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Dear Friend,
Since March 2025 the prison administration and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was aware that Mumia's eyesight deteriorated to 20/200 (legally blind). Mumia was not able to read, including his mail, nor retrieve phone numbers, or proceed with his research and writing to complete his Phd dissertation.
For over seven months no treatment was provided. On September 2, Mumia was treated for complications from cataract surgery a few years ago. However, he remains disabled and at risk of loss of sight in his other eye, damaged by severe diabetic retinopathy. He needs that treatment immediately.
This is an outrageous attack on an innocent prisoner serving a life-without-parole sentence! A long history of Mumia’s 43 years imprisoned (29 of them on death row), have shown that prison authorities, who are required to provide adequate health care, failed to do so, leading Mumia’s supporters to the conclusion that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has actively tried to disable and even kill him. (They tried this in 2015 by failing to diagnose and treat Hepatitis C, sending Mumia into a near-fatal crisis.)
A loud and determined public response is required to win immediate treatment to restore Mumia’s full eyesight.
Please join this effort, do your part, and share this information.
Sincerely,
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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
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Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  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 authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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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.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
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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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
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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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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1) Climate Change’s Toll in Europe This Summer: Thousands of Extra Deaths
Three times as many people in cities and towns died from severe heat as would have done in a world without human-caused warming, scientists said.
By Raymond Zhong, Reporting from London, Sept. 17, 2025
A tourist outside the Acropolis in Athens in July. Credit...Angelos Tzortzinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Severe heat this summer killed three times as many people in European cities as would have died had humans not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels, scientists said Wednesday.
The new analysis was based on historical mortality trends, not actual death records, which are not yet widely available. The researchers looked at 854 European cities and towns, where they estimated that a total of 24,400 people died as a result of this summer’s heat.
The findings reflect a worrying pattern: Rising temperatures are increasing the risks to human health more quickly than communities and societies can adapt.
Nearly all heat-related deaths are preventable, said Malcolm Mistry, an assistant professor of climate and geospatial modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who contributed to the analysis. And governments in Europe, the fastest-warming continent, have taken steps to protect their citizens.
So the fact that so many people still die each summer “shows that we are not able to keep pace with global warming,” Dr. Mistry said.
Summer after stifling summer, extreme heat is transforming Europe. Wildfires are worsening. Cities are rethinking the way they’re built. Companies are struggling to keep workers safe.
In 2022, during what was at that point the continent’s hottest summer on record, more than 61,000 people died from the heat, scientists have estimated. More than half of those people wouldn’t have died if not for global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and other human activities, researchers concluded.
The scientists behind the new analysis, which hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, said their aim was to provide “early estimates” of this summer’s heat fatalities. They examined European cities and towns with more than 50,000 residents and adequately long records of local deaths. In total, these areas account for 30 percent of Europe’s population.
The researchers first used climate models to estimate that these areas would have been 4 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2.2 degrees Celsius, cooler on average from June through August in a hypothetical world that hadn’t been altered by planet-warming emissions.
Then, by extrapolating from past mortality rates, the researchers estimated that only around 8,000 people in these cities would have died from heat in those months in that alternate, cooler world, instead of the 24,400 people who likely did so in the real world.
Rome, Athens and Bucharest, Romania, were the European capitals with the highest number of heat-related deaths after adjusting for city population, the researchers found. But when it comes to the share of deaths that can be attributed to climate change, the highest ranked capitals were Stockholm, Madrid and Bratislava, Slovakia.
Sweden’s capital might seem like an unlikely holder of the top spot. “Before, we had very few, if any heat-related deaths in Northern Europe,” said Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who worked on the new analysis.
From that low base, however, global warming is now starting to lift summer temperatures in northern countries into the range where they can harm human health, Dr. Konstantinoudis said. Far fewer people still die of heat there than in Southern Europe, but when they do, it is much more squarely the result of climate change, he said.
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2) U.S. Government to Invest $75 Million in Ukraine’s Minerals
The investment will ease fears in Kyiv that Washington is pulling back from Ukraine’s war effort. It also underscores the mercantile nature of the U.S.-Ukrainian alliance under President Trump.
By Constant Méheut, Sept. 17, 2025
Constant Méheut has reported extensively on the U.S.-Ukrainian minerals deal, from the tense negotiations behind it to its implementation.
A uranium mine in Pervozvanivka, Ukraine. The investment announcement could help attract badly needed capital to sustain the country’s war economy. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
The U.S. government on Wednesday pledged $75 million to kick-start a landmark deal to invest in Ukraine’s vast mineral reserves, a commitment that will ease fears in Kyiv that the Trump administration is walking away from the war-torn country.
When an agreement this spring granted the United States a stake in Ukraine’s critical minerals, Kyiv cast it as a way to lock in American support through business ties. President Trump had made clear he would no longer give U.S. money to Ukraine for the war effort, leaving Kyiv scrambling to retain whatever American engagement it could.
