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We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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We need as many people there as possible to carry our message - no more of our tax dollars for endless wars. Can we count you in? Sign up here:
https://www.codepink.org/novdc26
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 ‘Freedom Zone’ launches important human rights event October 30 Global Festival in Support of Russian Political Prisoners _________________________________________________________ THE LOCATIONS: Berlin, Munich, Warsaw, New York, Minnesota, Budva, Melbourne, Helsinki, Haifa, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Vilnius, São Paulo, Florianópolis, Batumi, Tbilisi, Belgrade, Riga, Paris, Yerevan, Milan, Vienna, London, Madrid THE AUDIENCE: Anyone concerned about political prisoners in Russia
Lectures, auctions, letter evenings, film screenings and other events will take place in more than 20 countries, including the US, Brazil and Australia, demonstrating worldwide solidarity with the prisoners of the Russian regime. Speakers in different cities will include such well-known opponents of the Putin regime as Daria Serenko, Mikhail Lobanov, Sasha and Nadezhda Skochilenko, Ivan Philippov, Alexey Ponomaryov and other prominent Russian exiles. Funds raised will go towards supporting political prisoners, covering the costs of legal representation, visits from loved ones and other needs. It is also possible to join the international campaign by making an online donation. This global festival will be a tangible expression of opposition to lawlessness in Russia and support for its victims. Let’s show that we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who have been unjustly convicted! ______________________________________________ ‘Freedom Zone’ was founded by Kseniia Kagarlitskaia, daughter of political prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky. Since 2024, the organisation has been holding charity events (festivals) abroad to raise funds for political prisoners in Russia, raising awareness of the unlawful persecution and inhumane prison conditions faced by people in the Russian Federation, as well as campaigning for the release of political prisoners. Website: https://freedom-zone.com/festival Contact: Kseniia Kagarlitskaiazona.svobody@gmail.com +38268347993 Telegram @pruesha ___________________________________________________________________ Donation link: https://buymeacoffee.com/zonasvobodk Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Huge Riots in France Prompt Shock and Blame Game
After anti-government protests devolved into chaos, leaders from across the political spectrum blamed one another for the unrest, even as it subsided on Sunday.
By Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic, Reporting from Paris, Oct. 18, 2026
A street in Paris, littered on Sunday with debris a day after nationwide protests and riots. Benoit Tessier/Reuters
France was in a state of shock on Sunday, as citizens walked through streets lined with shattered storefronts, charred cars and burned-out government buildings after the country’s largest demonstrations in years devolved into riots and looting.
The unrest on Saturday — which led to some 2,000 arrests — caused widespread damage to several symbols of the state, including a 19th-century city hall in Limoges, a town in central France renowned for its porcelain, that was largely destroyed in a nighttime arson attack. More than 600 police officers were injured, Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, said on social media on Sunday.
Rioters attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where they broke into the local government headquarters and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. A fire also destroyed a tourist office in Lyon, and 1,500 shops were damaged or looted nationwide, according to Alexandre Bompard, head of the French federation of commerce and distribution, who estimated that the cost of repairs could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“I’ve never seen this before, I am disgusted,” said Sophie Vanpoperinghe, 47, as she gazed at ransacked shops on Boulevard Magenta, the road in Paris where she has lived for 22 years and which is frequently used for demonstrations.
More than half a million demonstrators marched on Sunday to protest the rising cost of living and poor conditions in schools, among other grievances. Many were stunned on Sunday at how rioters had used those demonstrations as a smoke screen for vandalism.
Estelle Grandidier, a nonprofit worker who had marched in Paris, said she was “shocked” to see scenes reminiscent of those she has observed in crisis zones overseas.
But Ms. Grandidier said that a clear distinction should be made between the rioters and the protesters, who came “onto the streets to present their demands in a completely peaceful manner.”
On Sunday, the violence and protests had subsided and given way to a political blame game. Government officials and far right leaders accused the far left of stirring up the unrest, and left-wing leaders blamed the government.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu placed the blame for the chaos squarely on a far-left party, France Unbowed. The leader of that party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, stands a chance of beating centrists to the runoff in next year’s presidential election to succeed President Emmanuel Macron.
Mr. Lecornu accused France Unbowed of sowing distrust about the police among student protesters all week. He also said that the earliest rioters had started attacking riot police and government buildings before official protests were set to begin and were members of the “ultra-left.”
“Behind all this, there is obviously a political battle to wage,” Mr. Lecornu said, adding that the country was at “the point of no return.”
“It’s also time to choose sides,” he said. “Either you are in the camp of the Republic, and therefore of law enforcement — and of those who protect people and property and enforce the laws — or you are on the side of the rioters.”
In response, Mr. Mélenchon blamed the government. He said on social media that Mr. Lecornu was “responsible for the chaos” — due to “incompetence or a worst-case strategy to create a party of order that would make people forget his failure in public finances.”
Mr. Lecornu did not respond to that accusation, but had earlier urged Mr. Mélenchon to call out the perpetrators of looting and violence.
Mr. Mélenchon had offered a qualified condemnation of the violence, stating that “those who share our fight have no place in looting, in pillaging.”
Regardless of the “responsibilities of those in power,” he said on Saturday night, the left “must refuse to take part in actions without political meaning and contrary to our methods.”
Marine Le Pen, a far-right leader who leads the polls for next year’s presidential election, said that “legitimate social demands” had been “hijacked by the far left and the rhetoric of Jean-Luc Mélenchon” and his colleagues, whom she accused of fostering chaos by “legitimizing violence.”
Protest organizers had hoped that the demonstrations on Saturday would lead to a convergence between the student demonstrations demanding better school conditions that have roiled France since September, and a broader social movement addressing a wider array of concerns, including the rising cost of living.
What emerged on Saturday, as more than half a million people protested nationwide, seemed like a split-screen event. Students, farmers, teachers and trade unionists often marched peacefully through one part of a city, while groups of black-clad agitators sparred with police and caused damage in other areas.
Then, as things unraveled, opportunist rioters joined in, exploiting the chaos, government officials said.
“It’s sad, people got angry,” said Laure Monloubou, 50, as she gazed at the aftermath in Paris near Place de la République, where dozens of shops were looted and cars were burned on Saturday.
But she, too, emphasized that the anger of those who looted was “not to be mixed up” with that of people peacefully walking in the streets.
In Paris, the police said they were confronted first by “wildcat marches” and violent groups of 500 to 1,000 people. The situation changed in the late afternoon, the Paris police prefecture said in a statement on Sunday morning, with “the massive arrival of individuals whose sole objective was to commit theft and looting, taking advantage of the disorder to act.”
Sorin Moraru, 48, the owner of a cleaning company, was working on Sunday to restore a bank agency that had been attacked in Paris. He said the vandalism was “unacceptable.”
The damage, he estimated, would take days for his team of six to clean up. The vandals “should be caught and punished, they should pay,” Mr. Moraru said.
“One can demonstrate, one can express oneself, but not destroy,” he added.
Though the scale of the protests on Saturday led some union leaders to consider it a success, the movement faced an uncertain future on Sunday as French society processed the violence and looting that accompanied the demonstrations.
With French schools starting a two-week half-term holiday, the high school movement is expected to lose steam — though some labor unions, including the C.G.T., one of France’s largest, have called for another day of mass demonstrations on Nov. 5.
“It feels like society is spinning out of control,” said Henri Parent, 56, a tourist from Belgium who was surveying broken storefronts in central Paris on Sunday morning.
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2) Huge Riots and Anti-Government Protests Roil France: What to Know
Rioters attacked city halls and shops over the weekend amid protests over living costs and poor school conditions.
By Amelia Nierenberg, Lynsey Chutel and Catherine Porter, Oct. 18, 2026
Catherine Porter, who reported from Paris, has covered the protests for weeks.
“More than half a million people joined some 110 marches throughout France on Saturday, the interior ministry said, in the biggest day of protest since the demonstrations began about a month ago. A major union, the C.G.T., gave a higher estimate, saying 800,000 protesters had turned out.”
Amid many peaceful demonstrations on Saturday, rioters vandalized roughly 1,500 shops and many symbols of the French state. Credit...Kiran Ridley/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
France is reeling from its largest unrest in years, after anti-government demonstrations devolved into riots and looting that caused nationwide damage and deepened a sense of national reckoning.
As the chaos subsided on Sunday, political leaders blamed each other for the unrest and citizens looked on with shock at their cities, littered with broken glass and the charred skeletons of burned cars.
The violence marked a convergence between a weeks-old student movement for better school conditions, an emerging national movement to protest high living costs, and opportunistic rioters who used the demonstrations as a cover for looting.
The protests have heightened a sense of fiscal and social crisis in France, the European Union’s second-largest economy. The government is trying to pass an unpopular belt-tightening budget while facing public anger that has helped position Marine Le Pen, a far-right leader, as the favorite to win the presidency in an election next spring.
What happened this weekend?
More than half a million people joined some 110 marches throughout France on Saturday, the interior ministry said, in the biggest day of protest since the demonstrations began about a month ago. A major union, the C.G.T., gave a higher estimate, saying 800,000 protesters had turned out.
Amid many peaceful demonstrations, rioters vandalized roughly 1,500 shops and many symbols of the French state, leading to roughly 2,000 arrests. An arson attack largely destroyed the town hall in Limoges, in central France. In Marseille, the second-largest city, masked people broke into a government building and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the Republic.
Why are students protesting?
High school students started protesting last month to express frustration with the condition of their schools.
They have pointed to crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, overloaded schedules, a shortage of teachers and staff, and underfunding in schools. Many are also calling for an overhaul of state-run admissions platforms for higher education and universities that they call unfairly selective.
Students have blockaded hundreds of schools. They have set fire to, or damaged, at least 24 of them, according to the government. Thousands have been arrested since September and over 1,000 police officers, students and school staff have been hurt.
The students’ anger has been exacerbated by the police’s forceful response. Prosecutors and a police watchdog are investigating at least 34 cases involving accusations of police misconduct during the protests.
The cases include a 15-year-old boy whose left hand was ripped off, officials said, likely by the explosion of a police stun grenade; and a 14-year-old boy maimed by a tear-gas grenade that an officer had fired at close range.
Why did other groups join the students?
Throughout October, labor unions and other campaign groups have increasingly joined the students’ demonstrations. They have held bigger rallies to express solidarity with the students as well as to protest a broader range of issues.
Some are angry over the cost of living and rising fuel prices that have surged, in part, because of the Iran war. Farmers have joined in, angry at agricultural costs.
Social media accounts associated with the “yellow vest” protest movement, which roiled France nearly a decade ago with roadside demonstrations against high gas prices and other issues, have joined calls for demonstrations.
And left-wing parties have also seized on the protests as part of a wider expression of discontent at President Emmanuel Macron, who is limited to two terms and is nearing the end of his time in office.
Such discontent has a long history in France, where student-led protests in 1968 nearly toppled the government and helped transform French society.
What is the political fallout?
On Sunday, far-right leaders and the centrist government blamed the far left for the chaos. They pointed in particular to a major far-left party, France Unbowed, that they said provoked the unrest.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has accused party leaders of sowing distrust about the police among student protesters, and said some rioters were members of the “ultra-left.”
