump administration brokered a new cease-fire agreement between the two countries.
Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, said the Iranian-backed militant group rejected the new deal. That could further complicate negotiations to end the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which has demanded that Lebanon be included in any broader peace agreement.
President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon told reporters that the agreement — announced by Israel, Lebanon and the United States in Washington on Wednesday — was the “final opportunity” to reach a comprehensive cease-fire and warned that “each party will bear responsibility” if it did not respond positively.
The deal would return to an April cease-fire agreement that has been largely ignored, with each side continuing to strike at the other. It demands a unilateral cessation of attacks by Hezbollah but does not explicitly require immediate concessions from Israel, such as a withdrawal of its forces from southern Lebanon. Israeli troops have occupied much of the region since invading during this latest conflict.
Hezbollah does not answer to the Lebanese government and was not a party to either set of negotiations, raising questions about whether the deal could be enforced.
Hezbollah officials said the group had fired two rocket salvos on Thursday at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon’s border region. The Israeli military issued a warning on social media to residents of southern Lebanon not to return to an area south of the Zahrani River, about 25 miles from the border with Israel.
Under the cease-fire that took effect in April, Israel said it retained its right to act in self-defense but would not carry out “offensive operations” against Lebanese targets by land, air or sea. Israeli forces have pushed deeper into Lebanon, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has ramped up his rhetoric against Hezbollah in recent weeks, even as truce talks have taken place.
On Thursday morning, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said the agreement also “includes an unequivocal statement” to disarm Hezbollah across Lebanon and a condemnation of Iranian involvement in the region.
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5) The U.S.-Qatar Domination of Gas Left the World Dangerously Exposed
Before the war, the global market for liquefied natural gas was increasingly commanded by just two countries, one of which has now been hobbled.
By River Akira Davis, June 4, 2026
River Akira Davis, the Japan business correspondent, reported from Doha, Qatar, and Tokyo.
The liquefied natural gas production facility in Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City before the war. Iranian attacks have crippled its production, and the damage will take years to repair. Picture Alliance, via Getty Images
Years before the war in the Persian Gulf, executives in boardrooms across Japan were discussing a development they feared posed a growing risk to Asia’s energy supplies.
The global trade in liquefied natural gas, the supercooled fuel that underpins power generation across Asia, was hardening into a duopoly. Just two nations — the United States and Qatar — were poised to account for the vast majority of supply growth by 2030.
Anxiety was high in Japan because it’s the largest L.N.G. importer behind China. The concern was that a market dominated by two powerful suppliers could disadvantage buyers and leave Japan vulnerable should either pillar falter. The United States was viewed as politically unpredictable, especially after the Biden administration paused permits for new export facilities in 2024.
And Qatar sat in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
In February, those fears were realized. That month, Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which Qatar ships virtually all of its L.N.G. to the rest of the world. Two weeks later, Iranian strikes hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan L.N.G. hub, inflicting damage that could take years to repair.
The disruption immediately knocked about a fifth of global L.N.G. supply off the market. In Asia, the destination for most of Qatar’s exports, gas prices skyrocketed. Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Singapore and Taiwan were among those in Asia getting anywhere from a third to nearly all of their L.N.G. from Qatar. The rug had been pulled out from under them.
It is easy, in hindsight, to say countries should have been better prepared, said Henning Gloystein, a managing director for energy at Eurasia Group, a political risk research firm. Yet significant energy supply disruptions occur virtually every decade, he said, and the industry’s growing reliance on just two suppliers had created a structural vulnerability.
“The industry was too concentrated,” he said. “Now, of the two big players, half are out of the market.”
Carved Out of the Desert
Qatar’s ascent to the top of the global L.N.G. industry began in 1992 when Chubu Electric, a Japanese utility, was scouring the globe for the four million metric tons of liquefied natural gas needed to fuel a new domestic power plant.
Finding traditional suppliers tapped out, Chubu turned to Qatar, then an oil-dependent nation mired in debt. Though sitting atop the world’s largest natural gas field, Qatar needed enormous investment to build the infrastructure required to liquefy gas for export.
For Qatar, the Japanese supply deal was transformative. The contract enabled the country to secure international bank loans needed to construct its first L.N.G. trains — the giant industrial processing units that liquefy gas.
From there, Qatar became a primary supplier in a rapidly expanding global market. Around the world, industrialized nations increasingly viewed natural gas as a critical bridge fuel, helping them move away from the more carbon-intensive coal while building toward a future powered by renewables. The worldwide demand for L.N.G. surged to more than 220 million metric tons by 2010, up from 55 million in 1990.
North of Doha, the Qatari capital, the authorities built Ras Laffan, an industrial city that today contains more than 100 square miles of gas-processing and liquefaction infrastructure. Visitors permitted inside the heavily guarded complex describe it as a dizzying labyrinth of steel rising from the desert.
The L.N.G. boom propelled Qatar’s annual economic growth above 10 percent for years. By 2006, Qatar had surpassed Indonesia to become the world’s largest L.N.G. exporter, a distinction it comfortably held for much of the past two decades.
Fracking Boom Takes America
In the United States, policymakers spent much of the early 2000s fearing the country was running out of domestic gas and building enormous import terminals. But starting around 2008, hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling helped unlock immense resources previously trapped in shale.
The refinement of those technologies transformed the United States into a major exporter. Across the Permian Basin and the Marcellus Shale, new gas projects fed terminals in Texas and Louisiana that liquefied natural gas for shipment to Europe and Asia.
Throughout the 2010s, the U.S. fracking boom incited public backlash over issues like contaminated groundwater and gas leaks, but the L.N.G. surge carried forward as regulators refrained from halting permits for large and lucrative export projects. By 2023, the United States had overtaken Qatar as the world’s top exporter.
Around the same time, the duopoly was also being cemented as rivals receded. Russia’s plans to expand its gas sector were stalled by Western sanctions. Australia saw production plateau amid tightening environmental regulations and domestic supply mandates. Legacy Southeast Asian exporters such as Malaysia and Indonesia began consuming more of their own gas at home and exporting less.
That left two countries — Qatar and the United States — to divide an expanding global market. Both embarked on major production expansions. In 2019, Qatar announced plans for new wells and L.N.G. trains that would nearly double its export capacity by 2030.
Meanwhile, a new wave of projects sprang up along the American Gulf Coast that the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects will more than double American L.N.G. export capacity by 2029. By the end of the decade, Qatar and the United States are expected to control about half of the world’s total supply.
This dynamic has raised red flags in Japan for years. With the market increasingly concentrated in just two countries, importers faced the risk of sudden supply disruptions or the wielding of exports as geopolitical leverage. Japan has sought to diversify its liquefied natural gas portfolio, leaning heavily on Jera, a joint energy venture between two of the country’s biggest electric utilities, created in 2015 in part to achieve the scale needed to secure a broader array of supply lines.
Rise of a Near Monopoly
Now, one of the two global pillars of L.N.G. supply has been hobbled, with the Strait of Hormuz shut and Qatar unable to export. Even if the waterway reopens, production is likely to remain impaired for years because of structural damage at Ras Laffan. The expansion project, already behind schedule, is also likely to face further delays.
Countries heavily dependent on Qatar are struggling. Pakistan, which gets nearly all of its L.N.G. from Qatar, is enduring power blackouts. Vietnam and India are rationing gas and reverting to coal-fired generation. Even wealthier countries such as Singapore, which relies on Qatar for roughly a quarter of its L.N.G. imports, have issued sweeping energy-conservation guidelines.
American officials have sought to seize the moment. At an Asian energy forum in Tokyo in March, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used the Middle East energy crunch to pitch U.S. suppliers. “We have energy to allow for prosperity at home, and the ability to sell energy to friends and allies across the Pacific,” Mr. Burgum said. Now, he told gathered business and government officials, “You don’t have an alternative.”
In reality, while American companies are racing to bring new export capacity online, those efforts will fall far short of offsetting the near-term loss of Qatari gas. Even after the strait reopens, supplies are likely to remain tight for years.
Parts of Asia are likely to continue rationing power. Eurasia Group’s Mr. Gloystein also expects a rush to diversify supply lines, with producers in countries like Australia, Norway and Canada scrambling to bring additional output online as quickly as possible.
Qatari production will eventually recover, but for the next few years, the industry is likely to shift from a duopoly-like structure toward one dominated by the United States, Mr. Gloystein said. “The U.S. will play a very, very dominant role.”
For gas importers already concerned that American energy exports could be used as leverage in trade disputes and diplomatic negotiations, the prospect is troubling. “That’s a very legitimate concern, which I think will reappear in the next two years,” Mr. Gloystein said.
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6) Governor Says Immigration Officials Won’t Let Her Visit Delaney Hall
Gov. Mikie Sherrill said the Department of Homeland Security’s actions at the New Jersey immigrant detention center raised “serious questions.”
By Tracey Tully, Published June 3, 2026, Updated June 4, 2026
Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Senator Andy Kim, right, have expressed concerns about conditions at the Delaney Hall immigration detention center. Credit...Dakota Santiago for The New York Times
Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said Wednesday that federal immigration officials were continuing to bar her from entering a detention center in Newark, raising “serious questions about what is happening behind its walls.”
Ms. Sherrill noted that she had met Tuesday evening with relatives of migrants being held at the Delaney Hall detention center, which has become a focal point of protest against President Trump’s immigration crackdown. She said that the relatives had shared “heartbreaking reports of unsafe, inhumane and unconstitutional conditions” inside the 1,000-bed jail.
“Detainees have requested to meet with me,” Ms. Sherrill, a Democrat, wrote in a social media post, “and I want to meet with them.”
Ms. Sherrill first attempted to enter the facility on Memorial Day but was turned away. On Tuesday, the state’s attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, filed a lawsuit after state health officials were denied access to the medical unit and several other areas of the facility during an inspection.
Ms. Sherrill’s public rebuke on Wednesday reflected the growing tension between New Jersey’s elected leaders and federal immigration officials as demonstrations outside Delaney Hall have grown increasingly volatile in the last two weeks.
Groups of mainly peaceful protesters have gathered daily outside the detention center since it reopened last year. But the crowds began to grow after detainees initiated what they have described as a hunger and labor strike on May 22 to draw attention to the conditions inside the facility, which is operated by the GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison companies.
