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We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Trump Brought Venezuelan Gold to the U.S., but Refiners Won’t Touch It
The administration is brokering deals in a notoriously corrupt industry, including one with a company that the United States deems a security threat.
By Anatoly Kurmanaev, Tyler Pager and Rebecca R. Ruiz, Sept. 28, 2026
Anatoly Kurmanaev reported from Caracas and the mining town of El Callao; Tyler Pager from Washington; and Rebecca R. Ruiz from London and Geneva.
“The gold trading deal exemplified how Mr. Trump used the capture of Mr. Maduro to gain control of Venezuela’s resources. First, he took charge of Venezuela’s oil exports. Next, his administration turned to Venezuela’s mineral wealth.”
Gold miners at work in El Callao, Venezuela. Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
In early March, as President Trump basked in the success of a military intervention in Venezuela, he joined Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the West Wing for a private celebration. A businessman also attended, and brought along a pile of gold.
The president looked approvingly at the 10 Venezuelan gold bars stacked in the Roosevelt Room, across from the Oval Office, White House officials recalled. Aides took photos and joked about keeping the gold.
Mr. Trump himself had once blacklisted Venezuelan gold, declaring that it destroyed the environment, poisoned people and financed gangsters and corrupt military officials. But after Mr. Trump toppled the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, his view changed.
On the same day that the bars arrived at the White House, the Trump administration issued a new policy allowing traders to import Venezuelan gold from one of the world’s most violent and corrupt mining regions. The first supplies would come from a state-owned mining company that remained a designated U.S. national security threat.
“Usually, you have to be in the Olympics to bring back the gold,” Mr. Burgum later said at an energy conference, regaling listeners with the tale of how he had opened Venezuela’s gold pipeline.
The gold trading deal exemplified how Mr. Trump used the capture of Mr. Maduro to gain control of Venezuela’s resources. First, he took charge of Venezuela’s oil exports. Next, his administration turned to Venezuela’s mineral wealth.
That included one of the world’s largest untapped gold reserves at a time when the prices were near record highs and buyers were hungry for it.
The Trump administration and its business allies said that gold sales would benefit the U.S. economy; help develop Venezuela’s mining region; and deprive criminals and corrupt officials of income.
But a New York Times investigation, from the mines of southern Venezuela to the White House to the trading houses of Europe, found that Mr. Trump aligned America with an industry that is still plagued by the very criminality that he said he was fighting by arresting Mr. Maduro.
Planes carried gold out of Venezuela before companies had even visited the mines. Some of that gold, The Times found, is linked to miners who pay gang protection money. That allows criminals to profit from the administration’s signature deal.
And American financiers are investing in a mine tied to gangsters as part of a deal brokered by the Trump administration.
Venezuelan gold had once benefited American adversaries like Iran. Mr. Trump sought to redirect it to the United States to be refined.
But partly as a consequence of the administration’s hasty approach, all that gold — hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth — sits untouched in warehouses, according to three people with knowledge of the shipments. Refiners would need to guarantee, under international rules, that the gold has not funded gangs, environmental destruction or corruption.
“Do we want to be the first refiner to publicly announce that we are receiving Venezuelan gold?” Simon Houghton-Dodd of Asahi Refining mused at a recent industry gathering in London.
This account of Mr. Trump’s gold rush is based on interviews with miners and refiners in El Callao, the heart of Venezuelan mining, as well as on interviews with White House and Venezuelan government officials, industry leaders and global commodities brokers.
Some spoke on the condition of anonymity, either because they were not authorized to speak publicly or because doing so would jeopardize their livelihoods or safety.
The gold arrangement is a crystallization of Mr. Trump’s long-held views on Venezuela, natural resources and U.S. power. Mr. Maduro was a dictator who oversaw a corrupt and violent system, but Mr. Trump has repeatedly cut deals with such leaders.
What set Mr. Maduro apart, besides his refusal to yield to Mr. Trump’s demand that he leave office, was that he controlled a nation rich with resources and traded them with America’s adversaries. Mr. Trump, particularly in his second term, has declared that the U.S. must have access to key minerals worldwide and expand its influence in the Western Hemisphere.
In January, Mr. Trump sent U.S. commandos to remove Mr. Maduro from power. He then moved to bring Venezuela’s riches under American control. It was a gamble that investment would bring reform, and not the other way around.
The White House said that progress takes time. “For years, Venezuela’s mining and gold industry has been stolen from the Venezuelan people and has been used to prop up dangerous gangs and support bad actors around the globe,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, wrote in a statement. “The United States is helping solve this longstanding problem. We are cleaning up Venezuela’s mining industry. Western companies are improving and legitimizing it.”
To carry out that vision, the Trump administration turned to business leaders eager to profit from the president’s mercantilist worldview.
Among them was Richard Holtum, the chief executive of Trafigura, one of the world’s largest trading houses. Mr. Holtum joined Mr. Trump at the White House to commemorate that first shipment of Venezuelan gold.
He had good reason to celebrate.
It was his company that had persuaded the White House to move on Venezuelan gold in the first place.
Striking Gold
Within days of Mr. Maduro’s arrest, Trafigura executives contacted the White House with a bold idea.
The Trump administration had just granted Trafigura the right to sell Venezuelan oil, giving it, according to the company, a broad confidential permit to bypass sanctions. But with skyrocketing gold prices, executives had ambitions beyond oil.
Trafigura executives told the White House that Venezuelan gold was a national security issue, according to people familiar with the proposal. They argued that the White House had an opportunity to wrest control of a lawless industry and put Venezuela’s minerals in the hands of the U.S. government and its partners — namely Trafigura.
At least some Trafigura employees were wary, according to people involved in discussions at the time. Venezuela had lots of gold, but how much could be traced and documented to industry standards? Getting involved in a country where gold is associated with human rights abuse, terrorism financing and corruption was risky.
White House officials knew these risks and the difficulty of cleaning up the industry. But officials said they felt pressure from Mr. Trump to make deals, and fast. Some argued that immediate investment was likelier to bring change than continued isolation.
Mr. Trump had been eyeing Venezuelan gold since returning to office in January 2025. He made the country a foreign policy priority and assigned a trusted emissary, Richard Grenell, to negotiate for U.S. access to resources, including gold. Mr. Grenell reached a tentative deal, but it collapsed over disagreements about Mr. Maduro’s leaving office.
Mr. Trump chose the military option instead.
Against that backdrop, officials said, Trafigura’s pitch was exactly what the White House wanted to hear. “Trafigura had a viable and quick plan to legitimately market gold following years of corrupt Venezuelan practices,” the White House said in a separate statement.
The new Venezuelan government was less enthusiastic.
Concerns in Venezuela
In early March, Mr. Burgum, the interior secretary, flew to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Mr. Trump appeared giddy with the success of his intervention, and Mr. Burgum, who oversees American mining, wanted to leave his mark on the project, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.
Mr. Burgum made it clear to Venezuelan officials that he wanted to broker big deals, the people said. The Trafigura proposal, which had taken a back seat to oil deals, was now a priority.
Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s interim president, was skeptical, according to people close to her. Under the proposal, Venezuela’s gold revenue would flow into an account controlled by the U.S. Treasury, which would then dole it out.
Despite her title, she had only nominal command over the military generals who exercised control in the mining region. If something went wrong, Ms. Rodríguez did not want to be held responsible.
But she was in no position to negotiate. Ever since Mr. Trump installed her as Mr. Maduro’s replacement, Ms. Rodríguez depended on Washington’s good will to stay in office.
