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Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a mem-ber 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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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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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) They Fled to Safety in Palestinian Territory, Then Settlers Attacked Again
Violent settlers are not merely clearing Palestinians from land under Israel’s control. They are attacking areas where Israel agreed to Palestinian self-governance
By Azam Ahmed, Photographs by Ivor Prickett, May 16, 2026
Reporting from Al-Awsaj, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
Muhammad Gawanmeh, 45, sat outside his family’s tent with his wife and two of his young sons soon after the attack in Al-Awsaj, northeast of Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this past week.
Muhammad Gawanmeh, 45, sat outside his family’s tent with his wife and two of his young sons soon after the attack in Al-Awsaj, northeast of Jericho, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank this past week.
Muhammad Gawanmeh recognized the black pickup when it first pulled in front of his tent, trailed by an ATV carrying Israeli settlers he also recognized.
In January, he had fled his home of more than 40 years in the Israeli-occupied West Bank after violent settlers repeatedly attacked his village, wielding assault rifles and even setting up a base of operations in the middle of his neighborhood. Mr. Gawanmeh held on until the very end before he uprooted his wife, children and extended family, the last of more than two dozen households to abandon hope.
With nowhere else to go, he erected a tent in the safest place he could find in the hamlet of Al-Awsaj, a sun-bleached stretch of land carved from stony hillsides, deep in territory that is indisputably under Palestinian administration.
And yet last weekend, here were the same settlers again, seven men in all, sending a current of fear through the recently displaced families who cowered in their tents as Mr. Gawanmeh, 45, stood outside.
The attack began right away.
Settler violence has grown commonplace in the West Bank in recent years, part of a campaign of harassment, abuse and forced displacement. Since Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, more than 700,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank among more than three million Palestinians.
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, violent settlers, emboldened by a right-wing government, have forced thousands of Palestinians from their homes, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Palestinians are forbidden from carrying weapons, while the settlers are often heavily armed.
The Israeli military and police not only routinely fail to stop the violence, but a New York Times investigation found that they also often intervene on behalf of the Jewish settlers.
In the attack last weekend, the masked settlers used pepper spray on Mr. Gawanmeh, he said, temporarily blinding him. A few of them beat him while others stood on lookout, according to a video of the attack captured by his family and shown to The New York Times.
When Mr. Gawanmeh’s eldest son, Ahmad, 22, began to shout for help, the settlers fled the scene.
But the assault was not over.
They circled the area in their vehicles, watching. When they realized the family was alone, with the other men working in the farms nearby, they returned.
Mr. Gawanmeh said he considered fighting back. But he knew better.
“They would shoot me, or I would be the one to go to jail,” he said hours after the attack, his shirt and pants still covered in blood. “So I let them beat me.”
The settlers hurled a stone that struck Mr. Gawanmeh in the back of the head, he said, knocking him nearly unconscious. Afterward, he said, they used a baton with nails driven through it to batter him on the ground, tearing a large wound in his leg. Both injuries required multiple stitches.
Family members said the settlers also threw stones at Mr. Gawanmeh’s wife, Alia, 43, injuring her foot, and even struck their 4-year-old son, Obaida.
The settlers fled, firing gunshots in the air, only when they spotted Mr. Gawanmeh’s brothers racing up the hill, the family said.
Asked about the attack, the Israeli military said it strongly condemned the violence. The statement added that Israeli soldiers were deployed to the area following a report of violence involving several Israeli civilians who entered privately owned Palestinian territory, threw stones and fired into the air.
When they arrived, the soldiers searched the area, but found no suspects, the military said.
Israel police, forensic teams and soldiers collected testimonies and evidence and the military was investigating, the statement said.
In the past, some Israeli officials have minimized the seriousness of settler violence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has dismissed some perpetrators as a “handful of kids” from broken homes.
Settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have grown worse since the start of the most recent war with Iran, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which recorded an average of seven attacks a day in the past few months.
The past weekend was particularly brutal, with Palestinian media reporting nearly 20 different attacks, a territory-wide blotter of arson, invasion and beatings.
On Wednesday, Israeli military forces fatally shot a teenage Palestinian amid a new rampage by violent settlers in the West Bank zone under Palestinian administration, Palestinian witnesses said.
The settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, stormed several villages near the city of Ramallah. The settlers beat residents, stole livestock and tractors and smashed car windows, the witnesses said.
When some of the Palestinian residents tried to stop them, Israeli soldiers opened fire at them and killed the youth.
The Israeli military said soldiers opened fire after “a violent riot” with stone-throwing. Its statement said the Israeli forces were trying to prevent confrontation, extract the livestock, and escort all Israeli civilians out of the area.
Ayad Jafry, a witness, said no one was throwing stones.
But last weekend’s assault was a notable escalation, particularly in territory ostensibly under Palestinian control.
The settlers’ message could not have been clearer.
“There is nowhere safe for us,” said Naif Gawanmeh, Muhammad’s brother.
The Oslo Accords signed in the 1990s divided the occupied West Bank into three zones. Much of the violence in recent years has been concentrated in land designated as Area C, where the Israeli military is responsible for overseeing civilian administration as well as security.
Much of the land is rural, home to Bedouin communities whose villages of trailers, tents and corrugated sheepfolds are often draped along the undulating terrain. As more and more of that land is cleared of Palestinian life, the violent settler movement is pressing into once-unthinkable areas, along the edges of major Palestinian cities and into regions supposed to be under total Palestinian autonomy under the Oslo agreement.
Al-Awsaj, where the attack occurred last weekend, was designated as part of Area A, land that the Palestinian Authority administers — as close as it gets to sovereign territory.
The family of Yusuf Kaabna, the teenager killed on Wednesday, had also been displaced to Area A after their homes in another zone came under settler attacks, according to Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who knows the family and documented the attacks where they previously resided.
The site where the Gawanmeh family now lives, a treeless mountainside northeast of the West Bank city of Jericho, is populated with recently displaced people.
Last summer, settlers moved into and then evicted hundreds of Palestinians from the village of East Muarrajat, which sits just a few miles southwest in the central Jordan River valley. The Palestinians’ abandoned homes and livestock shelters remain in the sloped valley like ghostly ruins.
But the settlers did not stop at East Muarrajat. Instead, they moved on to mount another offensive, in Ras Ein al-Auja, the family home of the Gawanmehs, which sits within sight of East Muarrajat. Over several visits to the area, New York Times journalists witnessed repeated harassment by settlers.
Residents said the settlers deployed the same terror campaign in both places, brutalizing villagers day and night, until residents had no choice but to flee.
This was how Mr. Gawanmeh said he recognized the settlers who attacked him last Saturday, and their vehicles. Even with their masks on.
The family had called for help as soon as the attack started, running down a list of agencies. The Israeli police did not answer, they said, nor did the Palestinian Authority, whose security forces have a large base a few miles away.
Asked about the incident, the Palestinian Authority said it does not respond to settlers attacks, citing the potential for political repercussions if the Palestinian authorities were to get into a confrontations with the settlers or the Israeli army.
When Israeli soldiers eventually turned up, they questioned witnesses. Mr. Gawanmeh’s son Ahmad told them he saw everything and had been attacked himself.
Rather than take Ahmad’s statement on the spot, however, the soldiers handcuffed and took him away for questioning, according to the family and activists who arrived on the scene immediately after the assault.
Her son’s fate uncertain, Mr. Gawanmeh’s wife limped out from under a makeshift awning, her right foot wrapped in gauze.
What will we do, she asked aloud. The settlers had stolen half their sheep before the family fled Ras Ein Al-Auja, she said, and she was certain they now wanted the rest.
“They will come back,” she said. “And they will keep coming until they’ve stolen everything we have.”
Her son was later released and returned to the camp.
David M. Halbfinger, Natan Odenheimer and Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting.
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2) Trump Says a Top ISIS Leader Was Killed in a U.S.-Nigerian Mission
The leader, whom the State Department designated a terrorist in 2023, had been hiding in Africa, President Trump said.
By Francesca Regalado, May 16, 2026
President Trump announced the operation in a late-night post on Truth Social, his social media platform. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Trump said late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces had killed a top leader of the Islamic State who was hiding in Africa, where the United States has been targeting Islamic militants whom the president says are killing Christians.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said he had directed U.S. forces in an operation on Friday night with the Nigerian military to eliminate the leader, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki.
Mr. al-Minuki was designated a terrorist and one of the leaders of the Islamic State by the State Department in 2023. He was a Nigerian citizen, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which had sanctioned him.
Mr. Trump said Mr. al-Minuki had been hiding in Africa but did not specify where he was killed or provide details about the mission, which he said was “very complex.”
“He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans,” Mr. Trump said in the post.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria said in a statement on social media that the mission had struck Mr. al-Minuki’s compound near Lake Chad, which is at the intersection of four countries, and killed several of his lieutenants. He did not specify the location of the compound.
Both Mr. Trump and the Nigerian military identified Mr. al-Minuki as the second-most-senior leader in ISIS, a position the military said he might have received “as recently as February 2026.” He had earlier overseen “ISIS-linked operations across the Sahel and West Africa,” the military said.
Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Mr. al-Minuki had been responsible for recent attacks against the military in the country’s northeast. A spokeswoman for the United States Africa Command said it did not have anything to add to Mr. Trump’s statement.
The U.S. military has launched a number of attacks against Islamic jihadists in Nigeria since December, when a U.S. missile strike killed terrorists in two ISIS camps in the country’s northwest. That operation was done in coordination with the Nigerian military, the United States Africa Command said at the time.
Thousands of Christians and Muslims have been killed in Nigeria in land disputes, sectarian violence and terrorism, which Christian activists and Republican lawmakers in the United States have viewed as the persecution of Christians. There is no clear evidence to show that Christians are attacked more frequently than any other religious group in Nigeria, analysts say.
Earlier this year, a U.S. official said that the Pentagon would send about 200 troops to Nigeria to help train its military to fight Islamic militants but that U.S. forces would not be involved in combat operations.
Saikou Jammeh contributed reporting.
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3) Long Island Rail Road Strike Shuts Down Busiest U.S. Passenger Rail Service
This is the first strike on the service in more than 30 years. It comes after three years of failed contract negotiations, two federal interventions and a volley of last-minute bargaining.
By Stefanos Chen and Ashley Southall, May 16, 2026
The last Long Island Rail Road strike was in 1994, when a two-day suspension shut down the service. Ryan Murphy for The New York Times
Thousands of workers for the Long Island Rail Road walked off the job early Saturday morning, staging the first strike in more than 30 years for America’s busiest passenger railway and grinding service to a halt.
After three years of failed contract negotiations, two federal interventions and a volley of last-minute bargaining, unions representing about half of the work force decided to take to the picket line to protest what they called insufficient wage increases.
Five unions representing more than 3,500 workers — including engineers, signalmen and machinists — called the strike after contract discussions with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the railroad, fell apart.
Kevin Sexton, a vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, one of the unions, said the two sides could not agree on raises in 2026, or on issues like health care contributions.
“We are truly sorry that we’re in the this situation,” Mr. Sexton said at a midnight news conference outside of M.T.A. headquarters. “But this is why you have to take collective bargaining seriously.”
More than 270,000 daily riders rely on the service to travel between New York City and Long Island, a sprawl of suburbs and bedroom communities where many of the region’s workers live.
At the Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike subway station, a transfer point for passengers traveling from Long Island, there was no sign of the strike’s affecting travel on Saturday morning.
Alex Najjar, 56, who owns the All Star Newsstand next to the station entrance, said none of his customers were talking about the strike. That was in contrast to the noisy early-morning scene at the railroad station near his home in the Richmond Hill neighborhood in Queens.
“There were people walking down the street holding signs and people driving by honking their horns,” Mr. Najjar said.
The strike comes as Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, seeks re-election later this year. The governor, who lost Long Island in the previous election, is being challenged by the Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, a Republican with close ties to the region.
Ms. Hochul said in a statement that while her administration has made investments in the Long Island Rail Road, the unions’ demands could force her to increase taxes or raise fares by as much as 8 percent.
“The L.I.R.R. is more stable now than it has been for generations,” she said. “The decision by some unions to strike over demands that would threaten that progress is reckless.”
Janno Lieber, the chief executive of the M.T.A., said the authority was willing to increase its offer for higher wages but the unions were unwilling to compromise. He said the M.T.A. could not make a deal that “implodes” its budget.
To mitigate the shutdown, the M.T.A. said it would provide free shuttle buses between six locations on Long Island and two subway stations in Queens.
But the service will be unable to accommodate all the riders who rely on the railroad, and it won’t begin until Monday, leaving many scrambling for weekend travel alternatives.
On Saturday, the New York Mets are set to face the Yankees at Citi Field in Queens, where thousands of Long Island-based fans are expected to arrive by rail.
If the strike does not end by Monday morning, buses will shuttle riders between the Bay Shore, Hicksville and Mineola L.I.R.R. stations, as well as Hempstead Lake State Park near the Lakeview station, and the A train stop at Howard Beach-JFK Airport. And buses from the Huntington and Ronkonkoma stations will take riders to and from the F train stop at Jamaica-179 Street.