The situation escalated sharply over Memorial Day weekend.
The authorities deployed tear gas and wielded batons as protesters resisted calls to disperse. Ms. Sherrill made the decision to send in state troopers on horseback and on foot, a tactic that has been sharply criticized by immigrant rights leaders. And the city of Newark temporarily imposed a curfew on the streets nearest Delaney Hall.
On Wednesday evening, a contingent of demonstrators continued to keep vigil on a stretch of Doremus Avenue adjacent to one of the main gates at Delaney Hall. The crowd, numbering about 75, was peaceful, even festive. Some demonstrators bopped their heads to dance music, salsa, punk rock, rap and reggae.
But just before midnight, demonstrators and the police clashed anew, according to video footage shared on social media. It is a pattern that has played out nightly. The governor and the mayor of Newark, Ras J. Baraka, have blamed at least some of the hostility on protesters from outside of New Jersey.
Hours beforehand, a post on social media had urged demonstrators to return to the facility at 8 p.m.: “CURFEW IS OVER BACK TO DELANEY.”
By law, members of Congress are authorized to conduct oversight visits at Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency facilities at will. And tours of Delaney Hall by members of Congress are common.
But other public officials, including governors, must request permission from the nearest ICE field office, according to a February 2025 ICE memo.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said she had no immediate comment on the governor’s statement.
Earlier on Wednesday, Representative Analilia Mejia, a Democrat who represents New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, confronted Markwayne Mullin, Mr. Trump’s homeland security secretary, about conditions at Delaney during a committee hearing in Washington.
She said she had met with detainees during inspections who complained about “poor sanitation, spoiled food” and a “lack of medical care.”
“I met detainees who not only were given their medication sporadically, or had their dosages lowered without consultation of their doctors, but I met detainees who were not even made aware of what medication they were given, just handed a bunch of pills,” Ms. Mejia said.
Mr. Mullin defended the care provided at ICE facilities, which he said have more medical staff members than most state prisons. It was a point that Representative Jeff Van Drew, a Republican from New Jersey, also made last week after he toured Delaney Hall.
“I saw good conditions, clean facilities, basic care and a detention center where ICE and D.H.S. are doing a hard job that keeps our communities safe,” Mr. Van Drew said in a statement. “Quite frankly, the conditions I saw today are better than what you see in some nursing homes.”
Ms. Sherrill, a former congresswoman, made her opposition to Mr. Trump the centerpiece of her campaign for governor.
In March, New Jersey became one of the first states to pass a law that bars ICE agents from wearing masks while on duty. (The federal government filed a lawsuit the next month that seeks to block the law from being enforced.) Ms. Sherrill has also sued ICE over a planned detention center in a warehouse in Roxbury, N.J.
Mark Bonamo contributed reporting.
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7) An Uneasy Burial
By Arlette Bashizi, June 4, 2026
Funeral procession
More than 400 cases of Ebola have already been reported in Mongbwalu, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where fear of the highly contagious disease runs the streets. But many of Sylvestre Atama’s parishioners refused to believe that it was Ebola that had claimed the life of their “bergère.” Their shepherd.
When patients at Mongbwalu General Hospital die of the disease, workers disinfect their remains, place them in body bags and then seal the bags in coffins provided by families. They return the coffins with strict instructions: Do not open.
Mr. Atama’s followers had other ideas.
They wanted a traditional burial ritual, which involves touching the body — and could easily have infected other people. When they were refused, they converged on the hospital, some armed, and tried to seize the preacher’s remains. A five-hour battle with security forces ensued.
The funeral procession shown above took place on a Monday morning after careful negotiations. Health workers carried the coffin, and soldiers and police officers kept the impassioned crowd at bay.
Many believed that Mr. Atama had died of malaria, not Ebola. With distrust deeply held by many Congolese toward the government and hospitals, they wanted to look inside the coffin themselves.
As the procession passed, the air filled with the sounds of grief and imprecation. Some prayed for the preacher’s soul. Others hurled accusations at the health workers who had tried to save him.
The soldiers were able to protect the health workers as they made their war to the cemetery about a mile distant, but then word came that a mob was awaiting them at the gravesite.
Changing course, when they got near the cemetery, they turned the coffin over to church leaders who, they said, had agreed to leave the remains untouched.
The church leaders finished up the procession. The health workers went back to tending to the living, and the dead.
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8) Ireland, Seen as a Weak Link in Europe’s Defense, Is Trying to Bulk Up
As concern rises in Europe over threats from an emboldened Russia, the Irish government says it’s working to plug gaps in its military, which reflect a tradition of neutrality.
By Megan Specia, Visuals by Paulo Nunes Dos Santos, June 4, 2026
Reporting from aboard the patrol vessel George Bernard Shaw in the Irish Sea, and from Dublin
Two sailors peered through binoculars from the bridge of the naval vessel as it patrolled the Irish Sea on a still morning in early May.
As they scanned the horizon, Lt. Cmdr. Maria O’Callaghan, the captain, pointed to a series of lines on a navigation display, indicating underwater power cables and gas pipelines that stretch between Ireland and Britain.
The crew of the Irish ship, the George Bernard Shaw, was looking for anything out of the ordinary while the captain used the screen to monitor a large vessel transporting liquefied natural gas. Although the ship was not on a sanctions list, the crew knew from tracking it in the past that it was heading north toward a Russian port, narrowly skirting Ireland’s territorial waters.
Their patrol was part of a stepped-up campaign by Ireland to apply greater scrutiny to the waters that surround it, as hybrid threats from an emboldened Moscow hang over Europe and ships seeking to circumvent Western sanctions sail in and out of Russia.
As America retreats from longstanding alliances in Europe, experts have warned that the small island nation, with permanent military forces of only 7,500, could be a weak link in European defense. That has resonated with the Irish government as it moves to modernize and bulk up its own defenses.
Lieutenant Commander O’Callaghan, 38, said her ship had begun hailing and questioning vessels over the radio at a level never seen in her 20 years of service. “It’s just about interrogating the information that is out there,” she said. “It’s mostly about looking at what’s around and being curious.”
Ireland has a long tradition of military neutrality, and successive Irish governments have used that posture to justify low defense spending. It is not a member of NATO, but Ireland carries outsize importance, security experts say, as a global data hub and as the European headquarters for many multinational technology giants, including Apple, Google and Meta.
Ireland’s foreign, trade and defense minister, Helen McEntee, said in an interview with The New York Times that her government was working swiftly to close a gap left by underinvestment.
“We need to be clear about what we as a country need to do, and that’s have stronger defense and security, that we need to invest in it more,” she said. “We are doing just that.”
The change is happening “as quickly as possible,” Ms. McEntee said, asserting that hybrid threats from Russia had made one thing clear: “Ireland is not immune to that.”
Ireland has raised its overall defense budget for the period from 2026 to 2030 to 1.7 billion euros, around $1.97 billion, a 55 percent increase. In February, it unveiled its first Maritime Security Strategy, setting out a five-year plan to protect its interests at sea and strengthen defense.
The maritime threats are growing, security experts agree. They cite the so-called shadow fleet, a group of aging tankers that covertly carry Russian fuel to avoid Western sanctions, but which are suspected of also sabotaging undersea cables elsewhere in Europe.
In 2024, the Yantar, which Western security services say was a Russian spy ship used to gather intelligence and map critical underwater infrastructure, was escorted by Ireland’s naval service out of Irish waters off the country’s west coast. It passed through the Irish Sea again in 2025. Other Russian vessels have been spotted lurking over data and energy cables in Irish waters.
A significant number of shadow fleet vessels ships have routed around Ireland’s west coast in recent weeks after Britain announced a new policy allowing the Royal Navy to board Russian ships under sanction transiting through its waters.
Because of legal and capacity limitations, there is little more the naval service can do than radio other ships and ask questions. Ireland lacks subsea sonar, anti-drone and air defense capabilities across its eight-vessel fleet. Crew shortages have also stymied patrols.
“Ireland certainly has a very steep hill to climb,” said Mark Mellett, a former chief of staff of the Irish Defense Forces, adding, “For Russia to get stronger, all that has to happen is for Europe to look weaker.”
The concerns feel more urgent this summer as Ireland prepares to host the rotating presidency of the European Union for the second half of this year. That will bring European leaders to the island for a series of meetings that pose potential security risks. In 2025, for example, Denmark reported drone incursions into its airspace while it held the position.
Ireland also wants to show a greater commitment to its European partners as it prepares. The government has accelerated some defense plans, including a military radar program. Some counter-drone technology will be introduced in the coming weeks. Officials also point to the budget increase over five years as a sign of greater commitment.
Others worry that the measures do not go far enough fast enough.
Barry Andrews, an Irish member of European Parliament, in a report earlier this year, found that Ireland’s security governance, infrastructure and military capabilities were not sufficient in the current security climate. While he acknowledged that some progress had been made, he said the upcoming presidency raised particular concerns.
“That puts a target on your back, and countries with far more sophisticated defense capabilities suffered major interruptions to their infrastructure during their presidency,” he said in an interview.
“I think the threat situation for Ireland has changed in the last few years because of major issues beyond our borders,” he said, citing America’s waning commitment to NATO under President Trump, as well as Russian aggression in Ukraine. “Also, Ireland had sort of a practice of strategic helplessness for a long time. And the U.S. and NATO and the U.K., they looked after the Irish defense and security, implicitly.”
Ireland’s military neutrality, a cornerstone of its foreign policy, has a long, complex history, rooted in hundreds of years of British occupation of the island, and the subsequent war of independence and civil war.
Since the state’s founding, it has maintained military neutrality, including during World War II.
The notion has stayed popular, and Ms. McEntee, the defense minister, dismissed the idea that the government was shedding that stance.
“Ireland’s position of military neutrality is not a position that’s in question,” Ms. McEntee said, but added that neutrality didn’t mean the country shouldn’t invest in defense.
The country also has longstanding involvement in peacekeeping missions, a point of national pride. Ireland sends its largest number of troops to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.
Ireland has plans to increase its permanent defense personnel to 11,500 by 2028. And the naval service — long tasked with duties like policing fishing grounds, intercepting drug smugglers and search and rescue — will soon begin an upgrade that will modernize vessels and enhance recruitment.
