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Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a mem-ber of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) My Son Never Turned 7. Because of Choices in Washington, Others Won’t Either.
By Zain Habboo, May 13, 2026
Ms. Habboo is a nonprofit executive and co-founder of the Rakan Stormer Research Fund at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Xiao Hua Yang
My son Rakan was 5 years old when I first said the word “cancer” to a doctor. They looked at me the way doctors sometimes look at mothers, as if I were afraid of my shadow. It was allergies, they said. Gas. The ordinary explanations for an ordinary child. But I knew his energy was off. I knew my boy.
We were in Jordan for the summer when my husband noticed that Rakan’s spleen was protruding. My childhood pediatrician told us not to worry, to enjoy a few days at the beach, then get a CT scan. There was a cloud over the whole trip that none of us could name. We already knew, in the way parents know things their minds won’t let them say out loud.
Most CT scans take less than five minutes. Rakan’s took nearly an hour. I remember breaking down in that room. I remember a nurse holding me while I sobbed, telling me it would be OK. I remember the word “mass” being repeated, and not knowing what it meant, and yet knowing it was the end of everything.
Rakan fought his cancer, a rare form of pediatric kidney cancer known as diffused anaplastic Wilms’s tumor, with a ferocity that lives in me to this day. Multiple surgeries. Multiple rounds of chemotherapy. Radiation. But every time we took one step forward, the universe pushed us two steps back.
He died almost exactly one year after his diagnosis, at age 6, on the fourth floor of Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., surrounded by the doctors and nurses who had become our family.
Afterward, I remember asking the doctor what we could have done differently. He said: We did everything we could. Only more research would get us to a cure for the tumor that killed my son. In the 10 years since, I have raised money for more cancer research and told Rakan’s story to anyone who would listen.
Here is what I need you to understand about pediatric cancer research: It is already the orphan of the oncology world. The percentage of federal cancer research funding that goes toward childhood cancers numbers in the single digits. Treatment protocols for some pediatric cancers haven’t changed in decades. The “popular” cancers — the ones with celebrity galas and pink ribbons and adult celebrity patients — get money and attention. The ones that take children languish. And yet around 15,000 children are diagnosed with cancer in this country every single year.
But what was already bad is now getting worse.
That path to curing pediatric cancers is closing. Not because we have run out of ideas or new treatments to try, but because the Trump administration made a choice to cut funding for pediatric cancer research and undermine the institutions that once made America the envy of the world when it came to health innovation.
In March, funding expired for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, a 26-year-old network that provides children access to experimental treatments. The following month, President Trump released his 2027 budget, which proposed cutting funding for the National Institutes of Health by 12 percent.
Already under this administration, we’ve seen a hollowing of support for research and science. Last year, hundreds of National Institutes of Health research grants were canceled or suspended. And the agency continues to fund research at a much slower pace than usual. A recent analysis found that as of late March, the National Cancer Institute had earmarked less than a third of what it would have for new grant funding by that point in a typical year under the Biden administration. Researchers who would have been guaranteed funding in any normal year are being told there is no money.
I want to be precise about this, because the administration will be precise in its denials: There is no single executive order that says “we are cutting childhood cancer research.” What there is instead is death by a thousand cuts, each one individually deniable, collectively lethal. A proposed cap on indirect costs for research that would make clinical trials impossible to run. Mass layoffs and resignations at the N.I.H. that have gutted institutional knowledge. Grant freezes. A leadership vacuum at the very agencies charged with saving children’s lives.
Children will die from this. Not metaphorically. Not eventually. Children who are sick right now, whose parents are scanning clinical trials the way I once scanned them, will find those trials closed. Parents will be told there is no study for their child’s particular cancer. They will stand on a hospital floor somewhere and ask a doctor what else could have been done.
Rakan would have been 16 last month. He had big, beautiful eyes and a wicked sense of humor, and he was perfect, the way 5-year-olds are perfect. I will never know what kind of young man he could have grown up to be. We should strive to spare other parents this pain, and we can. It’s not too late to restore funding to cancer research and save thousands of children’s lives. What else is the point of all this wealth and technology that our country has amassed, if not to put it to work saving the lives of little boys like Rakan?
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2) ‘Quite Brutal,’ ‘Not Friendly’: What People in China Say of Trump
Residents in four Chinese cities described a mixture of amusement and anger, blaming U.S. tensions for a slowing economy and rising fuel prices.
By Ana Swanson, May 14, 2026
Ana Swanson covers international trade. She spent the week in China, reporting from four cities around the country.
President Trump at the state banquet in Beijing on Thursday. Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Even for everyday people in China, President Trump’s influence looms large.
A steel trader in the southern city of Fuzhou said his business had been depressed by the trade war. A taxi driver in northern China complained that the increase in global gas prices amid the war in Iran meant he had to pay more at the pump.
At a shopping mall in Beijing, Sunny Sun, a woman who was invested in stocks, said she was watching her portfolio, wary of the impact of announcements from the president’s summit with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.
“There’s definitely some uncertainty in the market sentiment, because Trump is the kind of person who says one thing today and another tomorrow when he gets back to the United States,” Ms. Sun said. “His words can actually stir up things globally.”
‘Like Stand-Up Comedy’
Some residents were surprised to hear that Mr. Trump was visiting China, but all knew who he was. They cited his attempted assassination, his business record, his refusal to wear face masks during the pandemic, his campaign against Iran, and, of course, his tariffs.
“He’s a rather interesting person,” said Milly Zhu, a 34-year-old who works in film and TV promotion and was walking in a shopping mall in Beijing. “Some of his words and actions, for example regarding China, seem like stand-up comedy to people in China,” she said.
“Our President Xi might be considered, in comparison to Trump, more serious,” she added.