Days before Mr. Burgum’s arrival, she agreed to let Trafigura partner with Venezuela’s state-owned gold producer, Minerven. The deal gave Trafigura a yearlong right to buy and export gold from the handful of underground, industrial mines in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan mining ministry, which signed the gold deals, and the government’s media office did not respond to requests for comment.
On March 5, Mr. Burgum officiated the contract signing. Within hours, Trafigura whisked the first gold to the United States on a chartered plane.
“At the end of the two days, we were able to bring home $100 million of gold — physically, the gold,” Mr. Burgum later recounted to energy investors.
Trafigura was first into the market, which was reason to celebrate in the West Wing.
Trafigura’s partnership with Minerven, though, was hardly straightforward. Minerven’s facilities are surrounded by gang territory, where workers and suppliers pay protection money. Criminal ties to the region’s gold industry are well documented.
Trump administration officials made clear that the president wanted things to move quickly. “What the president likes is action,” Jarrod Agen, the top White House energy adviser, said in Caracas in April. “He also likes deals, and he likes progress.”
Trafigura and Minerven came up with a solution that seemingly carved out their operation from the criminality. Trafigura would buy gold only from two industrial mines that are fenced off and guarded by the military. The gold would be mined and processed on site, keeping gangsters and corrupt officials at bay.
Trafigura would then ship the semi-pure gold to the United States to be refined and sold onward.
It has not worked out so cleanly.
Protection Payments to Gangsters
The export pipeline was up and running within weeks. It has since developed into regular purchases that can be as large as 400 kilograms a month (about 880 pounds, or roughly the weight of a concert grand piano), according to a Venezuelan official and another person familiar with the arrangement.
The Trump administration left it to others to certify that the gold met industry standards, which included being free from illegal activity. But the gold started flowing before Trafigura or independent auditors had even visited the mines.
The company hired an auditor last spring and a risk consultant over the summer, after it had already bought millions of dollars worth of gold that had not been certified. “Due diligence of our supply chain is ongoing, and we are continuing to implement our joint responsible sourcing program with Minerven,” Trafigura said.
A Times reporter visited Venezuela’s gold production hub, the town of El Callao, this summer. Along with Minerven’s underground mines, it is home to hundreds of crude, privately run mining operations, including cooperatives known as brigades. The operators of those mines dig for gold and give a portion of it to the local gang, Tren de Guayana, as protection money, according to interviews with about a dozen mine owners, brigade leaders and Minerven employees.
Some brigades operate inside the fence, on Minerven property. The leader of one brigade told The Times that, each month, 20 percent of the team’s gold goes to the gang, a practice that is so ingrained in the local economy that it is known as “el sistema” — the system.
Another portion of what they collect, the brigade leader said, goes to Minerven, which melts it down along with the gold being sold to Trafigura. That account is supported by interviews with other brigade members in the area as well as Minerven employees.
That means that, in the Trump administration’s signature Venezuelan gold venture, the United States is importing bars that contain at least some amount of gold linked to Tren de Guayana.
David Soud, an investigator specializing in tracing illicit gold, whom Trafigura hired as a consultant this summer, acknowledged that operating in Venezuela remains risky.
“What I can say is that exploitation is deeply entrenched in the Venezuelan gold ecosystem,” he said. “And it is extremely challenging to work to build a supply chain that is free of it.”
Dozens of Venezuelan military officers still hold managerial posts at Minerven, despite Mr. Trump’s earlier concerns that Venezuela’s armed forces oversaw gold-related corruption.
Multiple Minerven workers said in interviews that they have been frequently threatened by the military and intelligence officers working for the company with dismissal or terrorism-related charges for demanding the benefits stated in their contracts.
Payrolls seen by The Times show that Minerven declares only a fraction of the gold that it sells to Trafigura. Workers say the underreporting reduces their wages, which are based primarily on production.
Trafigura pointed to the auditor’s visit to the mines. “To date, no human rights violations, conflict-financing, illegal taxation, extortion, or involvement of illegal actors have been identified at the sites,” Trafigura said.
Once Mr. Trump opened the door for Trafigura, other firms sought to cash in.
Even Riskier Territory
In late April, the White House organized a business delegation to Caracas, one of a growing number of opportunities for U.S. executives to negotiate deals.
One of those executives was Sean Pi, a private equity fund partner whose company, Heeney Capital, invests in mines. He had testified before Congress in support of legislation to fast-track mining projects in line with Mr. Trump’s broader goals on minerals.
Mr. Pi joined business leaders in Caracas to mingle with Ms. Rodríguez. He soon solidified a gold deal for his company.
Heeney Capital partnered with a rival of Trafigura, Mercuria, to produce and export Venezuelan gold. The pair estimated that their agreements would one day generate about $2.2 billion in annual mineral exports.
Because Trafigura had already locked in supplies from Venezuela’s established, below-ground mines, Heeney would need to look to more informal sites — which carry greater risks of corruption and environmental damage.
Heeney set its sights on El Chocó, a large open-pit mine run by the Venezuelan state.
The mine’s contractors, which provide machinery, catering and other services, paid protection money to Tren de Guayana, two workers employed by the mine’s contractors said in July.
In some ways, though, El Chocó represents a victory for the Trump administration. The Venezuelan government had been working with an Iranian company, Espadana, to build a processing plant at the mine. After Mr. Maduro’s downfall, the United States prohibited Venezuela from working with Iran. Most Espadana workers packed up and left.
On a recent visit, mining in El Chocó continued, but construction on the plant had stopped. The Iranian company’s machinery sat idle. Military counterintelligence squads and armored personnel carriers guarded the perimeter.
Despite those changes, anyone getting gold from El Chocó would risk buying into a system tied to organized crime.
“Around 90 percent of the gold produced in Venezuela is criminally produced,” said Julia Yansura, program director at the FACT Coalition, a Washington-based anticorruption organization. “If international companies want to go in and try to find the 10 percent that’s supposedly OK, that’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
Heeney and its founders did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesman for Mercuria declined to comment.
This month, Heeney announced it had signed a deal to take over mining operations and export rights at El Chocó. The company said it would modernize operations to international standards. It is unclear what steps Heeney might take to disentangle the mine from organized crime.
At the White House, Unshaken Confidence
Half a year after Trafigura began bringing Venezuelan gold into the United States, the company has been unable to resell it, according to people familiar with the deal.
That means that gold, meant to be a boon to U.S. business, instead sits in storage. Whoever buys and refines it would need to vouch that the gold has no ties to criminality.
The Trump administration is undeterred. It has continued loosening economic sanctions on Venezuelan mining. Democratic lawmakers, though, have questioned the legality of the Trafigura deal and promise greater oversight if they win control of Congress in November.
Some in the industry argue that the risks of dealing with Venezuela’s gold are no excuse to give up.
“The point is to engage and try to find a way to create a supply chain with integrity,” said Mr. Soud, the consultant to Trafigura. “The main risk of getting involved in any way with Venezuelan gold is: How on earth do you keep the gold you are bringing out of Venezuela from being tainted?”
Mariana Martínez contributed reporting from Caracas, and Justin Scheck contributed from London.
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2) What We Saw in One Venezuelan Gold Town
With U.S. support, traders arrived and cut deals. That investment has so far failed to improve the bleak conditions in the mining industry.
By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Mariana Martínez, Reporting from El Callao and Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 28, 2026
El Callao, the town at the heart of Venezuela’s gold mining industry. Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
The investment rush promised by the Trump administration has left no mark on Venezuela’s dusty, dilapidated gold industry hub.
Under pressure from Washington, Venezuela’s state mining company in March shifted its sales of gold bars to the United States from the Middle East, practically overnight.