Many observers doubted that the deal could draw U.S. investment while the fighting raged. But the new American pledge and a matching commitment by the Ukrainian government will bring a fund created under the agreement to $150 million.
“By deploying this initial capital, we aim to catalyze private-sector investments in Ukraine through the fund’s investments, to rebuild critical infrastructure, unlock nature resources and generate economic prosperity for the United States and Ukraine,” Conor Coleman, head of investments at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, or D.F.C., the government agency behind the investments, said in a statement.
The flow of U.S. government money into Ukraine’s minerals, hydrocarbons and related infrastructure could help reassure private investors and attract badly needed capital to sustain the country’s war economy.
It also shows the new mercantile nature of the U.S.-Ukrainian alliance under Mr. Trump. While the Biden administration spent tens of billions of dollars to aid Kyiv, Washington now focuses on opportunities to profit through investments and sales. It provides weapons to Ukraine only through purchases facilitated by a NATO-backed procurement system that uses European funds.
Aware of the U.S. president’s business-oriented mind-set, Kyiv hopes to give Mr. Trump a stake in Ukraine’s future through the mineral investment, especially as he has grown frustrated with his diplomatic efforts to end the war and hinted at possibly stepping back.
The U.S. investment “is a sign of trust and long-term commitment of our partners,” Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s prime minister, said in a statement. “American investments can be a guarantee of security both for Ukraine and for American business in Ukraine.”
Signed in the spring after months of tense negotiations, the deal gives the United States special access to investment projects in natural resources in Ukraine, which hold a potential value of trillions of dollars. Under the agreement, a company seeking to develop a mineral site and needing investors must first present its project to the fund created by the deal.
While the fund is jointly owned by the United States and Ukraine, Washington retains some control over it. The D.F.C. was appointed to lead its board this month.
The $150 million investment announced on Wednesday will provide the fund’s initial capital, but most of its future contributions are expected to come from Kyiv. Under the deal, half of the revenues the Ukrainian government earns from extracting minerals and selling licenses will flow into the fund.
Profits will then be reinvested in Ukraine’s economy, with the United States also claiming a portion. Mr. Trump has portrayed the arrangement as repayment for past U.S. aid.
In an effort to push the deal forward, Kyiv has pitched Washington projects to exploit deposits of lithium, graphite and titanium, three minerals the United States has identified as critical for its economy and national security. The Kyiv School of Economics says Ukraine holds the largest titanium reserves in Europe and a third of Europe’s reserves of lithium, which is used to produce electric batteries.
Ukraine officially opened bidding for its first project on Friday, at the Dobra lithium field, one of the largest in Ukraine. TechMet, an energy investment firm partly owned by the U.S. government, has announced that it will make a bid. But the bidding could face a legal challenge, as Critical Metals Corporation, an American company, claims to hold the rights to mine the site.
In recent days, a D.F.C. delegation scouted other sites in central Ukraine that could become pilot projects., including a mining and processing plant and a deposit owned by Velta Holding, a titanium producer. Titanium is critical for producing aircraft and medical implants.
Industry analysts say the path to extracting Ukraine’s minerals is filled with challenges, including complex licensing procedures and outdated geological surveys that cloud the true value of Ukrainian subsoil.
Perhaps the greatest challenge is Russia’s continued advance on the battlefield.
In July, its troops seized a valuable lithium deposit in the eastern Donetsk region. Moscow’s forces, which already control vast mineral resources through their occupation of roughly a fifth of Ukraine, are also getting closer to deposits of titanium and uranium in eastern Ukraine.
Potential investors may also be unnerved by recent Russian airstrikes on or near Western assets, including an American factory in western Ukraine. Ukrainian officials and analysts have viewed the strikes as a warning from Moscow that the West’s assets may not be safe in Ukraine, and that the bloc should back off from investing in a country that Russia has long seen as its economic backyard.
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3) ABC Pulls Jimmy Kimmel Off Air for Charlie Kirk Comments After F.C.C. Pressure
Mr. Kimmel faced criticism from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission for remarks about the politics of the man who is accused of killing Mr. Kirk, the conservative activist.
By John Koblin, Michael M. Grynbaum and Brooks Barnes, Published Sept. 17, 2025, Updated Sept. 18, 2025
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said that taking Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air was the “right thing.” Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times
ABC announced on Wednesday evening that it was pulling Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show “indefinitely” after conservatives accused the longtime host of inaccurately describing the politics of the man who is accused of fatally shooting the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The abrupt decision by the network, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, assailed Mr. Kimmel and suggested that his regulatory agency might take action against ABC because of remarks the host made on his Monday telecast.
The network did not explain its decision, but the sequence of events on Wednesday amounted to an extraordinary exertion of political pressure on a major broadcast network by the Trump administration.
Many Democrats immediately criticized the move, with Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, calling it “outrageous.” But President Trump, in a social media post from Windsor Castle in Britain, where he is traveling, described it as “Great News for America.”
The decision to suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live” was made by Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, and Dana Walden, the company’s television chief, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private process.
The comments at the center of this week’s firestorm came during Mr. Kimmel’s opening monologue on Monday night. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” the host said.
