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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a member of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) ICE Wants Local Police to Enforce Immigration Law. These Officers Signed Up.
By Allison McCann, June 12, 2026
The reporter joined a traffic enforcement operation conducted by Wyoming sheriff’s deputies who have been certified as immigration officers.
Sheriff’s deputies in Laramie County, Wyo., briefly detained a man from Venezuela after a traffic stop last month. The sheriff’s department in the county has an agreement with the federal government to perform immigration arrests. Todd Heisler for The New York Times
Early on a Tuesday morning last month, the sky still black, a group of deputies from the Laramie County sheriff’s office set out to patrol two major interstates that cross their corner of southeast Wyoming. Over the course of five hours, they made 41 traffic stops, issued 12 citations, made two criminal arrests and — through a new partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — detained seven immigrants.
One person was asleep in the backseat of a silver pickup truck stopped for a too-dim rear license plate light. Two passengers in a minivan that had been going 12 miles per hour over the limit were also taken into custody. Four others were detained after their pickup, too, was stopped for speeding.
All were booked into the county jail to await transfer to an ICE detention facility. The deputies working the immigration operation earned a combined $1,325 in overtime courtesy of the federal government.
The Trump administration has enlisted hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies in its mass deportation campaign by deputizing their officers as immigration agents, extending ICE’s reach far beyond where the agency typically operates.
Living in the United States without authorization is a civil violation, not a criminal offense, and local police officers have no responsibility to enforce federal immigration law. But after completing a 40-hour virtual training, certified officers can inquire about the immigration status of people they encounter in the course of routine police work; call ICE if they suspect a person is undocumented; and, if given the go-ahead, take immigrants into custody.
Before President Trump returned to office, the program — named 287(g) for a section of federal immigration law — had largely consisted of agreements with local agencies to identify and process immigrants already held in jails. The Trump administration expanded the cooperation, and for the first time offered cash incentives to agencies to sign up and make arrests.
Participation has exploded, and de facto ICE officers are now on the ground in hundreds of cities and counties across 31 states. Several thousand officers have been credentialed — state troopers, sheriff’s deputies, police officers, constables — on top of the 12,000 new officers and agents that ICE hired last year. The rush to sign up and cash in has included some unusual agencies, too, like Louisiana’s State Fire Marshal and Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Perhaps most significantly, the program has the potential to turn highways and roads into sites of immigration enforcement.
“ICE does not have that generalized patrol authority, so it’s really great for ICE that they can use state and local police in this way,” said Naureen Shah, the director of immigration policy at the American Civil Liberties Union, whose Wyoming office is suing Laramie County over its agreement with ICE.
Brian Kozak, the Laramie County sheriff, said the program allows his office to be more efficient and move detainees through his jail more quickly.
“If someone is undocumented, it’s faster for our deputies to book them on an ICE hold and not even do the local charges. Then they don’t have to sit in my jail waiting for those local charges to be adjudicated,” he said, though he added that more serious felony offenses would still be charged.
‘A tremendous asset’
Even though 1,200 local task force partners have signed on, the program is still ramping up. Fewer than 300 participating agencies had both credentialed at least one officer and received a payment for immigration enforcement work as of March, according to a payout ledger obtained by Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist.
Researchers estimate that the share of people detained through any type of 287(g) program rose to about 10 percent in January, up from about 3 percent a year before. The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer detailed questions about the program or share more recent arrest or payment figures.
“The 287(g) program can be a tremendous asset to you and to the country,” Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, said this week at the National Sheriffs’ Association conference. “If we had the participation of all the county sheriffs that are in this building right now, think how much faster those arrests would move up.”
Over the course of a week in April, Laramie County was among the top arresting agencies in the country, alongside larger state authorities like the Florida Highway Patrol and the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, according to snapshots of internal ICE data obtained by The New York Times. Together, the top five local partners made 162 immigration arrests that week; over a week in May, the top agencies made around 300 arrests.
Those are modest figures, considering ICE recorded about 7,000 arrests each week nationwide in recent months. The larger goal may be the perception of an ever more widespread immigration enforcement apparatus.
“The arrest numbers sometimes don’t matter to them if the message and rhetoric is strong enough — that any kind of day-to-day activity for an immigrant could lead to deportation,” said Nayna Gupta, the policy director for the American Immigration Council, a legal advocacy group that supports immigrants.
Financial incentives
For the local partners, the program comes with an enticing offer: a one-time payment of $100,000 for new vehicles and $7,500 in equipment funds per certified task force officer. ICE says it will pay the salary and benefits for officers who do immigration work full time, and overtime for up to 25 percent of an officer’s salary.
Agreements are most common in states where Republican leaders back the president’s immigration agenda. Last year, Florida became the first state to require local agencies’ participation in the 287(g) program, followed by Texas this year. Elsewhere, participation is more scattered — and Democratic lawmakers seeking to reign in ICE have succeeded in banning the agreements altogether in 11 states, most recently in New York.
Laramie County now has 30 credentialed task force officers. Since October, they have made 412 immigration arrests and the sheriff’s office has received about $300,000 for its participation.
Larger statewide agencies stand to be paid millions. Then there are the hundreds of smaller agencies with only a few task force officers, like the police department in Colebrook, N.H., which has three.
“It’s a huge thing for a small department like us to get that stipend,” said Chief Paul Rella, who said his department has made two ICE arrests since January and has received around $100,000. “But even if there wasn’t a stipend, we would’ve done it anyway. To be able to have the authority to detain someone that may be here illegally, it all comes down to community safety.”
Immigrant rights groups and critics of the program say it has the opposite effect: As more police officers work for ICE, immigrants may be discouraged from reporting crimes or avoid contact with local law enforcement for fear of deportation.
“It’s a balancing act,” acknowledged Benjamin Cox, the police chief in Duncan, S.C., a town of about 5,000 with two task force officers. “I need the people in our town, no matter their immigration status, to feel comfortable calling me. That’s the most challenging part of 287(g).”
Opponents of the program also say that it can lead to racial profiling. In 2011 and 2012, the Justice Department found that participating agencies in Arizona and North Carolina had engaged in patterns of discriminatory policing, leading the Obama administration to discontinue the task force program.
Sheriff Kozak is familiar with those risks. He worked as a police officer for 20 years in Mesa, Ariz., when Sheriff Joe Arpaio set up random checkpoints and neighborhood sweeps that targeted Latinos, and he said he saw firsthand that the sheriff was “crossing the line.”
“Our policy requires lawful contact following a violation of state law,” he said. “We’re focused on traffic enforcement and traffic safety, and then a side thing is the immigration.”
A D.H.S. spokesperson said accusations that 287(g) agreements encourage racial profiling are false and that ICE’s local partners fairly enforce immigration law.