A Times investigation traced gold arriving in the United States to miners who pay protection money to gangs. U.S. financiers are exploring investments in mines tied to local gangsters.
We also found no sign that residents in Venezuela’s mining region are benefiting meaningfully from President Trump’s gold rush. We traveled to the gold mining town of El Callao and found that expanding operations had only further degraded the town’s broken public services.
Practically all of El Callao’s paved roads have been destroyed by years of heavy truck traffic. Everything in the town, down to the freshly hung laundry, is covered by a perpetual layer of red dust that swirls off the trucks. Power goes out daily, and for longer, as the expanding mines suck up capacity from an overloaded power substation.
The town needs new roads, steady power, a share of the taxes generated by the mines, and a government that enforces environmental laws.
Under the Trump administration, none of those has yet materialized. The conditions under which gold is produced have remained. Only the gold buyer has changed.
El Callao’s mayor, Coromoto Lugo, told us that the local government receives the equivalent of about $20,000 a month from the federal authorities. That’s less than 1 cent a day per resident. That figure has not changed since El Callao’s gold started heading to the United States.
“All of the government’s plans for the gold sector have failed,” Mr. Lugo, who belongs to an opposition party, told us.
U.S. officials have called the deal historic, and people familiar with its terms say the Venezuelan state now reaps market prices for its gold, rather than selling it cheaply to bypass economic sanctions.
With Mr. Trump’s support, global trading firms swooped in and cut deals to export semifinished gold bars. That investment has not trickled into the community.
Residents take to El Callao’s streets almost daily to protest the blackouts. During our visit, protesters blocked the only paved road connecting El Callao and other gold mining hamlets to the outside world, effectively bringing the region to a halt.
The protest reflected the modicum of freedom that Venezuelans have won since Mr. Trump toppled Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January, and turned the country into an American protectorate. Under Mr. Maduro, paramilitaries or gangsters would have broken up the protest in minutes, residents said.
But living conditions remain bleak. We watched children and teenagers toil in rudimentary gold processing plants, in open violation of labor laws. Those plants use mercury, a toxic liquid banned under Venezuelan law, which poisons water supplies.
More than a dozen miners told us that the work was slowly killing them. They had few illusions of finding a rich gold vein and retiring in comfort. Gold mining was the only job that allowed them to make a living in a country devastated by one of the steepest economic collapses in modern history.
Limited state presence has been exploited by the local organized crime syndicate, which holds the real power in town. Mine workers readily admit to paying protection money to the dominant gang, El Tren de Guayana, to work.
The locals call the extortion racket “el sistema” — the system. Many see it as a reasonable tax that pays for services that the state long ago stopped providing. The gang’s leader, known as Ronny Matón, or Ronny the Killer, mitigates legal disputes and punishes common crimes, such as theft and domestic violence, the residents said.
Venezuela’s mining ministry did not respond to request for comment.
The Trump administration intended, with its oil and gold deals, to weaken the power of the gangs. Earlier this year, U.S. and Venezuelan militaries jointly killed a leader of another gang farther south.
In the rest of the mining region, gangs continue calling the shots.
A few years ago, the government broke up the labor union at Minerven, the state gold mining company. It was part of Mr. Maduro’s campaign to snuff out organizations outside his control.
Without collective bargaining, Minerven’s miners lack life and disability insurance, yet work as much as a thousand feet below ground amid toxic gases and explosions. Three Minerven miners died in separate labor accidents in the past year.
Anderson García, 42, was crushed to death by a falling rock in the Mina Colombia mine in January.
Mina Colombia is one of two mines that supply gold to the United States.
“It is an inhumane environment, full of threats and dangers,” Mr. García’s father, Cifrando García, said in an interview. “Today it was him; tomorrow it will be somebody else.”
Mr. Lugo, the mayor, says foreign powers have long tried to capitalize on Venezuela’s gold riches. “The Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese — they all eventually left,” he said.
Now, he added, it’s the Americans’ turn.
Isayen Herrera contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.
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3) Trump Revealed Something Essential About Elites
By Hugo Drochon and John Guida, Sept. 28, 2026
Dr. Drochon is the author of “Elites and Democracy.” Mr. Guida is an editor in Times Opinion.
Simon Bailly
“We live in the age of the revolt against the elites,” writes Hugo Drochon in “Elites and Democracy.”
Indeed, everyone hates elites. No one wants to be one, or at least admit to being one. No candidate, Democrat or Republican, running for office in the midterms would call him or herself an elite.
But there is a rub: The candidates are running to become, or remain, elites — elites who govern and wield power.
In short, for better or worse, as Dr. Drochon, a political theorist, argues, democracy depends on elites: “How can the fact that a small number of people wield disproportionate power in economic, social or political spheres be reconciled with democracy understood as political equality?”
Dr. Drochon explores the role of elites in our politics in a written conversation with John Guida, an editor in Times Opinion. It has been edited for length and clarity.
John Guida: We are fewer than 40 days away from midterm Election Day. These elections are typically seen as a contest between candidates and parties. But are they also, in your view, a contest between elites, or at least who gets to be elite?
Hugo Drochon: They’re both: Parties are the institutions through which elites compete for political power, and voters decide between them during the midterms. Whoever makes it through the primaries can be considered a political elite; the elections in November will decide which elites get to be in power.
There are always elites. The people get to decide which ones rule. That may not be our ideal of democracy, but it’s not nothing, either.
Guida: So what is the ideal of democracy, and how does the reality of rule by elites complicate it?
Drochon: Our ideal is “people rule” or “sovereignty of the people.” The existence of elites complicates that: It doesn’t mean the people don’t have power, but it’s not absolute. You might say power is shared between the people and the elites.
If elites are a feature and not a bug of our political system, it’s an inconvenient truth that forces us to rethink our understanding of what democracy is. The reality is, we don’t have majority rule, but something closer to minorities rule. They don’t rule on their own; they need some support from the people to hold the reins of power. That’s exactly what we’re going to see in November.
Guida: And who are the elite?
Drochon: Elites are at the top of their respective spheres. They can be the best chess players, lawyers, athletes, artists — think about all the debates about who is the GOAT in any field. But there is a difference between what we might call governing and nongoverning elites, between those who have power and those who are the best at what they do.
What we’ve seen recently in the U.S. in particular is a big change in the composition of the governing elite. Donald Trump, in 2016, was not a member of the political elite — he was not part of the establishment in Washington — although he was certainly an economic elite, part of the 1 percent, and a celebrity as the host of “The Apprentice.”
Over the past 10 years, a new elite has risen to challenge the old, established political elite and has largely been successful in replacing it. And it has done so, especially in 2024-25, by bringing other elites — the “tech bros” — into the fray on their side, even putting one of them, Elon Musk, in charge of DOGE.
Guida: So Lionel Messi is elite. Taylor Swift. Tom Brady. Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Christopher Nolan. Dolly Parton was elite. But that is a categorically different elite than in the world of politics.
Drochon: Exactly. That is the difference defined by Vilfredo Pareto, who gave the word “elite” the meaning it has today: between governing and nongoverning elites.
Guida: You mentioned the tech bros. What does their presence — people like Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg — at the White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping say about their current role in politics?
Drochon: They’re the clearest case of nongoverning elites becoming governing ones: Being at the state dinner for Xi means they’re no longer knocking on the door; they’re now inside.
Another way to think about politics is as rising elites perpetually challenging established elites. This is what’s been happening here. The rising elites brought economic elites over to their side, along with the people who are part of the MAGA movement.