The shifts in the security climate will be “taking us on a path where we have never been before,” said Aonghus Ó Neachtain, a naval service press officer, noting that Ireland had gone from monitoring around four shadow fleet vessels in its waters at any one time to something like three dozen in recent weeks. “We just didn’t foresee a lot of these things happening,” he added.
For Lieutenant Commander O’Callaghan, the captain of the George Bernard Shaw, the view from the bridge will look very different in the coming months and years, with sophisticated sonar equipment alerting the crew to underwater activity and surveillance radar allowing them to track aerial threats.
It’s part of a rapidly changing awareness of the significance of the marine domain, she said, as the Bernard Shaw glided across a remarkably still stretch of the Irish Sea northeast of Dublin.
“You will hear it referred to as ‘sea-blindness’ — as a nation, we just didn’t understand, we were very much inward-looking,” she said. “But there has definitely been a shift in that.”
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9) A Job Market Leaving Young Graduates Behind Could Scar Them For Years
The labor market has improved but people entering the work force are having a harder time starting careers, a dynamic that has had permanent effects in the past.
By Sydney Ember, June 5, 2026
Shonagh Rae
Young college graduates are facing a gloomy economic future.
Confronting the toughest job market since the depths of the pandemic, they are likely to make less money in the long term and have more trouble advancing their careers, economists warn.
The rise of artificial intelligence also poses a new threat to the kinds of entry-level knowledge jobs that young graduates have long sought, which could further scramble employment prospects and upend career trajectories.
The result is that the current crop of recent graduates could be left with deep scars that include a reduction in earnings, diminished employment opportunities and even widespread job displacement.
“There are going to be lasting effects,” said Lisa Kahn, an economist at the University of Rochester. “The cohorts that were lucky enough to just finish a little bit earlier or a little bit later I think are going to be doing better.”
The full impact of graduating into this hiring downturn will not come into focus for years, and much remains uncertain, especially about A.I.’s role.
But history suggests that there is still trouble ahead for young graduates.
Economists have broadly found that workers who graduate from college during bad economies fare worse in the long run than their more fortunate counterparts.
In a seminal paper that tracked recent graduates before, during and after the recession in the early 1980s, Ms. Kahn found that “graduating from college in a bad economy has a long-run, negative impact on wages.” Though she found that the effects faded over time, a gap persisted even 15 years later, long after the economy had recovered from that downturn.
A reduction in wages occurs partly because recessions affect the quality and availability of early-career job opportunities, an in-depth 2012 study found. Because larger, higher-paying firms reduce their hiring during bad economies, many recent graduates end up taking positions at smaller, lower-paying firms at first. That thins their résumés and makes it harder to move up the ladder to better-paying jobs.
Workers who graduated from less prestigious schools or with majors that usually lead to lower-paying jobs are at a disadvantage, the study found.
“During recessions, good employers stop hiring,” said Till von Wachter, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an author of the 2012 study. “There’s a lot of friction in the labor market, so you never quite make it back to the top of the queue.”
The latest group of college graduates is likewise encountering an economy in flux.
Slow hiring for much of the past two years, coupled with a reluctance from employers to fire workers, has led to broad stasis that has hurt new entrants to the labor market, a group that includes young degree holders.
The unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27 has been up sharply in the last three years and stood at 5.6 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. More than 40 percent of those who are employed are working in jobs that do not require a college degree.
“The overall labor market is not in a recession right now,” said Larry Katz, a labor economist at Harvard, “but it’s clearly feeling like a recession for young college graduates entering the labor market.”
The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is not as bad as it got during the Great Recession or during the recession in the early 1980s, Mr. Katz noted. But it is higher than during the recessions in 1990-91 and after the dot-com crash in 2000.
He said he was worried that the rise in remote work since the pandemic meant that young graduates, when they did find work, would have fewer opportunities for training and mentorship, further destabilizing their careers. Employers may also be reluctant to hire young graduates because it is more difficult for managers to mentor and train less experienced employees remotely, according to research from economists at the New York Fed, the University of Virginia and Harvard. That could help explain the postpandemic rise in the unemployment rate for young graduates, they found.
As in the past, the tough job market is forcing many new degree holders to recalibrate their job searches and enter careers they had not considered. Many are settling for jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree. Others are forgoing employment entirely and instead opting for graduate school.
Accordingly, today’s young graduates might be expected to experience ill effects similar to those faced by their unlucky predecessors during typical economic slumps.
Adding to the uncertainty for young job seekers is that it is too early to know whether the elevated unemployment rate for new college graduates is caused by a cyclical slowdown in hiring — or is the start of an alarming trend brought on by A.I.
So far, A.I. has not wreaked havoc on the labor market despite dire predictions, and it is possible that it will have limited effects on opportunities for recent college graduates.
Other scenarios present a more ominous picture. Under one, companies continue to hire reluctantly as they work to figure out how to deploy the technology, which would hamper the ability of young graduates to switch jobs and raise the risk getting stuck on the employment ladder.
A.I. could also replace some high-skill, college-educated employees, who instead take lower-skill, lower-paying jobs. The shift would push less advantaged workers further down the job hierarchy and depress wages overall.
If A.I. does begin to automate entry-level work en masse, these young college graduates could be disproportionately, and more permanently, harmed.
“If it really does differentially affect entry-level jobs relative to others, then potentially you have a cycle that’s much harder for entry-level workers relative to the experienced workers than it has been in the past,” said Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley. “That could have larger scarring effects as a result.”
Even if A.I. does not vaporize jobs, the most recent degree holders could encounter a different challenge. Many graduated right before schools began teaching the technology in earnest. As a result, employers may view this current group of graduates as less attractive than those who graduate with more A.I. skills even a year or two later.
Still, young graduates generally do better in the labor market than people without a college education, especially during economic downturns. Though the gap has narrowed in recent years, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates is still lower than for all young workers.
“They’re still doing much better than if they hadn’t gone to college,” said Ms. Kahn, the University of Rochester economist. “That’s an important part of the narrative that people sometimes miss.”
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10) Senate Passes $70 Billion G.O.P. Immigration Bill
There was an hours-long series of back-to-back votes in which Democrats sought to force Republicans to take politically tricky votes on unpopular moves the president has made. Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times
Senate Republicans on Friday pushed through their $70 billion bill to fund President Trump’s immigration crackdown through the remainder of his term, after beating back bipartisan efforts to add language to bar or sharply restrict a federal payout fund for his political allies.
The 52-to-47 vote early Friday morning sent the measure to the House, which was expected to move quickly to pass it.
It was a victory for the president and his party, who have been eager to spotlight their hard-line immigration stance — and Democrats’ opposition to it — in the middle of an election year when their control of Congress is at stake. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, was the only Republican to oppose the measure, joining all Democrats.
But passage came only after Republican leaders quelled an internal revolt that had been simmering for weeks over recent moves by Mr. Trump that have underscored how his personal agenda is diverging sharply from his party’s political interests. The divisions threatened to sink the measure and prompted several G.O.P. defections on bipartisan efforts to modify it, all of which failed in an hourslong series of back-to-back votes that stretched all day Thursday and into the predawn hours of Friday.
Democrats orchestrated votes seeking to force Republicans to weigh in for the record on unpopular moves the president has made, including his plan to create a $1.8 billion payout fund to compensate people who he claims have been victimized by the government; his push for $1 billion in federal funding for his White House ballroom project; and his decision to name the housing secretary Bill Pulte as the nation’s top intelligence official.
While Republicans were strongly unified around the immigration bill itself, it had become the source of rare Republican pushback to Mr. Trump, as G.O.P. lawmakers revolted over his request for the ballroom and the payout fund, which many of them feared could be used to pay members of the pro-Trump mob who attacked the Capitol, with lawmakers inside, during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot..
Still in the end, while some Republicans broke with the president on those matters during hours of votes that continued into Friday morning, most of them swallowed their concerns and united to defeat Democrats’ efforts to tie Mr. Trump’s hands.
The result was the success of Republicans’ move to use a special filibuster-proof budget bill that was never meant for routine funding matters to effectively muscle through a multiyear mega-spending bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection over unified Democratic opposition. They resorted to the maneuver after Democrats refused to agree to further funding for Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown without new restrictions on the tactics and conduct of federal agents carrying it out.
But the legislation Republicans used instead, known as a reconciliation bill, is open to unlimited amendments, and Democrats took full advantage on Thursday and early Friday to put the G.O.P. in a difficult spot.
The action got off to a slow start on Thursday morning, when Republicans struggled to defeat an initial effort by Democrats to bar Mr. Trump from establishing the fund that could compensate his political allies.
That motion halted floor action for hours as a clutch of Republicans who supported the measure tried to leverage their votes, which were needed to keep the immigration measure on track, in exchange for assurances that their own amendments addressing the fund would get votes on the floor.
The Democrats’ proposal eventually failed, 50 to 49, with three Republicans facing re-election — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — joining them in support.
Though the Justice Department has said it would no longer pursue Mr. Trump’s plan to pay people who he claims have been victimized by the government, the amendment was a bid by Democrats to force Republicans to cast a politically painful vote on the matter. Many Republicans had said that they, too, would like to codify into law that such a fund could not be pursued in the future.
“America has never seen a more clear-cut case of corruption than Donald Trump’s slush fund,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said as he introduced his motion, noting that Mr. Trump himself continued to say he “loved” the fund and thought it was important.
Ms. Collins cast her “yes” vote early on, after huddling with G.O.P. leaders, who could afford few defections. But Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was recently defeated by a Trump-backed challenger and appeared newly emboldened to challenge the president, along with Mr. Husted and Mr. Sullivan, withheld their votes for hours. Later, Mr. Cassidy told reporters he had been holding out for the best possible deal to secure a vote killing the fund.
“I just wanted to optimize chances for success,” he said after voting against the measure.
But Mr. Cassidy’s ultimate proposal — one to wall off any potential federal payout fund so it would be made available only to law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol during the Jan. 6 assault — was defeated by his own party, with only five Republicans joining him and Democrats in support. That was not enough to get the proposal to 60 votes, the threshold for approval.
It came after Mr. Cassidy had worked with Democrats and Senate officials for much of Thursday and into the predawn hours of Friday to try to devise a viable proposal to block the fund altogether, eventually abandoning the effort after concluding it could not draw sufficient backing to pass.