From commute to detention
By late morning, the Laramie County deputies were preparing to head back to the jail when they stopped the speeding minivan. Four workers with a drywall company headed to a job site were inside. The driver and front-seat passenger had valid identification but told the deputies that the other passengers did not.
“We don’t typically ask other passengers unless there’s a reason, but nothing says you can’t ask” for identification, Chance Walkama, a chief deputy, explained. “That’s how things happen all the time.” Passengers who have not broken a law may decline to speak with the police, but many immigrants are unaware of this right.
Mr. Walkama texted the passengers’ information to his contact at the local ICE field office in Cheyenne. The ICE agent wrote back that one of their names matched someone with a criminal history and the same date of birth. After a few more questions, Mr. Walkama handcuffed the man, Christian Rodriguez, and loaded him into the deputies’ car.
He is now being held at an ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colo. “I don’t understand. I wasn’t driving, I had my seatbelt on,” Mr. Rodriguez said by phone from detention. “It’s not fair.”
Mr. Rodriguez, 29, arrived with his parents from Mexico as a minor and was about two years into the years-long process of applying for a green card. He is married to a U.S. citizen and has six children and step-children who are all U.S. citizens. He has no criminal convictions, records show; charges stemming from a domestic dispute with his ex-wife in 2020 were dropped.
Asked whether Mr. Rodriguez’s arrest reflected the purpose of Laramie County’s partnership with ICE, another chief deputy, Aaron Veldheer, said, “It weighs on me” — that a person who was riding in a car on his way to work is now separated from his family.
“Not that I wish somebody got hurt or there was a crime committed, but, yeah, it’s collateral,” Mr. Veldheer said. “But it’s part of the job. We can’t look the other way, either.”
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2) Sheriffs in Maryland Challenge State Limits on Cooperation With ICE
A lawsuit by a group of 17 county law enforcement officers is another front in the Trump-era fight over local police’s role in immigration enforcement.
By Campbell Robertson, June 12, 2026
Maryland’s Community Trust Act, among other measures, bars local officials from asking people about their immigration status. Credit...Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times
The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign has led to a succession of showdowns between states and the federal government over local police’s role in immigration enforcement.
These tensions have been playing out within states as well. Democratic-run cities in Republican-led states have found themselves at odds with their governors and other state officials. And increasingly, Republican sheriffs in Democratic-led states have been publicly fighting with their own state governments.
A new front in this battle has opened in Maryland, a solidly Democratic state with an often frustrated Republican minority. A coalition of 17 elected sheriffs, representing most of Maryland’s counties but less than a third of the state’s population, has sued the state over a new law limiting cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities.
Maryland had already barred local and state law enforcement agencies from signing formal agreements with the federal government that allow officers to assist in immigration enforcement. But with sheriffs and federal immigration authorities still cooperating in less formal ways, Democratic lawmakers crafted more legislation.
The new law, the Community Trust Act, bars local officials from asking people about their immigration status, notifying federal immigration authorities about people being held in local jails or handing people over to federal agents without a judicial warrant.
In their lawsuit, filed last month in federal court in Greenbelt, Md., the sheriffs argue that the law violates the U.S. Constitution and leaves their officers in a legally precarious place, where state and federal law conflict.
“It put us in a completely undesirable and untenable situation,” said Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler of Harford County, northeast of Baltimore.
Legal experts said Maryland was likely on firm ground because the new law does not require local officials to do anything beyond standard enforcement of criminal law. But given the fraught politics of immigration, the confrontation looms larger than the legal arguments.
Since President Trump’s return to the White House, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have made thousands of arrests in Maryland, more than triple the number of arrests during a similar period under the Biden administration. Nearly three-quarters of these arrests were made in the community, at work sites and in residential neighborhoods.
But hundreds came about through cooperation with local law enforcement, according to testimony submitted to the Maryland legislature by the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that conducts research on the criminal justice system and supports the new law. In most of those cases, according to the testimony, the person being handed over to ICE had not been convicted of a crime.
“For our clients, that is not an abstract legal problem. It means losing your job, your housing, your family before you have ever been found guilty of anything,” said Stephanie Wolf, director of immigration services for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender.
Sheriffs and immigration activists both agree that cooperation between local officials and federal immigration authorities continued after the state banned formal pacts with ICE. The arrangements are known as 287(g) agreements because of the section of immigration law authorizing them.
“Sheriffs turned around and said, ‘Well, you know, the 287(g) agreements are formal written agreements between us and ICE, so we’re just going to have informal communication,” said Dr. Clarence Lam, the state senator who sponsored the bill.
There are exceptions. Local law enforcement agencies can alert immigration authorities about a person in custody if the person has been convicted of a felony, has had to register as a sex offender or has served at least five years in prison in another state.
The new law’s limits on cooperation are aimed at local jails, not state prisons, which in most states work with ICE routinely. The new law codifies elements of that cooperation, requiring state officials to inform ICE if a person the agency is seeking is going to be released from a state prison.
Still, the sheriffs said that parts of the law, which passed on the last day of the legislative session, were going to create difficulties. Some said they raised concerns in a meeting with Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat.
In a statement, Mr. Moore said the law “advances an important goal,” but presents “implementation challenges that must be addressed through executive action and in next year’s legislative session.”
Some of the sheriffs reiterated a warning that federal officials have made repeatedly in demanding local cooperation — that if ICE can’t pick up people from jails, the agency will end up conducting more operations on the streets.
“We’re going down a road we don’t want to go down,” said Sheriff Joseph Gamble of Talbot County, a politically mixed county on the state’s Eastern Shore.
Senator Lam, a Democrat, dismissed these warnings, saying the Trump administration makes a lot of threats to get what it wants but often does not follow through, or is stopped by the courts.
“I don’t think we should govern as though there was a gun pointed to our head,” he said. “We have to govern based on our values and what we believe is the best thing to do.”
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3) Anti-Immigrant Riots Leave Belfast on Edge: ‘Everyone Is Afraid’
In two nights of violence in Northern Ireland after a brutal stabbing, people were targeted because of their skin color, the authorities said.
By Stephen Castle, Reporting from Belfast, June 12, 2026
Attempting to clear protesters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Wednesday evening. Peter Morrison/Associated Press
Paul Sharkey lived through decades of sectarian violence between Protestant and Roman Catholic communities known as “the Troubles,” but thought that bloody phase of Northern Ireland’s history was over.
Then, on Wednesday evening, he heard a loud noise near his house on the Antrim Road in Glengormley, on the northwest edge of Belfast. When he looked out of his window, a burning van was hurtling toward his home.
“It was heading toward me — I was panicking,” Mr. Sharkey, 71, said.