France Unbowed has rejected that accusation and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has instead blamed the government for actions that he said made the unrest more likely.
Mr. Mélenchon said on social media that Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu was “responsible for the chaos, because of “incompetence or a worst-case strategy to create a party of order that would make people forget his failure in public finances.” Mr. Lecornu did not respond to that accusation.
Giulia Imbert, Ségolène Le Stradic and Zane Irwin contributed reporting.
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3) I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down.
By Chris Marquis, Oct. 18, 2026
Mr. Marquis is a professor at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School and the author of “The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost.”
This fall, another cohort of ambitious young professionals has arrived at business schools around the world for two-year programs with price tags in the six figures. Their presence at some of the nicest and shiniest buildings on campus renews a familiar question: What exactly is an M.B.A. for?
This question has become more urgent as business education has expanded dramatically in the past decades. Today, nearly one in five American undergraduates majors in business, and the M.B.A. is the most popular graduate degree in the United States.
I have taught in business schools for over 20 years, at Harvard, Cornell and Cambridge. While some students appear to care only about their future compensation, I have met many with nobler goals: engineers who want to commercialize clean energy, physicians determined to fix the health care system, nonprofit leaders who have watched good missions fail for want of good management.
These students enroll hoping to learn what business schools say they teach: how to manage people, how to allocate capital and resources and how to make the world a better place through leadership. But I’ve come to see how the institution can reshape the worldviews of those who enter it, often undermining the very ambitions that brought them there.
This change can take place in a single semester. Again and again, I have watched students abandon their altruistic intentions, instead becoming consumed by whether to choose careers in consulting or finance and who will land a summer internship at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs.
The modern business school is designed to promote dealmaking, simplification and optimization. This mind-set has escaped containment and has spread to the wider world. Business-educated elites increasingly populate political leadership, bringing with them a transactional view of public life. One investigation found that out of 45 current heads of state who had studied in the United States, 10 were business majors, and six of those also earned M.B.A.s. President Trump, a Wharton graduate, has treated foreign policy and government itself as extensions of dealmaking and personal gain.
Surely, not every business graduate governs this way. But recent research by the Nobel laureate economist Daron Acemoglu and colleagues shows what tends to happen when you put an M.B.A. in charge. In both the United States and Denmark, firms that appointed managers with business degrees cut wages and reduced labor’s share of income. Yet these companies didn’t become more productive, nor did they grow sales, investment or employment any faster. What registers as managerial acumen turns out to be wealth transfer — value moved away from workers and toward profits, shareholders and executives.
I’ve come to realize that business schools don’t just reflect our economic system — they actively manufacture its priorities and normalize its harms, training the future leaders who will design and defend the structures driving our overlapping global crises. Tinkering at the margins with a class on corporate responsibility or ethics is not going to help. We don’t need to “fix” business schools. We need to abolish them.
Business schools have always struggled to justify their place in the university. A medical school’s core justification is health, and a law school’s is justice — undisputed public goods. Business schools are organized explicitly around a private good: the pursuit of profit. The American sociologist Thorstein Veblen identified this tension a century ago, criticizing university schools focused on commerce because they “need imply nothing in the way of serviceability to the common good.”
When schools like Wharton and Harvard Business School were established, they were seen as overly vocational, and to build legitimacy their founders framed management as a profession, on par with law and medicine. But education in those fields rested on established bodies of knowledge — centuries of case law, natural sciences like biology — that management lacked.
The solution, devised in the 1920s by the Harvard dean Wallace Donham, was to borrow the teaching style used in law and medicine: the case study. It became the signature method of business education. To this day, professors assign 10- to 20-page descriptions of business challenges culminating in a decision point that students then debate in class. The method is pervasive: In 2024, Harvard Business School sold nearly 17 million case studies to various business programs around the world.
One well-known case study that I have taught many times is “Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley.” The facts are simple enough to produce a lively classroom debate. Mr. Parson has delivered impressive results and is viewed as a star performer, but his abrasive and go-it-alone style has alienated people across the firm. In the classroom, students take the position of his manager, Paul Nasr, and decide whether to promote him, delay the promotion or push him out.
Nearly three decades after publication, it remains among H.B.S.’s most widely used cases, and the dilemma is enduring: Should results be rewarded even when the person producing them damages the culture around him? In class, students vote on Mr. Nasr’s options and often role-play the difficult conversation between him and Mr. Parson. The discussion can be dramatic, engaging and effective.
But my experience has shown that by asking students to inhabit Mr. Nasr’s role, the case study narrows their imaginations to the decision facing one senior manager. Deeper questions — like whether Mr. Parson is himself a product of investment-banking culture — are rarely raised. Mr. Parson becomes an individual problem, when the larger issue may be an industry that rewards rainmaking, hierarchy and masculine performance norms, then acts surprised when they cause conflict.
When the case method is used in medicine and law, it serves a different set of goals. Medical students work through detailed patient scenarios — symptoms, test results, histories and social and economic context. Law students read real court opinions, dissecting facts, arguments and judgments. In both fields, students are confronted by the messiness of reality, and the goal is to foster disciplined skepticism: ask what’s missing, challenge assumptions and test how an analysis could be wrong.
Business school cases operate on another logic, focused not on inquiry but on decision making. H.B.S.’s own overview of the method describes students imagining “themselves in the decision-maker’s role” and “taking decisive action.” The point is to practice acting like the person in charge — or, as George W. Bush, a graduate of Harvard Business School, put it, “the decider.”
By overestimating the importance of individual decision makers, the business school classroom avoids harder questions: Who made this person the legitimate protagonist? Whose knowledge is absent? Why are workers, regulators, communities, ecosystems or citizens rarely given equal standing?
I wrote dozens of case studies during my decade at H.B.S., some of which are described as classics and best sellers. These are not products of independent research, but carefully packaged corporate narratives. The disclaimer printed in tiny type on every H.B.S. case concedes this point: Cases “are not intended to serve … as sources of primary data.” The data they include can be selective, biased or even fabricated.
For the many cases I wrote under the guidance of senior faculty members, events that reflected poorly on the company were softened or omitted and the roles of certain executives were burnished. The companies held final approval, with drafts reviewed by their lawyers and P.R. staff. Rather than being vehicles for disinterested learning, as one might expect at a university, the case studies end up as instruments of reputation management.
Corporate influence feeds a larger problem: The cases almost always feature winners, making it easy to mistake luck or timing for a proven strategy. Failures, dead ends and nonmarket solutions are rarely considered. Before Enron’s fraud was exposed, its business model was presented in admiring terms by at least five H.B.S. case studies. More damning still, the strategies that later led to its collapse — its asset-light model, its trading platform — were portrayed as innovations. Questions about deregulated energy markets, revolving-door oversight and opaque accounting went unasked.
Furthermore, edits that push the case narratives away from reality are often meant to make it “work” in a classroom. Complexity is systematically shaved away, and dissenting voices often go unheard. Real organizations don’t move in clearly delineated phases toward a decision point, but business school teaching materials often do — compressing timelines, dropping messy subplots and smoothing over contradictions to produce clean narrative arcs and satisfying problems to debate.
The result is a curriculum built around false narratives. Some of the most celebrated ideas in management have not been the ones that survived peer review or replication, but the ones that could be turned into TED Talks, consulting frameworks or airport best sellers. Faculty members are rewarded not for knowledge but for performance — selling a big idea with a memorable label that promises “success” or “disruption.”
Business schools have a divided mission: They seek to legitimize an economic system focused on private gain while also developing guardrails to tame it. They found a remarkable way to manage this tension: the “win-win” story in which the conflict between private gain and public good simply evaporates.
A classic win-win is the contention that environmental programs like reducing waste or using LED lights can save money or that decent pay and benefits lower costs by reducing employee turnover. Business schools now claim to educate “leaders who make a difference in the world,” as H.B.S. proclaims in its mission, while Wharton pursues a “quest for positive global impact.”
These aspirations are built on the delusional but widely accepted idea of “stakeholder capitalism”: that companies can produce climate stability, fair wages, healthy communities and functioning democracies while also delivering profits. Executives promise that technology will solve our environmental problems; voluntary measurement systems are offered as appropriate alternatives to public accountability; ethics is rebranded as competitive advantage rather than moral obligation.
During the 2010s, stakeholder capitalism was quickly woven into M.B.A. syllabuses. But when researchers examined whether the corporations that signed on to a statement pledging commitment to this ethos actually changed their behavior on wages, investment, governance or climate, they found little evidence of a shift. The statement was less a new doctrine than an effort at reputation management — and a ploy to avoid oversight.
Recent evidence shows that many foundational studies supporting the win-win idea were based on flawed data or couldn’t be replicated. Yet faculty members keep researching, writing about and teaching the topic — suggesting an ideological project more than an academic exercise.
Much of what has happened in business schools turned out to be the leading edge of a broader transformation: the corporatization of the university itself. Institutions now chase rankings, donors and corporate partnerships, tout their contributions to innovation and growth and treat everything else as overhead. Students are “customers,” and the degrees are “products” with greater and lesser “market shares.” University strategic documents talk about “brand positioning” for departments and “R.O.I.s” on tenure lines.
Once you accept this frame, it becomes hard to defend the existence of a philosophy seminar or a history department for any reason other than the revenue it generates. The hiring of non-tenure-track adjunct professors follows: If education is “content” delivered to fee-paying “customers,” why keep full-time scholars on the payroll when you can hire contingent, low-wage instructors?
Business schools’ success in placing their graduates in high-paying jobs boosts their rankings; high rankings attract more applicants and allow higher tuitions; and wealthy alumni fund new programs and buildings that elevate the school’s status. It is a self-reinforcing cycle — a flywheel, in M.B.A. parlance — that pulls money, attention and legitimacy away from the disciplines best equipped to question this logic: history, philosophy, sociology, political theory.
The university’s capacity to cultivate historical memory, moral judgment and democratic imagination is weakened, even as its capacity to churn out data analysts, financial engineers and “innovation” managers grows. The irony — and danger — is that in the age of A.I., the thinking fostered in the arts and humanities is increasingly urgent. The domination of business schools is not only physical and financial; it is intellectual, and it is crowding out liberal education.
I’ve come to a grim conclusion: The problem with business schools is not repairable misalignment but the design itself. Business schools are not malfunctioning institutions; they are highly efficient machines doing exactly what they were designed to do. An ethics elective here, a sustainability center there, a “responsible leadership” badge — they all serve to legitimize the machine, not change its output.
The most honest solution I’ve come across is to replace the category entirely. Stuart Hart, an emeritus professor at Cornell and an early sustainability champion, told me he reached that conclusion after trying every internal route to make M.B.A. curriculums more responsible. The institution itself was the problem. At the University of Vermont, Dr. Hart has since developed a new form of business degree focused on societal impact — a small but concrete test of the case for starting over. In this program, sustainability is not a lone elective but run through the whole curriculum, and students spend the summer embedded in a mission-driven company.
What would that clean-sheet logic mean across an entire university? One starting point is the organization theorist Martin Parker’s call to create “schools for organizing” rather than schools for business, centered on how humans coordinate for shared ends. Students would study co-ops, unions and social movements alongside the shareholder corporation. The central question would shift from “How do we maximize shareholder value?” to “How do different forms of organization distribute power, risk and reward — and which should we strengthen?”