The buses to Queens are expected to run every 10 minutes from 4:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., and afternoon shuttles back to Long Island could run from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. They will be able to handle up to 13,000 riders during the morning rush and another 13,000 in the evening.
There will be a limited number of buses running in the non-peak direction at some of the stations.
Mr. Najjar, the newsstand owner, said he thought the unions should settle instead of inconveniencing riders.
But Rashad Morshed Delvalle, 35, an M.T.A. bus driver, was more sympathetic. He compared the striking workers to bus drivers who were treated poorly during the coronavirus pandemic while doctors and nurses were showered with praise.
“They don’t feel appreciated enough,” he said. “The M.T.A. and the union reps had enough time to negotiate. They should’ve come to an agreement. They had three months.”
The Long Island Rail Road carried 82 million customers last year. Most were weekday commuters on their way to jobs in New York City, but an increasing number of passengers were using the service on weekends.
This is the first strike on the railroad since 1994, when a two-day suspension shut down the service.
The state comptroller’s office said on Friday that the strike could cost the region $61 million a day in lost economic activity.
Discussions between the unions and management broke down on the final day of negotiations.
The unions were seeking a retroactive 9.5 percent wage increase covering the last three years — the same deal the M.T.A. offered several other transit and civil service unions in recent months. But they were also seeking a 5 percent raise in the current year, a demand that exceeded what the M.T.A. has offered to other unions.
The M.T.A. countered with a 3 percent raise for 2026, plus a lump-sum cash payment, which it said would avoid upending negotiations with more than 80 other unions.
By Friday afternoon, the two sides were about 1 percentage point apart on wage increases, but were unwilling to compromise further.
Leaders of the negotiating unions have argued that their workers don’t make enough money to keep up with the cost of living in one of the country’s most expensive metro areas. They have not received raises since 2022.
Cash compensation for members of the five holdout unions averaged over $136,000 in 2025, according to M.T.A. figures, making them among the highest-paid rail workers in the nation.
Earlier in negotiations, the M.T.A. had also sought to eliminate a number of work rules that often require higher pay for certain tasks. The unions declined to do so.
For instance, if an engineer drives a diesel train at the start of a shift but is asked to switch to an electric train in the same day, the M.T.A. must compensate that worker with two days’ pay. If, on the same day, the engineer is asked to switch from driving passengers to driving a train back to a yard for maintenance or storage, that worker is entitled to a third day of pay.
These penalty payments added almost 15 percent to the average engineer’s compensation in 2024, the M.T.A. said.
The Long Island Rail Road has an annual operating budget of $2.2 billion, and labor accounts for nearly three-fourths of that budget.
Unlike much of the M.T.A. work force, which is prevented from striking because it is governed by different rules, Long Island Rail Road workers are covered by a 1926 federal law called the Railway Labor Act.
The law was designed to prevent major service disruptions by requiring mediation and an extended review period before a strike is authorized.
But in an unusual move, the federal agency that oversees such disputes, the National Mediation Board, last year released the unions from mediation, a decision that cleared the path for a possible walkout.
Ms. Hochul said on Saturday that she blamed the Trump administration for cutting the mediation short, and increasing the likelihood of a strike.
A strike was postponed twice within the past year, after the unions requested the intervention of two federally appointed review panels. The three-person panels, which were appointed by President Trump, said the unions should be paid more than what the M.T.A. was offering, but their suggestions are not binding.
The unions on Saturday declined to say how long the strike might last. Workers were preparing to picket at a number of stations over the weekend.
“This is an open-ended strike,” Gilman Lang, the general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in a statement.
“We don’t know when it will end. It shouldn’t have begun.”
Ellen Yan contributed reporting.
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4) Rival Protests Begin in London, With a Major Security Effort
The police have deployed thousands of officers, partly to keep far-right and pro-Palestinian marchers apart. The events are expected to draw tens of thousands to London.
By Megan Specia, Reporting from London, May 16, 2026
The streets of the British capital hosted an ideological split-screen on Saturday as separate, far-right and pro-Palestine demonstrators competed for attention in dueling protests.
Marching through central London, tens of thousands of far-right protesters wearing “Make Britain Great Again” hats and draped in Union flags demanded support for white culture and an end to migration.
Along another route, similar numbers of pro-Palestine and anti-fascism demonstrators decried racism as they carried signs and banners calling for freedom for Palestinians in Gaza and an end to the genocide they said was taking place there.
The groups largely stayed separate, with few reports of arrests or violence, after what London police said was an “unprecedented” security operation designed to keep the protests from descending into a riot.
Police said 4,000 police officers, as well as helicopters, armed vehicles and drone teams, were deployed Saturday. By 5 p.m., the police had reported 31 arrests but said the groups had largely stayed on their assigned routes and “both protests have proceeded largely without significant incident.” The FA Cup final, a major soccer competition, was also held on Saturday afternoon, bringing large crowds to the city and adding to the complexity.
“The scale of the operation is unprecedented in recent years,” said Cmdr. James Harman, the deputy assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, in a Wednesday news briefing ahead of the protests. “The planning for it has been ongoing for months.”
Protesters carrying flags and banners began arriving early in the morning as they made their way along London’s streets to the meeting points for the competing marches.
The far-right demonstration was organized by Tommy Robinson, an anti-Islam agitator whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, under the banner, “Unite the Kingdom.” Mr. Robinson, who has several criminal convictions and has served several stints in prison, has said it was a demonstration for “national unity, free speech and Christian values.”
“We have been in a culture war for a long time,” Mr. Robinson told the crowd on Saturday. He said the march represented a movement that was “thinking about how we can create a cultural revolution in this country.”
Along the protest route, several marchers echoed that sentiment.
“I’m just supporting being British,” said Corina Short, who came to the rally from Kent, about an hour away from London. “It means I can fly my flag with pride without feeling as though it’s a crime.”
Marchers waved signs that said “Stop the Boats,” a reference to asylum seekers who arrive on Britain’s shores, and chanted derisive slogans about Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a center-left politician and the head of the Labour Party.
“He says we’re causing division, he’s causing division,” Paul Gibson, from Nottingham, said of Mr. Starmer. “He protects the criminals, the Muslim gangs, the Islamic extremists, but when it comes to us, he blames us.”
In a video posted on Friday on social media, Mr. Starmer said the organizers of the march, “including convicted thugs and racists, are peddling hatred and division.”
The competing protest on Saturday was an annual Nakba Day demonstration, commemorating the mass displacement of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 during the Arab-Israeli War.
Organizers said it also stood “united against Tommy Robinson and the far right.” That rally was organized by a coalition of groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition and others, and was joined by “Stand Up To Racism,” a group opposing Mr. Robinson’s march.
Protesters carried signs declaring that “It’s Not a Crime to Stand Against Genocide,” “Stop Gaza Genocide” and “Freedom For Palestine.” Many waved the black, white, green and red Palestinian flag.
At one point, the crowd broke out into chants of “We are all Palestinians.”
Apsana Begum, a Labour member of Parliament who spoke at the rally, told the crowd that there were differences between the two marches.
“We know that the far right marches because our solidarity with the Palestinian people threatens their cause,” she said, according to PA Media, the British press association. “We will not be divided by the far right. We will not be silenced by any government, and we will not go quietly while crimes against humanity continue and are committed with impunity.”
Many people in the march appeared to be as focused on British politics as they were on the Middle East. Several carried signs that said “Stop Racist Reform U.K.,” a reference to the right-wing populist political party in Britain headed by Nigel Farage. His party made huge gains in elections in England, Scotland and Wales last week.
Both London demonstrations took place against an increasingly tense political backdrop, with the country’s terrorism threat level increased in recent weeks amid rising antisemitism, Islamophobia and extreme right-wing sentiment.
The bulk of the policing operation on Saturday was on keeping the two marches apart. At one point, the rallies converged on the same area of the city, near government buildings — at their closest, separated by just over 500 yards.
“We can’t ask a counterprotest to be in a completely different area of London,” Commander Harman said during the briefing on Wednesday. “They have to have an amount of proximity in order to make their point. We think we’ve come up with the right policing plan to keep people safe on the day, although it’s challenging.”
Protesters were required to stick to prearranged routes and to disperse by a designated time, or face arrest. The police also extended powers to arrest any speakers who used the events “as a platform for unlawful extremism or for hate speech,” Commander Harman said, noting that it was the first time these restrictions had been imposed for a rally of this type since the powers were enacted recently. It was not clear on Saturday whether any speakers had been arrested under these restrictions.
Live facial recognition technology was used for the first time in policing a protest, in a part of the city where people taking part in the right-wing rally are expected to gather beforehand. The technology compared those walking by with “the faces of those on a specific watchlist” of people wanted for suspected criminal offenses, Commander Harman said.
Officials said two of the 31 arrests occurred near the train station where the far-right demonstration began.
“One of the two men was arrested in connection with the incident in Birmingham where a man was run over,” the police wrote on X. “The second arrested man was wanted for a separate offense which involved encouraging people to attack a police officer.”
Some foreign far-right activists were also barred from entering Britain for that demonstration, the government announced this week.
“We will not allow people to come to the U.K., threaten our communities and spread hate on our streets,” Mr. Starmer said in a speech on Monday. “This is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation.”
Britain late last month raised its national terrorism threat level to “severe” from “substantial,” the fourth of five levels on its scale, meaning officials assessed that an attack was highly likely in the next six months. The Joint Terrorism Analysis Center, which is responsible for the assessment, announced the change after a stabbing attack on two Jewish men in the north London neighborhood of Golders Green and a series of other antisemitic attacks.
The center said the increase was “not solely a result of that attack,” but also of broader concerns about an “increasing threat of Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorism in the U.K.”
Ahead of the protests, “fears in Jewish communities are particularly heightened, but we’ve also seen increased concern more broadly, including in Muslim communities,” Commander Harman said.
The police are well aware of the risks the opposing demonstrations could pose. In September, Mr. Robinson and his supporters gathered in London in a protest that devolved into violence when several people involved clashed with the police. At that time, antiracism protesters had also gathered in a counter-demonstration elsewhere in the city, and around 1,000 police officers had set up barriers between the dueling protests.
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5) For Trump, Soaring Prices Test Voters’ Finances and Patience
Just months before another election that may hinge on the economy, the war in Iran has sent gas and other goods soaring.
By Tony Romm and Ben Casselman, May 17, 2026
Tony Romm reported from Washington and Ben Casselman from New York.
Swept into power by voters who were frustrated with the nation’s economic trajectory, President Trump promised at his inauguration to “bring prices down.”
But that was January 2025, more than a year before the White House would forge ahead with an agenda that has sent inflation roaring back, testing the patience — and the finances — of a cost-wary American electorate once again.
For Mr. Trump, the nation’s political and economic strains are laid bare in a series of dour reports released over the past two weeks. Consumer prices last month rose at their fastest clip in about three years, outpacing workers’ wages, while businesses saw their costs increase at a rate not seen since 2022.
Americans are racking up more debt. Families are saving less. And a key measure of consumer confidence dipped to an all-time low this month. The anxiety has bled into recent political polls, which have registered broad public disapproval of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy.
At the heart of matter is the war with Iran, which sent the average gallon of gasoline to about $4.52 nationally, according to AAA. That is a more than 40 percent jump from a year ago, an uptick that has cut across the global economy, affecting everything from the cost of workers’ daily commutes to the prices of goods at grocery stores.
Yet the president has largely dismissed those recent signals, telling reporters at one point last week: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”
Mr. Trump had been asked about the extent to which the economy factored into his plans to end the war, and responded that disarmament was his sole concern. Otherwise, the president has maintained that the U.S. economy is strong and will rebound quickly once the war concludes, precipitating a rapid fall in gas prices in the United States.
Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who has advised Mr. Trump, said the recent turbulence was not a “surprise.” But he acknowledged that voters might not be forgiving come November’s midterm election, given that the president promised he would bring down the cost of living.
“Republicans could face a tsunami election in November if inflation continues to stay high,” said Mr. Moore, who described gas prices as “the chief gauge people use to determine how the economy is doing.”
The jump in fuel costs is only the latest blow for American families, who have suffered through years of rising prices, high interest rates and a softening labor market — as well as much longer-running concerns about the affordability of housing, child care and other essentials.
Add on mounting concerns that the arrival of artificial intelligence could yield mass job losses and Americans have plenty of reason to be worried about their financial well-being, said David Tinsley, an economist at the Bank of America Institute.
“It’s one thing after another, and I think that is why people feel so bad,” he said. “It’s quite hard to point to things that people would feel great about, that would inspire a lot of optimism, unless you’re at the top of the income distribution.”
At the start of the year, Mr. Trump seemed ready to hit the 2026 campaign trail and claim credit for an economy on the upswing. In some of its earliest forecasts, the White House believed that its agenda, particularly its recent round of expensive tax cuts, would seed the conditions for higher wages, more jobs and new investments over the coming year, yielding benefits that voters would remember once they arrived at the ballot box.