An empty home opposite was also ablaze, he said, while young men with balaclavas covering their faces were “running all over the place like rats.”
The violence erupted after a brutal stabbing attack in Belfast on Monday, after which the authorities charged Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese refugee, with attempted murder. Graphic footage of the assault spread quickly online and was amplified by far-right activists, who called for protests and shared plans for roadblocks and locations for demonstrations.
On Tuesday night, violence broke out in parts of the city, with masked rioters setting fire to a bus, cars and garbage cans. Emergency responders had to escort immigrant families, including a parent with a 2-month old baby, from homes that had been set ablaze in one area of Belfast, the police said.
Violent demonstrations continued on Wednesday night, in spite of calls for calm, including from the family of Stephen Ogilvie, the victim, who remains in the hospital.
During the unrest, a group of masked men tried to reach a hotel that houses asylum seekers near Glengormley. They confronted a line of police officers in riot gear, hijacked a parked van, set it alight and pushed it in the direction of the police. The van veered off toward Mr. Sharkey’s house, where it crashed into a wall.
“I lost my teenage years to the Troubles. I thought moving out here I had got away from them — from the bombs and bullets, all the rest of it — and moved to the suburbs,” Mr. Sharkey said as the crumpled vehicle was removed. “Never did I think I was going to witness that.”
The disorder, with its ominous echoes of Northern Ireland’s violent past, has left Belfast on edge, with anxiety high among minority communities. On Thursday, a trade union, Unison, reported that a nurse had been chased by masked men on her way to work at a Belfast hospital, in what the organization called a “racist attack.”
Hilary Benn, the British cabinet minister for Northern Ireland, described the riots as “racist thuggery.” In an interview with Sky News on Thursday, he said people had been “intimidated, burned out of their houses by masked thugs on the basis of the color of their skin.”
Twasul Mohammed, an antiracism organizer at Participation and the Practice of Rights, a Belfast-based human rights group, said, “Everyone is afraid, everyone in the community, all Black and brown people are afraid.”
Since the riots began, she has not taken her children to school, she said. “It’s a really difficult time for all of us and it’s only bearable because of the support we are getting from the community,” she said.
Around 400 volunteers were helping, with some accommodating around 12 families who had to be evacuated from their homes on Tuesday night, Ms. Mohammed said. On Wednesday, there was more alarm when a list of addresses that might be targeted by protesters circulated online.
In total, about 200 individuals have had to be accommodated, added Ms. Mohammed, who is originally from Sudan but has been in Northern Ireland for more than a decade.
Businesses closed early on Wednesday and some workers stayed home. Health and social care leaders said that it was completely unacceptable that employees should be “intimidated or feel too frightened to come to work.”
Anti-immigration sentiment has been on the rise across Europe, fueled by populist right-wing political parties and social media. In Northern Ireland, which has a relatively low immigrant population, there are social and political factors too, including a housing shortage and areas of deep poverty.
And, despite a largely successful peace process, paramilitary groups still exist. Some argue that has made Northern Ireland susceptible to organized violence.
“The people who burned houses were marching in gangs; it was something organized. It was not random kids, it was a group of masked men wearing black,” Ms. Mohammed said.
Ryan Henderson, assistant chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said on Thursday that he had “no evidence to say that the violence is being coordinated by loyalist paramilitaries,” referring to groups that favored the use of force to remain part of the United Kingdom and resist a united Ireland.
He added, however, that there had been “significant coordination from online social media activity, some from people within Northern Ireland — and some from outside.”
On Lendrick Street, where violence broke out on Tuesday, three charred vehicles and several blackened and boarded-up houses were still visible on Thursday. An acrid smell of burning filled the air.
Martin Craigs, a former aviation executive who was born in England but has lived in Northern Ireland since 1969, said that the disorder was “a new chapter of violence and a new chapter that is deeply saddening when we thought we were moving away from street conflict, burned-out cars, car bombs and shootings.”
The troublemakers were “only a tiny proportion of people,” he said, but he added that he believes the incitement is unlikely to go away quickly unless people take a stand against the violence.
“It’s too easy to fan flames online and through all the modern communication tools that are a blessing in so many ways but a curse in this way,” Mr. Craigs said.
The Rev. Jacob Mercer, 37, a minister in the Church of Ireland in Glengormley, said that he had witnessed the disorder near the hotel housing asylum seekers and that he had noticed that many demonstrators were not from the local community.
He also said that the violence reflected some of the simmering resentment within the Protestant community that wants to safeguard its place in the United Kingdom.
“There are a number of highly deprived communities who feel they are not being listened to or cared for by the authorities and for them, that’s in contrast to people who get a free hotel to stay in and free food,” Mr. Mercer said.
Some locals think, rightly or wrongly, he said, that “it feels like the government cares more about looking after the immigrants than after us.”
Such sentiment has increased with the rise of right-wing populist parties, including Reform U.K., led by Nigel Farage, and a new far-right rival, called Restore Britain, Mr. Mercer added.
“I think the rise of Reform and Restore and other political parties and popular nationalist leaders has given a focal point to people who feel that there is someone now who represents them politically,” Mr. Mercer noted.
That makes things uncomfortable for some people of color who have lived in Northern Ireland for most of their lives.
Masood Alam was born in Pakistan and has lived in Northern Ireland since 1973, navigating the Troubles and once owning a clothing business.
In earlier decades, he said, “if you went to Belfast city center, it was a purely white city” and it was rare to meet anyone of color.
But he recalled being able to visit both Catholic and Protestant districts without any difficulties.
“In the Troubles we were safe, we had no problem,” Mr. Alam said. “None of the Asians took any part in the local politics, so we were more or less welcomed on both sides.”
Now, things feel less secure.
“I do feel concerned,” he said. “I have been here 53 years, but when the crowd is all charged up, if you are not white you are a target.”
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4) Wages Are Falling. Wealth Is Surging. No Wonder Americans Are Unhappy.
As Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, workers are facing higher prices and fears of A.I.-driven job losses.
By Ben Casselman, June 13, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/business/economy-trillionaire-wealth-wages.html
Times Square on Friday, when Elon Musk’s SpaceX went public on the Nasdaq exchange. Karsten Moran for The New York Times
Two events from the past week help crystallize this strange, contradictory moment for the U.S. economy.
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the surge in energy prices had wiped out a year and a half of wage gains for the average American worker. On Friday, the public-markets debut of SpaceX made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
That stark juxtaposition helps explain why many Americans, in survey after survey, say they no longer believe the U.S. economy is working for them. A few people are getting fabulously, unimaginably wealthy at the same time that entire generations of families worry they will never be able to afford to buy a house, raise children or enjoy a comfortable retirement.