Dismantling the business school as a single high-status silo that professionalizes private gain may seem a heavy lift. But universities can create cross-disciplinary pathways for students who want to work in business without submitting them to the business school worldview. Some already offer “business and society” majors or master’s programs in organizations and public purpose, drawing on sociology, law and public policy. The point would not be to abolish the study of markets, but to return it to settings where questions of power, history, democracy and ecological limits cannot be so easily avoided.
For most of my career, I’ve taught electives focused on responsible business and sustainability — gratifying work, but largely preaching to the converted. Recently, at Cambridge, I introduced a required sustainability course filled with future bankers, consultants and tech executives who once would have steered clear.
Many arrive deeply skeptical, convinced that any time a corporation acts in a responsible way it must be a marketing ploy; some push back hard on ideas they see as threats to growth. But forcing them out of their bubbles into a shared conversation about the natural environment, inequality and discrimination has produced the kind of debate that is so often missing in education today.
This is not enough. One required course cannot redeem the business school model. If anything, teaching it has intensified my disappointment. The course is relegated to the very end of the program — a telling signal of its importance — and amid a growing backlash against sustainability, there is some pressure to reduce or eliminate the class, to appease the customers who now drive decisions in higher education.
Still, the experience has reminded me why abolishing business schools cannot mean abandoning the people in them. The goal is not to write off the students as aspiring selfish capitalists; it is to stop funneling them through a machine that narrows their sense of possibility. Many of my students arrive on campus wanting to work on the crises that our economic system has created. What they lack is an institution that is worthy of their better impulses.
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4) How a Dominican Migrant in New York Became an ICE Target
Oscar Belgal arrived in the city from the Dominican Republic in 2022. Chaos appeared to follow, ending in a fateful encounter with immigration agents.
By Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Ana LeyMaria Cramer and Hamed Aleaziz, Oct. 18, 2026
The reporters interviewed more than a dozen people, in New York and the Dominican Republic, and reviewed internal federal records and hundreds of pages of court documents.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in plain clothes shot Oscar Belgal, center, in the neck. ICE officials said he had weaponized his car. New York Police Department, via Associated Press
The young man from the Dominican Republic slipped into the United States through the southern border about four years ago, acquaintances said, evading U.S. immigration authorities.
He was in his mid-20s and headed to New York, but his attempts to fly under the radar — and to find his footing in a new country — quickly spiraled.
He got a job at a carwash, and then selling carpets, but couldn’t hold down either job. He rented a bedroom in Upper Manhattan, but was taken to court after failing to pay thousands of dollars in rent.
About a year after arriving, the man, Oscar Belgal, was arrested after being accused of stealing cash and jewelry from two acquaintances, with help from an associate who had a gun. Two years later, he was arrested again, this time charged with drug dealing, after he sold bags of cocaine to an undercover police officer outside his apartment building, according to prosecutors.
By 2026, his past had caught up to him: The Trump administration was going after undocumented immigrants, and he was on its radar.
Mr. Belgal’s collision course with Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to a violent climax on Oct. 8, bringing a sudden hail of gunfire to a residential pocket of the city that straddles Manhattan and the Bronx.
It was a sunny autumn afternoon, and Mr. Belgal had just picked up his 5-year-old son from school and taken him to McDonald’s. While they were parked, with the boy in the back seat, a team of ICE officers in plain clothes surprised them.
Two officers in hats and sweatshirts, one with his gun drawn, rushed at the car and Mr. Belgal accelerated his vehicle. At least one officer fired multiple rounds, striking Mr. Belgal on the left side of the neck as he crashed into a concrete traffic barrier. His son was not injured.
Mr. Belgal, 28, was taken to a hospital and later transported to a federal prison in Brooklyn, where he was being held in solitary confinement, a bullet still lodged in his neck, his lawyers say.
Key elements of the encounter — most critically, whether the officer’s use of deadly force was legally justified — remain fiercely contested. In court filings, Mr. Belgal’s lawyers said that the officers never identified themselves — which ICE denied — and said that “Oscar was terrified for his and his son’s lives.”
While the New York Police Department released footage that shows the lead up to and aftermath of the shooting, ICE has not released body camera footage from its officers that could show the shooting itself. Local and federal officials said they are investigating the incident.
Since the start of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, shootings by ICE officers — of immigrants and of demonstrators — in Minneapolis and Maine, Chicago and Los Angeles have ignited furious protests.
Now, that tumult has arrived in New York.
For ICE, the encounter cast a spotlight anew on its tactics and provoked criticism from city and state leaders, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who renewed calls to abolish the agency.
For Mr. Belgal, a father of two whom ICE said had entered the country illegally, the shooting marked the culmination of a brief but turbulent time in New York. Some who knew him — particularly those who felt harmed by his actions — were outraged by the shooting but said that a string of bad decisions had paved a direct path to his arrest and potential deportation.
The New York Times interviewed more than a dozen people who knew Mr. Belgal, obtained internal federal records of his apprehension by ICE and reviewed hundreds of pages of court records.
From the moment Mr. Belgal arrived in New York, his life was fraught with turmoil.
Destination New York
Mr. Belgal hailed from a poor urban neighborhood in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
In an interview there last week, his grandmother, Juana de León, said she had raised Mr. Belgal, as well as other grandchildren, because his mother was absent.
Mr. Belgal, a slim man with long dark hair he often braided, bounced between low-wage day jobs in construction and moved out of the house after meeting a woman and having a son with her, Ms. de León said.
“He got by through odd jobs,” Ms. de León said outside her home on Thursday, as she sold shoes and clothes that had been shipped from the United States. “One day he would go work with one bricklayer, the next with another.”
Like other migrants, Mr. Belgal left the Dominican Republic alone in search of better economic prospects and made it to Colombia by October 2022, according to Carlos Martínez, a Dominican man he befriended there.
Together, they made the same journey that thousands of migrants undertook on foot during the Biden administration, cutting through the treacherous Darién Gap in Panama until reaching Mexico.
“We slept together, we ate together, we did everything together,” Mr. Martínez, 25, said in an interview.
They split up before crossing the border, though they would reunite in New York.
Mr. Belgal told acquaintances that he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in late 2022 without being apprehended. He soon found refuge in Washington Heights, the Upper Manhattan neighborhood bustling with immigrants from the Dominican Republic.
A pair of Dominican sisters whose relatives knew Mr. Belgal said they extended him a hand when he arrived in November 2022, apparently penniless.
Cruz María Reyes, 49, one of the sisters, said that they let him stay in a spare bedroom for free over nine months. They helped him find a gig washing cars, which he abandoned once it got colder, she said, and later selling carpets at a store in downtown Manhattan.
By late 2023, Ms. Reyes, who lived in the three-bedroom apartment with Mr. Belgal, said she began charging him $250 a week for the room.
A few months later, in December 2023, Ms. Reyes heard loud knocks at the door.
It was two police officers looking for Mr. Belgal. They handcuffed him and took him away.
Police officers arrested him because two months before, according to prosecutors, Mr. Belgal and another man had robbed two people Mr. Belgal knew: Mr. Martínez and his wife, Yesica Torres.
The couple told the officers that they had gone clubbing in the Bronx on Oct. 2, 2023, with Mr. Belgal and the other man, whom they did not know, according to court filings.
While they were all sitting inside a car, Mr. Belgal’s accomplice pointed a gun from the driver’s seat at the couple, who were seated in the back, and demanded they hand over their jewelry, prosecutors said. Mr. Belgal, seated in the passenger’s seat, took their chains and rings, and about $1,100 in cash, before kicking them out of the car, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Belgal faced 18 criminal charges, but his lawyer, who argued at the time that Mr. Belgal was in the car but not involved in the robbery, negotiated a deal with prosecutors. Mr. Belgal pleaded guilty to just one charge: grand larceny in the fourth degree, a nonviolent felony.
He received five years of probation.
Mr. Martínez and Ms. Torres, who said they were scarred by Mr. Belgal’s betrayal, said they fled to the Dominican Republic after his arrest because they felt intimidated by him.
“We put him in jail, and he stayed in touch with us,” Ms. Torres, 35, said in a phone interview last week from the Dominican Republic, describing how Mr. Belgal had accused them of “snitching” on him. “He threatened us.”
The Times was unable to interview Mr. Belgal.
In a statement, the Legal Aid Society, which is representing Mr. Belgal, denied that he had “threatened or intimidated witnesses.”
A second arrest
Mr. Belgal continued to share the apartment with Ms. Reyes after his first arrest.
Soon, his partner and their son, a toddler at the time, arrived from the Dominican Republic and moved in, Ms. Reyes said.
Mr. Belgal later left his job selling carpets and the couple stopped paying rent at the end of 2024, said Ms. Reyes, who took them to housing court.
Around that time, Mr. Belgal also appeared to have turned to drug dealing, according to Manhattan prosecutors.
From January to June 2025, Mr. Belgal sold plastic bags of cocaine to an undercover officer during multiple exchanges near his building on Wadsworth Avenue, and on at least one occasion, a bag that also had fentanyl and heroin, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint.
Mr. Belgal was arrested in August 2025 and charged with 10 counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance. He pleaded not guilty to all counts; the case has not been resolved.
Some of Mr. Belgal’s neighbors said the arrests didn’t define him, adding that he was generally a kind person who helped older residents with their groceries and even took them to their doctor’s appointments.
“You knew he was often out of a job,” said Aldenia Casanova, 53, who said that Mr. Belgal replaced the locks on her door in his free time. “But he was very well-behaved and mild-mannered.”
When Mr. Belgal was released from custody after his second arrest, he never returned to the apartment. His partner and their son also moved out after a judge ordered them to vacate the premises because of the lapsed rent payments, records show.
Ms. Reyes said that she is owed seven months of rent, or about $7,000.
She criticized ICE’s conduct in the shooting, but said that Mr. Belgal’s run-ins with the law had ultimately exposed him.
“I’m not out for revenge,” Ms. Reyes said. “But he’s paying for the consequences of his actions.”
In a statement, the Legal Aid Society said that Mr. Belgal’s “past does not diminish his humanity, lessen the gravity of what happened to him or erase the profound trauma his child has experienced.”
Gunfire on a city street
ICE first tried to arrest Mr. Belgal last month.
When officers found him in the Bronx on Sept. 18, he ran into a nearby building and got away before he could be arrested, according to internal federal records.
Federal agents tried again 20 days later.
They fanned out in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles on Oct. 8 in the Marble Hill neighborhood, where Mr. Belgal had moved.
They spotted him at about 4 p.m. inside a gray Honda, parked in front of a fire hydrant on West 225th Street, his blinkers still on.
Moments later, surveillance footage shows, two officers run up to the driver’s side of his car, one with his gun pointed at Mr. Belgal, who puts his car in reverse and backs up a few feet.
Then, he accelerates, steering away from the officers, as one smashes the side window of the car and the other points his gun at the windshield, the video shows.
At least one officer fired multiple shots at Mr. Belgal’s vehicle, according to local and federal officials.