Still, the vote on his amendment reflected considerable antipathy among Republicans about Mr. Trump’s fund. Joining Mr. Cassidy, the other G.O.P. supporters were Ms. Collins, Mr. Husted, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Tillis.
The tricky series of votes was exactly what Mr. Schumer had previewed for days as he threatened to use the immigration bill to force Republicans to defend the president’s least popular actions when voters are suffering in the country’s affordability crisis.
The Senate defeated a proposal by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, that would have barred the use of federal funds or private donations for the president’s White House ballroom project without congressional approval. A handful of Republican Senators — Ms. Collins, Mr. Husted, Mr. Tillis and Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Murkowski — backed it, but it still fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass.
Also defeated by Republicans was a bid by Democrats to bar Mr. Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing and Finance Agency, from serving as director of national intelligence, by declaring that no official could do that job while also being the head of a different agency. Three G.O.P. senators joined Democrats to back that move: Mr. Cassidy, Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski.
Many of the Democratic amendments offered throughout the day were not designed for passage. They were designed instead as messaging bills to frame the midterm elections and underscore Democrats’ pitch to voters that G.O.P. lawmakers were ignoring the needs of families in favor of the president’s own selfish wants.
Republicans argued that the focus on the fund — which had become a major impediment to passage of their immigration enforcement bill even though the measure was silent on the matter — was an effort by Democrats to distract from their opposition to funding ICE and the Border Patrol.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and majority leader, took to the floor on Thursday morning to try to keep the focus on the immigration bill that was supposed to be a point of unity for the party to rally around.
“We are here today only, only because Democrats refuse to appropriate a single dollar for our border and immigration law enforcement,” Mr. Thune said.
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11) A Shocking Betrayal of Black Americans
By Mara Gay, June 5, 2026
Ms. Gay writes about politics for Opinion. She traveled to Memphis and Montgomery, Ala., for this piece.
Outside the blindingly white antebellum columns of the Alabama State Capitol on a recent Saturday, Martese Chism stood in the Southern heat with thousands of others, rallying for voting rights. It was a show of defiance amid a sweeping attack on Black political power.
To get there, Ms. Chism, 65, left Mississippi before dawn, drove to Memphis and rode a bus five hours to Montgomery with her 8-year-old great-nephew Carson in tow. They made the trip to honor Ms. Chism’s great-grandmother Birdia Keglar, a civil rights activist killed while fighting for the same rights in Mississippi 60 years ago.
Millions of Americans like Ms. Chism live in states where Republicans are drawing maps that dilute the power of Black voters, and those who share their interests. Just on Tuesday, the Supreme Court allowed Alabama to eliminate one of only two Black-majority districts. By the fall elections, and almost certainly by the next presidential election, new maps will be in place.
The Supreme Court decision in April severely weakened the Voting Rights Act by allowing political parties to gerrymander voting districts for partisan advantage, no matter the effect on Black voters. The effort to destroy Black political power in the South is among the greatest betrayals of Black Americans, and those who have voted alongside them, by the federal government in living memory. It will have far-reaching consequences for all Americans, and for our democracy. Despite this, the work of mobilizing a response is largely falling to Black people.
In Montgomery, many of these Americans had come from across the South to gather in what was the first capitol of the Confederacy and register their outrage.
Elderly Black people protested in soaring temperatures. Some told me they had marched many times before, over decades. Parents carried small children who had overheated and fallen asleep, fanning them as their brown limbs dangled from their arms. White Americans showed up, too, joining the largely Black rally with signs that said, “No Jim Crow Maps.”
Black Americans have carried extraordinary burdens in the United States, not only to exercise their own rights, but also to make the country a democracy. The Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 and strengthened in the decades that followed, had protected them from racial gerrymandering that divided them across multiple districts in order to blunt the impact of their votes. This was just one of a multitude of tactics Southern officials used to limit Black suffrage and stifle competition during Jim Crow.
In more recent years, an increasingly ideological Supreme Court began issuing rulings weakening the Voting Rights Act. On April 29, the court’s 6-to-3 conservative majority eviscerated much of what was left of the law, effectively saying the legislation that Americans marched, bled and died for decades ago was no longer necessary. Congressional maps that diminish the Black vote are now acceptable, according to the court, so long as state lawmakers say they are drawing them based on partisan advantage and not on race.
The suggestion that partisan gerrymandering has nothing to do with race is fantastical. It ignores the defining role of race and racism in shaping partisan affiliation in the United States. For instance, the embrace of the civil rights movement by the national Democratic Party is, according to many historians, the main reason so many white Southerners became Republicans in the second part of the 20th century, a phenomenon known as realignment.
Since the court’s April ruling, largely white Republican-led legislatures across the South have moved to dismantle Black political power at stunning speed, breaking apart voting blocs at the urging of a failing president desperate to keep control of Congress in this fall’s midterm elections. The redrawing of these maps is almost certain to sharply reduce the number of Black Americans serving in the U.S. House and could critically diminish the ability of Black voters and millions of other Americans to elect candidates of their choice. At the same time, they will become less able to hold the elected officials who come to represent them accountable. Redistricting has already happened in Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Lawmakers plan to redistrict in Georgia and Mississippi for future elections.
The clearest assessment of this arrangement came from Ms. Chism. “Yes, I can vote, but I have no power,” she told me. She then recalled the U.S. Constitution, which for 80 years when determining congressional seats counted enslaved Black Americans as three-fifths of a person. “They’re using our body, our vote, as part of the census, like they did during slavery. They count us, but we don’t have no voice. We back to that.”
All Americans, everywhere, have a deep stake in what happens to voters in the South. The harm of severely limiting the power of Black voters across the region will not be limited to Black Americans and marginalized people.
The South will be more likely to send members of Congress to Washington who have directly benefited from the erosion of the Voting Rights Act. These lawmakers can be expected to be less responsive to Black constituents and other Democrats in their own districts, but also the interests of voters across the country who hold similar political preferences.
The political careers of these candidates will most likely depend on extreme gerrymanders that limit competition from Black voters and other Democrats, even when those Americans make up large portions of the region’s population. The new map enacted in Louisiana, for example, gives Republicans a solid advantage in five of the six congressional districts, even though Black people make up one-third of the entire state population. And though Black voters are the heart of the Democratic coalition in the South, that coalition includes Latino, Asian, Native and white Americans as well. Polling can be sparse on the subject, but it’s worth noting that Pew found in the 2010s that about one-third of white Southern voters identified as Democrats.
Democrats, facing long odds in the South, will be motivated to engage in aggressive gerrymanders in the states they control, as seen last year in California after Texas acquiesced to a demand by President Trump. This will place even more voters into congressional districts where they are less likely to have a shot at fair representation. Extreme gerrymandering is bad for democracy, making it harder for parties to recruit qualified candidates, gain the support of voters and mount the competition necessary for a healthy democracy.
“You have to view this in historical context,” Eric Holder, who under President Barack Obama was the nation’s first Black attorney general, told me. “If you go from Reconstruction to 2026, the federal government’s support of the voting rights of people of color generally, and African Americans specifically, has ebbed and flowed. What we’re seeing now is consistent with the worst of what the federal government has done along that arc.”
Mr. Holder described the actions of the Supreme Court and the Trump administration as a “betrayal.”
Among the most striking examples of the campaign underway has been unfolding in Memphis, one of the largest majority-Black cities in the country. Court rulings around the Voting Rights Act have for decades acknowledged the need to draw congressional districts that were “compact” and include Americans “of similar interest.” Under the new map, thousands of Memphis voters now sit in the redrawn Ninth District, which stretches over 200 miles through rural Tennessee almost to Nashville. Republicans split the city’s voters into three congressional districts — each with a solid Republican advantage — to bury Memphis’s Democratic votes. Republicans in some Southern states are also planning redistricting that will determine control of state legislatures.
At Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Memphis one evening recently, a crowd of mostly older Black voters gathered with their elected officials, all Democrats, to learn about the redistricting that had taken place the previous week. The sanctuary filled with people and the temperature rose. One woman pulled out a giant fan with a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and used it to create a gentle breeze. When the legislators dimmed the lights and projected an image of the new congressional map onto the wall, loud gasps filled the air.
“I hear you,” Representative Jesse Chism told them. Then Mr. Chism (a cousin of Martese Chism) turned to an old axiom from the Black church derived from Genesis. “What the Devil mean for bad…,” he began. Instead of finishing the verse — “God turns for good” — he paused. The crowd broke out into knowing laughter and applause, transforming the energy in the room.
In a powerful display of grit and tenacity, State Representative Justin J. Pearson, a Black progressive from Memphis, is continuing his bid for the gerrymandered Ninth District congressional seat anyway.
I met him one morning at the Cossitt Library in downtown Memphis, where the novelist Richard Wright had found his way around a rule barring Black people from taking out books by borrowing a white man’s library card. Inside a reading room, the soft-spoken 31-year-old with an Afro whose oration and quiet confidence tends to captivate voters, greeted me with a hoarse and exhausted voice. “My grandparents all grew up during segregation,” he said. “We do not quit because it is hard. We do not yield because of white supremacy. I grew up in a Black prophetic tradition of faith that began before I was born.”
Mr. Pearson said he believed he could build a coalition across race, geography and class and would campaign not only in Memphis but also in every one of the 14 other counties, mostly rural, that now make up the district. “This race is a race for Black folks and for the South, to show our stake in this democracy,” he said.
To build this kind of coalition and win under the new maps, Mr. Pearson and other Democrats in the South will need to increase turnout as well as persuade thousands of new voters to take to the polls. They will also have to do the work of changing people’s minds and persuading at least some Republicans to vote for them instead.
The new congressional maps are very likely to make it significantly harder for generational talents like Mr. Pearson to get to Congress. He has also faced headwinds from curious places inside his own party. Before the Memphis seat was redrawn, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House from Brooklyn, had endorsed Mr. Pearson’s 77-year-old primary opponent, Steve Cohen, the incumbent. Mr. Cohen, who is white, has held the seat for decades. The week after the redistricting, he announced his retirement. Watching Mr. Pearson draw crowds throughout the South, it is easy to see why Republicans in Tennessee and the Democratic establishment alike might want him out of the way.