Pareto has this simple but effective formula: A is the established elite that is challenged by B, the rising elite. C are the people. B persuades C that it will serve C’s interests better, and C helps B topple A. Then D (a new elite) rises to challenge B. The constant is that C never rules, although in this perpetual challenge, I want to argue, there is the space for change, and even positive change.
Guida: Perhaps you could apply that formula to the Democratic Party this year, which is going through something of a makeover. Its candidates include democratic socialists in New York City (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the best known) as well as people like a smokejumper in Montana, a farmer in North Carolina, a Tejano singer in Texas, a Methodist pastor in Kansas. … The list goes on. Does that translate to Pareto’s formula, or some version of it?
Drochon: Yes. I’ve tried to develop that idea through the notion of “dynamic democracy.” For political change to happen, you need three elements. The first is a social movement or force putting pressure on the political system. Second, you need a section of the established elite to break off from it and join the movement to overthrow the established elite. And that coming together of the two happens through institutions like political parties — Step 3.
I was fascinated by how MAGA managed to put Trump in the White House, but Black Lives Matter didn’t seem to have had the same or similar political impact. Arguably, Trump would not have come to power in 2016 if establishment Republicans like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell hadn’t fallen in behind him once he’d won the nomination, rather than resisting him: They acted as what I call the “rebel” elites.
Nothing comparable happened for Black Lives Matter: Black voters were crucial to Joe Biden in 2020, but no section of the Democratic establishment turned B.L.M. into a political vehicle.
The smoke jumpers and farmers are the party renewing itself from below — Pareto’s circulation of elites — which is healthy. The democratic socialists are the more challenging test. The question for A.O.C. and the Democratic Socialists of America is if a section of the established Democratic Party is willing to break and come over to their side. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said in August that he doesn’t support the D.S.A.’s agenda, so for now the answer seems to be no, but let’s see how that develops.
Guida: Gallup has a poll tracking Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going. In 2005, it dipped below 40 percent, and only for the briefest moment (February 2020) has it risen above that level since. It currently stands at 21 percent. That seems like a damning verdict on the political elite. What does the perennial dissatisfaction of Americans say about the elite? Or is there a failure here of the dynamism you identified as a key part of the churn of politics?
Drochon: Perennial is the operative word here: The fact of elites is always going to rub up against the view we have of what democracy should be. There’s no way to close that gap.
But you can narrow it. As one elite gives way to another, change can occur — hopefully for the better, and hopefully in the direction of doing a better job of delivering what voters are actually looking for.
The opposite — leaving the current elites in place — generally makes things worse. There is an argument that actually there hasn’t been enough churn, to use that term, in U.S. politics recently: Samuel Moyn has recently decried the U.S. as a gerontocracy.
You could also argue that democracy is something never achieved and something we have to keep striving for.
I want to defend that idea: We have to keep striving, but in doing so, good things may come out of it. And it also makes celebrating the small victories worthwhile.
There’s this great fable from Aesop I like to quote, of the dying peasant on his deathbed who tells his children there is a buried treasure in the field: They dig and dig and dig but can’t find the treasure, because there is no buried treasure. But by the end, having dug up the land — tilled it — they have made themselves richer.
That’s the relation I’d like to keep between the ideal of democracy and the reality, dynamic democracy: We’ll never find ideal democracy of the rule of the people, but in striving toward it, certain democratic benefits might accrue.
Guida: Anton Jäger (a Times contributing writer) has developed a theory of “hyperpolitics.” How does that interact with elite theories? He recently described hyperpolitics as “a concept that describes a change in political culture in the West” that notes “an increase in political activity on a variety of metrics, whether it’s voting, protests, but also political violence.” That increase in political activity, however, “is not matched by an increasing institutional strength.”
Drochon: There’s a strong overlap between the two: Jäger is pinpointing how there’s been an increase in social movements, without institutions to carry that pressure into changing the political system. That’s the Black Lives Matter condition generalized: movement without mediation. But institutions alone aren’t enough: You also need rebel elites.
Guida: You are in Britain, which has a Labour prime minister. But in much of Europe, parties on the left, particularly the center-left, are struggling, and populist parties of the right — most recently, Alternative for Germany — are often advancing. Any idea why these movements on the left have trouble connecting to institutions, political parties or rebel elites? Or has the decline of mass politics and unions hit the center harder than parties further on the ideological spectrum of both the left and the right?
Drochon: On the center-right, look at the Christian Democratic Union in Germany or even the traditional conservatives in France; the latter have almost been wiped out. Most of the energy seems to be on the far-right at the moment or, at least, the AfD, Reform UK and Marine Le Pen seem closest to gaining power.
But there is energy on the far-left, too: In Berlin, the Left party has just come first in the state election; in Britain, Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, has been an insurgent force; and in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon might make it to the second round of the French presidential elections.
But the collapse of traditional mass politics and unions — unions, like parties, serve as mediators between the people and political elites, and that loss of mediation has meant a turn to more populist politics with a direct link to a leader — has hit the center parties most strongly. It’s also that we’re going through a change of elites: The post-Cold War consensus is coming to an end, and the politicians who represented that consensus are being replaced by new ones. So there is a “circulation of elites” — another Pareto term — happening here, with new elites challenging the established ones. But all of these parties — the AfD, Reform, even Le Pen — need established elites, whether political, economic or social, to break off and come over to their side if they’re going to achieve power.
Guida: The 20th century provides the most obvious, and horrible, examples of this dynamic process going badly wrong, or at least going in worrisome directions. How should we think about those examples, when the dynamic process produces institutions or parties that are authoritarian or illiberal?
Drochon: It’s the same mechanism. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler came to power on his own: Established conservatives brought them in, thinking they could tame them. That, on a very different scale, is the Ryan and McConnell story — and it ultimately consumed them.
The mechanism itself is neutral, so the story goes both ways: If you’re in the D.S.A. and want to take over the Democrats, you look for one concession at a time. But if you don’t want D.S.A. to subsume the Democratic Party — or MAGA to take over the Republican Party — then you know you have to draw the line.
What I’ve described as rebel elites isn’t automatic: The decision to break is a choice, not a fait accompli — it can be resisted. And you can fight back; this is, after all, a dynamic process.
Guida: Are there ways of getting better at choosing elites? Some seem better than others at disguising, or at least talking past, their eliteness.
Drochon: Go back to Aesop’s fable for a moment: We can still judge whether the rising elites are at least aiming toward more democracy or less. And by democracy here I mean equality, whether political, social or economic. Do politicians say they’re going to increase political participation? Are they going to redistribute wealth? Are they going to be more inclusive?
Every society has a distinct elite. In the U.K., for instance, we often say that P.P.E. — philosophy, politics and economics — at Oxford is the “degree that runs Britain.” In France, it was ENA, until Macron abolished it and replaced it with the National Institute of Public Service. In the U.S., Ivy League-educated lawyers have often had the edge. It makes a real difference whether you have civil servants, lawyers or debaters running the show.
Like our politicians, our societies are always in flux. Ideally we’d have leaders who can manage and channel that flux. But if they’re not up to it, we need to be able to throw them out and try someone new, to see if they can do it any better. That’s the notion behind dynamic democracy, and, as I see it, still fundamentally what democracy is about.
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4) The Big Question Looming Over Brazil’s Elections: President Trump’s Next Move
As Brazil prepares to hold elections next month, Latin America’s biggest nation is taking steps to shield its democracy from potential American meddling.
By Ana Ionova and Adam B. Ellick, Sept. 28, 2026
Ana Ionova reported from Brasília and Washington, and Adam B. Ellick from Brasília and São Paulo, Brazil.