After the crash, Mr. Belgal emerged from his car, its back window shattered and its windshield pierced. His son, unharmed in the back seat, was crying. Mr. Belgal held his neck, and shouted in Spanish.
“He yelled, ‘Help me!’” Viely Herrera, 21, a bystander, said. “‘Help me! I’m dying!’”
ICE officers forced Mr. Belgal onto the pavement and handcuffed him, according to witnesses.
Minutes later, New York police officers carried Mr. Belgal into an S.U.V., and drove him to a hospital.
The aftermath
ICE officials argued that Mr. Belgal had refused orders to exit his vehicle and accused him of “weaponizing” his car.
The agency said that Mr. Belgal smashed his car into two ICE vehicles and tried to run over an officer, an account that has not been corroborated by the publicly available footage.
Federal officials said that they would release ICE body camera footage upon concluding their investigation. The Bronx district attorney, Darcel Clark, said her office was investigating the shooting, which she described as “a matter of grave concern.”
Arianna Montero, the mother of Mr. Belgal’s son, said in a brief interview that her son had been “traumatized,” speaking little and having nightmares.
“Why fire so much at a single person, and a child?” she said.
Federal officials said that the officers did not know the boy was in the car.
Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said that officials believed Mr. Belgal had “indirect or direct knowledge” about a shooting that injured an off-duty customs officer in Manhattan in July 2025, but Mr. Mullin did not elaborate.
ICE officials said that Mr. Belgal had ties to a gang known as the Trinitarios, but offered no evidence. His lawyers said in filings that Mr. Belgal — whom they said most recently worked in construction — “vehemently” denied any gang affiliations.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security blamed New York’s so-called sanctuary laws, which they said prevented the city from transferring Mr. Belgal to ICE when he had been previously arrested.
“Make no mistake: ICE is not going anywhere, and we will continue to target the worst of the worst in sanctuary cities who refuse to jail criminal illegal aliens,” the agency said.
Mr. Belgal’s lawyers argued that his arrest was illegal because the officers arrested him without a valid warrant and without having started deportation proceedings against him.
His lawyers said he was semiconscious when he arrived at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital the night of the shooting. Inside, doctors stopped his bleeding and, when he awoke, ICE officers handcuffed him to his bed, his lawyers said.
Mr. Belgal spent about five hours in the hospital and was discharged after doctors found that he was medically stable, the federal records say.
ICE officers moved him the next day to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison in Brooklyn.
His lawyers, who are suing for his release, said that he was being held without proper medical care while awaiting surgery that doctors had told him he needed to remove the bullet, adding that “the left side of his face is numb, and he can barely hear out of his left ear.”
Anusha Bayya, Hurubie Meko, Oishika Neogi, Wesley Parnell, Nate Schweber and Ed Shanahan contributed reporting from New York. Hogla Enecia Pérez contributed reporting from the Dominican Republic. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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5) This Is What America’s Utility Bill Crisis Looks Like
Record heat and a rising demand for electricity are closing in on Oklahoma families trying to keep the lights on and the AC running.
By Eli Saslow, Photographs by Erin Schaff, Oct. 18, 2026
Genia Weitz and her husband, Daryl Mason, confined themselves to their living room to try to keep their electricity bill down.
Record heat and a rising demand for electricity are closing in on Oklahoma families trying to keep the lights on and the AC running.
Genia Weitz and her husband, Daryl Mason, confined themselves to their living room to try to keep their electricity bill down.
The worst of the heat was just beginning to lift when Genia Weitz, 58, walked into the stubborn Oklahoma sun last month and found the next emergency waiting in her mailbox. “Disconnection notice,” the letter began. She scanned her electric bill and saw a total balance of $1,340.96, far more than her monthly income. State rules prevented the power company from shutting off someone’s electricity when the heat index was above 101 degrees, but now it had dropped to 99 in September, and Weitz had nine days to pay.
She went back inside, where the window shades were drawn and heavy blankets hung across the halls and doorways to trap cool air. The house had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but for the past several months Weitz and her husband, Daryl Mason, had mostly confined themselves to their 300-square-foot living room, letting the rest of the house bake to save money on electricity. They had an air-conditioner mounted to the window that rattled all day. They had her oxygen machine plugged into the wall and his CPAP machine for sleep apnea hooked up in the corner.
Weitz had been sleeping on the couch while Mason slept in the recliner. Sometimes, their grandchildren would pile onto mattresses in the living room. On the most humid nights, the heat index outside barely dropped below 85, and their machines ran until morning.
“I can’t breathe if I don’t have my oxygen,” Weitz said, as she handed the bill to Mason. “I don’t think I’d last a single night.”
“We’d probably stroke out anyway in all this heat,” Mason said. “If we lose this room, we’re not going to make it.”
As fall sets in across the country, the bill is coming due for the hottest summer on record in the United States. The last three months were about three degrees above average, hotter than the Dust Bowl summer of 1936 and the heat dome of 2021, and tens of millions of people can’t afford to pay for the air-conditioning that helped keep them safe in the deadly heat. About one in six U.S. households is already behind on its utility bills, according to federal data. More than a dozen hot-weather states like Arizona, Georgia, Virginia and Oklahoma restrict shut-offs during the most dangerous heat, so disconnections tend to peak in October, when a climate crisis turns into a collection notice.
The Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) had disconnected Weitz’s power before, so she knew the shut-off notice wasn’t an idle warning. PSO had told customers it was also facing rising costs: for fuel and equipment, for investments to update an aging power grid, for the rising demands of extreme weather and new large-load customers, including data centers being built for artificial intelligence. The company’s rates were still below the national average, and it attributed much of the summer’s higher bills to temperatures that kept air-conditioners running around the clock.
Weitz studied her bill and saw she was paying nearly $500 each month to live in a single room. “Turn the lamp off, Daryl,” she said. “Stop running the ceiling fan.”
She’d read on Facebook that power companies sometimes offered 30 days of relief to people with serious medical conditions, so she printed a form to bring to her doctor. “Please be advised that a life-threatening situation does not cause the debt to be forgiven, but merely postponed to a later date,” it read.
Their car was broken down in the driveway, so she boarded a shuttle bus and looked out the window at the faded brick buildings of McAlester. It was a town of 18,000 people built on a coal rush and sustained by an ammunition plant and the state penitentiary. Weitz had always known it as a hard place to live, but after five decades she also knew almost everyone, including the shuttle driver, Sondra Beck.
“Never thought I’d need to see the doctor just to keep my lights on,” Weitz said.
“I owe $700 by Friday,” Beck said. “Everybody’s getting shut off lately.”
They had worked together for several years at a nearby chicken plant, where Beck was a supervisor and Weitz worked on the deboning line. Weitz had stood in the refrigerated plant and deboned as many as a dozen birds a minute, hundreds an hour, thousands in an average 12-hour shift. She dug her fingers under the meat, peeling each fillet off the rib cage until her wrists went numb and her fingers swelled inside her gloves. Now she had arthritis in both hands, two artificial knees, a damaged back and $860 a month in government disability payments. She missed her job. She missed the chill of the factory floor.
The shuttle stopped at the clinic. Weitz tried the front door, but it was locked. A sign on the window said the office was closed for lunch. She went back to the shuttle, took out her phone and eventually texted her eldest daughter.
“You know I hate to ask,” she wrote.
Weitz’s daughter Shenia Mick put on a business suit and a necklace and left home in the dark to drive to her office in Tulsa. Mick, 36, had always believed in showing up early for her job at GasTech Engineering, but lately she was stretching her hours from 6 a.m. until early evening. What her bosses attributed to ambition and work ethic was also basic math. Her office was air-conditioned, and somebody else paid the bill.
Her house had been dangerously hot for much of the summer, as her two aging wall units failed to keep up with 17 consecutive days of 100-degree heat and high humidity. She pushed the AC to its limit around the clock and ran up electric bills of more than $500 each month, but her indoor thermometer rarely dipped below 80 degrees. She set up fans in her bedroom and still awoke sweating in the night. Once, she tried to cook dinner on the stove and became dizzy and then nauseated, suffering from what she believed to be heat stroke. Her boyfriend got her into the shower, and the ice-cold water felt hot against her skin.
She worked in her office until lunch, when she saw a text message from her mother in McAlester. Mick was already helping to pay for her mother’s water bill and car insurance, and here was a photograph of her mother’s electric bill.
“These numbers are getting crazy,” Weitz wrote.
“It’s bad here, too,” Mick wrote. “I’m constantly paying for something. I’m at work right now.”
“You’re doing so good. I’m proud of you.”
Her mother said it often and to everyone: Her eldest daughter had escaped McAlester and become the town’s most unlikely success story. Mick had dropped out of high school, run away from home several times, and returned with two children and a DUI before she turned 18. She lost years to alcohol and heroin before going into liver failure, and then she’d walked out of a Tulsa hospital in her mid-20s and somehow started clawing her way back: to a methadone clinic every day, to a G.E.D., to a manager’s job at IHOP. She signed up for college classes and went to night school for seven years, earning three associate degrees and eventually a job at GasTech.
She started in the shop, wearing T-shirts and jeans as she helped build equipment for natural gas plants, until a manager noticed Mick was organizing and running a team like a seasoned boss. The manager offered Mick a job on the business side, lent her a wardrobe of professional clothes and helped her pay back years’ worth of court fines. Now she was a senior buyer in the purchasing department, earning more than $80,000 a year to negotiate deals with suppliers around the world, with a LinkedIn profile her mother showed off around McAlester. She had her hair highlighted, her facial piercings removed, her suit jacket tailored. “A results-driven professional,” the profile read.
But lately it seemed to Mick as if the reward for so much transformation was more of the same bills, the same stress, the same debts that kept accumulating as she paid almost $1,500 for her own rent and just as much each month to help support her family in McAlester.
In August, she made three separate payments to PSO for her own electric bill, sending $150, $194 and then $101.42. After she became dizzy from heat in the kitchen, she borrowed money from an online lender to buy an extra portable AC unit for $379. The unit cooled parts of the house but drove up her electricity costs. Now she had another bill from PSO, and she would have to borrow to pay that balance, too.
Mick texted her mother with a photo of her own bill: $589.51. “Avoid disconnection,” the bill read. “Pay at least $169.59 to keep your power on.”
“I’m paying this every month, and it’s still so hot in our house,” Mick wrote.
“That’s way too much,” Weitz wrote.
“Is there anyone else who can help?” Mick asked her.
The heat held in the 90s. The window unit kept rattling in the living room. Weitz went back to the clinic and had her doctor sign and mail the medical form, certifying that losing power would be life-threatening. That bought her another 30 days, but her oxygen machine kept running and her debt continued to grow. One afternoon, she showed her electric bill to her daughter-in-law, Autumn Cooper, 24.
“I still don’t know what I’m going to do,” Weitz said.
“Even looking at that number gives me a heart attack,” Cooper said. “I’d panic if I was dealing with those big amounts.”
Instead of being billed hundreds of dollars each month, Cooper had switched to a prepaid plan with PSO so she could make small payments to her account every few days. As long as her account had a positive balance, she had power to cool her house, wash laundry and cook for her five children.