“I don’t think the stock market is necessarily causing” Americans’ pessimism about the economy, said Stefanie Stantcheva, a Harvard professor who studies public sentiment. “But I don’t think people are looking at it and are thinking, ‘Great, this means I’m going to do very well, too.’ It’s potentially reinforcing this feeling of ‘I’m falling behind.’”
Inequality is hardly a new feature in America. But the explosion of wealth at the very top is without precedent in U.S. history. At the height of the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, the richest handful of Americans had a net worth equivalent to about 3 percent of the country’s annual economic output, according to data compiled by the French economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. Today, the fortunes of the same 0.00001 percent [One hundred-thousandth]— about 20 individuals — make up roughly four times as large a share, equivalent to 12 percent of annual output.
Other economists, using different methodologies, come up with somewhat different numbers. But hardly anyone disputes the basic fact that the wealthiest few have made extraordinary gains in recent years.
The picture for the other 99 percent of Americans is more nuanced. More than half of U.S. households own stocks, either directly or through retirement accounts, meaning they have benefited at least somewhat from the record-setting run-up in share prices. Wealth has risen more slowly for middle-class families than for the rich over the past decade, Federal Reserve data shows, but it has still risen.
For most Americans, however, “wealth” is a somewhat abstract concept, tied up in the house where they live and the retirement accounts they hope to leave untouched for as long as possible. What matters more, day to day, is their income. And the share of national income going to workers has been trending down for decades. It hit a record low in the first quarter of the year, according to data from the Commerce Department.
Now, rising costs are again taking a bite out of workers’ paychecks. The recent jump in energy prices — a result of the war with Iran — pushed the annual inflation rate to a three-year high in May. Hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, have fallen for three months in a row, erasing all the gains made during President Trump’s first year in office. Measures of consumer sentiment have plummeted as gas prices have risen.
Oil prices have eased somewhat in recent weeks on hopes of a lasting cease-fire, and are likely to fall further if the United States and Iran reach a deal and tankers begin to move out of the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz in greater numbers.
But relief at the pump is not likely to end Americans’ anxiety after years of one economic shock after another. First, the Covid-19 pandemic shut down large parts of the economy and put tens of millions of people out of work, at least temporarily. Then inflation soared to the highest level in four decades. Since then, Americans have endured high interest rates, tariffs and repeated recession scares.
“If you think about what it felt like to go through Covid, and then inflation, and also political unrest and instability, you come out of those things thinking, ‘How am I supposed to plan for the future?’” said Elizabeth Wilkins, president of the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Ms. Stantcheva, the Harvard economist, has found that bouts of high inflation take a long-term toll on consumers’ economic attitudes. That is not only because of the strain on their budgets but also because it seems unfair — the wealthy are able to absorb higher prices relatively easily, while lower-income households struggle.
“It goes hand in hand with a big sense of inequity and injustice,” she said.
Now Americans face a new threat in the form of artificial intelligence, which tech industry leaders warn could eliminate whole categories of white-collar work. Many economists are skeptical of those predictions, but polls show that many workers are worried about what the technology will mean for their careers. Voters across the country have also rebelled against plans to build A.I. data centers in their communities, citing their impact on electricity bills, water supplies and air quality.
Given those concerns, it is hardly surprising that the public is uncomfortable with the surge in wealth that has accompanied the A.I. boom. Companies connected to the technology have driven the recent gains in the stock market. SpaceX’s debut on Friday was the first in what is expected to be a series of giant initial public offerings for A.I. companies. (SpaceX, though best known for its rockets and satellites, also owns an A.I. lab and has made huge investments in A.I. infrastructure.)
In addition to making Mr. Musk a trillionaire, the SpaceX I.P.O. alone was expected to mint thousands of new millionaires and several billionaires.
“Many of the tech moguls who are the current superrich have not helped themselves in the conversation by saying, ‘My innovation is going to obliterate your life,’” said Glenn Hubbard, an economist at Columbia Business School who served as a top adviser to President George W. Bush. “It’s not too crazy to imagine a backlash.”
Mr. Hubbard said he did not necessarily see a problem with the existence of billionaires or even trillionaires, as long as people were getting rich through entrepreneurship and innovation rather than through corruption or cronyism. But he said policymakers should take the public attitudes seriously. Congress should consider ways to tax billionaires more effectively, he said, and to ensure that the wealthy don’t exert undue influence on the political system.
Many progressive economists, however, argue that enormous fortunes like Mr. Musk’s inherently distort both the economic and the political systems, giving the superrich too many ways to avoid regulation, taxation and oversight.
“It’s the power to influence markets, it’s the power to buy competitors, it’s the power to influence policymaking,” said Mr. Zucman, one of the French scholars of wealth inequality. “If you want a well-functioning market economy, it’s not good to have too much concentrated power with extreme wealth at the very top. It distorts markets. It distorts democracy.”
The A.I. boom is still in its nascent stages, and some analysts are skeptical that SpaceX and other companies will earn profits to justify their sky-high valuations. If the doubters are right, share prices could fall and Mr. Musk’s trillionaire status could prove short-lived.
But such a decline could have consequences for ordinary Americans as well. A.I.-related investments have helped carry the economy through a tumultuous period; the stock market boom has helped prop up consumer spending as wage growth has cooled. A bursting of the A.I. bubble would put millions of jobs in jeopardy, from the electricians wiring data centers to the waiters serving wealthy investors in high-end restaurants. And it would vaporize trillions of dollars in paper wealth held in 401(k) accounts and college saving plans.
That can make A.I. feel like something of a Catch-22 for workers: If the technology succeeds in reshaping the economy, they could lose their jobs. If it fails to live up to the hype, their retirement savings could evaporate. No wonder so many Americans feel that the economy is rigged against them, said Heather Boushey, who served as an adviser in the Biden administration and has written a book about the economic impact of inequality.
“Clearly our economy is designed to create a handful of billionaires and a trillionaire,” Ms Boushey said. “It is no longer about creating opportunity and stability for the majority.”
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5) Mega I.P.O. Frenzy Could Be a Harbinger of a Stock Bubble
Rampant enthusiasm is buoying tech shares to levels that defy gravity. Invest with caution, our columnist says.
By Jeff Sommer, June 13, 2026
Jeff Sommer writes Strategies, a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy.
A SpaceX ad on the Nasdaq MarketSite tower in Times Square. The company, which Elon Musk founded in 2002, began trading on the stock market on Friday. Andres Kudacki for The New York Times
Amazing things are happening in technology, and ordinary investors are being invited to get a piece of the action.
With the SpaceX market debut on Friday, the Anthropic and OpenAI initial public offerings in the pipeline, and the sizzling tech stocks already on the market, there’s no shortage of betting opportunities.