But then Mr. Trump began to bomb Iran in February, which upended the global economy by snarling its energy supply. Far from the boom once envisioned, analysts have since broadly revised their projections, anticipating that sky-high oil will slow growth, worsen unemployment and raise prices, meting out the greatest damage to families that earn the least.
“These are the exact kind of spikes that are going to hit low-income people the hardest, at the exact same time that their incomes are slowing the most,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy for the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive group that focuses on cost-of-living issues. “I totally understand why people are really mad right now.”
Mr. Jacquez served under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who strained early in the 2024 election to convince Americans that the economy was good when their gas and grocery bills said otherwise. Stung by the downturn of the Covid-19 pandemic, voters did not accept that argument, and they returned Mr. Trump to office.
During the presidential race, Mr. Trump promised to bring down inflation and restore a sense of normalcy after years of economic tumult. Once elected, however, he began unleashing chaos of his own making, chiefly through his eye-watering tariffs, which caused import prices to rise. And just as those effects had started to calm, the president commenced a war that drove up the cost of gas, the one product where the price is posted in giant numbers alongside every highway in America.
“They’re the two major decision points of his presidency, and their impact on domestic prices is to unequivocally make them higher,” Mr. Jacquez said.
Despite the mounting challenges, the White House has remained bullish about the nation’s economic course. Last Sunday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, mused on Fox News that the nation’s gross domestic product, a measure of its output, could top 6 percent this year. (Most private forecasters expect the economy to grow at less than half that rate.)
Mr. Trump and his aides have also pointed repeatedly to the stock market, which has posted a series of record trading days during the war, primarily driven by optimism around artificial intelligence. So, too, has the White House found reason for celebration in the labor market, after employers added 115,000 jobs last month, surpassing expectations.
Pierre Yared, the acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, predicted last week that consumer prices would “go back down” once the war ended. That, he added, would relax pressure on families, who would see wages continue to grow “following the tailwinds of the economy.”
“Consumers are continuing to spend, and they do seem to be looking through the shock,” Mr. Yared said. “It looks to us like consumers understand the situation is temporary.”
There is little evidence so far that Americans’ anxiety about the economy is causing them to pull back their spending. Retail sales were solid in April, data released on Thursday showed, continuing a pattern of resilience that has repeatedly defied forecasters’ predictions of a slowdown.
But that strength is being driven, at least partly, by wealthy households, which have been insulated from economic headwinds by a steadily rising stock market. Lower- and middle-income households are the ones bearing the brunt of slower wage growth and rising prices. Larger tax refunds have helped many families offset higher costs, but that effect is fading.
“There is a bit of a buffer from increased tax returns,” said Justin Weidner, an economist at Deutsche Bank. “The consumer has a bit of a buffer in the near term, but the longer gas prices remain high, the more precarious the situation could get.”
Taken together, the conditions have left investors convinced that the Federal Reserve is not going to slash interest rates this year, as Mr. Trump has vigorously sought. Even after securing a new chair for the central bank — Kevin M. Warsh, who was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday — policymakers seem inclined to wait out the current uncertainty before resuming their cuts.
“We think there is a narrow path to being able to get a cut in, but I would say it is very slim,” said Josh Hirt, a senior economist at Vanguard, adding that it “would definitely depend” on a swift unwinding of the war with Iran.
Yet the president’s aides have appeared to dismiss investors’ conclusions about the Fed. In an interview on the sidelines of trade talks in China, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, told CNBC that inflation would moderate quickly, allowing Mr. Warsh to cut rates soon.
“I actually think he’s going to be in a very good position,” the secretary said of Mr. Warsh, “because we may get a series, one or two more hot inflation numbers, but then I think we’re going to see substantial disinflation.”
Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Mr. Trump’s approach to the economy had been baffling, especially coming off the experience of the Biden administration.
“I’ve been struck, even before the Iran war, with the degree to which President Trump is making the same mistakes as President Biden,” Mr. Strain said. “We’ve had two presidents in a row who have seen consumer prices going up on their watch, who have dismissed those price increases out of hand as temporary, transitory, not real in some measure.”
Both presidents had also “politically chosen to downplay the importance of price increases in the lives of voters,” Mr. Strain added.
“There have been an astonishing number of own goals in the last year and a half,” he said.
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6) We Are Sliding Back Into the Middle Ages
By Katya Ungerman, May 17, 2026
Ms. Ungerman writes the newsletter default.blog under the pen name Katherine Dee.
Brecht Vandenbroucke
In 2024, Tucker Carlson revealed that he had been physically attacked in his bed by a demon — “or by something unseen.” The entity left four claw marks on each of his sides and on his left shoulder, he said. He was bleeding when he woke. Catholic and Orthodox clergy weighed in publicly, with an Orthodox priest lamenting that Mr. Carlson’s Episcopalian faith left him ill-equipped to respond to such an attack.
More recently, Gregg Phillips, the head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, made news for claiming that he had once been teleported, by forces beyond his control, to a Waffle House 50 miles away in Rome, Ga. The Times sent a reporter to track down the workers and regulars at all three of Rome’s Waffle House locations, but nobody remembered Mr. Phillips.
In a less esoteric vein, this past Easter, Catholic priests in dioceses across the country welcomed the largest classes of converts they had seen in 15 or more years. Eastern Orthodox parishes are also reporting a surge in growth, particularly among young men.
“In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America,” one Antiochian Orthodox priest told The Times, “this has never been seen.”
The backdrop of all this is the peculiar atmosphere of contemporary public life — claustrophobic, faintly hallucinatory, where what we know as real feels like sand shifting under our feet. The first lady, Melania Trump, walks a humanoid robot down a White House red carpet and later tells the audience to imagine a future humanoid educator named “Plato.” A former intelligence official testifies under oath that the United States has been secretly retrieving and reverse-engineering crashed U.F.O.s for decades, and that nonhuman “biologics” have been recovered.
Demonic vexation, teleportation, increased interest in religious practice — those phenomena are all signs that life feels, to many, increasingly charged with unseen forces. You might say it has been re-enchanted. There’s a widespread feeling that the material explanation is no longer sufficient; that something uncanny, maybe even numinous, is diffused into the texture of ordinary American life.
Pew found in 2024 that 30 percent of Americans consult astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers at least once a year. New age practices are even more popular among some demographics, like younger women and L.G.B.T.Q. adults. During my first pregnancy I received a reiki, or energy healing, treatment for my unborn son. It’s now offered at major hospitals across the country.
What is going on? Why is the world re-enchanting itself now?
In 1917, the sociologist Max Weber argued that a long process of rationalization, culminating in modernity, was eliminating “mysterious incalculable forces” from the world. Science would explain; technology would master; and magic would disappear. For a brief stretch of modern history, he seemed right: The enduring human instinct to believe in the otherworldly declined as empiricism, common evidentiary standards and, for the shortest period of all, mass media produced a rough consensus about what was real. Now we seem to be sliding back.
Three changes in both the kind of information we receive and the way we receive it may help explain what’s going on.
The first is that, in the era of digital technology and the endless scroll, the mind is being asked to do more than it comfortably can. The brain is a pattern-matching machine. Most of the time, it’s like a piece of software running in the background, synthesizing information without your noticing. You walk into a room and instantly read the mood; you glance at a friend’s face and know something is wrong before they tell you. Today, there’s just too much information — and we’re noticing patterns that don’t exist.
This mental overload is how you get from “that’s an odd coincidence” to “nothing is a coincidence.” It’s the same type of thinking that produces QAnon and other conspiracy theories. It’s what happens when a stranger on TikTok tells a million viewers this video was “meant” to find them, and many of them, despite being vaguely aware of how recommendation algorithms work, take it as a sign that supernatural forces are at work.
The second change has to do with proof and evidence. Doctored photographs predate A.I. and even the digital camera. But fabricating proof used to take work.
A.I. has removed that friction — any claim can now be furnished with evidence on demand, evidence increasingly indistinguishable from the real thing. And since so much evidence can now be fabricated, any piece of evidence can be dismissed. When nothing is verifiable, then everything is permitted.
Finally, there’s institutional decay. The paranoid explanation keeps turning out to be partly right. To give just one high-profile example, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, spent decades downplaying how addictive its product was, even as it fueled an overdose epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
When events like that one happen often enough, people lose confidence in institutional authority. There goes “the science,” or “the church,” or “the official story.” Demonology, astrology or conspiracy theories about satanic pedophile cabals ruling the world fill the gap.
The result of all of those conditions is that life has begun to feel governed by forces beyond our understanding, by knowledge that is unverifiable and by authority that is distant and suspect. It is, in a word, beginning to feel medieval.
I do not believe that re-enchantment, in itself, is the main problem. After all, re-enchantment doesn’t mean “irrational,” or “untrue,” or “conspiracy,” though it can lead there. Rather, it’s the re-emergence of one of the oldest and most durable features of human experience, the sense that the world is bigger than what human knowledge can, at a particular moment, measure. It’s not a coincidence that many of our most famous scientists were obsessed with ideas that we’d now find crazy. Thomas Edison, for example, claimed to be working on a device that would try to receive the voices of the dead.
But enchantment mutates when it’s untethered from a foundation, from a community that acts as a check on the most wild and destructive instincts.
In a Rolling Stone article about A.I.-induced spiritual crises, the writer Miles Klee spoke to an unnamed source whose partner had messaged extensively with ChatGPT. Eventually, the partner came believe he was God. He had an ecstatic experience with a product that has a stake in keeping him engaged; his story might have ended differently inside a spiritual community, where someone could have told him to slow down.
The world we’re moving into will look more like the one before the modern era than like the one we grew up in. It will be saturated with the supernatural. Everyone will believe in something. The question is in what.
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7) What A.I. Did to My College Class
By Theo Baker, May 17, 2026
Mr. Baker is a college senior and the author of “How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University.”
Maxime Mouysset
At Stanford University, where I am a senior, tech chief executives are something like rock stars. When the Nvidia founder Jensen Huang showed up to give a guest lecture late last month, students mobbed him. They offered up their laptops and personal workstations, desperate for a signature from a kingpin of the artificial intelligence era. Last year, speaking to the same class, Mr. Huang gave out shining $4,000 graphic cards with his name autographed in gold ink — the ultimate dorm room status symbol.
Stanford has always been a haven for aspiring techies, but recent events have taken the school into uncharted territory. A.I. is everything. We talk about it at the dining halls and in history classes, on dates and while smoking with friends, at the gym and in communal dorm bathrooms. Nearly all of higher education has been overtaken by this technology, and Stanford is a case study in how far it can go. For the past four years, my classmates and I have been the subjects of a high-stakes experiment.
We are the first college class of the A.I. era — ChatGPT arrived on campus about two months after we did. When we graduate next month, this technology will have altered our lives in very different ways. For some, it has opened the door to staggering wealth. But for many who came to Stanford — just four years ago! — when a degree seemed like a guaranteed ticket to a high-paying job, the door has been slammed shut. For all of us, A.I. has permanently changed how we think and behave.
Stanford already had a shaky reputation for integrity when I arrived in 2022. It was the origin place of the Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (now serving a 10-year prison sentence), the crypto fraudster Do Kwon (now serving a 15-year prison sentence) and the founders of Juul (which was forced to pay billions for getting kids hooked on vapes). All of these scandals were in the news when freshman year began. Many of my classmates arrived idealistic and hopeful, but among the strivers seeking a path to fortune, hustle culture was the accepted way of life. Now A.I. has made deception easier and more remunerative than ever before.
Cheating has become omnipresent. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t used A.I. to get through some assignment in college, yet the school was at first slow to realize how widespread this would become. As freshman year went on, some professors suggested that the “nuclear option” might be called for: allowing faculty to proctor in-person exams, a practice banned at the university for over a century to demonstrate “confidence in the honor” of students.
In our tech-enabled, newly A.I.-powered world, students were increasingly fudging just about everything. They would embezzle dorm funds to spend on their friends and lie about having Covid to get the UberEats credits that the school offered to those in quarantine. Some kids I knew published a paper that claimed a groundbreaking new A.I. advancement. Online sleuths quickly pointed out that it appeared to be just a stolen Chinese model, to which the two Stanford co-authors responded by blaming the plagiarism on the third author.
In junior year, 49 percent of the 849 computer science majors who responded to an annual campus survey said they would rather cheat on an exam than fail. A friend of mine captured the school’s ethos while we were discussing the tech hardware and other items our student club neglected to return to corporate sponsors. It was all, I recall her saying, “just a little bit of fraud.”
About halfway through freshman year, some coding classes started requiring students to sign a declaration — “I did not utilize ChatGPT” — to submit each assignment. During the first term these attestations began to appear, I watched a freshman I knew sign the declaration that he’d done his homework without A.I. as ChatGPT was still open in the next window — while on the deck of a yacht party financed by venture capitalists. The incentive structures were not aligned toward honesty. One could get ahead, quickly, by cutting corners, by focusing on self-presentation.
The money is a big part of it. A.I. has merely accelerated a trend that was already underway at Stanford and has been reflected by many of the country’s most corporatized universities: Education itself can be seen as a secondary goal to enabling future success, frequently defined as a future windfall.