Conservative activists castigated those comments, saying they mischaracterized the political beliefs of Tyler Robinson, the accused shooter. Prosecutors said Mr. Robinson had written in private messages about Mr. Kirk’s “hatred,” but the authorities have not identified which of Mr. Kirk’s views the suspect found hateful; his mother told prosecutors that her son had recently shifted toward the political left and had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”
Mr. Carr, in an interview on a right-wing podcast on Wednesday, said that Mr. Kimmel’s remarks were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” and that the F.C.C. was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”
“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr told the podcast’s host, Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the F.C.C. ahead.”
Mr. Carr’s criticism of Mr. Kimmel was the latest attack against the media by the president and his administration. Mr. Trump himself sued ABC last year in a case that the network paid $16 million to settle. On Monday, the president filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and four of its reporters.
This summer, Mr. Carr’s F.C.C. approved a major merger involving CBS’s owner, Paramount, days after CBS agreed to pay $16 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by the president.
CBS also canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” ending a network franchise for over three decades after next May. CBS said the cancellation was for financial reasons, but many in the media industry have speculated that it was done to curry favor with the Trump administration while Paramount’s merger was pending. Mr. Colbert, like Mr. Kimmel, is frequently critical of Mr. Trump and his policies.
Mr. Kimmel had planned to address the backlash to his comments during his Wednesday telecast, according to two people familiar with the program. But Disney’s executives made the decision to suspend the show before taping began. The company’s board was not involved, according to one of the people with knowledge of the discussions inside Disney.
As F.C.C. chair, Mr. Carr wields power over the broadcast licenses that are granted to local TV stations by the federal government. In the podcast interview on Wednesday, Mr. Carr encouraged local ABC stations to “push back” and pre-empt coverage that does not serve “their local communities.”
“Frankly, I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, ‘Listen, we are going to pre-empt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out,” Mr. Carr said. (Comcast is the parent company of NBC.)
Shortly after Mr. Carr’s remarks, Nexstar, an owner of ABC affiliate stations around the country, said that it would pre-empt Mr. Kimmel’s program “for the foreseeable future” because of the host’s remarks. Nexstar recently announced that it planned to acquire a rival company in a $6.2 billion deal, which will be scrutinized by the F.C.C.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Carr expressed approval for Nexstar’s decision to pre-empt Mr. Kimmel, thanking the company “for doing the right thing.” He added: “I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.”
Late Wednesday, Sinclair, another owner of many local TV stations, said that it would also suspend Mr. Kimmel’s program, and called on Mr. Kimmel to apologize and “make a meaningful personal donation” to Mr. Kirk’s family and the activist’s political group, Turning Point USA.
Mr. Schumer, the Democratic leader, denounced the pressure on ABC from the Trump administration as “despicable, disgusting, and against democratic values,” and compared it to the playbook of autocratic Chinese and Russian leaders.
“Trump and his allies seem to want to shut down speech that they don’t like to hear,” Mr. Schumer said on CNN. “That is not what democracies do. That is what autocracies do. And it doesn’t matter whether you agree with Kimmel or not, he has the right to free speech.”
Late on Wednesday, after ABC pulled Mr. Kimmel, Mr. Carr went on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program and described the actions by Nexstar and Sinclair as “unprecedented.”
“I’m very glad to see that America’s broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of their community,” Mr. Carr said. “We don’t just have this progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood.”
He added: “This is an important turning point.”
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Benjamin Mullin contributed reporting.
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4) The Trump administration reinstates a more difficult citizenship test.
By Jenny Gross, September 18, 2025
The U.S. government will reinstate a harder citizenship test that contains more complex questions than the current version, the Trump administration said Wednesday, part of the president’s tightening of the legal pathways to settle in the United States.
The test is one of the final hurdles for the hundreds of thousands of people who become American citizens each year. The new test will be administered to those who file their applications on or after Oct. 20, according a notice from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Matthew Tragesser, a U.S.C.I.S. spokesman, said in a statement that the revised test would ensure that new citizens are “fully assimilated and will contribute to America’s greatness. These critical changes are the first of many,” he said.
Under the new test, applicants will have to get 12 out of 20 questions correct, instead of six of 10.
The bank of questions has been expanded to 128 questions, from 100, and also features fewer questions with simple, sometimes one-word answers.
Late in his first term, President Trump implemented a revised test, which was in place from Dec. 1, 2020, until April 30, 2021, when the Biden administration scrapped it.
One question on that test that had drawn scrutiny was: “Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War?” The correct answer was, “to stop the spread of Communism.” Another question on that test was, “Who does a U.S. Senator represent?” Previously, the answer had been “all people of the state”; on the test introduced in December 2020, it was “citizens” in the state.
The difference between that test and the one being introduced now is that officers will be required to ask questions until the applicant passes or fails. So, if an applicant answers the first 12 questions correctly, he or she will not need to continue answering all 20 questions.
Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in July that the test was too easy. “The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,” Mr. Edlow said in an interview with The New York Times. “It’s very easy to kind of memorize the answers,” he said. “I don’t think we’re really comporting with the spirit of the law.”
The U.S. government has administered citizenship tests in some form since the early 1900s. There was no standard test, however, so local judges and magistrates administered their own until the Internal Security Act of 1950 made knowledge of U.S. history and civics a prerequisite for naturalization. The current pass rate for the citizenship test, according to U.S.C.I.S., is 91 percent.
Applicants have two chances to pass the test before they must restart the application process from scratch.
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5) Syria’s President Says Border Deal With Israel Could Come ‘Within Days’
Syrian and Israeli officials have been holding talks about security arrangements along their shared border as part of U.S.-mediated efforts to reset decades of hostility.
By Ben Hubbard, Reporting from Damascus, Syria, Sept. 18, 2025
President Ahmed al-Shara of Syria, pictured here in April, said this week that his country is tired of conflict. Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
President Ahmed al-Shara of Syria has said that his country is negotiating a potential agreement with Israel aimed at decreasing tensions along their shared border and an accord could be reached “within days.”
Syria and Israel have officially been enemies for decades. But since the rebels he led toppled the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December of last year, Mr. al-Shara has pursued a more conciliatory approach.
Citing self-defense concerns, Israel has occupied territory in southern Syria and carried out hundreds of airstrikes inside the country, including near the presidential palace where Mr. al-Shara works. With U.S. mediation, officials from his government have been talking to the Israelis for months about a possible security agreement for southern Syria.
Mr. al-Shara, speaking to researchers and reporters in the capital, Damascus, late on Wednesday, said Syria is tired of conflict after more than 13 years of civil war and was working to ensure peace with its neighbors.
“We could reach an agreement at any moment,” he said of the talks with Israel. But the challenge, he added, would be whether Israel would stick to it.
Syria’s economy and military were both largely destroyed during the civil war, giving the country limited leverage in the talks, analysts say. Israeli officials have said they intend to keep forces in Syria to prevent any hostile forces from entrenching near its borders. Israel also wants southern Syria to remain free of Syrian government troops.
It remains unclear what exactly the sides are seeking in the current talks. The office of Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, who has been leading the talks with Syrian officials, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel and Syria have been officially at war since 1948, with their most enduring point of contention being the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed.
The two countries signed an agreement in 1974 that established a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone between their forces, and the border has been largely quiet for decades. With Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, Israeli officials said they considered the accord void until order was restored in Syria.
Mr. al-Shara said on Wednesday that his government has continued to abide by the 1974 armistice agreement despite Israel’s repeated violations of it. He said that the aim of the current talks is to reach new border arrangements similar to the 1974 agreement, including a buffer zone and monitoring by international forces.
Mr. al-Shara said the status of Mount Hermon and the Golan Heights, disputed territories that Israel now controls, is not part of the current talks.
Euan Ward contributed reporting.
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6) IN ONE IMAGE, The Road
By Saher Alghorra, Sept. 18, 2025
Some, like this mother and her two young children, have managed to squeeze onto overladen vehicles in search of safety. Others, lacking the money for a ride, have had to escape by foot, carrying whatever they can. Mattresses, rugs, blankets. The carts are piled high with anything the families might need wherever they end up. Containers are essential, so the evacuees can store as much water as possible in the rare moments they find any. This woman, seeking what shelter from the sun she could, had a plea for journalists: “Photograph us to show the world the misery we are in.”
The coastal road in Gaza was even busier than normal this week.
Gazans have already endured two years of a war, under heavy Israeli bombardment, that has killed tens of thousands, destroyed much of the territory and caused a humanitarian crisis. But on Tuesday, a new panic set in after Israel began its long-threatened military offensive in Gaza City.
Trucks, cars, tractors, tuk-tuks, donkey carts and even supermarket wagons have been pressed into service as people of all ages flee south. After two years of war between Israel and Hamas, the vast majority of the vehicles are battered, missing windshields and other parts.
The costs of transport and fuel have skyrocketed. Renting a truck or a tractor — if you can find one — can cost as much as $1,500, and some families have joined together to share the expense.
They take whatever food they have with them. Gazans are struggling with widespread hunger that began after Israel imposed several restrictions on aid entering the enclave and continued even after the Israelis lifted the blockade and unveiled a new system for distributing food. A U.N.-backed panel of food experts has declared that some areas are experiencing famine, which Israel has rejected.
The mood on the road out of Gaza City when this photograph was taken was solemn. Many people, especially women, had been trying to get some rest on the side of the road whenever they found shade.
Now, they were on the move again.
Some were trying to get to an area about six miles away that Israel has described as a humanitarian zone, though aid agencies have warned that it cannot handle the influx. Others were hoping to stay with relatives or find some place to set up a tent. Some said they did not know where they would end up.
The scenes were reminiscent of the early days of the brief cease-fire between Israel and Hamas at the start of this year — but it was a mirror image.