Elon Musk ignited a frenzy with his roadshow for SpaceX, promising a future of interstellar riches from artificial intelligence combining spaceflight, satellites and orbiting A.I. data centers. I watched his presentation at JPMorgan and was entranced.
Who am I to say that cheap, virtually limitless A.I. generated from Earth’s orbit won’t happen just as Mr. Musk says it will? Intellectually, I’m willing to contemplate the possibility that he is truly leading the world to a vibrant future, on this planet, on the moon and eventually on Mars.
But from a purely investing perspective, I’m keeping my feet firmly on the ground.
As I’ve pointed out, the price being asked for SpaceX shares was exorbitant, and it rose even higher on its first day of trading. That said, the company’s stock might well rise further over the next few weeks, driven by sheer market enthusiasm. Mr. Musk reserved a double-digit percentage of the I.P.O. shares for “retail,” or ordinary, investors — as opposed to big institutions. A retail allocation of 5 percent or less has been customary in most recent public offerings, according to Jay Ritter, an economist and I.P.O. expert at the University of Florida.
But SpaceX’s price is so high that, for investors coming late to the party, the probability of a solid return in the next several years is low. Historical data provided by Mr. Ritter bears that out.
SpaceX set its own valuation way above an important threshold, a 40-to-one price-to-sales ratio, meaning it would take 40 years of sales to equal the market value at that share price. Stocks valued above that level have rarely made money over the next three years. Because the Anthropic and OpenAI public offerings are still at a preliminary stage, there’s less information about them. But their valuations imply richly priced shares, too.
For investors to accept these prices — as well as those of many other big tech stocks — is, in itself, troubling. It suggests that the stock market has entered perilous territory. If this isn’t already a full-blown bubble, it could easily become one.
Still, I’m not getting out of the stock market entirely, because stocks have been great for the long term, and because I can’t forecast market movements with any accuracy. But some times are riskier than others for stock market investors — and this may be one of those times.
The Bubbly Market
I am not too worried, for now, about the direct effects of the mega I.P.O.s on retirement investments. Either they won’t be represented for a long time in broad, diversified index funds — the S&P 500, for example — or they will make up a tiny proportion of assets held by investors.
The CRSP market indexes, now run by Morningstar, will hold the I.P.O.s soon, which means that Vanguard Target-Date Retirement Funds based on one of the indexes will have small dollops of the newly public companies within weeks. But the indexes will include them only in proportion to the shares actually for sale in the marketplace. That’s known as their “float,” and it will be minuscule. Even if the shares fall sharply after inclusion, they will barely move the overall index, and anyone’s retirement funds (including mine, in New York Times retirement accounts) will barely be affected.
The Nasdaq-100 is a different matter. That tech-heavy index will hold SpaceX and the other two big I.P.O.s quickly, perhaps within 15 trading days. Funds based on that index typically serve as proxies for bets on the tech market and not as core retirement investments. Nasdaq-100 funds, like the Invesco QQQ, enable traders to move rapidly in and out of the tech market, as waves of frenzy ebb and flow. That’s not my thing.
The trillion-dollar I.P.O.s do worry me, but for another reason. My concern is that stock offerings of this remarkable size are coming to market only because A.I. stock prices have already risen through the roof. The I.P.O.s aren’t merely lavishly priced. They represent a dangerous moment for the stock market.
There have been some stock market declines lately, but the information technology sector of the S&P 500 traded this week at a price-to-earnings ratio over 39, according to FactSet. That’s a very high level.
Tech company earnings are growing rapidly, but even so, the sector is immoderately priced. The overall stock market has been riding on the momentum of A.I. companies, making the entire market vulnerable. Rising bond yields, geopolitical turmoil and soaring inflation threaten the market, and further tumbles would hardly be surprising.
In an unusual warning on June 5, Bank of America’s stock strategists, led by Savita Subramanian, warned that the S&P 500, and tech stocks in particular, was overpriced and suggested that investors “take profits.” For the rest of this year, the strategists said, the S&P 500 is likely to fall modestly. Such a decline might seem painful. But in my view, after the market rally of the last few years, a small drop could be healthy if it forestalled the creation of a mammoth bubble.
History Lessons
How much irrational exuberance is being unleashed in the furor over SpaceX and the prospective I.P.O.s from Anthropic and OpenAI can’t be known until the new stocks are seasoned and have been trading on the market for a while.
But the signs of an incipient bubble are there. The most important financial questions may be how far current market excesses will go, as well as which companies will survive and prosper as new technologies are let loose on the world.
History provides some context. After the swelling of the dot-com bubble to unsustainable proportions, the market crash lasted 30.5 months, from March 24, 2000, to Oct. 9, 2002. The S&P 500 fell 49.1 percent from top to bottom during this stretch. Investors who stuck with the S&P 500 index were still hurting a decade later. But companies like Amazon, eBay, Google and Salesforce survived that crash, and the infrastructure foundations that were laid back then made the current tech boom possible.
Whatever happens in the markets over the next year or two, some companies will prosper because of A.I. technology for decades to come. It’s just that it’s difficult to know now which companies they will be.
Parallels with previous periods of extreme stock market enthusiasm can be overdrawn. It’s true that using some measures, the market has approached levels of overvaluation not seen in decades.
Take the economist Robert Shiller’s CAPE ratio, which measures the valuation of the S&P 500 over long periods. Professor Shiller, a Nobel laureate, designed it as an inflation-adjusted yardstick for comparing stock prices with the average of the last 10 years of corporate earnings.
At the moment, the ratio is as high as it has been since the bursting of the dot-com bubble. But it has been high for years — if not quite this high — and that hasn’t set off steep market declines. Timing the market is difficult. I certainly can’t do it.
But high stock market prices, combined with the relatively high interest rates of the current period, are still significant. They don’t tell us what will happen next week, but they do suggest that stock market returns will be subdued in the years ahead. Vanguard, which uses methodology derived from Professor Shiller’s work, projects constrained stock market returns for those reasons.
Over the next decade, U.S. stock prices will probably increase in a range of 4.9 to 6.9 percent, annualized, compared with a return of about 13 percent for the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund over the last decade, the company said in its latest estimates, produced in April. Small, beaten-down value stocks will probably outperform large-capitalization stocks, including tech stocks, in the United States, and stocks in foreign markets are likely to outperform those in the United States, Vanguard said.
Perhaps the most noteworthy forecast is that bonds will lag the stock market by only around one percentage point, and with far lower risk of major declines. In short, bonds look like a relatively good value right now. Tech stocks do not. And the mega I.P.O.s look especially expensive.