The first time our college class gathered together was for a convocation ceremony in late September 2022. As one of the speakers droned on, I remember looking around and seeing a number of my classmates slumped over in the shade, dozing off. One of those kids is going to become a billionaire soon, it occurred to me. I wondered who it would be, and how.
At first the answer seemed to be cryptocurrency, and then it was A.I.
Most of my friends remember where they were and what they were doing when ChatGPT came out on Nov. 30, 2022. I was nearing the end of my time in Stanford’s infamous computer science “weeder” course, CS107. Like organic chemistry for pre-meds, this was the class that filtered out the true coders from those without the requisite hustle (with lots of shameless public tears involved).
The velocity of change that began on the day ChatGPT entered our lives was stunning. A friend texted me a link to the research preview of OpenAI’s latest demo: “Have you seen this yet? It’s INSANE.” We began kicking around silly prompts, reveling as ChatGPT explained the bubble-sort algorithm “in the style of a fast-talkin’ wise guy from a 1940s gangster movie.” It’s “very good. Very very good,” I messaged my friend. Still, neither of us understood that this would mark the transformation of A.I. from a technology to a product.
Students were probably the earliest wide-scale adopters. After all, it was far and away the quickest route to an A. When I took CS107, the only viable way for people to cheat was to seek out a student who’d gone through the class before and beg for solutions to the notoriously difficult problem sets. There was no alternative to putting in a large amount of work. Even if one did obtain the answers from another student (engaging, by the way, in a social act, if nothing else), the students I knew who did this still spent hours sculpting their stolen code so as not to be caught.
Few cheated in this most overt fashion back then. But a month later, any student could instead turn to a chatbot, plugging in a prompt alone in a dorm room and mindlessly regurgitating the result. “I remember the first time I used it feeling an immediate sense of guilt,” a friend recently told me. “Now it’s just normal.”
Half of the laptops in any lecture seem to be open to ChatGPT or Claude. In the beginning, experimenting with models was a pastime for the nerds; showing off the early access you got to the next frontier large language model was a status symbol, and people would come pleading for your authorization keys to try it out for themselves. In just a few short years, however, A.I. has become a fact of life. “It’s all we talk about,” my ancient Greek art history professor remarked recently.
In April 2026, the proctored exam policy finally went into place. Because of A.I., most of us now take our tests by writing in blue books, like students a century ago, scribbling out answers by hand under keen observation. Meanwhile, we wonder constantly what will happen next.
Many students view these large language models as a job threat. The machines have gotten so much better at coding that junior engineers can’t really compete. A Stanford computer science degree means something very different today from what it did when we set foot on campus — no longer is there a functional guarantee of an entry-level position.
But for those willing to dream up a company with “A.I.” in the name, there is a nearly surefire route to monetary gain. Perplexity, started right when my freshman year began, is an example of a “wrapper” start-up — in other words, a company that does not have its own proprietary A.I. and merely repackages existing models in a different form. It is a search tool, and loses money essentially every time a new user inputs a query. In April 2024, it reached a billion-dollar valuation; two months later, that number tripled. In May 2025, it announced that it was fund-raising at a $14 billion valuation, which had grown to $18 billion by July, and $20 billion by September.
Money in Silicon Valley has become a game of almost meaningless numbers bandied about in a breathtakingly casual manner. It contributes to the whirlpool effect students at Stanford have felt around tech and lucre — if your roommate can drop out and start a nine-figure company, why shouldn’t you profit, too? Why put all your energy into being a student when it seems like everyone around you is getting rich? One time during sophomore year, I was working on homework in my dorm common room with an acquaintance when she offhandedly remarked, “I bought a house in Las Vegas last week.” She continued, “It’s good for taxes.” It’s hard to put your earbuds in and get right back to your problem set when someone says something like that.
Yet the same Stanford dropouts who seem to be making the most money right now are often working on the very technology that is worsening life for their former college classmates.
Emerging research has begun to show what most people feel is obvious: Relying on A.I. for cognitive tasks can reduce one’s own intellectual capacity and resilience. It’s one thing to use it in the workplace, but in the classroom, difficulty is often precisely the point. Sure, a robot can lift 600 pounds much more easily than I can — but that doesn’t much help me if I’m trying to work out. The same goes for the thinking exercise of education. However, telling that to students is about as attractive a message as “eat your veggies” or “sleep eight hours.” It feels like scolding.
Even in the heart of the Silicon Valley techno-utopia, most people know that our tech is bad for us, or at least that it can be. A.I. is often a tremendous productivity boost, yet my friends increasingly refer to both short-form video and their A.I. chat logs in the language of addiction. It’s becoming baked in, shaping our generational character. We are a digital generation, growing only more attached to the virtual world.
The technology behind A.I. is wickedly clever, and back when large language models were still a research experiment — before they propped up the U.S. economy — my friends and I bubbled with excitement. I remember trying to explain to my grandfather, who has since died, that “backpropagation,” a technique vital to A.I., grew out of attempts to quantitatively prove Freud’s theories about the “flow of psychic energy.” I don’t think I really sold Gramps on why he should care — but to me, the development of A.I. was human genius at its finest, and I couldn’t wait to open the arXiv links people would text me containing the latest and greatest research. The output of a model didn’t matter anywhere near as much as how it was designed.
Now, the opposite is true. A.I. is an application that people actually rely on, and companies have become less and less transparent about its design. What counts is the immediate response you receive when you send a reading to ChatGPT to be summarized on your walk to class. Most students call OpenAI’s model “Chat.” Many refer to it familiarly, consulting with Chat repeatedly over the course of a day, letting it decide how to text a situationship and confidently repeating hallucinated assertions while in line at the coffee shop. For years, online livestreamers have used the word “Chat” to interact with their audiences, asking commenters to tell them what choices to make in video games. That students now use the same name for A.I. feels appropriate. What really is the distinction between a nameless, faceless human you’ll never meet except over the internet and a statistical approximation of the same thing?
The internet has already allowed us to feel more connected than ever while becoming lonelier than ever. A.I. lets us cut out the human part of human interaction entirely.
When I was sitting in a recent class on love in French fiction — exactly the kind of course that a senior takes before it all comes to an end — I listened to the first student presentation, entitled: “Applying the Gale-Shapley Algorithm to ‘The Princess of Clèves.’” The enterprising presenters sought to resolve the contretemps of the 1678 romantic novel through a computer science matching algorithm. Love was something to “be optimized.” Next to me, one student scribbled on a branded notepad from Hudson River Trading, a quantitative trading firm where fresh graduates can earn upward of $600,000 a year. Another had a sticker on her laptop: “Practice safe C.S.” The class could not have felt more Stanford.
Living on campus for the past four years has been an eye-opening journey. Higher education was not equipped for the A.I. revolution. Someday in the future the fully autonomous Clawdbots or Moltbots (or whatever people call them) will laugh to themselves about this silly interregnum when universities seemed paralyzed, trying to bridge the gap between the liberal education of yore and the future in which humans have no monopoly on intelligence.
For us, this was college.
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8) In Iraqi Desert, Two Israeli Outposts Were Kept Secret for Months
Israel spent over a year preparing a covert site in Iraq for its operations against Iran, regional officials say. Iraqi officials later confirmed the existence of a second base.
By Erika Solomon and Falih Hassan, May 17, 2026
The truck rattling by at 2 p.m. on March 3 was a familiar sight to residents of the Bedouin encampment in Iraq’s rugged western desert — a local shepherd’s pickup, en route to the nearest town of al-Nukhaib.
Its return a few hours later, flaming and riddled with bullets, was anything but routine.
A helicopter was chasing the truck, three witnesses from the camp said, firing on it repeatedly until it jerked to a halt in the sand.
The deadly attack, which has not been previously reported, took place after Awad al-Shammari, 29, set off on a grocery trip, his cousin, Amir al-Shammari, told The New York Times. Instead of making it home, the shepherd stumbled upon a closely guarded Israeli military secret, hidden in the Iraqi desert. His family believes it cost him his life.
Mr. al-Shammari’s discovery would ultimately reveal how Iraq had played host to two covert bases operated intermittently by Israel, a hostile state, for well over a year.
Sometime between starting his ill-fated trip and its gruesome end, Mr. al-Shammari had contacted Iraq’s regional military command to report what he had seen: soldiers, helicopters and tents clustered around a landing strip. Israel was operating a base there to support its military operations against Baghdad’s regional partner, Iran, according to senior Iraqi and regional officials.
The presence of an Israeli outpost in Iraq was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal. Iraqi officials told The Times there was another undisclosed second base also in Iraq’s western desert.
The base Mr. al-Shammari came across predated the current war between the United States, Israel and Iran, the regional security officials said, and was used during the 12-day war against Tehran in June 2025.
Israeli forces began preparing to build the makeshift base as far back as late 2024, one of the regional officials said — identifying remote sites from which to operate in future conflicts.
Israel’s military declined repeated requests for comment on the camps or on Mr. al-Shammari’s killing.
The witnesses to Mr. al-Shammarri’s death spoke on condition of anonymity, citing concerns for their safety. Most of the officials who discussed the Israeli bases insisted on anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive security matter.
The information they shared indicates that at least one of the bases — the one Mr. al-Shammari stumbled upon — had been known to Washington since June 2025 or possibly earlier. That would most likely mean Baghdad’s other key ally, the United States, had withheld from Iraq the fact that hostile forces were on its soil.
“It shows a blatant disregard for Iraqi sovereignty, its government and its forces, as well as for the dignity of the Iraqi people,” said Waad al-Kadu, an Iraqi lawmaker who attended a confidential parliamentary briefing about that base.
The U.S. role in Iraqi security was part of Israel’s calculations in deciding it could safely operate clandestinely in Iraq, the regional officials said.
In both the brief war last year and the current conflict, two Iraqi security officials said, Washington compelled Iraq to shut down its radars to protect U.S. aircraft, making Baghdad more reliant on U.S. forces to detect hostile activity.
The disclosure of the bases raise uncomfortable questions for Iraq, too. Among them: Were its forces really unaware of a foreign presence until a shepherd exposed it? Or did they know, but chose to ignore it?
Either possibility reflects how Iraq, long trapped in a tug of war between Washington and Tehran, remains unable to exercise full control over its territory.
“The position of our security leaders is shameful,” Mr. al-Kadu said.
Maj. Gen. Ali al-Hamdani, commander of the Iraqi military’s Western Euphrates Forces, said the army had suspected an Israeli presence in the desert for over a month before the shepherd’s discovery.
“Until now,” he said, “the government has been silent about it.”
Iraq’s government, for whom acknowledging Israeli outposts is fraught, has still not acknowledged the Israeli bases. Iraq has no diplomatic relations with Israel, and its population sees Israel as an enemy. Lt. Gen. Saad Maan, a spokesman for Iraq’s security forces, told The Times that Iraq “has no information regarding the locations of any Israeli military bases.”
Growing outrage in Iraq over the revelations could threaten U.S. efforts to curb Iranian influence in the country, even as the war’s outcome remains uncertain.
Two regional security officials said the base Mr. al-Shammari exposed was used by Israel for air support, refueling and to provide medical treatment.
The outpost was made to shorten distances Israeli aircraft had to fly to reach Iran. It was intended as only a temporary presence to assist with military operations — like those in the June 2025 war, during which, the two regional officials said, the base proved extremely useful.
In a speech after last year’s war, Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, said the success of Israeli operations was made possible “among other things, by integration and deception carried out by air forces and ground commando forces.”
The Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, declined to comment on Israeli operations in Iraq, referring questions to the Israel Defense Forces.
But former top U.S. military commanders, Pentagon officials and American diplomats who served in the region said it was inconceivable, given the U.S. military’s close ties with the Israeli military, that Central Command did not know about the Israeli presence in western Iraq.
A dangerous secret
For weeks, Bedouin communities in Iraq’s western desert had been reporting unusual military activity to Iraq’s regional command, according to General al-Hamdani, the regional commander.
The army decided not to approach, he said, and instead conducted “surveillance monitoring” from afar of what commanders suspected were Israeli forces. They requested information from their U.S. counterparts, but got no response.
On the day Mr. al-Shammari stumbled upon the foreign forces, he too contacted the local authorities, according to his cousin and Maj. Gen. Fahim al-Gurayti, the spokesman for the regional Karbala Operations Command.
Shortly after that, General al-Gurayti and Mr. al-Shammari’s family said, the army and his relatives lost contact with him.
His family searched two days before finding the Bedouin residents who had witnessed his killing, learning what had become of him.
“We were told that a burned-up pickup truck the same as Awad’s was out there, but no one dared to go there,” the cousin, Amir, said. “When we got there, we found the car and body burned.”
His family shared photographs of his bloodied corpse, his head and fingers blackened, and his charred pickup truck. They buried his body next to the vehicle, beneath a simple gray tombstone.
A day after the shepherd’s report, Iraq’s regional command dispatched a reconnaissance mission, according to General al-Gurayti and General al-Hamdani.
As the units approached the area, they came under fire, according to a statement released a day later by Iraq’s Joint Operations Command. One soldier was killed, two were wounded and two vehicles were bombed before the units decided to retreat.
Top Iraqi security officials in Baghdad were struggling to understand what had happened.