“And leaked documents written by an ally of Mr. Bolsonaro, reported by Brazilian media and reviewed by The New York Times, suggest people close to the candidate may have proposed giving the United States access to Brazil’s critical minerals in exchange for support.”
Supporters of the right-wing presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro waved American flags and brandished a blowup doll of President Trump clutching an imprisoned President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at a rally this month in São Paulo, Brazil. Andre Penner/Associated Press
Since taking office, President Trump has become an electoral kingmaker in Latin America. Right-wing candidates aligned with Washington have won the past seven elections in the region, with Mr. Trump explicitly endorsing the winner in two of them.
“We’re doing very well in South America,” Mr. Trump told reporters this month. “Lots of people that I got elected.”
Now comes the biggest regional test for the right and for Mr. Trump’s record of success: Brazil.
As Brazilians prepare to head to the polls, the question looming over Latin America’s largest democracy is whether Mr. Trump will try to influence its presidential election next month.
The American leader has not openly championed any Brazilian candidate. But the Trump administration has in more subtle ways lifted the right-wing challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, who is running against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist.
Having watched Mr. Trump wade into other elections and experienced his failed attempt to help Mr. Bolsonaro’s father avoid prison for plotting a coup, Brazil is erecting a firewall to try to shield its high-stakes vote from potential U.S. meddling.
The efforts include monitoring foreign lobbying and disinformation, fighting false claims about electoral fraud and enlisting the support of countries in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
This article is based on interviews with over a dozen Brazilian government and electoral officials, law enforcement officers, intelligence agents and foreign diplomats. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s campaign and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The concern for many in Brazil is that, in a narrow contest where polls show Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Lula practically tied, a helping hand from Mr. Trump could tip the scales in the challenger’s favor.
The Trump administration has rejected Brazil’s claims that it is seeking to interfere, even though it tried this summer to send a U.S. delegation to investigate Brazil’s electoral integrity.
American help, Brazilian officials said, could come in the form of more measures to hurt Mr. Lula’s image. Mr. Trump used sanctions and tariff threats in an attempt last year to save Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio Bolsonaro’s father, who tried to cling to power after falsely claiming the last election was stolen. That failed, and he was sentenced to 27 years.
Many also worry about online campaigns from abroad aiding Mr. Bolsonaro.
A recent wave of paid social media posts, shared by prominent U.S. right-wing accounts, added to those fears. The posts amplified claims by Polymarket, the predictions market backed by Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, that Mr. Bolsonaro stood staggering chances of winning, deviating wildly from polls showing no clear front-runner.
Mr. Lula, among the few world leaders to take on Mr. Trump, has made clear he is prepared to defend his country’s interests.
“The Americans better not come trying to influence our elections,” he said this month. “Trump should mind his own country’s business.” Speaking at the United Nations last week, he blasted foreign meddling into his country’s sovereign affairs, without naming the United States: “Brazil is nobody’s backyard.”
He also launched a searing campaign video accusing the Trump administration, without offering evidence, of helping his rival and interfering in Brazil’s elections with an eye to seizing its natural resources.
Brazil, a vast nation of 210 million, has an economy powered by commodities the world needs and institutions that are not afraid to push the limits of democracy in the name of saving it.
“Wherever the threat may come from, we have the tools to defend ourselves,” said Gilmar Mendes, Brazil’s longest serving Supreme Court justice. “If necessary, there will certainly be a forceful response.”
The Trump Factor
Worried about campaigns orchestrated from abroad, Brazil’s intelligence agencies have made combating foreign manipulation through social media a top priority.
The court that oversees elections has also set new rules for electoral misinformation, asking companies like Google and Meta to submit plans for combating misleading videos and posts generated by artificial intelligence.
And, amid renewed attacks by Mr. Bolsonaro’s allies in Brazil and abroad about the credibility of the country’s voting systems, the authorities began a major campaign, complete with a mascot, aimed at bolstering trust among voters, diplomats and international observers.
A win by Mr. Bolsonaro would bolster ambitious plans laid out by Washington to expand its influence in Latin America through right-wing allies.
“Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” the State Department said in a recent, lengthy video.
Brazil represents the biggest remaining prize. As president, Mr. Bolsonaro would more likely align with the United States on issues like organized crime and critical minerals. (Mr. Lula has said Brazil would not hand over its natural resources.)
“This is the fork in the road that America faces,” Mr. Bolsonaro told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas in March. “Either you have the most powerful ally in the hemisphere, or an antagonist.”
Mr. Bolsonaro’s allies have relished the prospect of American assistance. At a recent rally, supporters waved American flags and brandished a blowup doll of Mr. Trump clutching an imprisoned Mr. Lula.
And leaked documents written by an ally of Mr. Bolsonaro, reported by Brazilian media and reviewed by The New York Times, suggest people close to the candidate may have proposed giving the United States access to Brazil’s critical minerals in exchange for support. The document’s author acknowledged producing it, but denied writing it on behalf of Mr. Bolsonaro’s campaign or that it was shared with U.S. officials. Mr. Bolsonaro’s campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the document.
The U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has cast Brazil as unfriendly to American interests, lumping it in with U.S. adversaries like Cuba and Nicaragua.
Many in Brazil have bristled at the idea that Mr. Trump, who was once recorded asking a state election official in Georgia to “find” more votes, should be stepping into another nation’s elections.
“With all due respect,” said Justice Mendes, “the United States has no lessons to teach us when it comes to electoral systems.”
American Help
In Brazil, worries about American meddling have dominated political discourse and editorial pages for months. And to many, the Trump administration has already been propping up Mr. Bolsonaro’s candidacy in indirect ways.
At a time when Brazilians are deeply worried about security, Mr. Trump yielded to lobbying by Mr. Bolsonaro to designate two Brazilian gangs as terrorist groups.
The administration also tried to send U.S. envoys to meet Mr. Bolsonaro in Brazil and investigate the country’s voting systems, which prompted Brazilian officials to block the visits.
If his son, Flávio, loses, there are signs the candidate could launch similar claims of electoral cheating — and his allies expect to find a sympathetic ear in Mr. Trump.
Following the last election, President Biden recognized Mr. Lula’s victory within hours. Even so, Mr. Bolsonaro’s claims of fraud inspired his supporters to storm the capital, in a riot reminiscent of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Counterattack
International experts agree Brazil’s electronic voting machines, a frequent target of Mr. Bolsonaro’s movement, are some of the most secure in the world.
Yet a poll last month showed 34 percent of Brazilians distrust the voting machines, up from 20 percent in 2022.
The electoral court has invited political parties and hackers to test the machines and greatly expanded randomized auditing.
On a recent weekday at the electoral court, social media influencers snapped selfies with an election mascot shaped like a voting machine. The court also hosted over 80 diplomats for a workshop touting Brazil’s electoral system.
“We opened our doors to the world,” said Justice Kássio Nunes Marques, the chief of the electoral court. “We went about dismantling every argument.”
And with U.S. support no longer a given, Brazil has worked to shore up international backing elsewhere.
Diplomatic missions from the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia and other countries, worried about interference from Washington, are holding informal talks on how to jointly respond after the election, according to three senior foreign diplomats.
These diplomats said allies are likely to quickly defend the vote’s integrity no matter who wins, but they also worry about displeasing Washington.
International observers are also sending more monitors. And, in a last-minute reversal, the Carter Center, an independent U.S.-based monitoring group, also agreed to send observers, partly motivated by concerns about meddling, said a person familiar with the decision.