For the last month, she had been washing dishes by hand in the dark and still burning through an average of $12.29 in electricity each day as she monitored her balance constantly. Whenever it dipped below zero, PSO cut her off within a few days. She had received more than a dozen low-balance warnings over the course of the summer. Now she checked the latest balance on her phone and showed it to Weitz: $2.46, enough for a few more hours of power.
“See, that would stress me out even more,” Weitz said. “It’s hanging over your head every minute.”
“I can always come up with a few bucks,” Cooper said. “But every day is a hustle.”
Cooper was going to school to pursue a nursing certification during the week while her husband stayed home to care for their children — a 6-year-old, a 4-year-old, 2-year-old twins and an infant. On weekends, she worked back-to-back double shifts at the New Hope Retirement and Care Center, where she earned $16 an hour to bathe, feed and change residents in the memory care wing. She scraped together a little extra money by selling used baby gear online, borrowing from friends and doing odd jobs for a construction company. If everything went exactly right, she made just enough to keep her power on. One day in July, she sent PSO three separate payments: $7.15 in the morning, $3.65 a few hours later and another $3.14 before she went to bed.
She had come to believe that any real solution would take more than a few dollars at a time, so she went online to start researching electricity charges. Oklahoma was emerging as a major hub for data centers, luring companies like Google and Meta with the promise of tax breaks and cheap land in an effort to become “the high-tech data center capital of the world,” Gov. Kevin Stitt had said in 2025. One proposed data center outside McAlester would use more electricity each week at full capacity than all the homes in McAlester used in an entire year.
PSO was planning to invest $1.2 billion in new power generation and storage to keep up with the rising demands of a growing population, new homes and new businesses. A new state law aimed to make the largest new consumers pay their share, but some of the costs of adding more power had already fallen on ordinary customers.
PSO had cut off power 58 times for every 100 residential customers in 2024, the most recent year with federal data. It was the highest rate of any investor-owned utility in the country, and the company said most of those disconnections were on a small number of prepaid accounts like Cooper’s that shut off when they dipped below zero and then came back on within minutes of payment. On and then off again. On and then off.
PSO had promised to waive some late fees on high summer bills and offer extensions and payment plans. The company had written a public letter to customers saying “affordability is important” and “we do not take any change to customer bills lightly,” but Cooper went on social media and found hundreds of Oklahomans complaining about a similar crisis.
“My bill is unreal. I guess I’ll just burn up.”
“I use a flashlight on my phone before I turn a light on, and I pay $100 a week.”
“Single mom here. Cried on the phone with them last week because mine is so high.”
“My monthly bill is almost 900. I know it’s hot, but this is like an AC bill on Venus.”
Cooper read through the complaints in mid-September and started a petition online to demand more affordable and transparent electric bills. “We, the customers of PSO, are speaking up,” she wrote. “We want our voices heard and our concerns addressed.”
Now she sat in Weitz’s living room and checked the petition on her phone. It had 24 signatures.
She switched to her PSO account. “Urgent: low balance warning,” the app read.
“Here we go again,” Cooper said. “I could be waking up in the dark tomorrow.”
“They might cut you off before me,” Weitz said.
“Guess I have to figure this out,” Cooper said.
They got into Cooper’s car and drove into downtown, passing the cluster of churches that were losing members even as more people came to their doors for help. Cooper watched her gas gauge dip below the empty line as she pulled up to the post office. She had cut a deal online to sell 30 baby outfits to a buyer in Texas for a total of $10, but she wouldn’t get paid until the clothes arrived.
“How long until it gets there?” she asked the clerk.
“Two days, maybe three.”
“Nothing faster?”
“You could overnight it, but that’s not going to be cheap.”
Cooper shook her head and went outside. “It’s time to get creative,” Weitz said. She knew people in town who hired drivers for odd jobs and businesses that bought scrap metal or paid cash for gift cards. She knew all of the aid organizations in town and how much they gave to whom. Just a few weeks earlier, she had gotten almost $500 in energy assistance from a federal program for low-income families.
“Let’s try the churches,” Weitz said.
“I already feel guilty about not going to church,” Cooper said. “I don’t want to ask for help.”
“You have a better plan?”
Cooper stood in the parking lot for a moment and then got back into the car. They drove to the charity Shared Blessings, where the administrator said it had resources to help 10 people with electric bills each month, and Cooper’s request was the 43rd. They continued to All Saints Episcopal Church, where a woman came outside with her cellphone pressed to one ear and waved them away. “Sorry, all out,” she said. They walked a few blocks to Mike’s Club, a thrift store where the owner, Mike Brown, sometimes took money out of his register for families in need.
“I’ve got employees who’ve had their power cut,” Brown said. “The whole town’s going dark. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
Cooper thanked him and went back to her car. She started to drive home, but Weitz pointed to a building up the street. “Last stop,” she said.
Cooper groaned but then turned into the parking lot for First Baptist Church. A woman at the front desk greeted them with two bottles of water and a package of snack foods. “Let me guess — electric bill?” she said.
“I really just need maybe $10, $20 to keep my lights on,” Cooper said.
“I get it,” the woman said. “Let me talk to the pastor.”
Cooper and Weitz waited as she disappeared into the back of the church. A few minutes later, the pastor came out to the lobby, shaking his head. “My bill last month was $1,800, and I live in a double-wide,” he said. “We’re all out for the day. Will you try us again?”
“Sure,” Cooper said. “I’ll be in the same situation tomorrow.”
She drove back to Weitz’s house, parked out front and checked her account. “To prevent disconnection, please make a payment immediately,” the app read.
“The kids might stay over here with you for a few nights,” Cooper said.
“Of course,” Weitz said, and they walked through the dark house, past the hanging blankets and back into the living room.
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6) Food Pantry Patrons Face ‘Too Much Month at the End of Their Money’
Food inflation, gas prices and cuts to federal benefits have created a “perfect storm” for food pantries, which have become vital parts of the family budget for millions of Americans.
By Audra D. S. Burch, Reporting from Immokalee, Fla., Oct. 18, 2026
“People are hungry, and they are scared,” said Chris Manno, who volunteers and shops at a food pantry in Virginia. Eze Amos for The New York Times
Every Thursday, Chris Manno volunteers at a food pantry near the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Waynesboro, Va., where she helps guide the families waiting to shop for free groceries.
Then she gets in line herself, sitting in a white lawn chair until the doors open.
For two years, Ms. Manno has shopped at the Lifeworks Project’s River City Bread Basket. Then this summer, her federal food benefits were cut by about $300 a month in an unforgiving economy, and her trips to the pantry went from supplement to necessity.
“People are hungry, and they are scared,” said Ms. Manno, 57, who is on medical leave from her job at a nonprofit and shares an apartment with her 22-year-old disabled son. “I am here because my food budget kept getting tighter and tighter.”
Rising grocery bills and dwindling federal food benefits — the first driven by tariffs and war, the second by government budget cuts enacted, in part, by President Trump’s signature tax-cut-and-spending law — are pushing struggling families to food pantries to help bridge the gap.
An NBC News survey this month of 48 of the largest food banks — representing 35 states and Washington, D.C. — found that nearly three-quarters reported increases in the number of people coming to their sites over the past year. The rise is coinciding with midterm elections that could prove to be a referendum on Mr. Trump’s economic stewardship.
“We are sitting at food insecurity levels that are the highest they have been since the Great Recession,” said Linda Nageotte, president and chief operating officer of Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 250 food banks. “Prices for everyday basic necessities are increasing faster than incomes, and the result for too many families, is that there is just too much month at the end of their money.”
The recent jump in food pantry traffic sits atop elevated demand from pandemic-era disruptions and inflation that had already widened the type of families dependent on help. Assistance that was once reserved for emergencies has become indispensable for many.
“The role of a food bank has gone from being a real lifeline in the most extreme cases to being an important part of the social services infrastructure of many American communities,” said Richard LeBer, president and chief executive of the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, which serves about 300,000 people monthly in five counties.
He said the food bank served about 20 percent more families this August than last August.
One Friday this spring in Albuquerque, N.M., Jacqueline Marquez, 29, was running low on food and needed help, so she drove for the first time to a food distribution site.
Ms. Marquez sat in the drive-through line for about 90 minutes, waiting for a box of fresh fruit and vegetables to be loaded into her minivan. She remembered feeling overwhelmed by the thought that so much of her financial circumstances was tied to distant geopolitics out of her control.
It has been, she said, “a season of struggle.”
Ms. Marquez works part-time as a cooking instructor and is looking for a full-time job now that her youngest attends day care. She needs higher-quality foods for a daughter with severe food allergies. Child support and about $700 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits go only so far, as the price of gas — about $4.39 per gallon in New Mexico — and other essentials rise.
She has canceled doctor appointments too far from her home, she said, “because I have to ration my gas.”
Even then, she said, “sometimes I run out before the month is over.”
Overall, consumer prices are up 3.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Food costs jumped 2.5 percent over the past 12 months and about 30 percent from 2019 to 2025.
The result: Almost half of Americans struggle to pay for at least one of their basic needs, a study by the Pew Research Center found. Nearly three-quarters of lower-income adults reported difficulty covering the cost of groceries, housing, medical care or daily transportation.
Compounding all that, the Trump administration cut about $1 billion in federal aid for anti-hunger programs last year, then trimmed SNAP funding — to cut waste and fraud, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.
SNAP participation fell by about 5 million people from July 2025 to June 2026, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which analyzed federal and state data. That has added pressure to charitable food groups.
“It’s the perfect storm of long-term financial strain, disruptions related to SNAP, higher cost of living and wages not keeping pace,” said Kari Diener, chief executive of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank in Virginia, who has seen demand increase by about 40 percent over the last four years.
Kyle Waide, president and chief executive of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, said the demand for food assistance within the metro Atlanta and North Georgia network had increased by about 70 percent over five years, most notably after the expiration of pandemic-era benefits.
He added that much of the demand was among households that earn too much money to qualify for federal programs. The food bank is serving about 275,000 households per month.
The most recent increases are not being caught in national statistics. The Trump administration decided a year ago to no longer track hunger. The last federal report showed about 48 million Americans experienced food insecurity at some point in 2024.
Data from the 211 network, a national information and referral service for social services and other assistance, offers a more recent if narrow snapshot. The United Way, which supports the 211 network and handles about 60 percent of the referrals, reported at least a 20 percent spike in requests for food assistance last year in multiple states, including Louisiana, Texas, Maine, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Heather Black, who leads United Way Worldwide 211 System Strategy, said some who reached out to 211 acknowledged they were racking up credit card debt to buy groceries.
On Tuesdays, Celia Rosas wakes up an hour or two before sunrise to take a couple of worn lawn chairs to a nearby church parking lot in Immokalee, Fla., to secure spots for her and a neighbor in the front of the weekly food pantry line.
Twice a month, she heads to a drive-through food pantry pitched on the grounds of a rodeo where she picks up two prepackaged bags of chicken, fruits and vegetables. And, on Saturday mornings, if her food is low, Ms. Rosas visits another local church for ingredients to make a big pot of spaghetti — pasta, tomato sauce and ground beef.
“Coming to the lines was hard at first because I had never had to do that,” said Ms. Rosas, 57, a third-generation tomato picker and packer who was forced to quit after open-heart surgery three years ago.