Back then, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to their homes in Gaza City in the hope that the warring sides were moving closer to ending the conflict. Now, many are heading in the opposite direction, and the cautious optimism they once allowed themselves feels like a distant dream.
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7) Rifts Grow Between Netanyahu and His Security Chiefs
As Israel expands its war in Gaza, decision-making has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of one person: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Sept. 18, 2025
An explosion in Gaza on Wednesday, seen from across the border in Israel. Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters
Israel’s advance on Gaza City is not only dividing the Israeli public but also showcasing extraordinary discord between the military leadership and the elected government at a time of crisis.
Top military and security officials have been at odds with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently over three critical policies: his decisions to take over Gaza City, the enclave’s main urban center, and to strike at senior Hamas officials in Qatar, and his approach to negotiations on ending the war.
Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-line stance on all three issues has not only deepened his isolation internationally but has also sharpened questions at home about where he is taking Israel. His actions have shaken Israel’s strategic relations with Arab states, even as President Trump wants to see those expand, and have prompted condemnation and sanctions from some traditional allies.
“We are in a unique and unprecedented era in the sense that decision-making on core issues of national security is essentially concentrated in the hands of one person,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group based in Jerusalem.
“The norm was that big decisions were taken in consensus between the top political and top military-security leadership,” added Mr. Plesner, a former centrist lawmaker. “So this norm has been violated — the chief of staff has been forced to take his soldiers into a battle that he doesn’t necessarily believe in.”
The military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, pushed back in recent weeks against the government’s decision to take over Gaza City, which Israel’s leaders describe as one of Hamas’s last strongholds. Over his resistance, Israel launched its ground invasion of the city this week, even with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still living there.
General Zamir was concerned about the exhaustion of reserve soldiers after nearly two years of war in Gaza, security officials said. He also warned that the military could end up with sole responsibility for governing the Gaza Strip’s two million Palestinians, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
There are also concerns that the assault on Gaza City could endanger the lives of hostages held there.
Mr. Netanyahu appointed General Zamir to his role just months ago and at the time praised him effusively for his “aggressive approach.”
But the prime minister has now launched risky operations in both Gaza and in Qatar against the recommendations of some of his top-ranking military and security chiefs.
General Zamir and David Barnea, the chief of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, opposed the timing of the strike in Qatar, a country that has been mediating negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza and a close U.S. ally. They preferred instead to let negotiations for a possible cease-fire run their course, according to three people familiar with the internal deliberations who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment on private discussions.
Mr. Netanyahu recently changed his stance in the truce negotiations. He had been insisting on a phased, gradual approach to resolving the conflict, starting with a temporary truce and the release of some hostages. Now he has moved to demanding a comprehensive deal to free all the remaining hostages at once and end the war on terms set by Israel. Such an agreement would be much more elusive, and Hamas has steadfastly rejected the terms so far.
That sudden shift, too, was opposed by General Zamir and Mr. Barnea, as well as by Tzachi Hanegbi, Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations. The officials said that the three chiefs had wanted a return to the phased deal that had been on the table and that Hamas had largely accepted.
In Israel’s democratic system, by law, military and security chiefs must ultimately comply with government decisions or resign. General Zamir has chosen to stay on so far.
General Zamir said in a televised address on Tuesday that the objective of the Gaza City offensive was a decisive defeat of Hamas. At the same time, he said he wanted to emphasize that bringing back the hostages was a war goal and “a national and moral obligation.”
Idit Shafran Gittleman, an expert on military-civil relations who works at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, said that General Zamir’s reservations about the Gaza City operation were clear. And while the politicians and generals can and often do disagree, she said, this time the arguments seemed to be less about tactics or strategy and more about a moral clash between those who prioritize defeating Hamas and those who want to put the hostages first.
With thousands of soldiers being sent into battle, “It’s difficult to exaggerate how grave the situation is,” she added.
Many Israelis say they doubt that the government’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas is attainable and wonder what the operation in Gaza City can achieve that nearly two years of fighting have failed to accomplish.
Polls suggest that a majority would prefer a negotiated deal that would secure the release of the remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and an end to the war.
Critics of Mr. Netanyahu say that he has prolonged the war to keep himself in power by mollifying the far-right members of his governing coalition. Drawing out the conflict has also staved off a public reckoning over the government and intelligence failures ahead of the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war.
The Gaza City operation is expected to worsen an already acute humanitarian crisis in the coastal territory, where about 65,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the enclave’s health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attack in October 2023, the Israeli authorities said, and about 250 more were taken as hostages.
Dozens of captives were released during two brief truces. Israel believes there are about 20 hostages still alive in Gaza, as well as the remains of up to 28 others.
While more than 350,000 people had fled Gaza City as of Tuesday evening, according to the Israeli military, roughly half a million are believed to still be in the city under bombardment.
Mr. Plesner and other experts said that Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right government lacked the constraints that have shaped Israeli decision-making for decades, such as the principle of consensus.
In the past, the defense minister has also generally been a figure with political clout who would exercise personal judgment and have effective veto power over contentious missions.