So instead of jumping onto the I.P.O. bandwagon at this point, it might be wiser to assess whether you are already excessively exposed to A.I. through funds that hold big tech stocks. Perhaps this is a good time to rebalance, by reducing your U.S. megacap stock allocations, shifting some holdings into bonds and cash and diversifying globally, using low-cost index funds.
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic might be as great as their founders say they are. If so, I expect that it will be possible to buy them at favorable prices down the road, after the buzz has died down.
Right now, as I noted last week, the only certain thing coming from the SpaceX I.P.O. is that Mr. Musk will be enriched by it, much as he has been at Tesla.
For the rest of the investing public, it may be better to just watch the market spectacle and hold enough bonds and cash to ensure some restful summer nights.
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6) A Tren de Aragua Leader Is Killed in a Joint Strike, U.S. and Venezuela Say
A strike this week in Venezuela killed a gang leader known as Niño Guerrero who was wanted in the United States, officials in both countries said.
By John Yoon, June 13, 2026
A joint strike by the United States and Venezuela killed a leader of the Tren de Aragua transnational gang, President Trump and officials in both countries said on Friday, dealing a blow to a syndicate the Trump administration has blamed for an influx of violent crime and illicit drugs.
The strike took place earlier this week alongside Venezuelan security forces, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said without providing a precise date. He said it targeted a compound housing Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, a founder of Tren de Aragua.
A statement from Venezuela’s communications ministry said the operation took place in Venezuela, in the southeast of the state of Bolívar. Both Mr. Hegseth and Venezuelan officials said that Mr. Guerrero Flores had been killed in the strike.
Mr. Guerrero Flores, 43, was better known by the alias Niño Guerrero, meaning “warrior child.” He was wanted in the United States on federal charges of directing acts of terrorism, alongside other charges.
Mr. Trump said on Truth Social, his online platform, that the U.S. military’s Southern Command had conducted the strike at his direction as part of his pledge to dismantle foreign gangs. His administration designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization last year.
Mr. Trump said the operation had been conducted with the Venezuelan government, which has become more cooperative with the United States since the United States captured the former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and helped install a more pliant replacement, Delcy Rodriguez.
Mr. Trump posted a video of a building exploding and invoked the names of crime victims in Georgia and Texas, calling the operation “retribution” for their families.
Mr. Trump has often railed against the gang, using it to push his deportation agenda and to justify his military strikes on vessels purportedly ferrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States. In both those efforts, critics have questioned whether Tren de Aragua has truly played the dangerous role that Mr. Trump says it has.
Gen. Francis L. Donovan, who leads the U.S. Southern Command, thanked Venezuelan security forces in a social media post for their support in what he described as a joint operation.
The Venezuelan government said in a statement on Friday that a combined operation had targeted organized crime structures. The operation was based on the exchange of intelligence between the two countries, the statement said.
Tren de Aragua originated as a prison gang in Venezuela in the mid-2000s and has since expanded across Latin America and several U.S. cities. The organization is one of the most notorious in the region, focused on sex trafficking, human smuggling and drugs, drawing intense scrutiny from U.S. law enforcement.
The Biden administration in 2024 issued a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Mr. Guerrero Flores. He was charged last year in a New York federal court under the second Trump administration with racketeering, terrorism, drug importation and firearms offenses.
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7) British Forces Seize Russian Shadow Fleet Oil Tanker
Britain’s Defense Ministry said it was the first time that British forces had acted alone to stop a ship in the fleet, a collection of vessels that Russia uses to move fuel and evade sanctions.
By Stephen Castle, Reporting from London, June 14, 2026
A handout picture from the British Defense Ministry showing British forces intercepting the Smyrtos, a vessel that is part of Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers. U.K. Ministry of Defense
Britain’s armed forces have for the first time intercepted and seized control of a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker sailing in the English Channel, the British Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
Royal Marine Commandos and specially trained law enforcement officers boarded the vessel early Sunday in a military operation that lasted six hours and that was supported by British military ships and aircraft, the ministry said in a statement.
The intercepted tanker, the Smyrtos, will be held and monitored off the southern coast of England, the ministry added.
“This operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said in a statement, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Russia’s shadow fleet is a collection of often dilapidated ships with hazy ownership that covertly moves fuel around the globe, enabling the country to sidestep international sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine.
According to the British government, the shadow fleet consists of more than 700 vessels and is responsible for carrying 75 percent of Russia’s sanctioned oil, giving the Kremlin an important economic lifeline.
Britain, which has so far imposed sanctions on more than 500 Russian shadow fleet vessels, says more than 70 percent of them are over 15 years old.
The interception of the Smyrtos was the first time that British forces had acted alone to stop a ship in the shadow fleet and the first such operation in the English Channel, the Defense Ministry said.
This year, the British military assisted the United States in seizing an oil tanker, the Marinera, in the waters between Iceland and Scotland. American officials said the ship had violated sanctions by carrying oil for Venezuela, Russia and Iran.
After that operation, the British government had said it was exploring how British forces could take similar action against sanctioned vessels traveling through its waters. In March, Mr. Starmer decided British armed forces and law enforcement officers could board shadow fleet vessels in accordance with international law, the Defense Ministry said.
The operation against the Smyrtos was conducted in “close coordination” with France, building on recent collaboration between the two nations.
This month, President Emmanuel Macron of France said his country had intercepted an oil tanker thought to be part of the Russian shadow fleet. That vessel, the Tagor, was detained with British support in the Atlantic Ocean, around 400 nautical miles west of Brittany. It was the fourth suspected shadow fleet vessel that France has boarded since September 2025, according to the French authorities.
Britain’s military action comes at a sensitive moment politically. The country’s defense secretary, John Healey, and the armed forces minister, Al Carns, both quit their posts last week in a dispute over military funding plans.
A new British defense investment plan is expected to be published before a NATO summit scheduled for next month. But when he left the government, Mr. Healey warned that the level of military spending proposed by Mr. Starmer “falls well short” of what is needed to protect Britain.
That political rift came against a backdrop of growing tensions between Britain and Russia, including a series of incursions by Russian ships and aircraft around the British coast. British officials believe these were intended to test Britain’s military abilities or to map critical underwater infrastructure, including cables.
Mr. Carns told the BBC on Sunday that British forces had not previously boarded a Russian shadow tanker partly because “we had a Russian frigate in the Channel protecting some of those ships coming through.”
“It was about hitting the right parameters to make sure that everything — from legal to the cargo — met the requirements for boarding,” he said, while adding that more boardings were likely in the future.
Kirill Dmitriev, Mr. Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, said on social media that a “desperate” Mr. Starmer was attempting an “escalation” that aimed to distract British voters from concerns over irregular immigration.
In a statement issued this year, the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed that European countries had come up “with the notion of a ‘shadow fleet,’ which does not exist in international maritime law and is being used as a cover for acts of piracy on maritime routes.”