To understand what’s at stake, consider the impact of veteran Black members of the House elected since the civil rights movement. For decades, members like Bennie Thompson, James Clyburn, John Lewis and Barbara Jordan championed not only issues like Black employment, but policies like Medicaid expansion, funding for poverty programs and public schools, and the Affordable Care Act that have helped Americans across the country. Black Americans elected to state legislatures and local offices throughout the South since the adoption of the Voting Rights Act have often played a similar role.
Then there is the power of the Black electorate. Across the South, Black voters introduce critical competition into a region largely dominated by the Republican Party. They also remain the heart of what has been a growing coalition for the Democratic Party in states like Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina.
It’s not only the speed of the redistricting campaigns underway in the South that is notable, but the spirit and character animating them.
Republicans in Tennessee were in such a hurry to, as one put it, “send an entire Republican delegation from Tennessee” that a state Democrat questioned how they could have known the partisan score of the new districts they were creating. The Democrat said Republicans had used census data to draw the maps, which does not include party affiliation.
Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana suspended an election already underway so the Republican-led Legislature could scrap one of the state’s two majority-Black and Democratic districts, tossing the votes of more than 40,000 Americans who had already cast ballots. I met one of those voters in Memphis, outside the National Civil Rights Museum at the former Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. “I have to vote a second time,” Rosalyn Baty, 67, a Black woman visiting from Louisiana, told me.
Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves plans to wipe his state’s only majority-Black and Democratic House district, now represented by Mr. Thompson, off the map. “Congressman Bennie G. Thompson’s reign of terror on MS-2 is over. It is not a matter of ‘IF…’ Just a matter of ‘WHEN!’” Mr. Reeves wrote on Facebook. Mr. Thompson led the Jan. 6 committee hearings in the House and organized voter registration drives during the civil rights movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Georgia Republicans are expected to redraw their maps for the 2028 cycle. In Montgomery, Ala., Republicans continued their vote to approve redistricting legislation even after tornado sirens began to sound, warning of an arriving storm.
Footage from inside capitol buildings across the South shows that Americans of all backgrounds are showing up in protest, a significant point of hope. There have been pockets of opposition from Republicans, too; in South Carolina, a group of state senators blocked an effort to turn the state into a 7-0 map.
But videos have also captured the animus and glee with which largely white Republican caucuses throughout the South have carried out Mr. Trump’s request for widespread gerrymandering. William Arnold, the director of justice and re-entry programs at the advocacy group Memphis for All, said the experience of watching the Republicans vote on the maps in Nashville left him shaken. “They were laughing. Laughing and smiling,” he said. He described it as “one of the most jarring experiences of my life.”
Many Americans outside the South tend to see the region as exceptional. But its politics have long been shaped by national politics, from the decision to abandon Reconstruction, to the infamous 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson upholding Jim Crow, to the Voting Rights Act and its enforcement by the Department of Justice. The recent decision by the Supreme Court, Louisiana v. Callais, weakening the Voting Rights Act, continues that tradition.
The attack on democracy and Black political power in the South was made possible by justices in Washington, a president from Queens and a Democratic Party that has so far failed to stop them. “This is a national movement of national antidemocracy activists who happen to be acting at the sub-national level,” said Robert Mickey, a political science professor at the University of Michigan who has written extensively about U.S. political development. “It’s easiest to do this in the South.” Mr. Mickey said the political system is placing an undue burden on individual citizens. “We’re outsourcing the response to undemocratic laws back to the people who are harmed by them,” he said.
The Democrats were largely unprepared and ill equipped to respond. Democrats have trifectas (control of all three branches of state government) in 16 states; Republicans have trifectas in 23. Of the Democratic-led states, only a handful offer significant opportunities for the party. California voters approved a ballot initiative last year allowing Democrats to redraw maps, an effort that could add up to five Democratic seats this year. Efforts by Democrats in other states have so far yielded little. Virginia’s Supreme Court tossed a ballot initiative approved by voters that could have added four House seats for Democrats.
Wes Moore, Maryland’s Democratic governor, has pushed hard to move forward with a redistricting plan but has so far been stymied by the State Senate president, Bill Ferguson, also a Democrat. Mr. Ferguson is now signaling he may be open to the plan. Democrats in New York are working on a plan that could add several Democratic seats, but, for process reasons, not until 2028.
Many of the same people who are mobilizing across the South right now are also in mourning. The oldest Black Americans, who grew up during Jim Crow, are now watching key gains of the civil rights movement being dismantled. Generations of Black Americans are coming to terms with the exhaustion, rage and grief from knowing that they and their children will most likely continue to face exceptional headwinds in the United States, a country their ancestors helped build.
At the voting rights rally in Montgomery, U-Conjay Nelson, a 31-year-old Navy veteran from Tuscaloosa, Ala., held a sign that read, “By any means necessary, so don’t let the necessary occur.” I noticed that she seemed to be staring off into the cloudless Alabama sky. Temperatures had risen to nearly 90 degrees, and her three young children rested on the ground beside her. The youngest, a 3-year-old boy, wore Spider-Man Crocs and was sitting on a curb, staying as still as possible to try to keep cool. I asked Ms. Nelson whether she was OK. “People thank you for your service all the time, and you come home to this,” she answered. “It makes you wonder: What did we serve for?”
Martese Chism was just 4 years old in 1966 when her great-grandmother Birdia Keglar — who had housed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activists and faced threats — traveled to Jackson, Miss., and never made it home. Local authorities at the time said that she and a fellow activist, Adlena Hamlett, were killed in an accidental head-on collision, a story the family never accepted. Ambushing cars on the roadway was a known tactic of the Ku Klux Klan.
Ms. Keglar began organizing in earnest in 1955, incensed that she and other Black residents were barred from the all-white jury that had failed to convict the white men who lynched 14-year-old Emmett Till. The day she died in 1966, she had gone to Jackson to attend a civil rights meeting.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation reopened the case of her death in the 2000s, part of a review of possible hate crimes that took place before 1970. By that time, 40 years after the deaths, investigators said they had “insufficient evidence” to indicate a hate crime had taken place. The car the women were driving in, which belonged to Ms. Keglar, was never returned, according to the family. Vernon Dahmer, a prominent Black civil rights leader in Mississippi, was assassinated just one day earlier by the Ku Klux Klan. The Voting Rights Act had been signed into law months before.
These are the Americans who made the freedoms that we have enjoyed possible. In their stories are indispensable lessons about how to keep the country moving forward.
In a moment when many things are calling for our attention, it is tempting to look away. But there are tectonic, generational shifts in power unfolding before our eyes that demand action. This is about the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans to achieve the permanent dominance of a single political party. This is about the rolling back of the clock to a time that many Americans living today do not recognize, and others fear because they do.
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12) The White House’s Latest Provocation Is ‘Grotesque and Terrifying and Juvenile’
By M. Gessen, Opinion Columnist, June 5, 2026
Will Matsuda for The New York Times
“They walk among us.” The glowing green letters emerge ominously against a dark backdrop. Above them hover the words “aliens” and “declassified,” suggesting the release — long awaited in some corners of the internet — of secret government files concerning extraterrestrials. Slowly, tantalizingly, more text appears: “For 60 years, the U.S. government has kept a closely guarded secret.” Then the big reveal: It’s not the trailer for a horror film; it’s a White House web page, posted last Thursday. And the scary creatures in question aren’t extraterrestrials; they’re the other kind of aliens — the immigrant kind, the kind hunted by ICE.
“Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods, and interacting with us in our daily lives,” the page announces. “They’ve shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes as our children, and lived seemingly normal human existences.” That’s the joke: Human beings are described as nonhuman invaders. Fascism, but make it a troll.
This web page, which invites users to look up the number of immigrants supposedly arrested on charges of criminal activity in American cities and towns, belongs to a subgenre of Trumpian gestures that are menacing and sophomoric at the same time. “Grotesque and terrifying and juvenile,” is how Ernesto Verdeja, a genocide-prevention expert at the University of Notre Dame, described it to me. These gestures are hard to write about: The ugliness is undisguised, so what is there to say? And yet, these statements, step by preposterous step, change the world we live in.
With phrases like, “They do not belong here” and, “Deport them all,” the page struck me as an incitement for Americans to commit acts of violence against immigrants. But Benjamin Valentino, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, thinks that the purpose of the page is not to get Americans to do anything: It’s to get them to do nothing, while the government commits its campaign of cruelty against millions of people just trying to live in peace. “They want a majority of the population to turn their backs,” he said. “That’s all that’s necessary.”
Valentino co-founded the Early Warning Project, which assesses the risk of mass atrocities around the world. To be sure, anti-immigrant violence in the United States does not approach the scale of the atrocities Valentino usually studies. But the dehumanizing language of the sort used by the Trump administration is, he said, “a pretty standard indicator” of risk, a necessary if insufficient condition of mass violence directed at a particular group.
“It’s not that it turns normal people into murderers,” Valentino said. “It’s that it turns them into bystanders.”
To the extent that the Trump administration has pulled back on its violent anti-immigrant campaign, it has done so because nonimmigrants have stepped up — in the courts and, especially, in the streets. The most dramatic confrontations took place this past winter in Minneapolis, but in the months since the federal government ended its occupation of that city, resistance has continued. In Newark, N.J., demonstrators have been protesting the conditions at the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility. At least 63 people have been arrested in the past week alone. In New York City, a relatively new coalition called Hands Off NYC has, since January, trained more than 7,000 volunteers to peacefully resist ICE. The Aliens web page, Valentino thinks, is intended to discourage this kind of activity.
“The key is that you are supposed to see your city with a big red dot over it,” Valentino said, referring to a map on the website, then click to read, supposedly, the number of immigrants who have been charged with crimes. (For example, “Jamestown, N.Y.: 10; Larceny, Obstructing the Police; Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nigeria.”) “And you see the charges — do you want to risk your life for this kind of person?”
When the page went up, the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy organization, happened to be hosting a gathering of data experts. Participants thought they saw something interesting. “The page is poorly coded, badly designed, and yet weirdly transparent about some things the administration hasn’t been transparent about before,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the council, told me. It appeared that the map was based on raw data of ICE arrests — information that the government had mostly kept secret since the beginning of President Trump’s current term. The map is possibly the best document to date of the scale of the ICE campaign, which, it shows, has raged not only in big cities but in small towns, where it’s sometimes less visible.