Often, their views were negative. Yang Saixiang, a 47-year old worker at a nail salon in a shopping mall in Fuzhou, said the Iran war had worsened her views and that many Chinese people disliked Mr. Trump.
“He’s not friendly to China,” she said. She said tariffs and the U.S.-China trade war had dampened earnings for her customers, and she questioned why the United States could not simply change presidents. “I think at his age, he doesn’t need to be president anymore,” she said.
‘He’s Quite Brutal’
Peng Shuiming, an 18-year-old hairdresser who sat outside the Fuzhou mall playing games on his phone, said the war with Iran had further soured his opinion on the United States, which was already poor.
“My impression of him isn’t very good; he’s quite brutal,” he said of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Peng said he was indifferent to Mr. Trump’s visit, and that whether China needed the United States was a “matter of choice. I feel China is quite powerful,” he said.
Zhang Lei, a 40-year-old taxi driver in Jinan, Shandong Province, argued that China was already wealthy, with little need for foreign goods, and that it should be more assertive.
“The fact that he’s taking the initiative to visit China means that China can control him, right?” he said of Mr. Trump. “It means that this trade war isn’t just unsuccessful for China, it means that the U.S. is also struggling.”
‘Better to Avoid Tariff Wars’
Some of the negative views of the United States appeared to be based on misinformation circulated on social media. One woman cited a report that beggars in the United States eat human flesh, while Mr. Peng mentioned that his view on the United States had worsened after seeing a report during the pandemic about the United States dumping bodies in the sea.
Others seemed to blame Mr. Trump and the trade war for broader weakness in the Chinese economy, some of which was likely linked to the current real estate downturn, or other reasons.
Chen Gang, a 42-year-old steel trader in Fuzhou, said tense relations between the United States and China were hurting his business. He sells steel to the construction industry, but the sector is shrinking.
“It would be better to avoid tariff wars and just cooperate amicably, without all this back and forth,” he said.
Mr. Chen said that Chinese leaders should be “polite and courteous” to Mr. Trump — at least on the surface. “People say nice things on the surface, but what they really mean behind the scenes is another matter. That’s how it is in business,” he said.
‘We Want to Get Along Well With the United States’
Many expressed hope that the meetings between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi would set the United States and China on a more stable path. Almost all characterized China as inherently peaceful.
“We don’t want war, we want peace,” Ms. Zhu said. “We want to get along well with the United States, and we want to develop our economy. Only peace can create a better economy.”
In Jinan, the northern Chinese city, Shen Jianmin, a 74-year-old retiree and former farmer who was relaxing in a public plaza on Wednesday, said that Mr. Trump tended to stir up trouble for no reason. But he said the visit was a positive development.
“It’s good that the U.S. is coming to China, right?” he said. “The friendship between the two countries is good.”
“Everyone wants a good life; which ordinary person wants to fight? When you’re constantly at war, it’s the ordinary people who suffer,” he added.
Li You contributed research.
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3) Why the Migrant Child Crisis Is Roiling the California Governor Race
The Times broke the story that has become a dominant line of attack against Xavier Becerra, the Democratic front-runner. Here are five things to know about it.
By Hannah Dreier, May 14, 2026
Hannah Dreier spent two years reporting on the growth of child labor throughout the United States.
In the first years of the Biden administration, thousands of children crossed the border alone and ended up working in some of the most dangerous jobs in the country. Migrant children as young as 13 suffered chemical burns on overnight factory shifts, had their limbs mangled by conveyor belts or fell to their deaths from roofs.
I broke this story in 2023. I didn’t expect that three years later, the reporting would become a major line of attack in the California governor’s race.
Opponents of Xavier Becerra, the Democratic front-runner, have been excoriating his tenure as secretary of Health and Human Services, the federal agency that was responsible for finding safe homes for those children. In the past two weeks, campaigns have spent more than $6 million on commercials in English and Spanish using my reporting (and even my voice, taken from interviews I did), according to AdImpact, a tracking service.
One ad says that “more than 85,000 migrant children went missing” under his watch. Another says that during Mr. Becerra’s tenure “kids suffered from forced labor, trafficking and abuse.”
Mr. Becerra has called the allegations “Trump lies.”
There has been spin on all sides. With just weeks to go before the June 2 primary, here’s what we reported — and what we didn’t.
Did children disappear on Mr. Becerra’s watch?
In debates, Mr. Becerra has been grilled again and again about the whereabouts of 85,000 children who went “missing” while he ran H.H.S.
The children didn’t vanish. But the reporting found serious breakdowns in how H.H.S. vetted sponsors and safeguarded children.
H.H.S. is responsible for children when they first cross the border. Caseworkers care for them in government shelters, vet the adults who come forward to take them in and then follow up with a phone call a few weeks later to check in.
Early in the Biden administration, so many children were entering the country that Mr. Becerra began urging staff members to move them more quickly through shelters, which could be crowded and makeshift. Employees told me they loosened protections that had been in place for years, including in screening sponsors. The department denied this and said it had never compromised safety.
During this time, H.H.S. did not reach a third of released children with a follow-up call. That came to about 85,000 children.
Some of those children, I found, were working in dangerous jobs. But there were also many ordinary reasons children did not answer calls. Some had changed phone numbers. Others screened unknown calls or feared they were in trouble. Often, H.H.S. called only once and never tried again.
What exactly happened to migrant children?
In 2021 and 2022, children migrated to the United States in record numbers, usually from impoverished towns in Central America. Most of them were not reuniting with parents but living with sponsors who often encouraged, helped or even forced them to work. Thousands ended up in punishing jobs that were illegal for minors — cleaning slaughterhouses or working at lumber mills or in roofing.