The current defense minister, Israel Katz, was appointed by Mr. Netanyahu last year after his predecessor, Yoav Gallant, was fired because of disagreements. Mr. Katz is seen as a Netanyahu loyalist and has repeatedly threatened to unleash “hell” on Hamas if the Palestinian militant group does not release the hostages and surrender.
Mr. Netanyahu faces little opposition from his coalition partners, who are mostly more hard-line than him, or from within his own party. And given the strong backing of the Trump administration, other international players appear to have little leverage over his actions.
Mr. Netanyahu has been accused of war crimes, including starving Gaza, by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and of presiding over a genocide. The Israeli government vehemently rejects the charges, and they appear to have made Mr. Netanyahu only more insular and defiant.
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8) We Can No Longer Tell Ourselves This Isn’t Really Happening
By Michael Hirschorn, Sept. 19, 2025
Mr. Hirschorn is the chief executive of Ish Entertainment.
Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times
Until Wednesday’s shocking announcement that ABC was cancelling Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show because of comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing, it was possible, if one squinted hard enough, to pretend that a broad free speech crackdown was not underway. The down-the-road cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show on CBS was chalked up to financial concerns, though anyone in the business not paid to think otherwise believes Mr. Colbert’s elegant skewerings of President Trump and MAGA were the real reason.
The silencing of Mr. Kimmel, following an explicit threat by Brendan Carr, the head of ABC’s regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, is the mask of “free speech” coming off for good.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Carr told a far-right podcaster on Wednesday, suggesting that the government would take action against Disney, ABC’s parent company, if it failed to dispense with Mr. Kimmel. Two owners of local ABC affiliates, Nexstar and Sinclair — both of which are known for their right-leaning political orientation, and both of which have pending deals that need the F.C.C.’s approval — had reportedly already demanded action. Disney caved within a day. There was some vague talk of finding a pathway for Mr. Kimmel to return, but his contract is up in May and he is highly unlikely to ever host on network television again.
The clampdown on establishment media and entertainment isn’t just getting started. Incited by Mr. Trump’s thin-skinned responses to even the mildest mockery or criticism, and inflamed by political opportunism in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s death, it is far further along than most people may realize. Everyone now is waiting for word on what will happen to Jon Stewart, the one-day-a-week host of “The Daily Show,” which like Mr. Colbert’s, comes under Paramount’s umbrella. Mr. Stewart this summer ended a segment on Mr. Colbert’s cancellation with a rousing song, backed by a gospel chorus and filled with profanity, spewing invective at his corporate overlords.
After the recent sale of Paramount, those overlords are now Skydance Media, run by David Ellison, the son of one of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters, Larry Ellison, the centibillionaire chief executive of Oracle. Numerous media reports suggest that the younger Mr. Ellison will install a new leader at CBS News: Bari Weiss, the former New York Times editor and writer who founded The Free Press, a particularly deft practitioner of the shell-game politics of free speech. Skydance has also announced a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, and Oracle is part of the consortium Mr. Trump assembled for the possible purchase of the U.S. version of TikTok. That hat trick would give the Ellisons unrivaled power over both old and new media. Federal regulators are unlikely to object.
With the exception of Netflix, a hugely profitable public company without apparent immediate need for government favor, every studio is either already compromised or about to be. ABC, and by extension Disney, already paid off Mr. Trump after he filed a comically spurious lawsuit targeting the “Good Morning America” co-host George Stephanopoulos. CBS had gone that same route over a lawsuit involving minor edits to a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. NBC’s soon-to-be-spun-off subsidiary, MSNBC, just fired a contributor for comments about Mr. Kirk. With Mr. Kimmel gone, Mr. Trump is now demanding the ouster of two NBC late-night hosts, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon. Perhaps he was offended by one of Mr. Fallon’s bits about puppies or holiday sweaters.
Amazon’s and Apple’s media operations are mere appendages to the companies’ core businesses, which makes them even less promising candidates to take risks on content. Amazon is currently making a feverishly unanticipated documentary about Melania Trump, for which she will be paid at least $28 million. The company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is also the owner of The Washington Post, which just fired its only Black opinion columnist for — perhaps you’re spotting a trend here — posting measured criticism of Mr. Kirk. Apple’s media division, to its credit, has yet to slaughter any of its programming as tribute, though the parent company’s chief executive felt it necessary last month to present Mr. Trump with a “customized plaque with a 24-carat gold base,” according to Politico.
The problem, of course, is that mainstream media — by which I mean the major media conglomerates that control most of the TV and movies you watch, music you hear and books and news you read — is in long-term decline, and therefore weakest at precisely the moment it is most needed to serve as a bulwark for free expression and democracy. Perhaps that’s why the Trump administration picked it as his latest primary target.
All of which is why the premiere episode of this season of “South Park” — featuring a thrillingly crass depiction of Mr. Trump’s talking micro-penis and scenes of him in bed with Satan — “had the impact of a primal scream,” as Richard Rushfield wrote in The Ankler. “Finally, someone was just saying it all. And doing it in a way that dispensed with the politeness with which we’ve tip-toed around every problem that’s come our way, with an unmistakably profane middle finger in the face of a crackpot demanding servility.”