As is usual for the Trump administration, the figures are decontextualized and misrepresented. In addition to the map, the page contains a supposed tally of “encounters,” a term that has one meaning in 1970s sci-fi and another in Customs and Border Protection-speak, where it typically refers to instances in which immigrants are apprehended. What struck me after spending too much time staring at the page was that it wants you to be afraid of all aliens: the space kind and the “illegal” kind, but also the “legal” kind, foreign-born people who have been living in this country for decades. As for the counter, it’s tracking nothing. The numbers just tick upward at a perfectly steady pace, one every second and a bit.
Underscoring the sophomoric aspect of this astonishing document is the fact that it’s shot through with references to “The X-Files.” I caught only one of them: The last lines say, “The truth is no longer out there. It’s right here. Right now” — a nod to the show’s tag line. Verdeja, the Notre Dame professor, grew up with the show, so he pointed out some other echoes, such as the combination of interplanetary warfare and a deep-state conspiracy. But superimposed on all that pop culture are the white supremacist tropes. The sentences about aliens “walking among us, living in our neighborhoods,” Verdeja said, read to him like invocations of the Great Replacement theory, which has become so familiar as to seem almost mainstream. “It’s similar to the way Jews were talked about in Europe in the 1920s and ’30s,” Verdeja said.
He made the comparison gingerly, wary of falling into an alarmist cliché. But the ideologues of Trump’s immigration policies are taking no such pains. A couple of days after the “Aliens” page was published, Gregory Bovino, the former head of the U.S. Border Patrol who oversaw the federal immigration operation in Minneapolis, traveled to Portugal for a meeting of far-right politicians to discuss “remigration,” a concept that refers to the forcible displacement of millions of people on the basis of their ethnicity in the wake of World War I — what we now call ethnic cleansing.
Driven by the same nativist and xenophobic ideas, the United States adopted the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924, which ended mass immigration by introducing national-origin quotas designed to favor Northern and Western Europeans and exclude nonwhite immigrants almost entirely. These quotas stayed in place for four decades — until they were repealed just over 60 years ago, which is when the White House page claims the story of the aliens begins.
The point of making historical connections is not to say that any two actions, or any two eras, are exactly alike. Context always changes. But it’s important to see that this web page isn’t just a troll. It didn’t come out of nowhere. Provocations like this are part of an old and terrible story, and it’s still being written today.
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13) It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers
By Molly Jong-Fast, June 5, 2026
Ms. Jong-Fast is a contributing Opinion writer.
Sam Gulliver for The New York Times
Commencement address season hasn’t been going well — for the commencement speakers.
I’m sure you’ve seen the videos on social media. The big shots who have been brought in to inspire a next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring. They’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning (though it sometimes seems as if they are bragging) that their technologies will be job destroyers.
Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive who spoke at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities, told graduates that “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” Scott Borchetta, the chief executive of the record label Big Machine, told the graduates of Middle Tennessee State University that “A.I. is rewriting production as we sit here.” In each case, the students expressed their displeasure at the speakers’ blatant A.I. boosterism the best way they could: with loud boos.
When Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google, told graduates at the University of Arizona about their A.I.-shaped future, the shouting got so intense that he paused and said that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” Mr. Schmidt told them to make the best of it. “The question is not whether A.I. will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”
Mr. Schmidt’s solution to world-upending technological change is … what? To pull yourself up by your bootstraps? His approach is peak billionaire brain, directed at the young people who have, for the better part of a decade, been treated as woke, lazy, avocado-toast-eating snowflakes. All these speakers just don’t get it. The problem isn’t woke; the problem is work. It’s a lack of social mobility. It’s that college may no longer elevate a graduate to the middle class. It’s that nobody even bothers to pretend that a house, a good job and the ability to start a family are at all guaranteed.
Think of this from the graduates’ perspective: Wealthy old people telling you your future is being pulped by acres and acres of electricity-sucking, water-guzzling data centers feels dystopian because it is. Companies are trying to automate your future away. No wonder you’re furious.
Young people are facing what M.I.T. Technology Review calls a “looming crisis in entry-level work,” and college, once assumed to be a prerequisite for a secure job, no longer feels worth it. The general gestalt coming from a certain sliver of affluent Americans is that college graduates are more liberal trouble than they’re worth and perhaps could be replaced by bots. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and G.O.P. megadonor, mused to Joe Rogan that a bot “never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high” and “never files H.R. complaints.” (It never boos a smug commencement speaker, either.)
According to a recent working paper from researchers at Harvard, hiring for entry-level roles at companies that have adopted generative A.I. has dropped each quarter since 2023. What is not clear is whether A.I. is taking people’s jobs or if companies are using A.I. as an excuse for not hiring. Either way, A.I. is not exactly popular with people entering the work force for the first time.
I’ve spent the past six months obsessing about giving a commencement address to Bennington College, where I earned my M.F.A. It’s a truly bizarre moment to speak at a college, in light of the way technology is changing the work force so rapidly and the way the White House has waged war on colleges, professors and education writ large. Even in the best of times, commencement speeches are uncomfortable: The kids you’re speaking to are basically hostages; they can’t leave without their diplomas.
When I finally gave my speech on Saturday, I didn’t talk about A.I. with the Bennington graduates. I talked about the role their magical little college played in my life. Getting a master’s saved me; it gave me a bit of a foundation, perhaps a little authority in a world where I often felt like an impostor. I told the kids the truth: that I would love to give them advice about how to avoid the messiness of one’s 20s, but the messiness is the point. “That eyebrow pierce will leave a scar,” I said. “You’ll have trouble getting the barbell out and eventually someone will have to use tiny pliers to cut it out of your face.”
(I worried initially that this advice might be too specific, but looking around the tent, I could see that getting a piercing out was something at least 30 percent of the graduating class would have to grapple with sooner or later.)
If I were to tell these graduates the truth about artificial intelligence, it would be this: You are right to be worried. But none of this is as inevitable as it seems. Remember putting everything on the blockchain? Remember NFTs? Hell, some of us are old enough to remember that the world was supposed to end in the year 2000.
Right now, A.I. is in its dark hype period — great for Anthropic’s I.P.O. — but who knows how useful any of this actually will be in the end in creating efficiencies (a.k.a.: replacing the youngs with bots). It’s within young people’s power to stop. Demand regulation of tech companies. Elect people who will legislate that regulation. Organize against data centers in your hometowns.
Don’t just boo — do something.
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14) Granted Clemency by Trump, Scores of Jan. 6 Rioters Have Been Accused of New Crimes
At least 97 of those who were charged in connection with the Capitol riot have reoffended in the years since the attack, the nonprofit publication Lawfare has found.
By Luke Broadwater, Published June 4, 2026, Updated June 5, 2026
Luke Broadwater covers the White House. He reported from Washington.
President Trump has made clear that he believes the Jan. 6 rioters should not only be praised, but that they should be compensated with taxpayer money. Kenny Holston/The New York Times
One was arrested after allegedly threatening a person with a gun in a church parking lot. Another was convicted of felony charges of grand larceny and burglary. Still another was convicted of child molestation.
At least 97 of the nearly 1,600 people who were charged in connection with the Capitol riot have been accused of new crimes since Jan. 6, 2021, according to a study released on Thursday from Lawfare, the nonprofit legal issues publication.
The figure, which is larger than previously known, includes 19 cases that happened after Mr. Trump granted clemency to Jan. 6 defendants on the first day of his second term, according to the study’s author. The rest of the cases happened in the years after the riot.
“The pardons closed a chapter for these individuals politically. What I found is that for a significant number of them, the behavior that defined Jan. 6 didn’t stop when they left the Capitol,” said Katherine Pompilio, the study’s author. She said the report likely misses some cases of recidivism by the Jan. 6 defendants.
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and the editor in chief of Lawfare, said researchers mined court documents and called county clerks’ offices as part of the study.
A previous study of Jan. 6 recidivism found at least 40 defendants faced other criminal charges, with 12 taking place after Mr. Trump’s clemency order. That study was done by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal watchdog group that has been critical of the administration. The Lawfare study found 19 criminal cases that occurred after the clemency.
In one of his first official acts of his second term, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping grant of clemency to nearly all of the people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol, issuing pardons to most of the defendants and commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militias, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, suggested that the Jan. 6 defendants were victims of a “weaponized justice system” under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“The White House has a rigorous pardon review process, which includes the White House counsel, the Department of Justice and ultimately the president as the final decider,” she said.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to revise the history of the deadly attack by a pro-Trump mob, who defaced the halls of Congress and attacked and injured more than 150 officers.
Although the administration has scrapped its plan to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies that Mr. Trump believes have been politically persecuted, the president made clear on Wednesday that he still believes the rioters deserve a payout.
“These are great people that were destroyed, their families have been destroyed,” he said, adding, “They went there with love.”
But the study found that dozens of those involved in the riot have been less than model citizens since the mob violence.
The study found that Jan. 6 defendants had been charged with crimes that range from relatively low-grade offenses like property damage, possession of drug paraphernalia and trespassing to serious felonies like grand larceny, stalking, planning to assassinate law enforcement officials and prominent politicians, and defrauding government agencies. One was convicted in 2025 of reckless homicide.
At least 16 have been charged with sex crimes or crimes related to child sexual abuse material and at least six have faced domestic violence charges. Others have faced charges for physical assaults, illegal firearms possession, or other violent crimes. At least 20 have been charged with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs or public intoxication.
The Trump administration has been eager to promote crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, often promoting posters and images with their names and offenses listed. But Mr. Trump and his allies have portrayed the Jan. 6 offenders as victims.
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15) The Gold Mines at the Heart of This Ebola Outbreak
Mining has been the lifeblood of this remote Congolese hill town for decades. Now, it is fueling the spread of a devastating virus.
By Declan Walsh, Visuals by Arlette Bashizi, June 5, 2026
Declan Walsh and Arlette Bashizi reported from a gold mine in Mongbwalu, Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicenter of the outbreak.
Red Cross workers removing the disinfected body of a gold miner, Mumbere Saidi, in Mongbwalu, Democratic Republic of Congo, last week.