This failure went far beyond H.H.S. Labor Department inspectors did not effectively enforce child labor laws. Schools declined to report that their students were working long hours in jobs that should have been off-limits. Multinational companies ignored young-looking faces on their factory floors.
When the first article was published, H.H.S. defended its actions. It said it wanted to release children from shelters swiftly, for the sake of their well-being, and that it couldn’t be held accountable for everything that happened after they left.
Within H.H.S., many staff members were angry with Mr. Becerra. Again and again, they sent up reports, including some that reached his level, warning that children appeared to be at risk.
This week, the same H.H.S. employees told me they were frustrated that the California race seemed fixated on claims about 85,000 “missing” children. What troubled them more, they said, was that the government rushed to release 250,000 children and then did so little to find out what became of them.
Did children die?
Children did die after being sent to their sponsors. Others were catastrophically injured.
Here are just a few I found: Andrés Toma, 16, fell to his death three months after being sent to live with an uncle. Antoni Padilla, 15, lost the ability to speak after falling from a roofing job. Marcos Cux, released by H.H.S. at age 13, was working at a chicken plant when a machine tore open his arm. When I met him, it hung limply by his side. It’s unclear whether these children received H.H.S. follow-up calls, or whether a call would have mattered.
Children and parents both consistently told me they had not imagined how dangerous the work would be, or how relentless.
Child workers were mostly living adult lives, expected to contribute to rent and pay off debts, allowed to go to school only after working night shifts, or not allowed to go at all. In other words, the kind of situations H.H.S. was supposed to screen out.
Some sponsors told me they believed that they were doing children a favor by helping them migrate and support their families. But many also kept careful tallies of what the children owed, including for their clothes, meals and lodging, and charged monthly interest.
What does Mr. Becerra say now about this?
Earlier this week, my colleague Laurel Rosenhall, who is covering the governor’s race, gave Mr. Becerra a chance to address the criticism. She asked him what conclusions voters should draw about his ability to manage a crisis as governor.
Mr. Becerra cited President Trump’s policy of child separation — which was carried out by the Department of Homeland Security, not H.H.S. — and told her he had done better by migrant children. But he said that he could not be held responsible for what happened to children after they left federal custody.
“What employers did, after they left our care, after they left our jurisdiction, where the exploitation of children may have occurred, was not on my watch,” he said. “While those kids were with us, they didn’t get exploited. While those kids were with us, they were cared for, and we’re very proud of what we did.”
There’s a debate about how long H.H.S. should be held accountable for what happens to the children it releases.
The department is required by Congress to ensure children are released only to adults who will provide for their well-being and shield them from trafficking and exploitation. But unlike the foster care system, H.H.S. is not required to support children until they reach adulthood. Under Mr. Becerra’s leadership, the department generally released children, made a follow-up call and then closed their files.
What has happened to the children?
After our reporting, the White House moved quickly to fix many of the problems, including strengthening sponsor vetting and making sure children could call a hotline for help if they were in trouble.
H.H.S. overhauled how it followed up with children. Caseworkers began visiting sponsors’ homes and offering children comprehensive post-release services and some legal help. The Labor Department also began cracking down on employers.
The changes were driven by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who instructed his aides to take immediate action after the first article was published.
Mr. Becerra was repeatedly called before Congress and questioned by both Republicans and Democrats. But then, as now, he said that what happened to the children after they were released from H.H.S. shelters was not his responsibility.
Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting.
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4) Trump Cites Inaccurate Data to Downplay Economic Toll of Iran War
He has minimized soaring gas prices, rising inflation and the American economy’s need for the Strait of Hormuz.
By Linda Qiu, Reporting from Washington, May 14, 2026
Gas prices have risen about 53 percent higher than they were at the start of the war on Feb. 28. Credit...Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The New York Times
President Trump has for weeks downplayed the economic toll of his war with Iran, citing a bevy of inaccurate statistics.
His remarks to reporters in recent days underscored his approach, as he asserted that the economic hardship Americans might face was not a factor in his negotiations to end the conflict. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” he said. “I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”
Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said the president had always been clear about the war’s temporary disruptions to the economy as inflation rises.
“The administration remains laser-focused on cutting costs and accelerating growth on the home front,” Mr. Desai said. “As these policies continue taking effect, and as traffic in the Strait of Hormuz normalizes after the Iranian nuclear threat is neutralized, both energy prices and inflation will drop again.”
Here’s a fact check.
What Was Said
“Now with all of this, inflation is much lower than it was under Biden. Biden had the highest inflation in the history of our country. Inflation is nothing by comparison, but our inflation is just short term. Because if you go from before, just before the war, we were for the last three months, 1.7 percent.”
— Mr. Trump in remarks to reporters on Tuesday
False. Mr. Trump is exaggerating the rate of inflation under the Biden administration and understating the rate of inflation under his own administration.
Inflation did reach the highest point in four decades — not in the “history of the country”— in the summer of 2022, at about 9 percent that June. But inflation reached higher points in the 1910s, 1970s and 1980s. Inflation had fallen to 3 percent in January 2025, when Mr. Trump took office.
In the three months before the United States attacked Iran on Feb. 28, inflation reached 2.7 percent in December, 2.4 percent in January and 2.4 percent in February — not 1.7 percent, as Mr. Trump said.
After the war began, inflation increased to 3.3 percent in March and again to 3.8 percent in April. Those figures are all higher than inflation at the end of the Biden administration.