Two senior officials said their efforts were repeatedly frustrated by top military commanders, who played down the incident.
In public, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command announced “foreign” forces had attacked their soldiers, and said it had raised complaints at the U.N. Security Council.
In private, the chief of staff of Iraq’s armed forces, Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarallah, called his counterparts in the U.S. military, according to General al-Hamdani and the two senior Iraqi officials. “They confirmed the force is not an American force,” General al-Hamdani said. “So we understood it was Israeli.”
Four days after the attack on the Iraqi soldiers, on March 8, the Iraqi Parliament compelled military leaders to provide a confidential debriefing. Lawmakers who were present said they could not divulge details. But one of them, Hassan Fadaam, told The Times that Israel had established at least one other outpost inside Iraq.
“The one in al-Nukhaib is just the only one that was found out,” he said.
A second Iraqi official confirmed the existence of a second base, without giving a location other than saying it was also in a western desert region.
Official protocol requires Washington to inform Baghdad of any activities on Iraqi soil, according to a former and a current senior Iraqi official.
That meant Washington either concealed the Israeli activity, these officials said, or informed Iraq’s top command of the operations, who kept them confidential. The officials thought it was extremely unlikely, however, that Iraqi leaders knew the presence was Israeli until the exposure by the shepherd, and most likely assumed the sites were American.
The balancing act
Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Baghdad has struggled with a political balancing act between its former occupier, Washington, and its powerful neighbor, Iran.
The Trump administration has put immense pressure on Iraq to curb Iranian influence. In particular, Washington wants Iraq to disarm militia figures aligned with Iran, and block them from roles in the government and security forces.
For years, Iraqi leaders were either unable or unwilling to do that, raising tensions with Washington.
The Israeli bases in Iraq put an already wobbly equilibrium at greater risk, said Ramzy Mardini, founder of Geopol Labs, a Middle East-based risk advisory firm.
“Engagement with the U.S. now risks being framed as alignment with Israel,” he said. “If the war with Iran resumes, it could provide a pretext for more direct Iranian military involvement in Iraq.”
It could also give Iran-aligned militias grounds to refuse to disarm, he said.
Today, the Israeli base in al-Nukhaib is no longer operative. The status of the other Israeli outpost in Iraq is unknown.
The family of the shepherd says his killing has been ignored.
“They demand the government investigate this incident and why it happened,” his cousin, Amir, said. “They want his rights respected.”
Aaron Boxerman, Sanjana Varghese, Eric Schmitt, Christoph Koettl and Devon Lum contributed reporting.
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9) W.H.O. Declares Ebola Outbreak a Global Health Emergency
Just a day after the announcement, cases were confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. There is no approved vaccine for this species of Ebola.
By Yan Zhuang, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Apoorva Mandavilli, Matthew Mpoke Bigg reported from Juba, South Sudan, May 17, 2026
A man is carried from an ambulance on Saturday as he arrives at a hospital after confirmation of an Ebola outbreak in the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Victoire Mukenge/Reuters
The World Health Organization declared on Saturday that the spread of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda was a global health emergency.
The announcement was made a day after Africa’s leading public health authority reported that an outbreak in a province in the northeast of the country was linked to dozens of suspected deaths.
By Saturday, cases had also been confirmed in Kinshasa, Congo, and in Kampala, Uganda, the capital cities of each country, the W.H.O. said.
In Congo’s Ituri province, where the outbreak was first identified, 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths attributed to the virus had been reported, although only eight cases had been definitively linked to the virus through laboratory testing. There is no approved vaccine or therapeutics for the Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the outbreak, according to the W.H.O.
The scale of the outbreak could be far larger than has been detected and reported, the W.H.O. said in declaring a “public health emergency of international concern.” It added that there were “significant uncertainties” about the precise number of people infected and the “geographic spread.”
The W.H.O.’s declaration signals a public health risk requiring a coordinated international response, and is intended to prompt member countries to prepare for the virus to spread and to share vaccines, treatments and other resources needed to contain the outbreak.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has played a major role in containing previous outbreaks, but last year it was shuttered by the Trump administration. It is unclear how that might have affected the response to this outbreak. The administration also cut funding for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading public health agency in the country. It also withdrew in January from the W.H.O.
The outbreak does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency, the highest level of alert, that was applied to the Covid pandemic, the W.H.O. said.
Some global health experts were alarmed that the first reports of the outbreak emerged so late in its development. A surge in cases is typically picked up much earlier by the W.H.O., other health organizations or by news reports, said Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
In Kampala, two confirmed cases, including one death, were not apparently linked, but they were identified within 24 hours of one another in people who had traveled from Congo, the agency said. The Ugandan authorities had earlier said they had identified a single case of a 59-year-old Congolese man who was admitted to a hospital in Kampala on May 11 and died three days later. A confirmed case in Kinshasa involved a person returning from Ituri, the agency said.
In Ituri, the 246 suspected cases have been reported across at least three health zones, including Rwampara, Mongbwalu and Bunia, the province’s main city, the W.H.O. said. The agency added that unusual clusters of community deaths had been reported across several health zones, and that suspected cases had also been reported in neighboring North-Kivu province.
The risk of the outbreak spreading is exacerbated by a humanitarian crisis, high population mobility and a large network of informal health care facilities in the area, the agency said.
Containing an Ebola outbreak depends on the speed and scale of the public health response. The virus is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, putting family members and caregivers at particular risk. Tracing people who may have come into contact with sufferers, isolating and treating victims promptly and safely, and burying the dead properly are all viewed as critical steps.
The political context in Ituri makes all of those things harder, according to experts. President Félix Tshisekedi of Congo declared a state of siege in the province in 2021 following attacks by insurgent groups, including the Allied Democratic Forces, an organization that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and the Cooperative for the Development of Congo, a militia group.
The state of siege amounts effectively to martial law, which limits fundamental freedoms. In addition, the armed groups have committed massacres in recent months that have not been stopped by the government or by U.N. peacekeepers, according to Clémentine de Montjoye, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
The effect has been reduced public trust in the authorities in terms of health and basic rights, she said.
“Civilians have already been exposed to extreme violence and the failure of the state to protect them and to provide them with access to basic services,” she said. “This has been compounded by U.S.A.I.D. cuts and a reduction of international aid that has affected health care providers and forced certain clinics to close.” Ituri borders Uganda and South Sudan, making frequent cross-border movement another challenge. In one example, Uganda is set to hold an annual Catholic festival on June 3 which typically attracts worshipers from across the border.
Uganda’s health minister, Jane Ocero, said on NTV Uganda, a commercial broadcaster, on Saturday that the country had a well-developed system of community health workers who go door to door, acting as surveillance officers, who then report through an electronic health system to emergency operation centers in every region.
“We have built up a very strong system of identification, detection and response to these outbreaks and the systems start from the grass roots,” she said.
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia were hit by an Ebola epidemic in 2014 and 2015 that killed more than 11,000 people and sickened more than 28,000 across 10 countries, according to estimates by the W.H.O. Responders initially failed to recognize the extent of the outbreak and did not take sufficient steps to prevent its spread.
Since then, there has been a string of outbreaks, mainly in Congo and Uganda. But they have been contained, largely because public health officials have reacted quickly, drawing on knowledge and experience gained during previous outbreaks.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., said in a briefing on Friday that the organization was notified about suspected Ebola cases on May 5 and had sent a team to Ituri to investigate. Initial samples tested negative for the virus because field equipment could detect only the Zaire species of Ebola, the only species for which a licensed vaccine exists, he said.
Samples were later sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa, which confirmed on Thursday that some had tested positive for Ebola, Dr. Tedros said.
The Doctors Without Borders charity said on Sunday that it was preparing to rapidly scale up its medical response in Ituri.
“The number of cases and deaths we are seeing in such a short time frame, combined with the spread across several health zones and now across the border, is extremely concerning,” said Trish Newport, an emergency program manager for the charity.
The spread of the outbreak to the capitals of Congo and Uganda could pose an added challenge for public health workers because infectious diseases can spread more rapidly in dense urban settings.
Musinguzi Blanshe contributed reporting from Kampala, Uganda.
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10) In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland
Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.
By Jeffrey Gettleman, Maya Tekeli, Anton Troianovski and Eric Schmitt, May 18, 2026
Ilulisaat, Greenland, a town where a Chinese state company nearly won a contract to build an airport in 2018. After U.S. officials pressured Denmark to step in, Greenland opted for a Danish company. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
With the conflict in Iran still smoldering, President Trump’s obsession with Greenland seems like a forgotten sideshow.
But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.
The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.
Some Greenlandic politicians say they have even circled a date on their calendars to be wary: June 14, Mr. Trump’s birthday.
An investigation by The New York Times, based on interviews with officials in Washington, Copenhagen and Greenland, has discovered:
· The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.
· The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.
· The United States is discussing cooperation with Greenland on natural resources. The island is loaded with oil, uranium, rare earths and other critical minerals, though much of it is buried deep beneath Greenland’s ice.
· The Pentagon is rapidly moving ahead on plans for a military expansion and recently sent a Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland, to inspect the World War II-era airport, the harbor and places where American troops could be housed.
The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.
If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.”
“We might as well raise our own flag halfway,” he said.
State Department and Danish officials have said little about the negotiations, which are being spearheaded by one of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s top advisers, Michael Needham.
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, the head of the Pentagon’s Northern Command, described in a recent interview with The Times the broader American vision to defend the Arctic, an arena of increased geopolitical competition as climate change melts polar ice and opens up what had been one of world’s most inaccessible regions.
General Guillot said Greenland would be part of a chain of interlinking radar stations and military bases, which also includes sites in Alaska and Canada. He said the American military needs a deepwater port and a base for Special Operations soldiers who would rotate through Greenland for training and exercises.
General Guillot said this could be done through the defense pact that the United States signed with Denmark in 1951, when Greenland was still a Danish colony. That pact has been the jumping off point for the current negotiations, and Greenlandic and Danish officials originally tried to argue that the agreement gave the United States such a free hand for forces on Greenland that there was no need to take over the island.
Negotiators have met about five times in Washington since January, when Mr. Trump threatened to seize Greenland, saying it was essential to American national security. Though he eventually backed down and has since been absorbed by the conflict in Iran, the White House has indicated he is still deeply interested in Greenland.
So the Greenlandic, Danish and American negotiators involved in the talks hope they can reach a deal that the mercurial president will accept, officials familiar with the discussions say. The accounts made clear that there was still some distance to go. The officials who spoke to The Times asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the continuing negotiations.
Dylan Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said in a statement that the national security and economic concerns laid out by the president “are undisputed by all parties and we continue to negotiate to address those concerns on a permanent basis.”
“This is not a president who allows problems to go unsolved for future presidents to deal with,” Mr. Johnson said.
Greenlanders have been emphatic they do not want to be part of the United States, but Greenlandic politicians say they are OK with having more American soldiers on their soil. Thousands of American troops were stationed there during World War II and the Cold War, though the United States eventually shut down every base save one.
Still, Greenland’s leaders feel they are being pressured to make other concessions and that they have little leverage in these talks.
“None of this is fair,” said Pipaluk Lynge, the chairwoman of the Greenlandic Parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “It feels very all or nothing. The best outcome is simply not to be invaded or controlled.”
Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland’s former foreign minister and another member of Parliament, said that if the wars in Iran and in Ukraine end, it could spell trouble for Greenland. She fears Mr. Trump would return to his obsession and Russia would also shift to the Arctic, long a strategic priority for Moscow.
“They are coming from both sides,” she said.
She and other Greenlandic politicians were bracing for June 14, the president’s birthday, and the Fourth of July.
“If he’s going to realize his policy of making the U.S. greater again,” she said, “he could use days like those.”
Some Greenlanders fear that the U.S. interest in exploring their natural resources might mean pressure to loosen their mining rules.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, said during a recent interview in his office in Nuuk, the island’s capital, “We can absolutely do business.”
But, he added, “we have very strict environmental regulations and that is how it will remain.”
Mr. Nielsen cuts an unusual figure in the middle of a geopolitical maelstrom. Before becoming prime minister last year at age 33, he was best known as one of Greenland’s top badminton players. Since taking office, he has lined up behind Denmark, seeing Greenland’s former colonizer as the best protection against the United States.
“I’m almost tired of saying it,” Mr. Nielsen said. “But the question of Greenlandic independence and the relationship between Greenland and Denmark is something we must decide internally. It’s not something the Americans or anyone else should interfere in. ”
Officials with knowledge of the talks said the Americans are pushing to establish a strict screening mechanism and veto power to make sure Russia or China do not land any major infrastructure or resource deals.
Even though China lies hundreds of miles from the Arctic Circle, it has been increasingly active in the region and tried to come into Greenland before.
In 2018, a Chinese state company was a leading contender to build several new airports on the island, including one in Ilulissat, where thousands of visitors come each year to gaze at the icebergs. After American officials pressured Denmark to step in, Greenland opted for a Danish company.
Officials with knowledge of the current talks said Denmark and Greenland did not want the United States making decisions on investment deals, arguing it would violate Greenland’s sovereignty.