It is far from clear whether any U.S. effort to help Mr. Bolsonaro would be successful. It could well supercharge support for Mr. Lula, in another example of the anti-Trump bump that has reshaped elections in Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
“We have no doubt about the outcome that will emerge,” said Justice Nunes Marques, “whether favorable to one side or the other — because it is the will of the Brazilian people.”
Jack Nicas, Alice Maciel and Thayz Guimarães contributed reporting from Brasília.
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5) I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This.
By Bill McKibben, Sept. 29, 2026
Mr. McKibben is a professor at Middlebury College and the author of “Here Comes the Sun.”
Sam Gulliver
Psychologists have claimed that evolutionary biology leaves humans ill-equipped to deal with giant, slow-moving problems. But suddenly we live in a moment when problems are speeding and piling up.
The climate crisis now consists of walls of water sweeping down Nepali rivers, obliterating entire towns in the blink of an eye, and wildfires that wipe out California neighborhoods in hours. And we’re confronting the birth and Bunyanesque growth of a new technology, artificial intelligence, that, according to some of its creators, is fairly likely to kill us all in the near future. We have to sit and listen as men worth unfathomable sums speculate about whether our species will survive their companies’ initial public offerings.
We definitely weren’t designed to cope with all this — our bodies, our nervous systems, our brains. Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they’re simply wearing us out. A lot of us would like politicians to offer, alongside their promises of affordability, even a glimpse of serenity.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey released in early September found that in 2024, 71.5 percent of adults reported that at least some of the time in the past three months they felt fatigued, defined as “physical or mental tiredness or exhaustion that does not improve with additional sleep or rest.” As the survey’s lead author, Natalie A.E. Young, told NBC, fatigue has become “one of the most frequently reported health concerns in primary care visits in the U.S.,” and sufferers — which, again, includes a vast majority of us — are “at higher risk of activity limitations and disability, including permanent work disability.” The most recent Stress in America report from the American Psychological Association found that a majority of adults reported feeling isolated and more anxious about the future than they used to be, and that much of the trouble could be laid at the door of our impossible politics: Almost two-thirds of respondents cited “societal divisions” as a significant stressor.
A kind of overwhelming weariness and even sadness is increasingly the default state of what, in living memory, were optimistic, get-up-and-go-ish fellow Americans. I think if we had some way of surveying Americans at 3 a.m., we’d find huge numbers of people awake, wondering what new strain might be in store come morning. I don’t think it’s fragility at work — how are we supposed to respond to the now almost daily news that roving bands of A.I. agents are up to mayhem, or that the onrushing El Niño will take temperatures to heights no human has ever experienced?
I arrive at this point with an unfair advantage, having spent the past four decades facing down the steady and so far implacable rise in the planet’s temperature. Over the years I’ve worked out remedies that keep me mentally healthy enough to keep fighting. I’ve helped build big movements in no small part so that I’ll have others to lean on, and I’ve learned that I need an hour or two of exercising in the natural world most days to reset my soul. Yet even those strategies increasingly come up short; the level of pressure that an even somewhat engaged American feels at the moment is very nearly debilitating.
In past periods of pervasive crisis, Americans at least had some institutions on which to lean. We’ve traditionally thought of the president as a kind of national father figure. It helped a Depression-haunted nation when Franklin D. Roosevelt told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself (and then backed it up with wave after wave of programs designed to make it so).
President Trump’s main response to our A.I. fear is to rename it “superintelligence,” while the country’s chief health authority, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has decided it’s time to go to work on chemtrails from airplanes. The tech chieftains wring their hands a bit about the trouble they’ve caused (remember, their creations have broken into companies and government agencies) and then get back to making their fortunes. Very few people feel like placing their trust in these powerful figures, young Americans most of all: Recent polling shows that roughly seven in 10 people ages 18 to 34 distrust Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and the other would-be wizards leading the big A.I. companies.
A not irrational response to all this would be to try to ignore it. Lots of people are doing so. Yet this kind of avoidance will just get us in deeper trouble by ceding control to those who profit from it, so I hope we won’t choose quietism or escape. I’m hard at work volunteering in this fall’s midterm elections, for instance; we simply can’t tune out.
If we elect serious leaders who can take control of Congress and the presidency, they’ll have to work hard — we need all kinds of reforms to prevent a relapse of the sickness to which we’ve fallen prey. None of it will be low stress.
But it would be nice if those leaders could at least have, as one goal, a country and a world where we could occasionally ignore them, where we didn’t have to live under constant tension. A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time. Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York doesn’t issue hourly tirades. Instead, he offers occasional videos of him and his crew cheerfully filling potholes; by most measures, his popularity has surged and the city’s mood seems to have improved.
I’d be happy to listen to Jon Ossoff or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for half an hour every Thursday if either of them runs for and is elected president. And then I’d be happy to think about something else that weekend; civic participation should be a part of life, not something that keeps you up at night.
Restoring some kind of calm is easier said than done, and will require hard choices. If A.I. represents a mortal threat, then it should be wrestled to the ground and stuck in a cage. Whatever its putative benefits, they aren’t worth any of us having to contemplate human extinction. The climate crisis is almost easy by comparison; we have inexpensive solar, wind and battery technology that can replace the fossil fuels driving temperatures ever higher, though of course getting to that point would require standing up to Big Oil. These hopes and fears will animate the next presidential election. Someone who figures out how to talk straightforwardly with Americans about the trade-offs will win the votes of a grateful nation.
Because if human survival and economic resilience are important goals, so is a world calm enough to meet the needs of the human nervous system. We can’t keep on like this — it’s simply inhuman. We’re creating a world that’s only fit for something artificial.
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6) ICE Plans 5,000 New Hires to Help With Deportation Drive
A similar surge last year resulted in undervetted officers initially being let in and then removed as the agency skipped basic checks for new recruits.
By Alexandra Berzon and Hamed Aleaziz, Sept. 29, 2026
Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark, N.J. in May. The agency has staffed up drastically since President Trump took office, growing by about 8,000, to reach 29,000 employees as of July, according to federal data. Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing for another hiring surge to support President Trump’s deportation campaign, with a goal of bringing on 5,000 new employees by the end of the year, according to four people familiar with the plans.
The hiring would expand the agency’s work force by around 17 percent and draw on substantial new funding provided by Congress. The agency had already staffed up drastically since President Trump took office, growing by about 8,000, to reach 29,000 employees as of July, according to federal data.
Most of the recruits are expected to be deportation officers, who participate in a variety of enforcement activities, from arresting targets to case management.
ICE has sharply ramped up its enforcement in the past few months with an aggressive arrest campaign bolstered by an infusion of more than $100 billion from Congress. Amid the campaign, agents have been under pressure to work seven days a week, and ICE offices have assigned more agents to immigration enforcement.
Last year’s hiring effort drew criticism for its size and speed, as officers were let into the agency with limited or no initial vetting. By the spring, hundreds of those new hires had been removed.
This time, the agency plans to employ stricter standards for checking out new hires, one person familiar with the procedures said. But it is unclear if ICE can adequately vet and hire an onslaught of new applicants or will run into some of the same concerns.
“Adequately vetting people takes time,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former acting chief of staff at ICE under the Biden administration. “It’s more important to get it right than do it fast.”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the newest hiring efforts were an outgrowth of the new funding allocated to D.H.S. and unrelated to attrition from the previous surge in hires. The agency said it planned to maintain rigorous standards.
Federal law enforcement agencies have historically struggled to fill positions rapidly and under pressure without letting in people with problematic pasts, said Daniel Altman, a former U.S. Customs and Border Protection official who oversaw internal investigations for the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
“Over time we tend to see an increase in excessive force and other types of misconduct that can happen when you hire someone not suitable for a position.” Mr. Altman said.