What Was Said
“Oil is down 25% or $30 per barrel since Sleepy Joe”
— Mr. Trump in a social media post on May 8
This is misleading. Mr. Trump shared a chart that showed the price of oil at $120 a barrel under Mr. Biden and $90 under Mr. Trump, comparing the highest point of gas prices under the Biden administration with a recent low under his administration.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose to $120 per barrel in June 2022, but had fallen to about $80 a barrel by January 2025, when Mr. Trump took office. The price continued to fall in Mr. Trump’s first year back in office, before surging at the onset of the war in Iran.
On Friday, when Mr. Trump posted his chart, Brent crude had risen to $101 a barrel.
What Was Said
“Well, no, gas prices have come down today. Have you looked? They’ve come down very substantially today.”
— Mr. Trump in remarks to reporters on May 7
False. Government and independent data sources show that the opposite is true. Gas prices have continued to climb.
Gas prices rose to $4.56 a gallon on May 7, according to the AAA motor club, from $4.54 a day earlier. That was about 53 percent higher since the start of the war on Feb. 28, when the national average price of gas was $2.98.
Gas prices averaged $4.45 per gallon in the week ending on May 4, according to the Energy Information Administration, a government statistical agency. That was about 52 percent than the $2.94 in the week ending on Feb. 23.
What Was Said
“We don’t use the strait. We don’t need it. In fact, boats are coming up to Texas, Louisiana and Alaska and filling up with oil. We don’t need the strait.”
— Mr. Trump in a May 5 interview on the syndicated news show “Full Measure”
This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump has a point that a tiny amount of oil imported to the United States travels through the Strait of Hormuz. But he is wrong that the United States does not use the waterway at all.
The Energy Information Administration estimated that in 2024, the year with the latest available data, the United States imported about 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the Strait of Hormuz, equal to about 7 percent of total crude oil and condensate imports and 2 percent of consumption.
The United States also relies on the strait to import and export other goods.
The United States imports about 12 to 17 percent of several commonly used materials for fertilizer (monoammonium phosphate, diammonium phosphate and urea). About 22 percent of aluminum imports and about 25 percent of helium imports also travel through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Persian Gulf accounts for nearly 20 percent of all American exports of sauces and condiments, 20 percent of waterborne passenger cars and 15 percent of trucks, according to the Congressional Research Service.
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5) In Qatar, Energy Sector Damage Is Severe, and the Way Back Will Be Long
Iranian strikes and a blockade have paralyzed Qatar’s gas engine, creating a technical bottleneck likely to stall exports for years.
By River Akira Davis, May 14, 2026
River Davis reported this article from Doha, Qatar. She has reported on the energy industry from Japan, Southeast Asia and Alaska.
A liquefied natural gas production facility in Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City. Qatar is one of the world’s largest exporters of L.N.G., but Iranian attacks have crippled its production. Picture Alliance/DPA, via Associated Press
In Doha, the stranded gas tanker Rasheeda has become a dark joke.
For more than two months, the vessel has drifted in circles in the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying the liquefied natural gas that serves as the lifeblood of Qatar’s economy. Residents track the ship on maritime apps and ask one another: “Where is Rasheeda today?”
The looping tanker has become a symbol of the paralysis gripping global energy supplies — a crisis that has cost Qatar billions in lost revenue and helped create energy shortages worldwide.
Qatar, one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, has seen its industry hobbled since war erupted in the Middle East nearly 11 weeks ago and Iranian strikes damaged critical infrastructure. Even facilities that remain intact have shut down because fuel cannot move through the closed Strait of Hormuz.
Since the war began, ships have tried just about everything to get out of the gulf, from calling in high-level diplomatic favors to hand-stitching Pakistani flags, hoping ties to the country mediating the U.S.-Iranian negotiations might secure safe passage.
During a week in Qatar, I interviewed more than a dozen people with knowledge of Qatar’s L.N.G. operations. Sensitivity in Qatar about the scarring of the energy industry is high. So most of the people requested anonymity to speak openly about QatarEnergy — the powerful state-owned energy giant that is the backbone of the economy. The details and observations about the state of Qatar’s L.N.G. industry stem from these conversations.
The consensus from these discussions was that even if the strait reopened tomorrow, Qatari L.N.G. exports would remain crippled for months and most likely impaired for years.
The biggest obstacle is technical. Replacement parts for infrastructure damaged by Iranian attacks can take up to five years to procure. At the same time, global shipping companies no longer trust the route through the strait, potentially leaving much of Qatar’s remaining exports stranded.
QatarEnergy did not respond to requests for comment.
The damage to Qatari gas infrastructure was inflicted in March, when Iran launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ras Laffan, the country’s L.N.G. production hub. Most were intercepted, but three of the 20 projectiles penetrated defenses and struck L.N.G. trains — the massive liquefaction units that supercool gas for transport.
Rashid Al-Mohanadi, a former engineer who worked on one of the damaged units, remembered the night of the attack. Looking north from his home outside Doha, he saw the sky over Ras Laffan flash with interceptor missiles. The explosions rolled outward like shock waves, rattling the windows and doors of his house. When he stepped outside, the horizon was thick with black smoke.
“That was the moment I realized something had gotten through,” he said.
The facility was already largely idle because Iran had shut the Strait of Hormuz weeks earlier. Experts say the timing most likely spared the plant from further damage, as the lines were not operating under full pressure. Even so, Iran appeared to have hit what engineers describe as the “heart” of L.N.G. liquefaction trains.
The two heavily damaged units accounted for about 17 percent of Ras Laffan’s production. QatarEnergy has indicated that restoring full capacity could take three to five years. Some analysts believe that the estimate is high, but most agree that the recovery will take years.
The strikes appeared to have damaged the main cryogenic heat exchangers, precision machines that perform the final cooling of the gas and whose manufacturing is dominated by a single U.S. company, a unit of the conglomerate Honeywell. Replacement units can take four to five years to obtain.