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia.
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8) Deadlocked Wars: How Major Powers Misread the Regions They Attacked
Russia and the United States projected their own centralized views onto Ukraine and Iran, analysts said. As a result, the smaller countries trapped larger ones in a costly confrontation.
By Neil MacFarquhar, June 14, 2026
Early this year on the outskirts of Kostiantynivka, Ukraine, which has been bombed consistently. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, both resist the idea that ostensibly weaker powers fought them to a stalemate, with the two leaders leaning on negotiations to win the capitulation that they failed to secure in battle.
Iran and Ukraine have pushed back robustly against this “might makes right” mentality, with top officials adopting an even more defiant tone in recent days.
In an open letter to Mr. Putin this month, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine derided Mr. Putin for clinging to power as he aged. “You did not expect full-scale resistance from Ukraine, and you did not foresee that things would go this far,” Mr. Zelensky wrote.
After Iran unleashed a missile barrage against Israel last week in retaliation for attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Parliament and Iran’s top negotiator, threatened more. “Until there is a sincere commitment to restoring trust, Iran’s response will not change,” he wrote on X.
Their recalcitrance reflects the reality of two wars in stasis, with a profound lack of trust all around stymying progress.
Talks to find peace in Ukraine hit an impasse right before the Iran war started, with Ukraine demanding more robust security guarantees for ceding territory than Russia was willing to accept. Diplomacy has mostly produced prisoner swaps between the sides. The United States, once trying to play the main mediator, has shifted its focus to Iran.
American and Iranian officials now say a peace deal with Iran could be at hand. But it appears that it will initially consist of a framework for negotiations that will push the thorniest issues, like Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions relief, down the road. It is expected to allow for at least the temporary reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to shipping.
“Both conflicts have produced a similar outcome: a weaker power has trapped a stronger one in a costly confrontation,” Fiona Hill, who ran Russian and European affairs at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, wrote in a policy paper for the Brookings Institution this week. “Like Putin, Trump did not have a plan for what would happen next.”
The root of the issue is that both presidents sparked wars with limited understanding of the opposing side, Ms. Hill said in an interview. “Both projected their own centralized views of their own roles onto Iran and Ukraine, so they thought if they could decapitate the system it would fall,” she said.
Mr. Putin did not anticipate fierce Ukrainian resistance, for example; Mr. Trump ignored admonitions that Iran could shut the Strait of Hormuz, and appeared to underestimate Iran’s capacity to retaliate and inflict damage on America’s allies in the region. Nor did the Iranian people rise up against their authoritarian leaders, as Israel and the United States had urged them to do.
While the bombing campaigns of the United States and Russia have had devastating effects, analysts noted, air power alone has not proved decisive.
“Although Russia’s aggressive invasion of its neighbor differs from Washington’s goal of reining in Iran’s expansionist threat, both states are finding it equally hard to align their end goals with the means available to achieve them,” James F. Jeffrey, a fellow at the Washington Institute and a former Middle East envoy, wrote in Foreign Affairs.
Ukraine managed to halt Russian troop advances in part by producing next-generation drones, changing the face of modern warfare, while the United States has shown no desire to deploy troops inside Iran.
Lack of compromise has prolonged both wars. The United States and Russia have presented extensive demands to the other side, but the list of what their adversaries get in return is short. Mr. Putin, in particular, has not budged from his maximalist demands, which include taking land his army has been unable to capture.
Mr. Trump has also repeatedly revised terms already agreed with the mediators, frustrating the Iranians.
The United States harmed the process “with contradictory messages, frequent changes in positions and demands, as well as repeated violations of the cease-fire,” Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said last week after fighting sputtered back to life.
Each revision erodes a little more of Iran’s confidence that Mr. Trump will stick to an eventual deal, analysts said.
Yet Mr. Trump has repeatedly declared that a resolution is just around the corner, as he did Thursday after calling off yet another offensive.
None of the shifting set of goals that he predicted at the beginning of the conflict — which he said would take only a few weeks to achieve — has been realized.
The same is true for Mr. Putin. Invading Ukraine, the Kremlin had expected it would quickly seize Kyiv, install a pliant regime and be welcomed by the Ukrainian people. That was more than four years ago. Despite a death toll estimated at more than 350,000 soldiers, Moscow has not fully occupied three of the four Ukrainian provinces that it now claims.
Asked last week about Mr. Zelensky’s latest overture for peace, Mr. Putin declared that “military operations” — he still avoids calling it a war — “will end when we achieve our goals.”
In reality, both Washington and Moscow “have been defeated in the pursuit of the goals that they had,” Ms. Hill said.
The circumstances of the two wars do not entirely match. Ukraine had not threatened Russia, while Iran had confronted the United States ever since its 1979 Islamic revolution through terrorist attacks, proxy wars and other assaults on American interests.
The United States did not have territorial designs on Iran, while Mr. Putin has occupied almost 20 percent of Ukraine. Militarily, Russia began destabilizing Ukraine by annexing Crimea and fueling a separatist movement starting in 2014. United States largely avoided a war with Iran until its 12-day bombing campaign last June undertaken with Israel.
Iran is more inclined than Ukraine to make a deal because it faces more dire economic conditions and receives almost no outside support, said Vali R. Nasr, a professor of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
At the same time, he added, the United States and Israel failed in their strategic objectives in two consecutive wars, in June and February. “So the Iranians want the United States, basically, to come to the table with the realization that they’re not defeated, and the military conquest of Iran is not in the cards,” he said.
The main American and Israeli priority is for Iran to abandon its nuclear program, including surrendering its highly enriched uranium, so it can never develop a nuclear weapon.
Iran has resisted making those concessions, and any resolution on that issue could come months or years down the road. Iran is also asking for longtime American economic sanctions lifted, along with the current naval blockade, and the release of $24 billion in frozen assets.
Iran wants to use the framework under discussion to test whether Mr. Trump will really implement an accord, Mr. Nasr said.
“They want to see whether he actually will lift the blockade,” he said. “They want to see whether he can maintain cease-fire in Lebanon, and they want see whether he will deliver some of their money.” If all that happens, they would be willing to negotiate something bigger, he added.
In Ukraine, Russia wants at a minimum that Ukraine withdraw from the strategically important sliver of Donetsk province from which it has been unable to dislodge them, with Russia even losing some ground in recent weeks.
In both wars, Mr. Trump has dented American credibility, Ms. Hill said. He failed to fulfill his vow to negotiate a peace settlement in Ukraine while undermining NATO in the process, and he did not achieve his main goals in Iran, or protect Gulf allies from Iranian retaliation.