The agency is still digging itself out of a vast backlog in vetting the backgrounds of officers and others who were brought on last year. Nearly 7,500 people are still waiting for the extensive background checks required for their positions, with an ability to work on a limited basis in the meantime, according to two people familiar with the process who were granted anonymity to be able to speak freely.
While it is not unusual to be in training or even sometimes put to work before a full background check, the number of hires still needing to be checked is far more than is typical, the people said.
The extensive checks are aided by third-party contractors but analyzed and reviewed by federal employees, who determine whether the person can continue working. There is intense pressure to get the checks done while the new hires are still in a probationary period, when they are easier to fire.
Normally, new hires receive preliminary checks before a full background check, which can take months. But last year, the agency began to make the initial determinations on recruits without completing a full security form, fingerprints or any polygraph testing.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that a high-level official who oversaw preliminary vetting in August 2025 filed a whistle-blower complaint with the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security raising concerns about the practices. He wrote that the Trump administration was giving final job offers without proper preliminary vetting or any at all, violating the law and fast-tracking unqualified, “improperly vetted” candidates into ICE’s ranks, exposing the agency to “grave national security risks.”
Such concerns have come to the fore amid actions from some of the recruits hired last fall. Among them are David Brouillette, a new officer whose ex-wife identified him as the person who fired the fatal shots that killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant, in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13.
The Homeland Security Department did not make Mr. Brouillette available for an interview. In a statement, the department criticized efforts to publicly identify ICE officers.
Albert Sun and Michael Gold contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research
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7) Israeli Settlers Stop Soldiers From Returning Palestinians to Their Home
The Supreme Court had ordered the military to ensure a West Bank family that fled violence could go back. But settlers blocked the effort, with the authorities accused of not doing enough to confront them.
By Natan Odenheimer and Fatima AbdulKarim, Sept. 29, 2026
Natan Odenheimer reported from Tel Aviv, and Fatima AbdulKarim from Ramallah, West Bank.
Mahmoud Toubassi with his wife, Aedah, in the village of Jalud in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Tuesday. Ammar Awad/Reuters
More than 100 Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and soldiers in the West Bank overnight when the Israeli military tried to return a Palestinian family to their home after they were forced out, with the authorities accused of not doing enough to confront a rise in settler violence.
The Israeli government, military and police have been condemned for failing to protect Palestinians in the occupied territory after a surge of settler attacks resulted in few arrests and stoked international criticism. The settlers are Jewish Israelis who live in areas that Israel occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Most of the international community considers the settlements to be illegal.
In the latest outburst of violence that began late on Monday, the settlers set fire to Palestinian homes and wounded three Israeli border police officers when the soldiers tried to return the family, the Toubassis, to their home in the village of Jalud, the military said in a statement. Three people were arrested, according to the Israeli police, who said in a statement that they had opened an investigation.
The family were forced to leave their home in July after repeated settler attacks on the property. In August, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had created a closed zone in the area to prevent nonresidents from entering. But Palestinians documented Israeli soldiers standing by as settlers went in and out of the Toubassi house or even playing ball with them in the yard.
The Supreme Court this month ordered the military to ensure the safe return of the Toubassi family after settlers took over their home. Under international law, the military is responsible for maintaining law and order and protecting Palestinians living in the West Bank because Israel is an occupying power, a principle that is recognized by Israeli courts. The military said that the soldiers filmed playing with the settlers had been removed from combat duty, according to the Supreme Court decision.
Overnight, after the family had returned to the property, a group of settlers set fire to a vehicle at the house and threw stones at the building, according to Mahmoud Toubassi, one of the family members. The military evacuated the family about an hour after they had returned when settlers moved to set the house alight, Mr. Toubassi added.
“Without the army, we would have not been able to leave,” he said.
The military said in a statement that soldiers had been unable to permanently return the family to their home, but also noted that troops had stopped a more serious incident from taking place. After the family entered the home, the military said, more than 100 “rioters” arrived and “severe violence” started, with rocks thrown at security forces, roads blocked and tires set on fire. The military said that additional personnel had been called in to try to disperse the settlers and that those forces had intervened to prevent the family from being harmed.
Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has soared, according to U.N. data, especially since the start of the Gaza war, which was ignited by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. So far in 2026, at least 23 Palestinians have been killed in incidents linked to clashes with settlers, according to the U.N. humanitarian office.
International pressure on Israel to rein in settler attacks has grown in recent weeks. This month, Britain, Canada and France banned trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
In recent months, settlers have besieged Palestinian families in their homes or forced them out, including in Jalud and in neighboring villages. The violence has been widely condemned, including by Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, who this month called settlers who attacked Palestinians “terrorists.”
In a statement released by his office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel condemned the violence targeting the Toubassis. He added that “the handful of rioters are not representative of the law-abiding settler public in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name of the West Bank.
Last week, Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly that settler violence against Palestinians was down to 150 “juvenile delinquents.” But Israeli former security officials and human rights groups say the problem is far broader. A group of prominent Israelis, including more than three dozen retired army and air force generals, has accused the Netanyahu government of failing to check what they termed “Jewish terrorism.”
Critics say Mr. Netanyahu’s policies have fueled clashes in the West Bank. Gadi Eisenkot, Mr. Netanyahu’s main rival in next month’s general election, called the overnight attack “a campaign of terror of violence.”
“This is what anarchy and loss of control look like, which have reached new heights under the current government,” Mr. Eisenkot said on social media.
Instead of being able to sleep in their own beds after Israeli troops escorted them back home, the Toubassis watched as their home was attacked again.
“It broke my heart to see the fire eating up the house,” Mr. Toubassi said.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel.
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8) Trump Administration Prepares to Ask Tax Filers if They Are U.S. Citizens
The new question, included on a draft version of the primary tax form, comes as part of an anti-immigrant turn at an agency that long prioritized tax administration.
By Andrew Duehren, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 29, 2026
A draft version of Form 1040, the primary tax form, includes a new question that asks taxpayers to declare their immigration status.
The Trump administration is preparing to add a question on next year’s tax returns asking people whether they are a citizen or legally authorized to work in the United States, expanding an attempt to cut tax refunds for immigrants or push them out of the tax system entirely.
In a draft version of Form 1040, the primary tax form, the Internal Revenue Service this month included a new section that asks filers to check a box “Yes” or “No” to answer the question: “At the time you file your return, are you, and your spouse if filing jointly, a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or an alien lawfully authorized to work in the U.S.?”
The additional question comes as part of what the Trump administration has said is an effort to prevent undocumented immigrants from receiving federal tax benefits. But many tax credits require recipients to have valid Social Security numbers, meaning previous tax forms already screened undocumented immigrants from receiving them. That fact has led several tax and immigration experts to conclude that the question is simply intended to scare undocumented immigrants out of filing their taxes at all.
That fear first emerged last year, when the I.R.S. shared addresses it had on file for roughly 47,000 people with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Federal law closely guards access to information submitted on tax returns, and several courts have blocked the I.R.S. from sharing bulk data with ICE. Still, even if the I.R.S. may not be able to legally do so, the addition of the citizenship question could reawaken concerns about the agency using its vast stores of information to help detain or deport people.
Undocumented immigrants pay tens of billions in combined federal income, payroll and local taxes every year. Since they do not have valid Social Security numbers, undocumented immigrants are among the people who can use a separate nine-digit code called an individual taxpayer identification number to file their taxes. The I.R.S. has not in recent history asked taxpayers about their immigration status, and has instead sought to encourage every U.S. resident to file their taxes.