The heat exchangers are a relatively small target within the Ras Laffan complex, which is more than twice the size of San Francisco, suggesting the strike was aimed at inflicting lasting damage.
Even for infrastructure that survived, getting fuel to market will remain difficult. Unlike the United Arab Emirates and Oman, which have coastlines on the Arabian Sea or Gulf of Oman, Qatar is uniquely vulnerable. All of its maritime infrastructure sits deep inside the Persian Gulf, leaving it without an alternative route to open water.
Roughly 1,600 vessels remain trapped near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying L.N.G., oil and fuel byproducts. After reports that Iran was allowing Pakistani-flagged vessels through, some crews stitched together makeshift flags from scraps of cloth found on board. It did not work.
For shippers, the danger will persist even if a cease-fire holds. Tehran has claimed to have seeded the waterway with undersea explosives. Until international mine-clearing units or Iranian authorities provide credible guarantees of safety, shipping companies are likely to be reluctant to risk their crews’ lives.
The Philippines, which supplies much of the world’s merchant-mariner work force, has begun directing crewing agencies to stop sending Filipino sailors into the conflict zone. Fears of further Iranian aggression and a lack of insurance coverage for such voyages threaten to keep vessels away. That leaves QatarEnergy in a bind.
Qatar cannot simply restart production until it secures commitments from shipping lines to return for new cargoes. If gas continues to accumulate with nowhere to go, storage tanks could overflow, forcing shutdowns that risk permanent damage. Because of that bottleneck, the entire export system is unlikely to return to normal for at least three to four months after the strait reopens.
The full extent of the damage is still unclear, but given the scale of the repairs required, “we’re talking reduced production until the end of the decade,” said Henning Gloystein, a managing director for energy at Eurasia Group, a political risk research firm. “It’s a significant tightening of the market.”
Even if the immediate crisis is resolved, many in the energy industry think that the Strait of Hormuz will not return to what it was. Support is growing for enormous infrastructure projects designed to bypass the strait, potentially redrawing the Middle East’s energy map.
One frequently discussed proposal is a pipeline across the Arabian Peninsula to a new liquefaction and export terminal in Jeddah on the Red Sea. Another would extend pipelines south to the Omani port of Duqm, allowing Qatari gas to be loaded directly onto ships in the Arabian Sea.
But pipelines carry geopolitical risks of their own. Relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia — through which any overland route would have to pass — are warm now but scarred by a yearslong rift in which the kingdom cut off diplomatic and transport ties. Pipeline infrastructure is also vulnerable to missile and drone attacks.
For now, the immediate urgency is reopening the waterway itself. “Priority No. 1 is getting the strait open,” said Mr. Al-Mohanadi, the engineer who used to work at Ras Laffan. “Then it becomes about finding a mechanism to keep it open.”
After nearly a decade at a QatarEnergy-Exxon Mobil joint venture, Mr. Al-Mohanadi joined the Doha-based Center for International Policy Research as a vice president. He said one option was to create a multilateral maritime insurance “piggy bank” — a private and sovereign-backed fund that would insure ships transiting dangerous waterways such as the strait.
He also said there was growing pressure for Asia’s largest energy consumers to take a more active role in regional maritime security. For decades, the United States has served as the Gulf’s de facto guarantor, maintaining military bases across the region. Mr. Al-Mohanadi argues that the burden should increasingly be shared by Asian “middle powers” most dependent on Middle Eastern energy exports.
“We’re in a period of history where it’s a jungle, and that is threatening global energy security and entire economies,” he said recently over a late-night coffee at a hotel overlooking the waters off the northern tip of Doha Bay.
Near the end of our conversation, Mr. Al-Mohanadi opened a maritime tracking app on his phone. He typed in “Rasheeda,” and out emerged a rendering of the tanker, still endlessly circling the gulf. “Poor Rasheeda,” he said, looking down at the screen. “At this point, she must be so tired.”
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6) Her Two Sons Disappeared. Her Search Made Her the Voice of Mexican Mothers.
One of the most prominent activists for Mexico’s disappeared recently found the remains of one missing son. Now she has turned her attention to finding the other.
By James Wagner, Photographs by Fred Ramos, May 14, 2026
Reporting from Los Mochis, Juan José Ríos and other small towns in Sinaloa, Mexico
Cecilia Flores during a search for her missing son last month in Juan José Ríos, Mexico.
When she arrived at the field in northern Mexico where she has been searching for her son’s remains, Cecilia Flores kissed a large banner emblazoned with his face. Big letters on it proclaimed, “Your mother is fighting because she loves you.”
Ms. Flores was leading a team of fellow mothers, archaeologists and criminologists all searching in the relentless sun one April morning for people who have gone missing. An excavator dug trenches 4 feet deep and as long as 180 feet.
Ms. Flores’s son Alejandro disappeared in 2015, when he was 21. She has been searching this area on and off for the past four years after receiving an anonymous tip that her son’s remains were in this field in Sinaloa State, where other bodies have been unearthed.
“If I find my son, I’m going to make an altar here,” Ms. Flores said.
This is the constant agony of searching mothers, or “madres buscadoras” as they are known in Mexico. Few are more prominent than Ms. Flores, 53, the founder of several groups including the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, or the Searching Mothers of Sonora, a state in northwest Mexico.
Many mothers go years without finding their loved ones, and some never do. Ms. Flores, a mother of six, has two sons who both disappeared.
But in late March, prosecutors in Sonora called her to say that they might have located her other son, Marco Antonio, who went missing in 2019 when he was 32. Her hopes had been raised and then dashed five times before over the years. But she rushed over to the search site and helped with the dig.