After the local Islamic State affiliate attacked his farm, Mumbere Saidi fled to the gold mines in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, trekking 200 miles across one of Africa’s most dangerous war zones.
He found backbreaking work in a remote mining town where he panned for gold. When times were good, Mr. Saidi, 27, sent a few dollars back to the parents he left behind. When they were bad, he struggled to feed his wife and baby daughter.
At least he felt safe, until last week, when an invisible enemy struck Mr. Saidi inside his home.
“The disease got him,” said his brother, Kondu Ganda, also a miner, using a common euphemism for Ebola in a town where many avoid the word.
Behind him, Red Cross workers in white protective suits removed Mr. Saidi’s body from their mud-walled home and carefully placed it in a coffin.
For over a century, gold has been the lifeblood of Mongbwalu, a remote hill town in Ituri province that draws people looking for work from across Congo and beyond. But now Mongbwalu is at the epicenter of the devastating Ebola outbreak sweeping this region, and gold is helping to drive it.
Experts now believe that the outbreak, already the third largest on record, began in Mongbwalu as early as February. Yet the authorities failed to detect it until May 15, in part because it was caused by a lesser-known virus, Bundibugyo, for which there is no treatment.
By the time a crisis was declared, the Bundibugyo virus had already been spreading for weeks through Mongbwalu’s gold mines, among men who work cheek by jowl in rough conditions, trading gold that often crosses nearby borders.
Now, they are falling sick and dying.
When Mr. Saidi fell ill last month, it first seemed to be malaria. As his condition deteriorated, increasingly desperate relatives carried him to six different clinics in search of a cure, his brother said. Nothing worked.
After his death, neighbors clustered quietly outside Mr. Saidi’s home, which is perched on a hillside amid banana groves and twisting paths. Five people had already died on their street, they said; word came through that a sixth had fallen ill.
“Another person has started bleeding up there,” Mr. Ganda said, pointing to a house.
Mongbwalu, in the Kilo-Moto gold belt, has long embodied the tragedy of Congo’s abundance. Belgian colonists opened the town’s first mines over a century ago, using forced labor. Cycles of exploitation, corruption and conflict followed. Under the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the mines were badly mismanaged. After Mobutu was ousted in 1997, and Congo fell into turmoil, militias and warlords battled over Mongbwalu’s riches.
During one particular brutal period between 2002 and 2003, at least 2,000 civilians were killed in and around Mongbwalu, Human Rights Watch later found.
Now Mongbwalu is largely peaceful, even as ethnic conflict rages in the surrounding countryside, and most of the mining is done by small-scale miners who work the informal mines dotting the town’s edge. Many come from other provinces of Congo, especially North Kivu, which itself suffered an Ebola outbreak between 2018 and 2020.
A mineral-rich region
But the lure of Mongbwalu is what is making it so dangerous.
The gold economy fuels a flow of workers, traders, prostitutes and smugglers from Congo and neighboring countries. Town authorities now believe that more than 80 people died from Ebola in the weeks before the outbreak was detected, and things have only gotten worse.
“We fear we are just at the start of our misfortune,” said Jean-Pierre Bikilisende, a former town mayor.
On the edge of town, gold seems to be everywhere. Following a winding path through tall grass, Arlette Bashizi, a photographer for The New York Times, and I suddenly found ourselves next to a wide stream where dozens of men in mud-splattered clothes shoveled sediment.
They sifted the sandy goop by feeding it into wooden sluices powered by clattering generators, then mixed it with mercury to extract gold nuggets. Given the perils of the work and the threats many had fled, few said they were bothered by Ebola.
Bienvenue Bironyi, a miner from North Kivu, had heard that people were dying. But, he added, he did not know what precautions he could realistically take.
“We’re still working from morning to evening,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”
The pay was an indisputable factor. Gedeon Abimana said he made between $136 and $272 a week, depending on his team’s gold haul. That is great money in rural Congo, although it came with considerable health risk: his job involves handling mercury with his bare hands, which can cause serious illness, including neurological damage.
He shrugged. “What can we do?” he said. “We have no choice but to work.”
The town could not stop, either. Heavy-duty mining trucks rolled down the unpaved main street. Motorcycle taxis clustered on corners, waiting for fares. Children in neat school uniforms skipped home. Soldiers and miners chugged beer in bars.
Michel Anguma, a gold miner in rubber boots, downplayed the calamity. Certainly, people were dying, he said as he strolled home after work. “Just back there, I saw people going to bury someone,” he said.
But gold workers could not afford to worry.
“Nothing is above God,” he said with a shrug.
He spoke under a cluster of trees filled with screeching fruit bats, which scientists say can act as a natural reservoir for the viruses that cause Ebola.
As with much in this outbreak, little is certain, including how many people are actually sick. In recent days, a surge in testing capacity at government laboratories was starting to give a clearer picture of the number of confirmed Ebola cases in Congo. About 300 people are suspected to have died so far.
But the head start the virus enjoyed as it spread undetected through Mongbwalu this spring means the true extent of the outbreak remains unknown. And with gold prices hovering near historic highs, the incentive to keep mining is powerful.
Beyond the town, Chinese operators run semi-industrial gold plants, government officials said. Last year, a British company called Horizon announced it was building a major new gold plant.
“We didn’t come here to spend five years studying,” a Horizon executive told a packed public meeting in September, according to the provincial government website. “We came to build.”
At a separate informal mining site, known as Kanza Kanza, miners were taking some precautions. Some local leaders wore face masks and told me they had reduced the number of miners sleeping in each tent from five to three.
But mostly, it was business as usual in Mongbwalu. Armored vehicles carrying U.N. peacekeepers lumbered through rutted streets. Nightclubs remained open, including one located yards from the hotel rooms where officials from the World Health Organization, here to help fight Ebola, were staying.
The town airstrip was temporarily closed due to Ebola restrictions, and at a nearby military base, soldiers observed strict hand-washing regulations. “At first, people didn’t believe the virus existed, but slowly they are coming around,” said their commander, Col. Bahati Nuru.
The virus seemed to be seeping in everywhere, including the military. At the beleaguered town hospital, health workers had just defused a crisis created by a distraught soldier.
After the soldier’s son died from Ebola, he blamed the medical staff for the boy’s death. “Fortunately, he was not armed,” said Dr. Alex Bogole, a hospital medic. “But he was carrying a knife, and threatening people with it.”
During a visit to the regional capital, Bunia, last week, the Congolese health minister, Dr. Samuel Roger Kamba, said the greatest difficulty in an Ebola outbreak was not deploying medical teams, but persuading communities to follow public health measures.
Like others in Mongbwalu, many gold miners appear to think that Ebola either does not exist or is a moneymaking scheme concocted by local doctors and foreign aid groups. With no treatment or approved vaccine available, many patients go to the hospital only to die soon after, deepening the distrust.
“Crazy stories are going around,” said Shadrack Toko, an official at Kanza Kanza. “They say that people brought to the hospital are being injected with poison, or even having their genitals cut off.”
As we walked back to our car, we came across Deborah Singo, a village leader, gold miner and virus skeptic. “I heard about it,” she said cagily of Ebola. But to really believe in it, she said, “I need to see it first.”
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16) They Shut the Golden Gate Bridge for 4 Hours. Now They Face Up to 15 Years in Prison.
Activists blocked the iconic span to protest the spending of American tax dollars on Israeli military efforts in Gaza. San Francisco’s prosecutor is now seeking a strict punishment.
By Heather Knight, Reporting from San Francisco, June 5, 2026
Pedestrians and bicyclists waited outside the pedestrian gate on the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge when the bridge was closed because of protesters in 2024. Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated Press
It began like any other Monday morning commute, with drivers zooming south from Marin County to the Golden Gate Bridge as they headed toward San Francisco.
At 7:55 a.m. on April 15, 2024, some cars stopped in unison, right in the middle of one of the world’s most iconic spans. Out poured 26 protesters, determined to make a dramatic statement on Tax Day against American tax dollars funding Israel’s military while it attacked Gaza.
Most of them stood in front of their vehicles and held banners, including one that read, “Stop the World for Gaza.” A smaller group — some remaining in their cars, others standing just outside them — locked their arms together in metal tubes and refused to budge.
It did not take long for traffic to clog, and thousands of vehicles to snake through the rainbow-painted Robin Williams Tunnel and into the lush green hills to the north. Many people missed work that day. Others missed important medical appointments. Nobody died and no one was believed to have been injured, but the protest infuriated plenty of people.
The protesters were arrested and their vehicles towed after about four hours. Traffic moved on, but the protesters’ lives did not. The seven who chained themselves together are now in a multiweek criminal trial in San Francisco Superior Court, where they could face up to 14 or 15 years in state prison.
In a liberal region where roadway protests have been part of the fabric for decades, many activists see the possible sentence as extraordinarily severe. In the past, protesters have avoided felony charges and agreed to perform community service and pay restitution, as was the case for activists who blocked the Bay Bridge in 2023 to call for a cease-fire in Gaza when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in town for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.
“Saying that you will face 15 years in jail, that’s outrageous,” Walter Riley, an Oakland civil rights lawyer who was at the courthouse to offer moral support, said during a trial break. “We cannot support this D.A.”
San Francisco is far removed from its Haight-Ashbury counterculture days of more than a half-century ago. The city has become a tech mecca, with seemingly endless riches pouring into companies that are part of the A.I. boom. Voters in 2024 elected a wealthy heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, Daniel Lurie, to run the city as a moderate Democrat.
As part of the city’s centrist tack, residents ousted Chesa Boudin, their social reform-minded district attorney, in 2022 as frustrations mounted over crime, drug use and homelessness. His replacement, Brooke Jenkins, was appointed with something of a mandate to punish criminals, violent or not, and improve the city’s quality of life.
The jail population in the city is now 50 percent higher than it was in 2022.
Ms. Jenkins declined to address the specifics of the Golden Gate Bridge case, saying she could not comment on a trial currently underway, but she discussed protests generally.
“When it violates the law and puts public safety in jeopardy,” she said, “I have a job to do.”
But to the protesters and their supporters, Ms. Jenkins’ charges are shockingly draconian in modern-day San Francisco. The seven on trial are facing several misdemeanor charges and one felony count of conspiracy.