“The I.R.S. doesn’t need this information to administer the tax law,” said Nina Olson, a former I.R.S. official and the executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, which sued the I.R.S. over its previous data sharing with ICE. “The only reason you have that attestation is to deter people.”
At the same time, the Treasury Department is moving forward with a push to cut off immigrants with legal status from receiving the full value of several tax credits. The administration has said those new rules are targeted at “illegal aliens,” but in reality they would affect recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, as well as immigrants on work visas, among others.
The question on tax forms and the stricter eligibility rules are the latest signs that the I.R.S. has become a tool in the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda, an important shift for an agency that for decades was narrowly focused on collecting taxes. Tax preparers and lawyers said the Trump administration’s new tax credit rules are stricter than the eligibility rules approved by Congress and threaten to create confusion for millions of tax filers next year.
President Trump has in recent months also sought to build a database of U.S. citizens, and he has proposed excluding noncitizens without green cards from the census. The new tax return question would most likely not be able to feed into those other efforts, though, because of taxpayer privacy laws. The proposed changes would probably draw legal challenges.
The I.R.S. did not respond to a request for comment. A representative of the Treasury Department said the citizenship question on tax forms would “provide the I.R.S. important and necessary information to help ensure tax benefits go where the law directs” without addressing specific questions about the changes.
“That rationale doesn’t hold water,” said Brandon DeBot, a senior attorney adviser at New York University’s Tax Law Center. “The government already has all the information it needs for whether someone is eligible for a tax credit.”
The overall effort began to take shape in August, when the Treasury Department proposed regulations outlining the new restrictions for four refundable tax credits: the earned-income tax credit, the child tax credit, the adoption tax credit and the American Opportunity tax credit, which covers education costs. In general, tax credits offset the amount of tax that someone owes, but refundable tax credits can go further, providing a payment to a filer that is larger than the balance of owed tax.
This means refundable tax credits can effectively serve as cash support to poor Americans who do not make enough money to owe much income tax. (Here is a simplified example: Someone who receives a $1,000 refundable tax credit, but owes only $200 in tax, can still receive the remaining $800 in tax credit as a payment.)
The Treasury regulations would, for the first time, define the money received through the tax credits — the amount beyond the tax owed — as a “federal public benefit.” That would subject this portion of the tax credit to a set of eligibility requirements laid out in a separate 1996 law, rather than the rules Congress wrote for the tax credits specifically.
Under tax laws passed by Congress, three of the four credits are already limited to people with work-authorized Social Security numbers, while the adoption credit is available to a broader pool. The proposed regulations would, instead, require recipients to be a “qualified alien” under the terms of the 1996 law, called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
Several categories of immigrants are authorized to work — and therefore have Social Security numbers — but do not count as “qualified aliens” under that law. Beyond DACA recipients and people with work visas, residents with student visas or temporary protected status would no longer be able to receive the full amount of the tax credits because they are not “qualified aliens.”
“This isn’t about undocumented immigrants, no matter how much they advertise it as such,” said Margot Crandall-Hollick, a researcher at the Tax Policy Center, a think tank. “This is about going after people who are allowed to be here and allowed to work here.”
The additional question on Form 1040 asks only if someone is a citizen, a U.S. national or authorized to work — and not whether the filer is a “qualified alien,” meaning that the answer would not be relevant to enforcing the Treasury’s new rules. Reflecting that, the I.R.S. released a draft of a separate additional form that directly asks if someone is a “qualified alien.”
“It’s a weird duplicate question,” Richard Pon, a certified public accountant in California, said of the Form 1040 change. “‘Qualified alien’ is different from the question that’s on the 1040. Why would they even ask that question about citizenship? I can’t think of any compliance reason for that.”
Those hoping to receive the full value of the tax credits will now have to know whether their immigration status aligns with the complicated definition of “qualified alien.” That added complexity could cause some people who are in fact “qualified aliens,” like green card holders, to not claim the full value of the tax credits. The Treasury regulations warn of penalties for people who fill out the forms incorrectly, a potential deterrent for uncertain filers.
“The design of these questions is to confuse and scare the people. Tax preparers are completely unprepared to figure out whether someone is a qualified immigrant,” Sarah Krieger, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center. “People are just going to be chilled or deterred from filing their taxes or claiming credits they’re eligible for.”
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9) Where High Rents Drive People Into Poverty
A new study identified 10 locations where higher-than-average housing costs have impacted poverty the most.
By Elizabeth A. Harris, Sept. 29, 2026
The housing shortage in the United States not only drives up rents, it is also a significant driver of poverty, according to a new study released by the Pew Charitable Trust on Tuesday.
The study examined parts of the country where lowering home prices would lift a significant number of people out of poverty — similar in effect to a major anti-poverty program — at a moment when the national conversation around housing has gained urgency at every level of government.
The analysis found that in nine states and Washington, D.C., poverty rates are 16 to 34 percent higher than they would be if housing costs were the same as the national average. Most of those states are on the East Coast — New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, New York and New Hampshire. Hawaii, California and Colorado also made the list. The analysis was based on research by Zachary Parolin, a professor at the University of Oxford, who examined census data to determine the states where housing costs contributed to the greatest share of poverty.
In New Hampshire, the poverty rate, as defined by the federal poverty line, is 16 percent higher than it would be with average housing costs. In Hawaii, the poverty rate is 34 percent higher. In most states included in the study, the rate of child poverty was even more elevated.
Nick Taylor, the director of Housing Action NH in New Hampshire, said local businesses have trouble hiring, especially entry level workers, because people can’t afford a place to live.
“We’re seeing people who are working hourly jobs at 15, 20, 25 dollars an hour, which is well above minimum wage here in New Hampshire,” Mr. Taylor said. “But they still can’t even come close to paying median housing costs.”
Alex Horowitz, project director for housing policy at Pew, said the core issue is supply: There just isn’t enough housing in any of these states, and it is difficult and expensive to build there. That means fewer homes are constructed and the ones that are cost more. The report estimates that the United States would need an additional 4 to 7 million more homes to alleviate the housing crisis.
Mr. Horowitz said that whittling away at regulations would help create more housing, for example by allowing townhouses to be built where only detached homes are permitted or by doing away with parking requirements, which mandate how many parking spots have to be included for each home.
“Thirty percent of low-income households don’t own a car, and they end up having to pay for a parking spot that they’re not using,” Mr. Horowitz said. Builders sometimes reduce the number of apartments they’re constructing so they can have the required number of parking spots, “even if the residents don’t want them,” he said.
States have started passing legislation to address the shortage. Mr. Horowitz said that between 2011 and 2016, all the states in the country cumulatively passed an average of one law per year to build more homes. In 2025, more than 100 such laws were passed. This summer, the federal government passed a housing bill that aims to speed up home building.
Last year, Pew released a study that found in cities that have added significantly to their housing stock, rents generally went down across housing types, but rents for older, less expensive apartments decreased the most.
The new Pew analysis said that lowering housing costs could have the same effect as creating a significant anti-poverty program. If enough housing was built to reduce rents by 20 percent, which the study says has happened in Austin, it would have a comparable effect to the 2021 expansion of the child tax credit. In Colorado, a 20 percent drop in rent would mean a 23 percent drop in the poverty rate and a 38 percent drop in child poverty. But unlike the child tax credit, housing doesn’t have to cost taxpayers a thing.
“Allowing more housing doesn’t have a cost in terms of the budget,” Mr. Horowitz said. “This is a free policy that can have major anti-poverty effects.”
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