In a heartbreaking video that received nearly a million views online, she held up a femur bone in the desert that DNA tests later confirmed to be from her son. The authorities said bone fragments, clothes and shell casings were found on the property of a deceased man who they presume had participated in Marco Antonio’s disappearance.
Marco Antonio’s remains were found just 300 feet away from where Ms. Flores said she and her daughters had searched three years before, based on a tip from a man who called her from prison. But they stopped looking when they mistook the sound of motorcycles from a nearby farm for cartel members riding up to threaten them, a grim reality that Ms. Flores has faced before.
Women searching for the disappeared have repeatedly been killed in Mexico, including last weekend.
“It wasn’t the right time to find him,” she said.
For nearly a decade, Ms. Flores has been one of the key faces of a crisis in Mexico, where more than 133,000 people have vanished. Nearly all disappeared in the past two decades, many at the hands of criminal groups or colluding officials.
The disappearances have hung like a cloud over the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has vowed justice for all of the missing and has overseen some encouraging changes but is under increasing pressure to do more.
While government statistics show homicides have dropped by roughly 40 percent under Ms. Sheinbaum, who took office in October 2024, the number of missing people has more than doubled since 2016, climbing steadily over the years.
Ms. Sheinbaum sparred with a United Nations body of experts last month over its scathing report concluding that disappearances in Mexico were widespread and systemic, and often involved the complicity of the authorities.
“They want to pretend that nothing happens, that everything is dropping, when it’s not true,” Ms. Flores said of the Mexican government while standing in front of a statue of St. Jude, the Catholic patron saint of impossible causes. “Every day, people go missing.”
Despite living under constant threat, Ms. Flores is unafraid to speak her mind.
Recently, she posted a video on social media asking Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, the infamous leader of the Sinaloa Cartel who is now in a U.S. prison, for tips to help locate her son. She included her address. She said she believed that Mr. Guzmán “was a good person for helping the poor a lot” and should now help mothers.
The disappearances have hung like a cloud over the administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has vowed justice for all of the missing and has overseen some encouraging changes but is under increasing pressure to do more.
While government statistics show homicides have dropped by roughly 40 percent under Ms. Sheinbaum, who took office in October 2024, the number of missing people has more than doubled since 2016, climbing steadily over the years.
Ms. Sheinbaum sparred with a United Nations body of experts last month over its scathing report concluding that disappearances in Mexico were widespread and systemic, and often involved the complicity of the authorities.
“They want to pretend that nothing happens, that everything is dropping, when it’s not true,” Ms. Flores said of the Mexican government while standing in front of a statue of St. Jude, the Catholic patron saint of impossible causes. “Every day, people go missing.”
Despite living under constant threat, Ms. Flores is unafraid to speak her mind.
Recently, she posted a video on social media asking Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, the infamous leader of the Sinaloa Cartel who is now in a U.S. prison, for tips to help locate her son. She included her address. She said she believed that Mr. Guzmán “was a good person for helping the poor a lot” and should now help mothers.
Once Marco Antonio was buried, Ms. Flores moved from Sonora State back to Sinaloa into her mother’s modest two-bedroom house to dedicate herself to finding Alejandro. She tried to search for him before, but she said she paused when local cartel members showed up at her mother’s house twice asking for her.
“I live with a lot of fear that something happens to her,” Ms. Flores’s mother, Marcela Armenta, 70, said in tears.
Ms. Flores has had round-the-clock police protection over the past few years. But she said she still worries about corrupt authorities in Mexico.
“The problem isn’t that they take me,” Ms. Flores said. “The problem is that they do it right in front of my family. I don’t want my mother to become a searching mother herself.”
Still, Ms. Flores is very public about her mission. She lists her phone number on social media. She goes live from her Facebook accounts while out on digs, often in dangerous or remote areas. Recently she narrated as other mothers and her brother used a flour-and-water mixture to glue missing persons posters to poles in small towns. She made sure they stuck them facing a local outdoor bar frequented by the “bad guys.”
She uses her large social media following to earn a living and raise money to fund her search groups, selling jewelry, makeup and more.
While in the town of Corerepe, Ms. Flores’s group attracted attention in part because of her police escort. Men on motorcycles, probably working for the cartels as lookouts, rode by frequently.
In several places, Ms. Flores said she and other mothers have put up missing posters only to discover them gone later. She said it was like pushing a boulder up a hill.
“We’re fighting apathy, bureaucracy and re-victimization by women and men who don’t like what we’re doing because they think it’s a waste of time, and that we’re looking for criminals who don’t deserve to be alive,” she said.
To María Isabel Zavala Monrreal, 53, whose 22-year-old son disappeared in Juan José Ríos in 2013, Ms. Flores is a source of strength and inspiration in the search for her son’s remains. She said her husband has never helped her search in part because he wants to leave the past alone.
“It’s a fight every time I come search,” she said, crying. “I’ll never stop looking.”
Gathering for searches is a therapy session of sorts for the mothers.
As the excavator buzzed nearby in the Sinaloa field, Ms. Flores, Ms. Zavala Monrreal and other mothers sat commiserating in the shade.
In one of the trenches, Ms. Flores found a bit of tattered green cloth. She pulled out her phone to show a photo of Alejandro wearing a green polo shirt the day he disappeared.
“Maybe it’s him,” she said.
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7) In a City of Big Dreams, Many Young Adults See a Cloudy Future
A bleak job market. Rising rents. Huge debt. In New York and other cities, traditional milestones of adulthood feel further away for some 20- and 30-year-olds.
By Troy Closson, May 14, 2026
Troy Closson, who covers young people, spoke to more than two dozen young adults, economists, work force leaders and career coaches in New York City.
Soban Ali moved to New York eager to make his way in a new city. Like so many other young adults, he discovered hardship and disappointment. Tessa Belle Dillman for The New York Times
It was around No. 87 when Soban Ali started to lose track of all his job applications.