Now, Ms. Rosas and her husband, a cancer survivor, are getting by on his $1,200 disability check. It’s not enough, so Ms. Rosas is looking for part-time work and relying on food pantries.
“I see so many people in the lines,” she said, “that I know I am not alone.”
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7) France’s Far Right Seizes the Moment as Rioting Stuns the Country
The National Rally, already ahead in the polls, presented itself as the party best placed to restore law and order.
By Catherine Porter, Reporting from Paris, Oct. 19, 2026
“Sunday was a day of mourning, shock and finger pointing in France. The day before, huge, peaceful protests for better school conditions and against rising living costs were overshadowed by black-clad and often masked agitators of unclear affiliation who attacked government buildings and shops across the country, sometimes stealing wine or electronics. For the National Rally, which bills itself as the party of law and order as well as an advocate for expelling unauthorized immigrants, Sunday was also a day of political opportunity. …The National Rally supports a bigger, stronger police force, and campaigned in legislative elections in 2024 for mandatory minimum sentences and an end to reduced sentences, as well as building more prisons. It also pledged to lower the age when defendants can be tried as adults by two years, to 16, and to cut state subsidies to the parents of juvenile criminals.”
The aftermath of protests in central Bordeaux on Sunday. Philippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
After riots erupted this weekend in cities across France, its centrist government blamed the main far-left party, accusing its politicians of inciting the violence. That party blamed the government, accusing it of stirring public anger through years of bad governance and heavy-handed policing.
What did the main far-right party do? It blamed both, and launched into campaign mode.
“We are paying for decades of being soft on crime, of weak authority, of the moral, psychological, and material disarmament of our internal security forces,” Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right National Rally party, said after emerging from a police station in central Paris on Sunday. He said had gone there to support police officers.
Then he addressed France’s “honest citizens” who were stunned on Sunday by the smashed storefronts and burned-out businesses destroyed by rioters the night before. He said they had a vital role to play in reinstating national stability. And that would be by voting in the coming election for his party.
“People need to wake up now,” Mr. Bardella said. “They need to make the right political choices, and in any case, we stand ready to restore order in the country.”
Sunday was a day of mourning, shock and finger pointing in France. The day before, huge peaceful protests for better school conditions and against rising living costs were overshadowed by black-clad and often masked agitators of unclear affiliation who attacked government buildings and shops across the country, sometimes stealing wine or electronics.
For the National Rally, which bills itself as the party of law and order as well as an advocate for expelling unauthorized immigrants, Sunday was also a day of political opportunity. It is six months before a presidential election that the party’s candidate, Marine Le Pen, is the favorite to win.
“The picture of France emerging this morning, in light of all the destruction, plays well into their hands,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political scientist at Sciences Po, a university in Paris. “We can clearly see that the National Rally is not a loser here.”
Ms. Le Pen has tried to detoxify the party, forcing out its founder, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was notorious for making racist, homophobic and antisemitic comments. But the party has never entirely disavowed him, many of its candidates have made racist or antisemitic remarks, and France’s top judges have maintained its formal designation as a far-right party.
The party’s approach to the riots mirrors how far-right groups across Europe are presenting themselves as the solution to different kinds of social and governmental challenges. In July, Spain’s government briefly lost control of the borders of a Spanish territory in North Africa, allowing a surge of migrants and handing the country’s far-right party, Vox, a new issue to campaign on. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, is leading national polls, in part by channeling anxiety over the country’s identity.
In France this week, as Mr. Bardella criticized the government’s policing, Ms. Le Pen seized the moment to criticize Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the main far-left party, France Unbowed, and one of her main rivals for the presidency. She said “legitimate social demands” had been “hijacked by the far left and the rhetoric of Jean-Luc Mélenchon” and his colleagues, whom she accused of fostering chaos by “legitimizing violence” — an accusation that the party denies.
The riots arrived at a sensitive time in France, with the country already dealing with a daunting budget deficit and a deadlocked Parliament in which no party has a majority.
“The far right are sure to gain from this,” said Alexis Veller, 53, a filmmaker, who stopped his motorcycle on Sunday morning to take photos of broken storefront windows and tagged walls in central Paris. “We are a very fractured country,” he said. “The situation is very, very worrying.”
Political analysts cautioned that the six months until the election is a long time in politics, and that voters’ motivations are complex and rarely focused on a single issue.
Still, the violence perfectly aligned with the image the National Rally has long painted of a France divided into two and battling for survival, said Vincent Martigny, a political science professor at the University of Nice, Côte d’Azur.
The party has portrayed the country as split between the France of the city centers — filled with woke students and rioters, it says — and the “good France” in the quiet countryside, he said.
“They try to oppose these two Frances, for an obvious reason, because their electorate is not in the city centers, nor in the suburbs, they are clearly in this other France,” Mr. Martigny said, adding that “this fuels the feeling decay, of decline.”
Whether the unrest offers a long-term bump in the National Rally’s fortunes will depend, in part, on if the protests continue, he said.
On Sunday evening, Ms. Le Pen released a video address in which she painted this very picture of a divided France. She was filmed sitting behind a wooden desk, with the French flag behind her, hands clasped — the image of a president in waiting.
“I condemn the hijacking of this anger by thugs who are sowing chaos in the cities of France,” she said.
“In six months,” she said, “the French people will be able to choose a different path: That of restored authority and security.”
The National Rally supports a bigger, stronger police force, and campaigned in legislative elections in 2024 for mandatory minimum sentences and an end to reduced sentences, as well as building more prisons. It also pledged to lower the age when defendants can be tried as adults by two years, to 16, and to cut state subsidies to the parents of juvenile criminals.
Since the current wave of protests broke out in working-class suburban high schools, Mr. Bardella has condemned students causing damage to schools and expressed support for police officers injured in confrontations with protesters.
Across the Atlantic, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who have both expressed support for Ms. Le Pen in the past, weighed in on the unrest in ways that amplified the National Rally’s critiques. Though the identities of the black-clad and masked rioters are largely unknown, the American leaders portrayed the unrest as caused by immigrants.
“France is burning!” Mr. Trump said on social media. “The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!”
Mr. Vance blamed the violence on “Western liberals” who “imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.”
He added: “I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.”
Given how unpopular Mr. Trump’s government is in France, it was not clear whether those messages would help or hinder the National Rally.
At the police station on Sunday, Mr. Bardella was confronted by the area’s Green lawmaker, Pouria Amirshahi, who was touring his constituency wearing the tricolor sash of an elected official. It was scandalous, he said, that while he was working, Mr. Bardella was out campaigning.
“They spend their time, as you can see, rubbing their hands together over this violence as if their time has come,” Mr. Amirshahi said.
Mr. Amirshahi then turned to the camera.
“We in France should unite,” he said. “We should stand together in the face of the challenge ahead of us, and not fall into this pattern of division and this pornography of violence that seems to excite him right now.”
But Mr. Bardella wasn’t listening. He had already hopped into a car and left.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.
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8) France to Impose Curfews After Nationwide Rioting
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu defended police efforts and pledged to restore order as government ministers acknowledged failures.
By Catherine Porter and Ségolène Le Stradic, Reporting from Paris, Oct. 19, 2026
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of France said he had ordered localized curfews for Monday night in some French towns and neighborhoods, as the government moved to reassert control after the worst riots in decades hit cities around the country.
While ministers in Mr. Lecornu’s government acknowledged failures in handling the weekend riots, the prime minister struck a different tone, saying that the police had done a good job against a “shadowy network” of far-left instigators who he said were seeking to orchestrate “a profound disorder in the country leading up to the presidential election.”
“While we witnessed very difficult scenes involving violence against property, no one was killed, and that is a miracle,” Mr. Lecornu said, emerging from an emergency meeting of ministers on Monday afternoon.
He told reporters that a massive police operation was underway — with “practically” 200 investigators in Paris alone working to track down the looters.
“My determination to restore order is absolute,” Mr. Lecornu said, vowing to use “whatever tools are at the government’s disposal.”
He did not provide specifics on where the curfews were expected, saying only they were for places that had been especially affected by unrest and that a map would be provided later on Monday.
Earlier in the day, France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, offered a mea culpa on national radio, saying that the police had been underprepared to deal with the scale of the riots that spun off from the mostly peaceful protests held across the country. Mr. Nuñez said he had offered his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron but that it had not been accepted.
The justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, also acknowledged that the authorities had “undeniably failed” in the face of the violence — the biggest unrest to hit France in years — and said on French television that there had been “a failure in intelligence.”
The government estimated that at least 3,000 businesses across the country had been pillaged over the weekend, double the figure given on Sunday by the federation of commerce and distribution.
Mr. Lecornu said that workers affected by the riots could access partial unemployment payments starting on Tuesday, and that the government was pushing insurance companies to accelerate the process of reimbursements.
“We must enable shopkeepers to get back on their feet very quickly,” he said.
It was unclear if those words would assure rattled citizens and furious mayors, many of whom demanded answers from the national government on Monday.
Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille, blamed the government and the police for “delivering” that city, France’s second largest, to “looters and rioters.”
Speaking on French radio, he accused the region’s prefect of inflating the number of rioters that had attacked city hall and local stores, and said that he was seeking “explanations” and “the guarantee that this will not happen again” from the government.
“I want compensation down to the last cent,” he added, saying: “You cannot let a country sink into a political crisis without an answer.”
After sporadic episodes of violence and looting persisted in several French cities on Sunday — including in Paris, where the police chief said 351 people had been arrested — several cities undertook measures aimed at restoring calm on Monday.
Even before Mr. Lecornu said he had instructed prefects to impose targeted curfews in certain places, a few cities had announced their plans to do so.
The authorities in Marseille banned gatherings throughout the city from 12 to 8 p.m. that day, a local official said on social media. In Denain, a small town in northern France, city officials said on social media that a curfew would be in place from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. through Oct. 25.
The mayor of Coulaines, in western France, made his announcement after the prime minister’s call, saying his town would have a curfew for minors after 11 p.m.
“I think that at the state level, it would be necessary to implement similar measures,” he said in a video posted on social media. “And why not declare a state of emergency if the raids and looting continue?”
Amid calls for calm and order, there were questions about what would happen next.
The students who started a protest movement more than a month ago by blockading their high schools to demand better conditions are now on a two-week vacation. However, other groups have joined the protests in solidarity and to highlight their own grievances, with some seemingly determined to keep the movement going.
A group of university students blocked entrances to the Louvre Museum on Monday morning, preventing it from opening its doors. Students also blockaded the Paris campus of Sciences Po, one of France’s most prestigious universities. The police were called to the scene, according to student unions and a spokeswoman for the university.
Some protesters who took part in the weekend’s huge demonstrations have already called for another mass action next weekend. On Monday, Mr. Nuñez said that police numbers would be reinforced across the country, “particularly this weekend.”
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9) To Find Criminals and Child Exploitation in Gold Mines, We Just Had to Look
Layers of people certify that gold is free from rights abuses and criminality. Nobody makes them leave their desks.