After starting on May 20, the trial began winding down with closing statements on Thursday, and jurors will likely begin deliberating Friday.
Joseph Cotchett, a Bay Area trial lawyer who is not involved in the case but has been following it, said that if the jury finds the defendants guilty, he would expect Judge Teresa Caffese to hand down time behind bars. But 15 years in prison would “be absurd,” he said.
For much of the past couple of weeks, scores of people, many of them wearing a kaffiyeh, the scarf that signifies support for Palestinians, have filled a courtroom across the street from San Francisco’s gold-domed City Hall in support of the defendants.
Some of them are the ones who held banners but did not link arms during the bridge closure. Those protesters planned the demonstration with those now on trial, but they had their records wiped clear after they paid restitution and performed five hours of community service.
Still, the group has banded in solidarity, calling itself the Golden Gate 26.
Ms. Jenkins asked that kaffiyehs be banned from the courtroom, along with the word “genocide” in testimony, but Judge Caffese declined both requests.
On the trial’s opening day, Angela Roze, an assistant district attorney, told jurors that the protesters had prioritized their personal cause over the well-being of everybody else trying to cross the bridge.
“Children were forced to defecate in bags. People had little to no water,” she said in her opening statement. “Because these seven individuals decided that their cause, their message, was more important.”
She added that the protest ended only when law enforcement officers told the seven that they would cut into the vehicles to remove them. The protesters were using metal tubes that law enforcement officers call “sleeping dragons” because the devices seem innocuous but are actually difficult to extricate people from.
The seven protesters, each with a different defense lawyer, have stressed that they tried other, lawful ways of protesting first. They called their representatives in Congress. They wrote postcards. They attended rallies. Nothing worked to stop the war.
Rocky Chau, 37, grew up in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco and now works by providing in-home care for his mother, who is elderly and disabled, in the city of Richmond, across the bay.
He testified that he started following news of Israel’s attacks on Gaza and grew increasingly disturbed. One article, about a 92-year-old grandmother in Gaza who was found dead weeks after an Israeli raid, left him particularly distraught, he said.
“It reminded me of my mom,” he said, pausing as he wept on the stand. “I knew I needed to do more.”
He said he had heard before the protest about the “necessity doctrine” — a legal theory that criminal behavior can be defensible if it prevents a greater harm from occurring during an emergency — and believed it applied in this case. He added that the protesters had taken care to assign one person to be a liaison to the police, leave space for emergency vehicles and bring food and water for people who were stuck.
“The only thing I wanted to do, the only thing I ever intended, was to send a message and get the United States government to stop the genocide,” he said.
Regina Schneider, a retired legal secretary who lives north of the Golden Gate Bridge, in Novato, Calif., testified about the effects of being stuck in her friend’s car for hours. In an interview later, she said she missed an important oncology appointment.
She said that she wanted the defendants to be sentenced to some detention time, though she declined to say how much.
“A lot of us are horrified by things that are happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, all around the world,” she said. “You do not adversely impact the lives of thousands of people to make your point.”
In the hallway, as the court proceedings continued, Mr. Riley, the civil rights lawyer, consoled Amy Ferrell, whose daughter, Sarah, is on trial.
“Here in San Francisco, to have this outcome is shocking,” Ms. Ferrell said.
Ms. Ferrell said her daughter had educated her about the war in Gaza, but she did not know about her daughter’s participation in the bridge protest until she received a call that night.
“Mom, I’m in jail,” she recalled hearing, adding she was inspired by her daughter’s commitment to social justice and shocked by the charges against her.
Ms. Ferrell said she lives in Baltimore and flew to San Francisco to attend the trial on a one-way ticket. She will not leave, she said, until she knows her daughter’s fate.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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17) As Trump Toughens Rules on Cuba’s Economy, Hotel Chains Pull Out
The Trump administration’s efforts to tighten the economic noose on Cuba appear to be working, as more international firms announced they would leave the island.
By Frances Robles, Reporting from Florida, Published June 4, 2026, Updated June 5, 2026
The Catedral in Havana is one of 15 hotels in Cuba run by the Spanish firm, Meliá. Credit...Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Trump administration’s campaign to force Cuba’s economic unraveling achieved key gains this week, when three international hotel chains and a bank that processes Visa and Mastercard transactions withdrew business from the communist nation to avoid violating new U.S. regulations.
Foreign businesses have until Friday to pull out of any venture in Cuba run by the Cuban military conglomerate that controls about half the nation’s economy. On Thursday, the U.S. government announced that it was imposing sanctions on another swath of Cuban officials and entities, including the armed forces.
Business leaders whose companies stay in Cuba risk losing their visa to travel to the United States and having their assets frozen. The companies themselves could also face sanctions, such as losing access to American banks.
The increasing exodus of businesses from Cuba will lead to increased unemployment and fewer financial resources for Cuba’s government, aggravating an increasingly untenable economic crisis.
While the United States has long prohibited most American companies from trading with Cuba, these new regulations, called “secondary sanctions,” are a major escalation, because they target foreign companies and financial institutions.
Cuba’s Central Bank announced Wednesday that a bank that processes Visa and Mastercard transactions had withdrawn to comply with a recent executive order from the White House that threatened sanctions against foreign companies doing business in Cuba.
The Cuban government, which did not name the bank, called the decision part of President Trump’s “strategy to strangle the Cuban people.”
The Spanish hotel operator Iberostar said it would end its partnership to run 12 hotels for Gaviota, Cuba’s tourism company, which is part of the Business Administration Group, a military conglomerate known by its Spanish acronym, GAESA.
Another Spanish firm, Meliá, said it would withdraw from its partnership running 15 Cuban hotels. Blue Diamond, a Canadian company that ran dozens of hotels in Cuba, also announced that it was pulling out.
Citing an announcement from the company, news reports said the Indonesian chain Archipelago International had also closed shop. The website for the company’s Aston Hotels in Cuba showed they were “no longer available for accommodation.”
The proposed U.S. sanctions are part of a series of stringent measures by the Trump administration designed to cripple Cuba’s economy and force economic and political change.
Mr. Trump on Thursday told reporters in Washington that Cuba had “sort of collapsed.”
Repeating a statement he had made in the past, he said he would “handle” Cuba as soon as his administration moves on from the conflict with Iran. “As soon as that’s done, on our way back, we’ll just make a little brief stop,” the president said without providing specific details.
Mr. Trump’s tightening vise on Cuba, including an effective oil blockade, is worsening a humanitarian crisis, leaving millions of people enduring extended power outages and struggling to find food and gasoline.
The U.S. State Department said on Thursday that it was adding five more Cuban officials and five entities to a list of sanctioned people and companies, including President Miguel Díaz-Canel and his family.
Vast neighborhood groups organized by the government, called the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and known for spying on local residents, were also targeted, as was Cuba’s gold mining venture.
“The entities and individuals designated today direct or fund the regime and its efforts to mobilize its radical revolutionary movements in the United States and around the world,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Two major shipping companies, one German and the other French, had already announced plans to cease operations in Cuba.
The United Nations’ World Food Program was forced to put off plans to purchase nearly 3,000 tons of food for Cuba “because we cannot find a shipping solution to bring it to Cuba,” said Etienne Labande, the agency’s Cuba country director.
The World Food Program, which was helping supply provisions for Cuba’s subsidized food rations, is also trying to find other ways to pay for fuel it used to buy from private companies, because it can no longer pay with Visa or Mastercard, he said.
The Trump administration’s sanctions against foreign companies, announced in May, largely targeted GAESA, the military conglomerate that operates everything from retail businesses to the tourism industry.
GAESA was born out of Cuba’s economic crisis in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been the island nation’s main benefactor.
The U.S. State Department, relying on media reports suggesting GAESA was sitting on enormous piles of cash even as the nation suffers, said the moves would deprive Cuba’s military “access to illicit assets.”
The Cuban government did not respond to a request for comment, but released a scathing statement denouncing the Trump administration.
The U.S. government, the statement said, had “once again acted with premeditated intent in its eagerness to manufacture pretexts to discredit the Cuban Revolution, its historic leadership, its current leaders, and, in doing so, confuse both our people and international public opinion.”
Mr. Díaz-Canel said on social media that GAESA was not “a path to enrichment for a few.’’
“On the contrary, it is one of the many examples that, along our path, has allowed us to resist the permanent aggression of the United States government.”
Seth Eisen, a spokesman for Mastercard, said the decision to withdraw had not been made by Mastercard.
The bank that had managed the company’s transactions decided to limit operations in Cuba, and without the foreign financial partner, Mastercards will not work to make purchases in Cuba, he said.
Visa, Iberostar and Blue Diamond did not respond to a request for comment. Meliá, in a statement, said its decision to leave Cuba “was made out of a deep sense of corporate responsibility,” but that the impact of its decision was limited because most of its hotels were already closed.
Cuba’s tourism sector has largely collapsed. In January, the Trump administration blocked fuel deliveries to Cuba, which limited the availability of jet fuel and led several airlines to cancel service.
“The reach of these sanctions was much wider and stronger, especially among the hotel chains,” said Paolo Spadoni, a political economist at Augusta University in Georgia who studies Cuba’s tourism industry.
He noted that not all of Cuba’s hotels are run by the military conglomerate, and the Spanish hotel companies were continuing to operate hotels run by Cuban entities not tied to GAESA and not targeted with sanctions.
John S. Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said the latest measures could lead the Cuban military conglomerate to dismantle its operations to comply with the new rules.
“In the last 30 days, there has been more commercial, economic and financial destruction in Cuba than in any period since 1959,” Mr. Kavulich said, referring to the year of the Cuban revolution that eventually ushered in Communist rule.
The U.S. administration, he said, “achieved so much without firing a shot or one boot on the ground.”
The State Department acknowledged that the withdrawal of the hotel firms was precisely what the measures were intended to accomplish.
“Our sanctions are deliberately targeted to prevent the Cuban military and security services from profiting off international investment in Cuba to fund their continued oppression of the Cuban people and threat to U.S. national security,” the State Department said in a statement provided to The New York Times.
“Companies choosing to exit the Cuban market are making a prudent decision to comply with U.S. law and avoid enriching a regime that routinely violates fundamental human rights.”
David C. Adams contributed reporting from Madrid, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Edward Wong contributed from Washington.
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