He had moved to New York City, eager to start life away from the Washington area, where he was born and raised. But seven months after arriving, he was laid off from his job at a federal contractor during last fall’s government shutdown. So he started a spreadsheet: “The Great Job Hunt of 2025.”
He applied to roughly 450 openings. He landed upward of 10 interviews. He still doesn’t have a full-time job.
Now, Mr. Ali, 24, feels guilty telling friends he can’t join them for dinner. He wants to start a family one day, but worries. “I can’t even afford myself, so how am I going to afford someone else?” he said. And he laments that he can’t pursue some of the hobbies that have always brought him joy, such as hip-hop dance. Classes are too expensive: about $25.
“It’s this existential depression and existential dread of, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’” said Mr. Ali, who earns $18 an hour working part-time at an after-school program. That’s just $1 more per hour than minimum wage.
He wonders about five years from now: “Am I going to be making a good, livable income? Or am I going to be flipping burgers?”
It’s a rough time to be a young adult. Young college-degree holders face their worst spring in the U.S. job market since the coronavirus pandemic.
And if headwinds are blowing across the United States, they can feel like gale-force squalls in New York, one of the world’s most notoriously expensive cities.
Rents here are surging faster than in the rest of the country. Postings for entry-level jobs in New York City plummeted by more than 37 percent between 2022 and 2024. And student loan debt is rising: In no state do young adults between 25 and 34 hold more average debt at almost $38,000.
Mark Levine, the city comptroller, summed it up.
“Young people are facing a triple whammy.”
‘PLS HELP A GIRL OUT’
New York’s allure is unmatched. The city attracted more college graduates between 2021 and 2024 than Los Angeles and Chicago combined. About one in four New Yorkers — or more than 2.1 million residents — are between 18 and 34 years old.
That popularity as a landing spot helps foster the city’s competitive hiring market.
Today’s job market is nowhere as rough for young adults as it was during the Great Recession in the late 2000s or the depths of the pandemic. But the city’s unemployment rate for 22- to 27-year-olds with a college degree has risen to about 7.3 percent, slightly higher than for peers with no degree — and higher than national rates for their age group.
Those numbers fail to capture those who are stuck in low-paying work that doesn’t use their credentials — like Natalie Lui, a finance and marketing graduate who went from being an I.T. analyst at an investment bank to working part-time at a gym’s front desk.
Ms. Lui estimated that she has applied to at least 300 full-time positions. She put a call-out on TikTok: “please comment literally ANY and most effective ways to get a job in NYC. PLS HELP A GIRL OUT.”
“It took a lot out of me to even post that online,” said Ms. Lui, who turns 26 this summer and worries about affording health coverage after she’s kicked off her family plan. “But it’s come to that.”
In interviews, many young adults said that they felt lost at a moment when the path to a comfortable life appears filled with fresh obstacles.
The traditional milestones of adulthood — marriage, financial independence, living without roommates — seem ever more distant. And many young adults feel burned out by knowing that their résumés may never be read by a person and that artificial intelligence could upend the skills needed to succeed.
“I’m trying to figure out what it is: Is it an experience thing?” asked Mirko Mormile, 27, a Brooklyn College alumnus who was raised in the Bensonhurst neighborhood and studied business. He is a full-time digital content creator — “not entirely by choice,” he said — after applying to other work over the past year.
“Is it, am I not good enough?” said Mr. Mormile, who is living with his grandfather, helping to care for him after a fall.
The growing angst among young adults has led to crowdfunding pleas on GoFundMe and inspired punchlines for stand-up routines.
“I left my job this year, and I moved to New York cause I wanted to try unemployment on the most difficult level,” one comedian, Josh Martier, quipped during a recent set.
“Let me tell you, that city has not disappointed.”
One 22-year-old said that she arrived in New York last year with her cat and a suitcase, dog-sitting in exchange for housing. She couldn’t find work in Chicago after dropping out of college.
She had applied to more than 1,000 jobs, from marketing openings to positions at Trader Joe’s and Starbucks, but couldn’t get in the door. She worked as a stripper, but business was slow. So she began sex work.
Many of her friends are unemployed. One joined the military because he couldn’t find other work, and was recently deployed to Bahrain. “That’s just what our generation is,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss her sex work.
“I feel like no one cares.”
$7 coffee and soaring rents
But let’s say you succeed in finding a well-paying job. Congratulations: The reward is a cost of living crisis that devours your paychecks.
Utility bills are rising, and food prices in the New York City area surged by 56 percent between 2012 and 2022, faster than in the rest of the nation. The cost of a Citi Bike membership jumped by 41 percent during the past six years.
And a large cup of coffee can push $7 after tax.
“Even just the little things that young people find joy in aren’t really affordable anymore,” said Rosaury Valenzuela, 30, an alumna of City College of New York who lost her job with a nonprofit organization in October and has struggled to find listings that offer a living wage.
She misses simple conveniences, like buying food at a single grocery store. Now, she needs to visit four, shopping around for low prices. And she said that it feels like the cost of a night out in the city has tripled — or quadrupled.
For Ms. Valenzuela and many others, housing costs are also a burning issue as rents rise quicker than wages.
The apartment hunt is especially suffocating in a city where — as Eric Kober, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, put it — “the system is very much stacked against young adults,” with limited vacancies and few affordable options.
Carla Marie Davis, 34, a digital content creator born and raised in Brooklyn, has sometimes spent well over half her income on rent. She wanted to live alone but couldn’t find a budget-friendly studio or one-bedroom rental in or near her neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant.