The irony is that this kind of middle-finger entertainment, or even entertainment that is thought-provoking, is more popular than ever. That “South Park” episode scored the highest ratings the show has gotten since 1999. It’s in good company. The blockbuster Oscar-contender “Sinners,” which used a vampire metaphor to make a deep statement about the cultural exploitation of Black people, has — despite its 137-minute run time — brought in nearly $400 million worldwide for Warner Bros.
Bad Bunny has become one of the most important and most popular musicians in the world thanks to fiercely political messages. Beyoncé’s spectacularly successful tour ended on a giant replica of the Statue of Liberty with its mouth taped shut. On TV, “Andor,” which delved smartly and patiently into the mechanics of fascism, drove more than $300 million in subscriber revenue for Disney+’s streaming service. The latest “Superman” remake illustrated Lex Luthor’s villainy by having him murder an immigrant and use his fortune to corrupt the Pentagon. It is currently tracking north of $600 million worldwide.
Even before Mr. Kirk’s death and the crackdown that followed, it almost certainly took leverage and guile to get these cultural products made and released. The “South Park” creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, waited until the day of the broadcast to tell executives from Paramount, with which they had just closed a $1.5 billion deal, what they had in store for viewers. The director Ryan Coogler, on the strength of his prior film, “The Black Panther,” compelled Warner Bros. to give him complete creative control on “Sinners” — and the eventual rights to the film, an all-but-unheard-of concession.
Are arrangements like these going to be possible in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s death? Paramount has pulled reruns of a “South Park” episode that mocked Mr. Kirk — even though he had said he was amused by what he saw of the episode. An episode scheduled for this past Wednesday didn’t make it to air at all. In an Instagram post, Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone took responsibility, writing, “This one’s on us.”
“Blink twice if they’re silencing you, Matt and Trey,” one of the comments said.
The complaint about so-called big media, historically, was that it was too commercial. Is it possible that these purveyors of popular culture will ignore the 50 percent or more of this country that want television, film and music that doesn’t feel like it was extruded directly from the president’s brain? Similarly, is it naïve to ask that legacy media respond to the looming threats of economic and authoritarian oblivion with a certain pluck, a third act, hey-kids-lets-put-on-a-show, high-school-musical defiance?
“Get some guts and do something interesting,” Ben Collins, the former NBC journalist who is now the chief executive of The Onion, recently said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “It’s not that hard.” The Onion had just published a parody editorial titled: “Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice.”
Of course, it’s slightly easier to get some guts if, like the Onion, you’re not part of a big conglomerate. As the former Twitter and other big social media platforms increasingly come under control of Trump-aligned ownership, that might be what saves us: alternative journalism platforms such as Substack, podcasts, the coming boom in low-cost A.I.-enabled video, a handful of studios like A24 and Neon that are still wedded to daring TV and film. Dozens of small, independent publications are sprouting up around the country and flexing their independence. And the growing number of TV journalists who have been fired or quit their legacy jobs after some disagreement or perceived infraction — Mehdi Hasan, Terry Moran and Joy Reid come to mind — are gaining enough traction to begin to be considered a new kind of deconstructed TV network.
Since Mr. Kimmel’s defenestration, various Hollywood figures have expressed their objections, as have industry guilds. None of that will matter if the studios and distributors ignore their creative and business acumen and simply defer to the wishes of the president and his minions.
Mr. Trump’s ability to silence his critics remains indirect, for the moment, meaning that multibillion-dollar conglomerates like Disney could still theoretically decide to sacrifice a few of those billions to assert the right to actually speak freely. There’s no telling how soon that right, too, might be gone.
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9) Battered but Undefeated, Hamas Remains a Fighting Force in Gaza
Some Israeli officials believe the military assault on Gaza City will deliver a decisive blow to the group, which continues to stage ambushes and guerrilla attacks.
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Tel Aviv, Sept. 19, 2025
Hamas fighters during a handover of Israeli hostages in February. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
The Israeli military has killed thousands of Hamas fighters in Gaza, decimated its weapon stockpiles and destroyed much of its underground tunnel network.
That onslaught has forced Hamas’s battered military wing to change. Once an organized army, it has transformed itself into scattered groupings of fighters, focused on digging in and surviving the war, while staging ambushes of Israeli soldiers.
“On the ground, there are no longer fixed Hamas strongholds in the conventional military sense,” said Wesam Afifa, the former executive director of Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV. “What remains today are small, mobile resistance cells fighting in guerrilla style.”
Hamas, though, is still a powerful Palestinian force in Gaza. And Israeli troops began a full-scale ground invasion on Gaza City this week, in an operation that officials hope will lead to the destruction of the group.
It is a risky operation, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are living in the area, unable or unwilling to flee to overcrowded areas with scarce resources.