Moscow and Kyiv had each hoped that Mr. Trump might persuade the other to agree to terms, but now both sides know that they need to look elsewhere for a solution, she said. Mr. Zelensky wrote as much in his letter to Mr. Putin.
Ultimately, analysts said, the lack of a resolution makes both the United States and Russia appear weak, and could hasten a more decentralized international order.
“Deadlock in Ukraine discredits Russia as a global military force,” Ms. Hill wrote in her policy paper. “It corrodes Putin’s patina of indestructibility, in the same way that the stalemate in the Persian Gulf undermines the United States and Trump.”
Sheelagh McNeill and Shirin Hakim contributed research.
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9) Germany and Japan Are Rearming Again, 80 Years After World War II
After becoming allies to disastrous effect in the 1940s, Berlin and Tokyo are finding new reasons to team up — including rebuilding their militaries.
By Jim Tankersley and Javier C. Hernández, June 14, 2026
Jim Tankersley reported from Berlin, and Javier C. Hernández from Tokyo.
In 1940, the imperial regimes of Germany and Japan joined what would be known as the Axis powers, bound by mutual opposition to the United States. They fought a world war, and they lost it, and their populations spent the next 85 years with shrunken militaries and a heavy reliance on their former enemy, America, for security.
Now, both countries’ wariness of America has resurfaced, alongside heightened fears about a surging world power, China, and an aggressive Russia. Tokyo and Berlin are rushing to rebuild their militaries. And, once again, they are strengthening ties.
Their cooperation is expected to gather momentum at the meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 nations in Evian, France, this week. It already includes sharing know-how, technology and weapons, like drones and helicopters, critical to the countries’ respective efforts to rearm.
It is hardly an Axis redux. This time, Japan and Germany are banding together from a defensive posture, with Berlin supporting Ukraine’s defense against Russia, and Tokyo wary of threats posed by China and North Korea. They are joining other like-minded “middle powers,” like fellow Group of 7 members Britain, Canada and France — their enemies in World War II. And they are casting themselves as champions of international law and institutions that serve as bulwarks against the bullying behaviors of the world’s most powerful countries.
As Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, said in March at a Japanese naval base, nations like Germany and Japan, “who still stand by the rules-based international order, must move even closer together and make clear what we stand for.”
Both Germany and Japan emerged from the devastation of World War II with a focus on rebuilding ravaged cities and stoking economic growth. They allowed the United States and other allies to shoulder much of the burden of keeping their citizens safe.
After Germany split in two, America built large military bases and stationed tens of thousands of troops in West Germany, a frontline outpost in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The governments of both East and West Germany maintained their own large armies, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the reunified country spent far more on social programs than on defense.
Postwar Japan adopted an American-imposed Constitution, drafted under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It forced the Japanese to renounce war and prohibited keeping armed forces except for defensive purposes. That led to the creation of the Self-Defense Forces, which remains the official name for the country’s military.
In the decades after the war, anti-militarist movements gained traction in both countries, promoting the ideals of peace, diplomacy, free trade and cultural exchange.
But that sentiment has waned in recent years, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and China’s increasingly assertive military and economic policies under its leader, Xi Jinping.
President Trump’s threats to abandon security commitments in Europe and his eagerness to strike a trade deal with Mr. Xi accelerated both countries’ pushes toward rearmament.
Thomas Berger, a professor at Boston University who has studied the postwar history of Japan and Germany, said that the two countries were responsible for “perhaps the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century,” a reference to World War II, and that their defeats had “shattered their ideals and beliefs in empire and militarization.”
But the recent change in the global security landscape, particularly Mr. Trump’s volatility, has fueled anxiety and urgency for the countries’ relatively new leaders, both of them conservative and defense-minded. “There is this justifiable fear that the United States might sell them out,” Mr. Berger said.
Shortly before taking office a year ago, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, led a successful effort to suspend limits on Germany’s government borrowing in order to drastically increase military spending. In a few years, Germany’s military spending could be larger than that of France and Britain — combined.
Japan commits half as much as Germany, but it is still one of the world’s top spenders on defense, with a budget this year of about $58 billion.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a conservative lawmaker, won office last year with nationalist calls to revive the military. She has deployed long-range missiles — capable of reaching China — in southern Japan, and has reversed postwar bans on arms exports.
Both Mr. Merz and Ms. Takaichi have made a point of trying to maintain warm ties with Mr. Trump, but both have also looked beyond Washington, increasingly, for military alliances.
Japan recently sealed a $6.5 billion deal to supply warships to Australia, and it is in talks with the Philippines and Indonesia about exporting warships. Germany has forged close ties with Ukraine in developing and deploying new weapons and has asked France to help provide it with a nuclear deterrent.
China and Russia have accused Ms. Takaichi of seeking to revive World War II-era militarism. But she has said her policies are necessary because Japan faces the “most severe and complex” security environment since that era, citing the threat of China and North Korea.
“No single country can now protect its own peace and security alone,” she said recently. “There is absolutely no change in our commitment to upholding the path we have followed as a peace-loving nation for over 80 years.”
The German public has embraced rearmament reluctantly, but faster than the Japanese have.
Recent surveys suggest a majority of Germans see the world now as more dangerous than it was during the Cold War. They also suggest that two-thirds of the country backs higher spending on the military, even though the German armed forces, which do not enforce a draft, have struggled to persuade young people to enlist.
In Tokyo this spring, tens of thousands of people protested Ms. Takaichi’s security policies, including the decision to export more weapons and to establish a national intelligence agency. The protesters were concerned that Ms. Takaichi might next seek to scrap Article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war.
Nahoko Hishiyama, 37, who helped organize some protests, said Ms. Takaichi’s “policies are deeply concerning, as they aim to turn Japan into a military power.”
Alexandra Sakaki, a scholar at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin who studies Japan, said that rearmament would require further shifts in mind-set in Germany and Japan, especially if officials turn to policies like conscription.
“They need to think about military and society in a whole different way,” she said. “Will they be ready for combat, will they be ready to fight? Japan and Germany need the public to back that vision.”
One country has applauded the German and Japanese shifts: the United States.
Mr. Trump has long pushed allies to spend more on their own defense so the U.S. military can focus elsewhere. Meeting last year with Mr. Merz, he welcomed Germany’s spending surge — though not without reservation. In a quip, Mr. Trump noted that a remilitarized Germany might not please the American leaders who defeated Nazi Germany in World War II.
“I’m not sure that General MacArthur would have said it was positive, you know?” he said.
Christopher F. Schuetze contributed from Berlin, and Kiuko Notoya from Tokyo.
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10) Eighty Things to Know About Donald Trump on His 80th Birthday
Here’s everything you should know, and may have already forgotten, about the deranged felon president. Zeteo has you covered!
By TEAM ZETEO, JUN 14, 2026
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