Over recent decades, Greenland has steadily gained more autonomy from Denmark, and most people on the island want to be independent some day. But Greenland lacks the intelligence capability to screen potential investors for links to Moscow and Beijing. So negotiators are discussing a process by which Copenhagen would do the screening, with American input.
The result could be that the negotiations, far from increasing Greenland’s sovereignty, end up giving Denmark more sway over the gigantic island.
Mr. Nielsen said he couldn’t “get into the specifics” of the talks but that Greenland should have the last word when it comes to who it does business with.
As he sat in his office, dressed in a black suit, black turtleneck and spotless black sneakers, he looked frustrated.
“We would like to see an end to this,” he said. “Because it’s a very strange situation.”
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11) Over 100,000 Family Separations in Deportation Push, Report Estimates
The Brookings Institution suggests that federal statistics are an undercount because immigrant parents are not being asked about or not disclosing their American children.
By Miriam Jordan and Jeff Adelson, May 18, 2026
Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent, and Jeff Adelson is a data reporter.
Ledy Ordonez was on the job at a San Antonio seafood wholesaler last July when immigration agents entered the facility, taking her and about a dozen others into custody. The single mother remains in detention, separated from her only child, Alonzo, a U.S.-born 2-year-old now in the care of a friend.
“He can walk and talk now,” Ms. Ordonez said from a detention center in Texas. “I’ve missed so much.”
A new analysis suggests that more than 100,000 children have been separated from their parents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. And roughly three-quarters of those children, like Alonzo, are likely U.S. citizens, according to estimates from the Brookings Institution that were shared with The New York Times.
The Brookings estimate of the number of children who are U.S. citizens is more than double the amount that would be expected over the same time period based on official Department of Homeland Security data. The researchers, whose report is based on a statistical analysis of the detainee population, argue the official statistics are an undercount because of how the government collects that information.
The findings point to a scale of family separations that far eclipses that of the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy in 2018, when about 5,500 children were removed from their parents immediately after crossing the southern border.
D.H.S. did not directly respond to questions about the number of parents who had been detained or the analysis suggesting that the official statistics did not reflect the full number of U.S.-born children whose parents had been arrested.
D.H.S. said in a statement that parents are given a choice of being removed with their children or placing their U.S.-born children with a designee.
“Any way you cut it, there are tens of thousands of children who have experienced parental detention since this president entered office,” said Tara Watson, a senior fellow at Brookings. “The majority are U.S. citizens,” she said.
The researchers estimated that about 205,000 children have had a parent detained — typically a precursor to deportation — including about 145,000 who are citizens. They used data from the Census Bureau and on Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests to determine the likely number of children detainees had based on their immigration status, sex, age, nationality and whether they were married.
The United States is home to more than 13 million immigrants who are vulnerable to deportation, because they either are undocumented or have temporary statuses. Some five million children under the age of 18 live with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent, according to estimates by several think tanks, and more than four million of them are U.S. citizens.
The Trump administration has arrested about 400,000 immigrants during enforcement operations in the interior of the country. There is no reliable information about how many children the detainees have, or what happened to those children once their parents were taken into custody.
Ms. Watson, an economist, and her co-author, Maria Cancian, a public policy professor at Georgetown University, sought to answer those questions, they said.
The estimates assume immigration enforcement is essentially random — that immigrant parents are just as likely to be detained as immigrants without children. But the researchers also created an interactive tool that estimates the likely number of children affected by parental detention under different enforcement scenarios and assumptions. Their most conservative estimate for the number of U.S.-born children with a parent detained is about 117,400. Their highest estimate is approximately 175,000.
The researchers said they considered 145,000 to be their most accurate estimate, and they predicted that it will grow, given that Congress allocated $45 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill to expand detention capacity.
Their estimate contrasts with figures released by D.H.S., which say the parents of about 60,000 U.S.-born children were arrested over the same time period. In their report, the researchers theorized the discrepancy was because D.H.S. was not consistently asking about children, or detainees were fearful of revealing they had children, worried about putting them or their caregivers at risk.
Based on interviews with child welfare agencies, the researchers estimated only a small fraction of the children end up in the foster care or similar arrangements.
“We found that remarkably few end up in foster care — most children stay with friends and family who don’t have a legal obligation to care for these children,” said Dr. Cancian, who studies child welfare and immigration.
Many schools and legal aid organizations have helped immigrants appoint a caregiver for their children in the event they are separated.
However, the children are often left in the care of older siblings or working-class families already grappling with financial hardship and precarious immigration statuses, making these arrangements ultimately unsustainable, experts say.
If the government is separating children from good parents who happen to be undocumented, it has “the obligation to safeguard their well-being,” Dr. Cancian said.
Public Counsel, a nonprofit legal aid organization in Los Angeles, has educated more than 4,000 immigrants on custody plans since last year, ensuring that someone is empowered to make medical and school-related decisions.
Still, the nonprofit regularly receives calls from schools, churches and others seeking assistance for children whose parents were just detained.
“We are seeing kids in tenuous situations, left with neighbors who don’t have the proper paperwork they need; older siblings who have children of their own; and cases where a father cannot handle young children,” said Sharon Cartagena, a family law lawyer at the nonprofit.
Casey Revkin, executive director of Each Step Home, which began by assisting immigrant families during the 2018 border separations, now focuses almost exclusively on helping parents in detention who have lived in the United States for many years and were separated from their children.
“Almost every day we are contacted by a mom in detention who was arrested and taken from her kids,” said Ms. Revkin, whose group raises funds to help parents in detention pay for phone calls to their children. “This time the cruelty is often being inflicted on U.S.-citizen children.”
The mother of Samantha Lopez, a 3-year-old U.S. citizen, was turned over to ICE last month by a sheriff’s deputy after a traffic stop while she was driving to her restaurant job, according to her husband.
Mr. Lopez, who asked that his full name not be disclosed out of concern that he could be targeted by ICE, said that his wife had told agents she had a young child, to no avail.
“I am feeling such a void and such anguish,” he said. “When our daughter talks to her mom, she listens attentively and then starts to cry.”
“This is my American child being harmed,” he said.
Mr. Lopez, a construction worker, said that he needed to work as much overtime as possible to afford a lawyer to secure his wife’s release, but he must also watch his daughter after day care.
Ironically, having a U.S.-born child can keep families apart.
Ms. Ordonez, who has been separated from her U.S.-born son for more than 10 months, said that she pleaded with agents long ago to allow the pair to stay in a family detention center while she fought her case. But American citizens cannot be held in immigration detention.
“I never wanted to be separated from my only child,” she said.
Agents have warned Ms. Ordonez that her deportation is imminent, she said. To accompany his mother, Alonzo needs a passport. Ms. Ordonez has been struggling to arrange it, she added. Agents warned her recently that they would deport her without the boy if she did not obtain the document, leaving him with his current caretakers.
“These aren’t family or anything, they are just caring for him as a favor,” she said, weeping. “If they deport me, I want to take my child.”
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12) Long Island Rail Road Strike Affects More Than A Quarter-Million Commuters
Workers on the nation’s busiest passenger rail service, who have not received a raise since 2022, have been striking since Saturday. People trying to commute to and from New York City on Monday faced a rough journey.
By Stefanos Chen, New York City transit reporter, May 18, 2026
A strike on the Long Island Rail Road, America’s busiest passenger rail service, upended the commutes of more than a quarter-million riders on Monday who rely on the service to get to work.
Five unions representing more than 3,500 workers — including engineers, signal workers and machinists — walked off the job shortly after midnight on Saturday, after yearslong negotiations over wages and other issues with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority fell apart. Monday was the first day that the strike affected weekday commuters.
The strike has shut down the entire service, which carries an average of more than 270,000 passengers a day between Long Island and New York City.
The M.T.A., the state agency that runs the railroad, is providing free bus service beginning Monday morning from six locations on Long Island to two subway stations in Queens, and in the opposite direction during the evening rush. Police officers and members of the L.I.R.R. work force who are not on strike are expected to help direct passengers to buses at the stops.
But the M.T.A. said the shuttles would not be able to accommodate all the riders who rely on the railroad, and encouraged people to work from home if they can.
On Sunday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that she had made major investments in the M.T.A. to stabilize its finances, and that she would not agree to a deal that could force the agency to raise fares.
“I worked hard to do that and don’t want that undone — I will not let that be undone,” she said.
A spokesman for the unions said in a statement on Sunday that their wage proposal was reasonable and that two federal review panels had sided with them.
“We remain ready to negotiate a fair agreement at any time and get back to work on behalf of Long Island commuters,” the statement said.
At Hicksville station Monday morning, Sandra Parker, 50, a customer service worker who was striking for the first time in her 22 years at the L.I.R.R, donned a red union shirt and held a sign that read “CONTRACT NOW.”
“We want to be able to live, put our kids through college, own our homes. What kind of legacy are we going to leave our children?” she said.
Carlos Velez, 52, a crew dispatcher on strike, said he felt for commuters and was eager to get back to work.
“If the strike could end five minutes ago, I’d be on the first train to Jamaica to continue my job,” he said.
Negotiations continued past 1 a.m. on Monday with no resolution, and have since picked up again.
Reactions from commuters were mixed, with some supporting the unions’ right to strike, and others frustrated by long detours.
Manoj Sharma, a software engineer, was boarding a Coach USA bus from Hicksville Monday morning with a sign saying it was bound for an A train stop in Queens.
“I don’t even know where Howard Beach is, this is going to be a long commute,” said Mr. Sharma, 33.
He hopes the strike will be over by midweek at the latest.
“I can deal with it for a few days,” he said. “But if it goes to Thursday or longer, it’s really going to cut down on my productivity.”
Here’s what to know:
· Why workers are striking: The striking workers are seeking a higher percentage-based salary increase in 2026 than the M.T.A. was willing to offer. The workers represented by the unions, who make up about half of the rail road’s work force, have not had a raise since 2022. Negotiations collapsed when the two sides could not agree on terms, like a proposal to change health care plans that could raise costs for new hires.
· Previous stoppage: This strike is already longer than the last one on the Long Island Rail Road in 1994. That two-day strike ended after Gov. Mario Cuomo largely conceded to the unions’ terms.
· Economic toll: The strike could cost the region $61 million a day in lost economic activity, according to the state comptroller’s office.
· Driving costs: Congestion pricing, the toll on drivers entering the busiest parts of Manhattan, will not be suspended during the strike, Ms. Hochul said, noting that she has no legal mechanism to suspend the program.
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13) Catastrophe Is Emerging in the World’s Most Vulnerable Places
The humanitarian relief system, decimated by cuts, faces a grave challenge as the Middle East war causes soaring costs for food, fuel and fertilizer.
By Peter S. Goodman, Photographs by Finbarr O’Reilly, May 18, 2026
Peter Goodman traveled to Somalia, visiting camps for displaced people, schools, health centers and a hospital for the treatment of malnourished children.
“As the conflict in the Middle East grinds into its third month, catastrophe is unfolding across the world’s poorest, least stable countries. If hostilities continue beyond June, those confronting acute hunger will swell beyond 363 million people worldwide, an increase of 45 million compared with before the war, the World Food Program warned.”
Muslima Ibrahim Mohamed, 38, holds her 2-day-old son, Noor Mohamed.
For nine days, they trudged across the parched soil of southern Somalia, taking turns carrying their 3-year-old daughter on their shoulders. Abdullahi Abdi Abdirahman, his wife and their seven children sought escape from a landscape drained of life.
Another drought had killed their goats and sheep, turning their life savings to dust. So they pressed on for 140 miles toward Dollow, a dusty outpost on the Ethiopian border. They were drawn by the same things that had already attracted more than 100,000 other people: International relief organizations were clustered there, offering food, water and health care.
Yet when they arrived in late January at a camp on the fringes of town, they were horrified to learn that aid groups had abandoned the area. President Trump had dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., eliminating Somalia’s primary source of assistance. From London to Berlin, governments had reduced funding for humanitarian aid. Relief organizations had been forced to choose where to focus their remaining money.
Dollow had not made the cut. Inside the camps, thousands of tents remained, but aid was disappearing. Families were losing cash grants for food. Health clinics were bereft of medicines and staff.
The following month, another shock unfolded, as the United States and Israel unleashed war on Iran. The closing of the Strait of Hormuz halted the shipment of oil, fertilizer and other critical commodities from the Persian Gulf. The cost of moving cargo soared. In Somalia, which depends on imports for 70 percent of its food, staple goods like rice and wheat flour doubled in price.
“Milk and meat are just a dream for us,” said Mr. Abdirahman, 47. His family was subsisting on a daily meal of sorghum porridge and wild grasses plucked from nearby riverbanks.
“The children are hungry,” he said. “It hurts.”
As the conflict in the Middle East grinds into its third month, catastrophe is unfolding across the world’s poorest, least stable countries. If hostilities continue beyond June, those confronting acute hunger will swell beyond 363 million people worldwide, an increase of 45 million compared with before the war, the World Food Program warned.
The danger is mounting absent the usual degree of international mobilization.