So she looked into homeownership through the city’s affordable co-ops for lower-income residents and discovered that she needed far more assets to qualify. It took two years to find a co-op in her price range.
“It shouldn’t take the stars aligning perfectly and having all the luck in the world,” she said, grateful for the newfound stability. Her parents had already moved to Atlanta to live more comfortably, and she was “nearly pushed to the point of leaving” herself a few years ago.
Perhaps no American city is defined by its trade-offs quite like New York. Tight living quarters and eye-popping prices are the cost of living in a dynamic metropolis.
But some work force leaders fear that today’s tribulations threaten to prevent young native New Yorkers from staying and dissuade all but the wealthiest transplants from settling.
They say it would be a blow to the city’s culture and economy. Already, residents between 26 and 35 are twice as likely to move out as the rest of the population.
Among them was Gabriel Perez Silva, a 29-year-old photographer who recently left for Burbank, Calif., after more than seven years in New York. He traded a Brooklyn apartment whose bathroom he said was “crashing in on itself” for more work opportunities and better value. He’s closer to a park and even has a hot tub.
“My quality of life has completely skyrocketed,” he said.
Yet Mr. Perez Silva and other young adults still saw the city’s charm.
Deanna Richards, 27, aspires to act on Broadway, but had to put her aspirations on hold and prioritize stability after facing two bouts of unemployment within six months last year. She shares a roughly $1,000-a-month rent-controlled apartment with her boyfriend, and said she would not be able to survive without it.
Still, she relishes the city’s arts scene and industrious spirit: “It helps push me in moments where I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I doing?’ ”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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8) Trump’s War Is Punishing the Poor, Starting at the Gas Pump
By Jeff D. Colgan, May 14, 2026
Mr. Colgan is a professor of political science at Brown University.
The cruelty of high fuel prices isn’t just about the cost, but also about the unequal burden it places on American households. Energy costs have been walloping the working class since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. And things could get a lot worse this summer, with prices rising ever higher the longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to shipping.
My research team at Brown University built a website to track the rising, real-time energy costs of the war with Iran. By mid-May, higher prices for just two energy products — gasoline and diesel fuel — added nearly $40 billion in costs to American consumers. That’s more than the Pentagon’s cost estimate of its military operations, now approaching $29 billion.
Before the attack, the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $2.98. Since then, the average price has soared to about $4.50 a gallon. That average smooths over a lot of regional variation. In California, prices have climbed past $6 per gallon. Colorado had an increase of more than $1.50 per gallon since February, lifting prices from below the national average to above it.
The rise in diesel fuel prices, critical to commerce, has been even sharper. Diesel is up by more than 50 percent. Even if you don’t purchase diesel directly, you’re paying a premium for other daily goods, because many of them are transported using trucks, locomotives and other engines that run on diesel fuel. If you buy a package online, you’re paying for diesel indirectly. Farmers are feeling it, too. There’s no escape in the air, either, with FedEx and UPS imposing surcharges as a result of rising jet fuel prices.
On average, each U.S. household has paid an extra $295 because of higher gasoline and diesel fuel prices since the war began. That’s more than a week’s worth of groceries for the average household. The burden falls hardest on poorer people, who are using less fuel than richer households, but whose costs make up a far larger portion of their budgets.
According to our analysis, Americans in the bottom 18 percent have had to spend at least half a week’s income to pay off the higher price of fuel since the end of February. As a result, they are cutting back on the gas they use, while households with incomes above $125,000 barely reduced their real gas consumption.
Fuel prices are likely to remain elevated for months, even if the fighting stops. Oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will remain low until Iran grants passage, either explicitly through an agreement or simply in practice, without acknowledgment. But even if the strait opens again, many insurers will be wary of allowing ships to transit it — just as the insurers were after the Houthis previously threatened shipping in the Red Sea.
Moreover, Iran might continue to charge a toll or tax on tankers for moving through the strait, which would get passed on to refiners. And don’t forget the physical damage already inflicted on the oil production equipment and processing facilities in the Persian Gulf, some of which will take years to repair or reconstruct. All these supply constraints push prices up.
Without a resolution soon, experts expect the fuel crisis to get much worse. Energy producers have been shielding the markets from the full impact of the conflict by drawing down their inventories, in hopes of refilling storage tanks when supply constraints ease. But global inventories will reach critically low levels by the end of May, just as the summer driving season ramps up. That could drive oil prices higher — up to $200 per barrel, according to some analysts.
Suppose that gasoline prices rise to $5 per gallon across the United States. That would mean an extra $513 per household from Memorial Day to Labor Day, compared with what consumers were paying before the war began, bringing the total gas bill for a typical household to $1,558 over the course of the summer.
If gasoline prices top $6 per gallon on average — a real possibility if oil goes to $200 per barrel — that would mean an extra $825 per household. Just for gasoline. Other fuels, such as diesel and jet fuel, will skyrocket. Those prices will, in turn, affect the prices of everything else, from groceries to air travel. Tomato prices are already up nearly 40 percent.
Extra energy costs are bound to have a political effect. High gasoline prices are visible, posted on thousands of roadside signs nationwide. Americans saw them rising soon after President Trump ordered the attack on Iran. That makes it difficult for Mr. Trump to avoid blame.
And it could spell trouble for the Republicans in the November midterm elections. No one should doubt Mr. Trump’s uncanny ability to shift the conversation away from potentially damaging topics, but even he may struggle with the anger voters feel every they time they fill their tanks.
They’re not being unreasonable. Americans can and should hold Mr. Trump accountable for the mess he has created in the Persian Gulf. Despite claiming to be the party of national security, the Republicans have proved to be poor shepherds of the national interest. In the case of Iran, their missteps are having direct, visible consequences for Americans’ pocketbooks.
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