By Justin Scheck, Oct. 19, 2026
Labor abuses and criminality are not hard to find in the world’s unlicensed gold mines. Assuming someone visits. Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
In the past year, I’ve seen toddlers working in gold mines. I’ve met miners who pay a drug cartel for the right to dig, and watched a boy drink from an underground mine’s wastewater pipe. I met workers in Colombia whose hands tremble from mercury poisoning.
One thing they have in common is that they supply gold to the supposedly tightly controlled marketplace of Wall Street financiers, central banks and government mints.
As my colleagues and I unraveled how that was possible, we kept coming back to one key point: The people who are supposed to keep dirty gold out of the legitimate marketplace rarely actually visit the mines.
That’s the gaping hole at the center of the world’s mainstream gold market. The industry has layers of people tasked with certifying that supplies are free from abuse and criminality, but nobody makes them leave their desks in places like London and Geneva.
The Times this week reported that the London Bullion Market Association, the closest thing the industry has to a regulator, has repeatedly allowed gold into the market that has been mined by criminal gangs, a drug cartel and children. In one case, we found the association helped a refiner paper over apparent violations.
Human rights abuses and criminality are often obvious, if you show up and ask. Earlier this year, I visited a mine in Northern Colombia, where miners told us they pay a drug cartel for the right work there. The gold was certified as meeting the industry’s highest standards, and was sold to a supplier of the U.S. Mint.
Similarly, my colleagues revealed that President Trump hurriedly allowed gold imports from Venezuela before independent inspectors could visit the mines and before traders had finished their due diligence.
Venezuelan mines are notoriously linked to corruption and criminality; the national gold company is designated a U.S. security threat. The importer hired one of the world’s top supply-chain experts, who praised the import plan without ever visiting the mines.
A Times reporter visited and quickly found that gangs were profiting from the gold.
I visited mines in Madagascar where children panned for gold in raw sewage and workers hammered rock, with no helmets or shoes, in shafts hundreds of feet deep. Adolescents said the pull of gold is stronger than that of school.
“I’ve already tasted money,” said a 15-year-old boy named Fredo who hauls 20-liter water tanks for miners.
Four decades ago, the Bank of England regulated the gold market, effectively as an arm of the British government. But in 1987, it passed its oversight to the L.B.M.A., an industry group run by the world’s biggest banks and refiners.
For years the L.B.M.A. was mainly concerned with gold purity and weight, not rights abuses and environmental damage. Gold was so much cheaper then. So illegal gold mining, while problematic, was not nearly as profitable, widespread and catastrophic.
But over the past two decades, wealthy investors and governments fueled a price run-up that sent gold to record highs (today’s price is roughly four times what it was in 2010). A destructive illegal-mining boom followed in some of the world’s poorest places.
Miners, and criminals who profit from them, have rushed into areas that are ecologically and politically sensitive, and often dangerous.
Brazilian gangs have moved mining barges hundreds of miles upriver, into some of the Amazon’s most remote corners. Gold mines have dumped millions of tons of waste into Papua New Guinea’s rivers. Close to 200 people have died this year at mines in Uganda, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Sumatra.
In an effort to fight the worst abuses, the United States and the European Union passed laws attempting to exclude so-called “conflict minerals” from the global supply.
In response, the L.B.M.A. issued rules aimed at eliminating money laundering, corruption, organized crime and child abuse from the supply chain. Since 2012, refiners have had to conduct annual audits to show that they followed those rules.
One major requirement: Refiners who process gold from small-scale operations must inspect the mines. This is different from government inspections. Officials in corrupt governments or countries with weak human rights records have an incentive to say that their gold is mined cleanly. The industry inspections are meant to ensure it.
But loopholes and lax enforcement mean inspections don’t always happen. If gold from a high-risk mine passes through a middleman, for example, the refiner can obscure its source. That’s how drug cartel gold ended up at the U.S. Mint and the Royal Canadian Mint. The drug connections melted away in a cauldron of gold in Texas.
In Madagascar, gold from unlicensed mines sailed into the legitimate marketplace. Despite the L.B.M.A.’s written rules, the refiner said it did not need to inspect the mines itself. The gold was certified as meeting the highest levels in the industry.
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10) Israeli Police Detain 10 Over Violent Settler Attacks in West Bank
Israel has faced pressure, including from the United States, to investigate the attacks. Rights groups say most inquiries into extremist assaults on Palestinians go nowhere.
By Aaron Boxerman, Oct. 19, 2026
Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians as they stormed an olive grove during the annual harvest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday. Credit...Ammar Awad/Reuters
The Israeli police said they detained at least 10 Israelis on Monday after recent attacks in the West Bank in which Palestinians were assaulted during the annual olive harvest, along with a U.S. citizen and European diplomats.
The detainees were all Israeli settlers residing in the occupied West Bank, according to Honenu, a pro-settler legal aid group representing them. The Israeli police statement did not say how many were detained in connection with specific attacks, adding that some of the settlers were detained for entering a closed Israeli military zone.
Israel has faced international pressure — including from the Trump administration — to crack down on settler violence. But rights groups say the vast majority of investigations into attacks on Palestinians end without convictions, effectively granting some impunity.
Israeli extremist attacks on Palestinians in the territory have spiked sharply in recent weeks as large groups of Palestinians have gathered to pick olives on the outskirts of their towns. The trade is an important economic lifeline for rural Palestinian villages, as well as a treasured cultural rite.
On Friday, masked assailants were filmed beating Heidi Levine, 63, a U.S. citizen who was photographing the harvest for The Washington Post. The attackers broke Ms. Levine’s rib, shattered her vertebrae and badly wounded her finger, according to her family, who said she later had to undergo surgery.
The violence in the West Bank continued into the weekend. On Saturday, a group of club-wielding men assaulted Palestinians and a European diplomatic convoy participating in the harvest in the largely Christian town of Taybeh, according to witnesses. A visiting French mayor said the attackers struck him and knocked him to the ground. The episode prompted condemnations from the European Union.
Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador, praised the arrests overnight on Monday as a “very positive development.” Mr. Huckabee, a longtime supporter of the Israeli settler movement, had previously denounced the assault on Ms. Levine, calling it a “despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards,” in a post on social media.
“We have called for a full investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law to whoever participated in this,” Mr. Huckabee said on Saturday.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers reside in the occupied West Bank alongside about three million Palestinians. While the Israelis generally enjoy the same rights and privileges as their compatriots inside Israel, Palestinians live under military rule, with their movements tightly controlled by Israel.
Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians there have risen sharply since the Gaza war began in late 2023, and are part of a broader campaign of violence that has prompted entire Palestinian communities to flee. Some former senior Israeli officials, including generals who formerly oversaw the West Bank, have called the violence “Jewish terrorism.”
While the Israeli authorities have prosecuted some of the more high-profile offenders, the vast majority of investigations do not lead to convictions, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group. Around 93 percent of investigations tracked by Yesh Din over the past two decades ended without indictments.
Critics of the current Israeli government say it has emboldened Jewish extremists by doing little to rein them in. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is currently facing a neck-and-neck election this month, has suggested the most recent attacks could be part of a “campaign to smear Israel.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister who oversees the police, was a lawyer before he entered government, and made a career of defending Israelis accused of attacks on Palestinians. A spokesman for Mr. Ben-Gvir did not respond to a request for comment on the recent attacks on Ms. Levine and the European diplomatic convoy.
The Israeli military previously used administrative detention — holding people without formal charges or a trial — to crack down on settlers accused of the gravest offenses. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, ended the practice against Israelis, although it is still widely used against Palestinians.
On Monday, Mr. Katz reiterated that he would not use administrative detention against Israeli settlers, calling it “a draconian measure.” More than 3,000 Palestinians are currently detained under the practice in Israeli prisons, according to HaMoked, an Israeli rights group.
Heedo Abu Laban and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
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11) At a Last-Hope Health Clinic, Desperation, Kindness and Fear for What’s Next
These doctors and community health workers are a safety net for patients losing coverage as premiums soar and Medicaid cuts mount, even as their clinic struggles to stay afloat.
By Jan Hoffman, Photographs by Erin Schaff, Reporting from Nampa, Idaho, Oct. 19, 2026
The early morning caller to Dr. Sarah Hershman’s personal cellphone was a patient.
Dr. Hershman, who works at a public health clinic in Nampa, Idaho, isn’t supposed to give out her private number. But she has been sharing it with some patients who she knows have no other recourse, telling them, “You really need to be able to contact me.”
Sophia Perez, 28, whose family has no health insurance, spoke in a frightened voice. Her husband, John, had been welding, she told Dr. Hershman, when he felt a hot sting on his eyeball. Could it have been hit by a metal shard? They could not afford a visit to a hospital emergency room.
Dr. Hershman asked careful questions and slipped him into the clinic’s packed Saturday roster.
Full Circle Health, where Dr. Hershman practices family medicine, has long been a last-hope safety net in the American health system. It is one of 1,400 networks known as federally qualified health centers with thousands of sites that receive federal funds to care for patients regardless of their ability to pay.
Now their caseloads are growing, even as revenues are falling. With cuts to Medicaid mounting and the cost of Obamacare insurance plans soaring, the clinic’s doctors and counselors are going to new lengths to patch together care for people with complex medical issues who are underinsured and uninsured.
Dr. Hershman and her colleagues have been spending hours providing unpaid care, emailing advice, calling after hours. They forage for cheaper but sometimes less effective medicines and spend weeks adjusting doses to make them as effective as possible. They negotiate with specialists to accept patients and offer to perform the work-up exams and follow-ups themselves.
Idaho has been one of the most aggressive states to slash Medicaid rolls over the past few years, affecting patients as well as clinics like Full Circle’s, which rely heavily on those funds to stay solvent. Now pressures on patients as well as clinics are about to become even worse, not only in the state but also throughout the country.
As harvest season for sugar beets, onions and potatoes winds down here, two ominous events loom on the calendar.
The annual enrollment period for Your Health Idaho, the state’s Obamacare marketplace, began on Oct. 15, but the generous government subsidies that helped make plans affordable are no longer available because Congress declined to renew them. Like many people, Mrs. Perez, whose job at an orthodontist practice includes filing insurance claims for patients yet cannot wrangle health care for her husband and 2-year-old, found that even the cheapest plan was out of reach. “It was all so overwhelming,” she said with tears in her eyes during her half-hour lunch break.
And come January, many patients covered by Medicaid — whose incomes are well under the state’s limits — may lose coverage. On New Year’s Day, new work requirements for eligibility, enacted as part of President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill, begin across the country. Idaho’s rules are among the nation’s most stringent.
Anxious Preparations
At 8 a.m., Debbie Lehnert, a community health worker at the clinic, replenished a filing cabinet drawer with patient stress busters for the day: Bubble wrap for popping and Little Debbie Swiss rolls, the primal ones with chocolate cake, cream filling and fudge coating.
Ms. Lehnert’s responsibilities include connecting distressed patients with emergency health coverage and support services.
For weeks, she and her peers in public health clinics across the state have been under a weighty new burden: The rapidly approaching Medicaid work rules. Community health workers have been convening regularly in videoconferences to puzzle through the rules, discussing patient hypotheticals that none of them can answer with certainty.