Four years ago, when Russia began its war on Ukraine, the global supply of fertilizers and grains was disrupted, prompting fears of hunger from sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia. But the pain was limited by $43 billion in humanitarian assistance marshaled by governments and multilateral institutions, according to data compiled by the United Nations. That campaign, which included emergency food aid, water and medical care, was led by $17 billion from the United States.
Last year, overall humanitarian funding dropped to $28 billion, and the United States contributed only $4 billion. Cuts are continuing.
“The system has been eviscerated,” said Kate Phillips-Barrasso, who heads global advocacy at Mercy Corps, an American aid group that runs relief and development programs around the world. The organization led journalists from The New York Times on a reporting trip in Somalia.
“This is the era of indifference,” she said.
Somalia is rife with calamity. In recent decades, the country has suffered civil war, famine, and the unpredictable attacks of Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamist group affiliated with Al Qaeda.
Drought ravaged the most recent harvest. Some 6.5 million people — roughly one third of the population — were suffering hunger at levels deemed an emergency, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned in February. That included more than 1.8 million children under 5 facing acute malnutrition.
Those numbers have almost certainly increased given the war. Yet the World Food Program, the largest source of aid in Somalia, has only enough funding to support 300,000 people a month through July, a fraction of the nearly 2 million people a month it was reaching in early 2025.
Humanitarian relief organizations now contemplate a surreal hierarchy of suffering.
“There are different categories of starvation,” said Hameed Nuru, the World Food Program’s Somalia director. “We are only able to reach those who are really on the verge of, if you don’t give them something now, they will not be there tomorrow.”
In some areas, children are still getting food, but not pregnant mothers. “Literally, it’s who dies first,” he said, “and who dies next.”
A Feedback Loop of Trouble
In scores of countries, overlapping crises are now reinforcing one another. Higher prices for food and fuel are limiting the benefit of what aid remains.
Marine traffic diverted from the strait has overwhelmed the port of Salalah in Oman, a hub for cargo that is transferred onto smaller vessels bound for destinations in West Africa.
Because of traffic jams in Oman, a World Food Program shipment that included split peas from Kenya and cereals from Belgium recently arrived 40 days late at the port of Berbera in the north of Somalia. That held up enough supplies to feed 500,000 women and children for a month.
In Sudan, scene of the world’s most dire humanitarian disaster, some areas are suffering famine, and 41 percent of the population is acutely short of food, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Yet in late April, the U.N. Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, had to scrap plans to ship five trucks loaded with emergency supplies to two cities in the south of the country.
In addition to the hurdles of moving goods in a country besieged by civil war, trucking companies were refusing to make the journey from Port Sudan. They were afraid of getting stuck in the hinterland, unable to refuel given shortages of oil.
“Kids are dying,” said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative to Sudan.
Four years ago, as Somalia confronted its most severe drought in years, it received $2.4 billion in humanitarian aid, more than half from the United States.
But when President Trump returned to office last year, he brought animus toward Somalia, deriding immigrants from the country as “garbage.”
Last year, the United States slashed humanitarian assistance to Somalia to $70 million from $467 million in 2024. Over the first four months of this year, less than $3 million came from American government donors — only 2 percent of all relief for Somalia. Britain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Canada and Qatar each contribute considerably more.
Still, many European governments have also retreated, spurred by Mr. Trump’s insistence that they spend more on defense rather than relying on American protection.
Relief organizations now reckon with a process they describe as “hyper-prioritization.” What aid remains has been concentrated on the neediest 21 of Somalia’s 90 districts.
This was the situation before the United States and Israel started a war on Iran.
Food, Fertilizer and Fuel
Somalia is dependent on imports for oil, most of it from the United Arab Emirates. As Iran launched retaliatory strikes on production facilities in the Persian Gulf, and as transport through the strait effectively ceased, the price of gasoline and diesel more than doubled.
Some people in the camps sell fruits and vegetables that they buy in markets in town. The fares for transporting their wares by motorized rickshaw have more than doubled. They were passing on the extra costs to their customers.
Trucking companies doubled and tripled prices for bringing sacks of corn over the border from Ethiopia. The cost of hauling rice shipped into Somalia’s ports rose by similar margins.
At a fish market in Mogadishu, the city of more than 3 million that is Somalia’s capital, Fatumo Abdi Noor, 45, tended to her stall as men used machetes to hack tuna and king fish into steaks. She had nearly doubled her prices. Owners of fishing boats could no longer afford to venture out to the deeper waters of the Indian Ocean. They were settling for smaller fish closer to shore, reducing the catch.
Faced with higher prices for fish at the market, customers were buying smaller quantities. Ms. Noor’s sales were down by half.
At a trade school in Dollow, a half-dozen women trained to be seamstresses, operating manual sewing machines. Materials used to maintain the machines had nearly tripled in price. Thread and fabric from Mogadishu had become difficult to secure.
At some public wells, the price of water had tripled, given that many pumps are fueled by diesel. Faced with the loss of funding from U.S.A.I.D., Mercy Corps, the American development organization, had halted programs installing solar cells to power public wells. Aid organizations like UNICEF were paying more to truck water to drought-afflicted areas.
Somalia also depends on the Persian Gulf for about one-third of its fertilizers. With stocks marooned on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz, farmers were contending with higher costs.
At a 10-acre cooperative farm in Dollow, a tractor tilled the ground in preparation for the planting of onions. The diesel that powered the machine had more than doubled in price. A 30-kilogram bag of nitrogen fertilizer had jumped to $35 from $20.
The cooperative planned to recoup its costs by demanding more for its harvest.
As he sat beneath the shade of a mango tree, its branches sloping toward the river dividing Somalia from Ethiopia, Adan Bare Ali, deputy mayor of Dollow, said his community was suffering from troubles that had been concocted far away. The drought was worsened by climate change — primarily the result of industrial polluters in larger, more powerful nations. The war was the handiwork of foreign actors.
“The situation has become unbearable,” he said. “The American regime is led by a person who really doesn’t care about anything happening outside his gates. The Americans are not honoring their commitment to the world.”
Throughout Somalia, unaffordable food combined with fewer medical clinics meant that children were more likely to suffer malnutrition and at greater risk of developing dangerous complications.
On a sweltering morning, more than 100 women sat on wooden benches with infants and toddlers in their arms at a nutrition center in Mogadishu. They were waiting their turn to lay their children on an examination table. Attendants applied cuffs to tiny arms, measuring their circumference to assess the extent of malnutrition. Babies shrieked as their mothers deposited them into a plastic bucket attached to a scale.
Those deemed moderately malnourished were given special foods. Those recorded as severe cases were administered therapeutic milk formula and antibiotics to ward off infection.
And those in greatest peril were sent to a so-called stabilization unit run by UNICEF inside a local hospital. There, babies and toddlers lay on cots, many with feeding tubes curling into their nostrils, and some attached to oxygen.
Eighteen-month-old Mohamed Abdi Abdullahi leaned against his mother, Fartum Abokor Omar, his ribs protruding from his chest. Folds of skin slumped from his arms.
The family had arrived a week earlier from their village north of Mogadishu. The river had dried up, decimating crops. When her son began vomiting, unable to hold down their single daily meal, Ms. Omar traveled to the nearest town to seek help.
There, a nurse at a clinic urged her to continue on to Mogadishu to seek care at Banadir Hospital. The bus fare was normally $12, a relative fortune. Now, it was double that. She wandered the town, begging for the needed money.
Inside the hospital, doctors had stabilized her baby. He was likely to be discharged within a few days. Which made this a positive ending in Somalia: a child spared from hunger.
Yet his story ran counter to the trend.
Throughout the country, UNICEF had closed 205 of its 800 local health clinics. These were the facilities best positioned to arrest the severity of malnutrition. When people were assessed and treated earlier, they had better odds of recovery.
Since January, the hospital had admitted 768 infants and toddlers with medical issues caused by severe malnutrition — double the pace of the previous year. Doctors estimated that one-third of those children could have avoided hospitalization had they been seen earlier.
Greater Need, Less Relief
Mr. Abdirahman and his family knew little of this context as they proceeded toward Dollow.
What they knew was hunger, fear and exhaustion. They walked dirt roads, traversing a largely treeless plain. They slept wherever they happened to be when the sun went down, resuming their journey as the first light seeped from the horizon.
On a sweltering morning in January, they reached the camp where international aid workers had previously provided help.
“There was nothing here,” said Mr. Abdirahman, still nursing a palpable sense of disbelief. “There are no services.”
They set up a tent alongside a fence of thorn bushes, taking shelter under leftover plastic sheeting held aloft by sticks.
Since their arrival, Mr. Abdirahman has been working as a farm hand, earning $1 a day. His wife, Sadia Abdirahman, walks across a bridge into Ethiopia where she washes clothes for better-off families. But as the cost of food rises, fewer households can afford to employ her.
“Sometimes, we go out begging,” she said.
In the center of the camp, a health clinic formerly financed by UNICEF sat empty, save for a volunteer midwife. The organization used to fund prenatal services, dispensing iron pills and medicines. It paid for ambulances to take women to local hospitals when they suffered complications during labor. Not anymore.
In late April, a woman in a neighboring tent, Muslima Ibrahim Mohamed, 38, went into labor. Her sisters helped her to the clinic. It was the middle of the day, but the building was locked. They borrowed money for a motorized rickshaw ride to a hospital in town. She lay on the bench for the half-hour journey, suffering the bumps of the rutted dirt road.
“I was in real pain,” she said. “I was terrified.”
At 38, she had lost four children to disease and hunger. Now, she cradled her newborn son, Noor Mohamed, against her chest. He had entered the world in a moment of extraordinary vulnerability.
A school inside the camp had also lost funding from UNICEF. The head teacher, Abdulnasir Mohamed Farah, 30, was still there, working without pay, because his fingerprint unlocked a digital payment card stocked with cash from the World Food Program. He used the money to buy rice and beans, typically the only meal of the day for his students.
“I can’t abandon the children,” he said.
The World Food Program has traditionally relied on American government support for nearly half of its budget. Given the cuts, it had reduced its allocation to the school by 60 percent. And that money was buying less at local markets. The school enrollment had swelled beyond 800 from less than 600 as the drought sent more families toward the camp.
At the World Food Program’s local headquarters, high walls were encircled in barbed wire. The head of the operation, Josephine Muli, surveyed her warehouse space — 13 A-frame tents used to store medicines and nutritional supplements.
Twelve of the tents were empty.
A single tent held cardboard cartons loaded with a peanut-based paste for malnourished children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
The cartons were emblazoned with the American flag, the U.S.A.I.D. logo and a message: “From the American people.”
“This will last for two months,” Ms Muli said. “The pipeline is dry. Beyond July, the pipeline will be zero.”
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14) Trump Threatens Iran as Tensions Surge Again in Middle East
The president has sought to force Iran to accept his terms on its nuclear program or else face renewed war. An emboldened Iran has rebuffed Trump’s demands.
By Aaron Boxerman, May 18, 2026
President Trump said in a social media post that Iran had to move fast “or there won’t be anything left,” adding “the Clock is Ticking.” Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
President Trump threatened renewed war with Iran on Sunday night in his latest ultimatum to the country, which has so far resisted U.S. demands to largely shut down its nuclear program.
Mr. Trump said in a social media post that Iran had to move fast “or there won’t be anything left,” adding “the Clock is Ticking.” He did not set a deadline and over the past two months, Mr. Trump has made similar threats to Iran without following through.
Negotiations between the United States and Iran have been stalled for weeks. Mr. Trump has repeatedly warned that he could soon order a renewed assault on Iran unless its leaders made concessions in the talks.
Iran has repeatedly rebuffed U.S. terms for a deal to curb uranium enrichment and end attempts to blockaded the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for shipping oil and gas. The turmoil over the strait has roiled markets and sent the price of oil soaring.
On Monday, Iran said it had handed yet another counterproposal to the United States in the negotiations. The Iranian foreign ministry said that the talks were still continuing through Pakistan, which has been mediating between the two sides.
Asked about Mr. Trump’s threats, Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman told reporters: “Don’t worry, we know very well how to respond.” He did not elaborate further, although Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened fierce retaliation if attacked again by the United States and Israel.
The Pentagon is planning for the possibility that Operation Epic Fury — which was paused when the president declared a cease-fire last month — will pick up again in the coming days.
Two Middle East officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that the United States and Israel are engaged in intense preparations — the largest since the cease-fire took effect — for the possible resumption of attacks against Iran as early as this week.
The war began in late February with a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran that drew much of the Middle East into the conflict.
But analysts say the United States has faced a tough dilemma since a cease-fire was declared last month. U.S. and Israeli war planes could again start attacking Iran from the air, but many military analysts say bombing alone is unlikely to force Iran to agree to American demands.
The two countries could launch a special forces operation to try to seize Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which the U.S. and Israel fear could be used to build a nuclear weapon. But such a raid could risk the lives of American soldiers, further straining domestic U.S. support for an unpopular war.
For the past month, Mr. Trump has instead opted for a pressure campaign — so far unsuccessful — to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States briefly launched what Mr. Trump called “Project Freedom” to help escort ships trapped in the waterway to safety. Just a day later, the initiative was suspended to allow for further negotiations with Iran.
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15) Medical Care Delays for Approval Persist, Despite Insurers’ Promises
Doctors and patients complain that the controversial practice of prior authorization for treatment and procedures is still widespread.
By Reed Abelson, May 18, 2026
Candace Rond, center, with her daughters Gabby, left, and Sophia, who both have juvenile arthritis. Lindsay D'Addato for The New York Times
Nearly a year after the nation’s health insurers pledged to overhaul their much-criticized practice of prior approval for medical care, patients and doctors say there is little evidence that delays and denials for necessary treatment have eased.
Just ask Candace Rond. She tried for weeks to get medication for her 15-year-old daughter, Gabby, who has two autoimmune diseases.
“The whole prior authorization experience is a nightmare,” Ms. Rond said.
In January, Ms. Rond was told she could not refill her daughter’s prescription until the insurer reviewed the request. Gabby was in pain, and Ms. Rond worried that her daughter’s sophomore year of high school would suffer. “I just get so frustrated,” Ms. Rond said.
About two months later, after repeatedly checking, Ms. Rond, who is a volunteer in Utah for the Arthritis Foundation, was finally able to refill the prescription. She is dreading this summer, when her insurance coverage begins a new year and a new approval cycle for her daughter’s medication.
Insurers’ use of prior authorization has generated significant public outrage, as has the budgetary stress caused by the rising costs of health care. In a recent poll conducted by KFF, a health research organization, one of three adults with insurance surveyed said prior authorization was a “major burden,” with nearly 70 percent describing it as at least somewhat burdensome.
Last June, dozens of insurance companies voluntarily promised to reduce the number of tests and procedures requiring prior approval and to make sure patients could stay on the same treatment for 90 days even if they switched plans, according to a joint announcement by the industry’s two major trade groups. They also vowed to speed up the reviews.
The trade organizations said in a recent statement that insurers were making headway by requiring authorization of fewer services and by responding sooner to doctors and patients.
But evidence of improvements remains spotty. Recent surveys of doctors found that prior authorization continued to be a major concern, that patients waiting for treatment could be harmed and that it contributed to significant administrative overload.
“It’s a huge issue, and we’re far from mission accomplished,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director for Families USA, a health care advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “We shouldn’t have insurers competing on how aggressively they deny needed care.”
Chris Klomp, who oversees Medicare for the Trump administration and helped persuade insurers to commit to changes, acknowledged that far too many treatments still required authorization.
The companies have made progress, he said, but need to do more. “I think that’s an excellent first step,” he said, “but hardly sufficient.”
Mr. Klomp defended the voluntary pledge as essential to influencing industrywide response. “We needed to be able to do something across all lines of business,” he said.
Broader legislation in Congress that would curtail the practice, at least for the private plans offered under Medicare, has stalled despite bipartisan support.
The Biden administration imposed some regulations, including shortening approval times for Medicare Advantage plans. In April, the Trump administration proposed new rules that would apply many of those regulations for medication reviews, a first attempt at oversight.
But states have limited authority to regulate plans offered by large employers and by private Medicare Advantage. Employers’ plans are largely governed under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, known as ERISA, partly to avoid a patchwork of state regulations.
Some states have passed legislation setting strict timetables for insurers’ approval reviews, with Iowa being the most recent. A Nebraska law forces companies to authorize care if 72 hours had elapsed in cases involving urgent medical conditions. By 2028, Nebraska would shorten the decision window to 48 hours.
Five years ago, the Illinois State Medical Society pushed state lawmakers to pass legislation that included requiring companies to keep approvals for patients with chronic conditions in place for a year.
“I don’t really know if I feel it,” Dr. Richard C. Anderson, a surgeon and a former president of the medical society, said of any impact from insurers’ promises.
Recent surveys reflect his observation. The Medical Group Management Association, which is made up of large physician groups, found that 90 percent of executives in the doctors’ practices reported an increase in the last year of administrative work related to seeking approval for patient treatment.
This month, the American Medical Association released a survey in which more than a quarter of doctors said delays and denials had resulted in adverse patient conditions like hospitalization or a life-threatening incident.
“Physician trust in voluntary insurer pledges is deeply eroded after years of unfulfilled promises,” Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, the president of the association, said in a statement.
Data to measure the effect of regulatory and insurer changes has not been widely available to consumers.
In March, for the first time, insurers were required by Medicare officials to publicly release information on the handling of medical requests, including the number of denials, for some of their plans.
Dr. Archelle Georgiou, who was a senior executive at UnitedHealthcare until 2007, said it had been difficult to find reliable information, which is posted on the companies’ individual websites.
A critic of prior authorization, Dr. Georgiou favors a centralized public database for people to navigate easily; Mr. Klomp said the government was considering one.
In a recent analysis of some insurers’ available data, Dr. Georgiou found that many denials for care were ultimately overturned. But with about one in 10 claims denied, according to her data, only 7 percent were appealed and two-thirds of the rejections were reversed.
The statistics may be worse for medications, according to her analysis of limited state data.
Dr. Anderson, for one, said he was frequently second-guessed by insurance companies. For example, he said, insurers insisted that some cancer patients get a CT scan before a PET scan, despite the PET scan’s ultimately being necessary to detail disease progression.
“They’re really not saving the system money, and they delay,” he said.
Prior approval is often required for imaging tests, and insurers do request reviews of surgeries outside of emergencies. Expensive medications, like GLP-1s for treating diabetes, are also subject to review. Insurers also differ in their requirements for the same treatment. The Trump administration has drawn criticism for a Medicare pilot program testing prior approval for a select group of conditions.
Insurance executives said it would take time for their efforts to affect the daily interactions among doctors, patients and insurers.
“This is not a matter of simply flipping a switch,” said Mike Tuffin, the president and chief executive of AHIP, a major insurance trade group that, along with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, collaborated on the industry pledge.
“The more transformative systematic reforms are going into effect next year,” Mr. Tuffin said. Those include the development of a standard package of information doctors can submit to every insurer.
By 2028, the insurance companies hope to be able to assess 80 percent of electronic requests while patients are still in their doctor’s offices.
Medicare officials recently announced a new push that included an initiative by insurers and others, like suppliers of electronic health records, to improve the pace of approvals and reduce the administrative burden. Hospitals and doctors are also being encouraged to modernize their systems.
Last month, the trade associations said insurers had cut the overall number of treatments that needed a review by more than six million, an 11 percent decline.
No insurer has been under more pressure to alter its practices than UnitedHealth Group, which owns the nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealthcare. Reaction to the assassination in Manhattan of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, in late 2024 erupted into a backlash against insurers.
UnitedHealth has since publicized various changes in an effort to restore public confidence and repair its image.
The company announced that it would reduce the number of treatments requiring prior approval by 30 percent this year. UnitedHealth also plans to exempt rural hospitals from most approval restrictions. And OptumRx, its pharmacy benefit manager, said it was cutting the number of medications needing review.
Aetna, the big insurer owned by CVS Health, said it was approving more than 80 percent of requests in real time and requiring fewer reviews than many of its peers. The company, which also owns CVS Caremark, the pharmacy benefit manager, said it was trying to simplify the process by issuing a combined approval of medications and procedures for select groups of patients, like some with cancer, or bundling imaging reviews for those patients so they did not need separate authorizations for every scan.
Insurers have recognized that treatment delays drive up costs and evoke dissatisfaction among customers. “We’re in an all-out effort to increase trust,” said Steve Nelson, Aetna’s president.
Some industry executives say they are trying to address the complaints.
“We need to move away from a world where insurance companies are wedging themselves between the doctor and the patient,” said Dr. Sachin H. Jain, the chief executive of SCAN Health Plan, which offers Medicare Advantage plans.
“The hard part is we’ve created documentation wars,” Dr. Jain said. And while the insurers and doctors spend time arguing about what documents are needed to justify the care, “the person who is getting in the middle of that is the patient,” he said.
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16) Firing Squads Expose the Brutality of the Death Penalty
By Maurice Chammah, May 18, 2026
Mr. Chammah is a staff writer at The Marshall Project and the author of “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.”
Steffen Kern
There is no tidy way to kill someone. But for the last century, Americans have searched for a way to carry out the death penalty that minimizes suffering while lessening trauma for executioners and witnesses. Those efforts have gone so poorly that we’re returning to a visceral execution method from the past.
Last month, the Justice Department encouraged federal prison officials to consider execution by firing squad amid a nationwide struggle to secure lethal injection drugs. South Carolina has already used firing squads three times recently, placing a hood over the prisoner’s head and firing rifles at a red bull’s-eye placed over the heart. Four other states have authorized the method, and Idaho is renovating its execution chamber to accommodate firing squads.
There is no question that killing a person in this manner is brutal. Witnesses have described the crack of rifles and the eerie silence as blood spills from the condemned person’s chest. It is a testament to the brutality of our execution system that firing squads may also be more effective and reliable than lethal injection, which is the most widely used execution method. Dr. James Williams, an emergency room physician and a firearms expert who has testified about firing squad executions in courtrooms across the country, told me last year that “there is a lot of evidence that the near-instant loss of blood pressure means no blood gets to the brainstem, and there is a rapid loss of consciousness.”
Dr. Williams is largely opposed to capital punishment, and he believes in minimizing suffering for executions that do occur. He told me an even faster method would be to fire a bullet into the brainstem, leading to death in milliseconds. As horrifying as that sounds, it shows how much we’ve shrouded the inevitable violence of the death penalty with syringes and barbiturates. Autopsies have indicated that many prisoners who looked peaceful as they were dying were actually paralyzed and may have felt as if they were drowning.
Firing squad executions strip away the veneer of medical theater.
Some Americans point to the horrific nature of the crimes being punished in death penalty cases and say: The more violent the execution, the better. But support for capital punishment, which is legal in 27 states, has been declining for decades. Polling shows that just over half of Americans support it, down from 80 percent in 1994. There are many reasons for this drop, among them high-profile botched executions. A wave of bloody spectacles, in multiple states and at the federal level, would be a clearer test of how deep support for the death penalty actually runs.
Before the early 20th century, the United States did not have much trouble accepting the gruesome sights, sounds and smells of executions. At the country’s founding, the violence of firing squads was part of the point; deserters were executed this way during the Revolutionary War and Civil War to deter other soldiers from absconding. In 1936, around 20,000 people attended the country’s last public hanging, an event that newspapers later decried as a “carnival of sadism.”
Firing squads and hangings mostly disappeared in the early 20th century, as public officials moved executions behind closed doors. There was a concern that public executions looked too much like the lynchings they were supposed to supplant.
While reporting for a book on the death penalty a few years ago, I learned that we turned away from more brutal methods like firing squads and hangings because of the country’s growing uneasiness about the death penalty itself.
Over time, lawmakers gave voice to the public’s collective queasiness as they tried to move away from lurid spectacles. “We’ve gone from stoning to crucifixion, to quartering, to burning people at the stake, to hanging,” a Texas state legislator, Ben Z. Grant, told his colleagues in a 1977 hearing. He worried that the latest method, the electric chair, had “become a circus sideshow.” Prison officials had to place masks on prisoners to spare witnesses from having to see their eyes pop out.
Mr. Grant proposed that Texas move to lethal injection — which had proven effective in veterinary medicine — as a more modern and humane method, and many states followed suit. But the effort to improve executions eventually had the opposite effect: In recent years, a significant number of people have convulsed on the death chamber gurney. (Firing squad executions are less likely to be botched, although last year South Carolina executioners missed a condemned man’s heart, according to a study of his autopsy.)
These botched lethal injections are an indirect consequence of wariness from the medical industry, as some doctors and nurses, citing ethical concerns, refuse to play a role in setting intravenous lines or administering drugs, leaving those with less training to do their best. Most drug companies have refused to let their products play a role in killing people, which has forced prison officials to turn to less reputable manufacturers and use more experimental drug cocktails.
During this period, some states abolished the death penalty and a few governors paused executions, often citing issues with lethal injection protocols. Many leaders also looked to more transparently harsh methods. Alabama started pumping nitrogen gas through face masks. Arizona refurbished a chamber to fill with cyanide gas, a method so similar to the gas chambers in Auschwitz that a Jewish community group sued the state, saying they were being asked “to subsidize and relive unnecessarily the same form of cruelty used in World War II atrocities.”
The firing squad was available all this time. The most logical explanations for avoiding it have to do with the upsetting visuals, the feeling that it’s old-fashioned and the possible effect on executioners. But people who participate in lethal injections routinely suffer psychologically in the long term. In 2022, Chiara Eisner at NPR interviewed over two dozen people who were involved in executions. Many were so affected by the experience that they suffered insomnia, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
President Trump oversaw 13 executions in his first term, all carried out by lethal injection. President Biden commuted the death sentences of most of the people on federal death row, so it’s not clear whether Mr. Trump will have anyone to execute this term.
But someday federal prison officials may train rifles on someone like Dylann Roof or Robert Bowers, both of whom committed high-profile mass shootings at places of worship. Americans will then finally have to decide what we can tolerate, after decades in which we have been able to pretend that we can kill people without a cost — to our executioners and to our own sense of ourselves.
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