Starting in January, Idaho patients will have to show documentation that they have worked or volunteered at least 80 hours a month for the previous three months. (Most states will require one month.) Reauthorization for the program will double in frequency, from the traditional yearly review to every six months. The requirements are expected to eventually reduce Medicaid rolls nationwide by five million people, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
One of Ms. Lehnert’s most urgent tasks right now is to alert patients. She dialed the next one on her bottomless list. The young man, who can’t get his diabetes under control, had qualified for Medicaid after he lost his job at the post office for using too many sick days. Now his reauthorization date coincides with the start of the new work rules.
“I just wanted to see where you are in that process, if there’s anything I can do to help with that?” Ms. Lehnert said, gently prodding. “January is just around the corner.”
Given the man’s bleak health, it is unlikely he will be able to produce three pay stubs in time. Ms. Lehnert said that with the clinic’s records about his chronic diabetes, they could collaborate to seek an initial medical exemption.
“My hope is that would give you time to focus on getting better and finding employment, so that the second determination in six months would be easier,” she said.
“OK, yeah,” he replied dully.
Ms. Lehnert suggested they meet to attack the paperwork together. Or do a three-way call with a state assistant. Or he could file online, where, studies show, procedural errors, such as computer mistakes and confusion over directions, are the biggest reasons for lost coverage.
“OK, yeah,” he said.
“So which would you like to choose?” she pressed.
He chose online.
After they hung up, Ms. Lehnert buried her head in her hands.
“I truly feel like this is a calling, and I won’t do anything else,” she said, giving her dark curls an emphatic shake. “But these days, I’ve never hated doing my job more.”
Working, but Earning Too Much
It was just after 6 p.m. on a Thursday, but the buzzy restaurant was already slammed with people waiting for tables. Amid the kitchen chaos, Oscar Casarez, 37, a line cook and a patient at the Nampa clinic, kept his head down, juggling grill times and rhythmically seasoning burgers, steaks and salmon.
Just over a year ago, Mr. Casarez, lightheaded and gasping, drove himself to a hospital in septic shock. He was placed in a medically induced coma. By the time he was discharged nearly four weeks later, his employer had replaced him, leaving him uninsured as well as unemployed.
To cover Mr. Casarez’s six-figure bill, the hospital helped him get emergency Medicaid, which carried him through countless clinic visits, scans, blood transfusions and medications as well as hospital stays each time his newly diagnosed severe ulcerative colitis flared up.
Yet he managed to secure line-cook shifts. In May, he was booted off Medicaid because he started earning too much.
He works at two restaurants; neither offers health insurance. But his health problems continue: He also has a blood clot in his liver.
To help, Dr. Amanda Aman, his primary care doctor at the Nampa clinic, has been coordinating with a local gastroenterologist so she can monitor him at the clinic for lower fees than the specialist would charge. Case managers at the clinic scrounged for less expensive medication. After determining that the only drug that quells his colitis attacks requires an out-of-pocket monthly cost of more than $14,000, they helped enroll him in a special program that will provide the drug free for a year.
Still, given his precarious health, Mr. Casarez knows he needs insurance. His only option is to buy a plan on the state’s Obamacare marketplace.
He will likely have to select the most bare-bones policy, which has monthly premiums of about $310 and a deductible of $10,000. The plan doesn’t even cover his gastroenterologist.
At most, when he works 10 straight days of double shifts (to get an entire weekend with his 9-year-old son), Mr. Casarez can earn $3,800 a month. Rent takes a $1,400 chunk; then there are utilities, car payments, gas, child support, food, toiletries.
It comes down to this, he said: He can pay bills and insurance by working overtime at two jobs, almost guaranteeing a slow, steady death march. Or he can work fewer hours and get on Medicaid but have no money for housing and bills.
“I feel like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t,” he said.
‘Medicaid Tears’
Late one afternoon, Dr. Ty Waters, the tattooed director of Full Circle’s Nampa South clinic, unfurled himself into a chair in Ms. Lehnert’s office. He mused sarcastically about getting teardrops tattooed down one cheekbone, prison gang style, to signal the fights he gets into on behalf of his patients. He would nickname the tattoos his “Medicaid tears.”
Recently, a manual laborer without insurance injured his leg but held off coming in for weeks, wary of racking up a flurry of the clinic’s income-adjusted fees. When at last he limped in, Dr. Waters, who suspected that the man had torn his anterior cruciate ligament, treated him free of charge, put him in a stabilizing brace so he could return to work and coordinated with an orthopedist who would see him without requiring an expensive M.R.I.
“Our patients are basically people who are already struggling, who lose coverage and then get penalized for asking for help,” Dr. Waters said.
Dr. Hershman, who teaches family medicine to residents at the clinic, poked her head into Ms. Lehnert’s office, rubbing her face wearily. Every week, she allows a battered woman to sit in a clinic room for as long as she needs because the woman feels safe there. Dr. Hershman bills only a few dollars for the visit. It’s hardly conventional health care, she said, “but it’s that nexus of what we can do to improve their social situation and, therefore, their health outcomes.”
Her eyes glistened. “I love my patients, and I want to show up every day and be the person that they need,” she said. “Because even though this job is hard, being them is so, so much harder.”
(Dr. Hershman knows personally what it’s like to face crushing medical debt: After being treated for cancer recently, she discovered that her insurance doesn’t cover fertility preservation procedures. In addition, she owes $450,000 for her medical education.)
Too many times, Dr. Hershman said, she has sat with deathly ill patients who are nonetheless consumed with worries about cost, anxious about burdening their survivors with medical bills.
She treated a 59-year-old tech writer with a chronic gastrointestinal bleed that had turned life-threatening: Normal hemoglobin levels for men range between 13.5 and 17.5; his was 3.5. Or, as she put it: “He literally had no blood in the tank. I don’t know how his brain was functioning.”
She felt strongly that he needed to be hospitalized in intensive care because he required emergency surgery and, likely, a stay of five days. Chatting him up about his adored grandbaby, she almost got him to agree.
But then he dug in and, however reluctantly, refused. Her notes from that visit read: “Pt. doesn’t want to be here because of financial situation. Working to get insurance with open enrollment but has limited means.”
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12) The French Kids Are All Right. It’s the Rest of Us I’m Worried About.
By Glynnis MacNicol, Oct. 19, 2026
Ms. MacNicol is a contributing Opinion writer. She wrote from Paris.
Jack Taylor/Reuters
On Saturday, protests shut down large swaths of Paris. In parts of the city and around the country, pockets of these demonstrations turned violent. Looting and arson marked streets near Place de la République and in the First Arrondissement, where shop windows were broken and electric bikes were set on fire. In the city of Limoges, the 19th-century Hôtel de Ville went up in flames; in Lyon, a tourist office blazed.
Protests here began in late September with students in the suburbs exhausted by the conditions of their schools, including their inability to cool or heat classrooms, keep out rats or simply keep teachers. This weekend, hundreds of thousands of French men and women joined the students on the streets in an expression of mass frustration over the cost of living, extreme wealth disparity, government paralysis and a faltering social welfare system.
For the past decade, I have spent part of every year in Paris. Protests are a fact of life here, but Saturday’s were different, larger, more intense. Many groups, including the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) — a protest movement that seized the country in 2018 and 2019 over the falling quality of life — joined the students, along with labor unions.
I left the Left Bank and set out on foot for Bastille, 30 minutes away across the Seine, on Saturday around noon. The Bastille column was covered in graffiti from a demonstration the previous week. There I caught the tail end of a procession of people making their way toward Place de la République. It was a largely peaceful group of mostly young people, some holding signs mocking President Emmanuel Macron, some waving French flags. Intermittently, marchers would break out in chanting and clapping.
At République, police officers ringed the square, dressed in riot gear as though preparing to go to war. It was crowded but civil. Some people wore surgical masks, others gas masks, ready for tear gas, the faint smell of which was already in the air. Television crews interviewed protesters. A few climbed the statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, and waved French flags. Shortly after I arrived, flash bangs began going off on one of the side streets toward Canal St. Martin, and canisters of tear gas could be seen sailing through the air. Crowds began running back into the square. As the tear gas grew thicker, I sought a quick exit down the narrow path the police had provided for people to leave.
It was only on Sunday that I saw the shattered windows, looted stores and charred remains of electric bikes.
The violence of the protests, which were amplified on social media and apparently the result of rioters exploiting the moment, threatens to undermine the message of the students and risks resulting in the exact opposite of their goals, which is to petition for more government resources devoted to education and, by extension, a more sustainable future.
These days of protest and rage have struck me as more than just a rebuff to the French government. The students’ fury is giving voice to some larger social failures many of us, in France and elsewhere, often fail to face directly: the climate catastrophe, the terror of artificial intelligence, the faltering economic picture. The students’ determination to voice their anger and frustration over the future is a necessary and courageous reminder that we all need to be facing facts and acting on them.
On my bike ride home from République on Saturday, I encountered an impromptu gathering of students singing the “Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. As they passed the intersection, some set down bikes and other objects to block cars and make the trip more difficult for everyone. That’s as it should be, I thought, as I navigated past the makeshift barricades. Against the backdrop of so many destructive forces, none of us, anywhere, should be allowed to proceed easily.
Since late spring, a series of calamities, in quick succession, have taken a battering ram to the fantasy that Paris is some sort of respite from the problems plaguing the world. A number of punishing, record-breaking heat waves roiled the country, beginning in May. Temperatures in Paris soared above 100 degrees Fahrenheit again and again this summer. Joyful images of young Parisians leaping into the Canal St. Martin and the Seine were sobered by a national death toll of nearly 8,000 and fires that burned tens of thousands of acres of land. The spectacle of haute couture shows held in the extreme heat felt especially grotesque. Walking through the city this fall, I still see the tattered remains of silver foil hacked together to keep out the heat fluttering from windows. Every piece of store-bought chocolate I’ve purchased since summer is white from having melted and resolidified. As October began, I wandered into the Pride parade rescheduled after the extreme heat made it untenable.
And then the streets were aflame.
All this is happening against the impending presidential election next spring, which currently favors the far-right candidate Marine le Pen. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, chronicler of the interwar period (another era known for its wild abandon), a restlessness approaches hysteria, with menacing undertones that have finally burst to the fore with the protests. Mr. Macron, the target of much of the students’ anger and derision, didn’t help matters much by spending his Friday night with Celine Dion, dancing at the city’s most coveted concert just before parts of Paris burned.
In a speech broadcast live Sunday night, Mr. Macron made a point to differentiate between the protesters’ “legitimate demands” and “those who destroyed, smashed and looted.” He said, “We all feel anger and shame.”
Americans, in particular, have always been susceptible to the country’s siren call. Last year, France had a 14 percent increase in first-time residency permits issued to Americans. As life and politics in the United States have grown ever more harsh and punishing, Americans have craved France’s monthlong vacations and universal health care (if not the tax burden that supports them).
But now, with Saturday’s enormous— and enormously destructive — protests, the dream that there is a place of escape may be nearing an end. With their anger and determination to tap into France’s long history of revolution, students are showing the rest of the world that the only way to march into the dark future is together.
Loudly. And with cleareyed resolve. Their challenge now is to keep the violence at bay. If there is a French fantasy to pursue in these tumultuous times, this must be the one.
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