On the battlefield, Hamas has adopted a strategy of staging hit-and-run attacks, rather than engaging in direct combat with Israeli forces, which have a vast military advantage. The group has been planting explosives under roads, in residential buildings and on top of Israeli military vehicles, according to Israeli security officials. In recent months, Hamas’s military wing has published videos of fighters in civilian dress approaching tanks, armored personnel carriers and soldiers before firing on them and then running away.
Since January, about 70 Israeli soldiers have died in combat in Gaza, according to the military.
Last week, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William J. Burns, said Hamas no longer had the capacity to mount another attack like that of Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and hundreds were abducted. That attack ignited the war in Gaza, and Israel's military response has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Hamas also does not have the capability to launch large-scale rocket barrages on Israel, as it routinely did in the early days of the war, or repel the advance of Israeli soldiers, according to current and former Israeli security officials.
The exact number of militants left in Gaza is unclear. Israeli security services estimate that there are roughly 15,000 remaining in the territory, said Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior official in Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, who is regularly briefed on the war.
Ahead of Israel’s full-scale assault on Gaza City, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that defeating Hamas was within reach, a claim that he has made many times throughout the war. But military analysts say it is unlikely that the new Israeli operation will deliver a knockout blow to the group.
“It’s naïve to believe Israel can put an end to Hamas in short order,” said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer specialized in Palestinian affairs. “It just doesn’t work that way.”
As Israel advances into Gaza City, the likelihood is that most of Hamas’s remaining fighting force would disperse into other areas of Gaza. Hamas’s forces are concentrated in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, and Mawasi, a coastal region in the south, according to a senior Middle Eastern intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.
Israel could attempt to take over those areas too, but security officials have said that it would require years of fighting to prevent Hamas from regaining a foothold.
Mr. Netanyahu has set out principles for ending the war, which include Hamas’s effective surrender, and has vowed to achieve them by force or negotiation. Hamas, however, has rejected those demands, and vowed to achieve a deal that ends the war on its terms or to fight until its last bullet. Hamas has said it would free all Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a permanent end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
On Thursday, as Israeli troops advanced in Gaza City, Hamas’s military wing said in a statement that it had prepared “an army of suicide fighters and thousands of ambushes.”
But some Palestinian analysts believe that both Hamas and Israel have exaggerated the group’s power to serve their own interests.
Mohammed al-Astal, an analyst based in southern Gaza, said Hamas was projecting strength to pressure Israel into accepting a deal to end the war. And Israel, he said, was portraying Hamas as a serious adversary as a pretext to destroying the enclave and expelling its residents.
“What Israel is practicing on the ground goes beyond eliminating Hamas,” he said. “There’s a general impression among Palestinians that Israel wants to eliminate Gaza and the people.”
The Israeli military has said that Hamas militants and their weapons infrastructure are embedded in civilian areas.
Asked whether Hamas was still a significant force, Mr. Ben Hanan, the former intelligence official, said the group was extorting businesspeople in Gaza and recruiting fighters. “All these things demonstrate that Hamas is still in power,” he said.
Hamas has also continued to run some civil institutions, operate internal security forces and make payments to government employees.
“When we talk about Hamas, we’re really talking about the remnants of Hamas,” said Esmat Mansour, a Palestinian political analyst who spent years in Israeli prisons with top Hamas leaders. “But as much as they’ve been weakened, they’re still the only game in town.”
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10) U.S. Military Buildup in Caribbean Signals Broader Campaign Against Venezuela
Trump officials say the mission aims to disrupt the drug trade. But military officials and analysts say the real goal might be driving Venezuela’s president from power.
By Eric Schmitt, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 20, 2025
As tensions in the Caribbean Sea have risen, the Pentagon has dispatched 10 F-35 stealth fighters to Puerto Rico to deter Venezuelan flyovers near U.S. ships and to be positioned should President Trump order airstrikes against targets in Venezuela. Credit...Ricardo Arduengo/Reuters
The U.S. military strikes this month on three boats that Trump administration officials have asserted were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea have cast a spotlight on the sizable naval armada and aerial fleet of spy aircraft the Pentagon has dispatched to the region in what it says is a counternarcotics and counterterrorism mission.
Military officials, diplomats and analysts say a main purpose of the force is to ratchet up pressure on Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, as top figures in the Trump administration call him an illegitimate leader and accuse him of directing the actions of criminal gangs and drug cartels.
“We’re not going to have a cartel, operating or masquerading as a government, operating in our own hemisphere,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News this week, adding that Mr. Maduro had been indicted in the United States and was “a fugitive of American justice.”
“There’s a reward out for his capture,” he said.
The heavy military presence in the Caribbean, including F-35 fighters in Puerto Rico, suggests the United States plans to do more than blow up small vessels, analysts said. But the scope of the operation remains unclear.
The 4,500-member force currently aboard eight warships is too small to invade Venezuela or any country harboring traffickers. And it is not operating in the main body of water to carry out a major drug interdiction campaign. That would be the eastern Pacific Ocean, regional experts say. The clandestine deployment of elite Special Operations forces suggests that strikes or commando raids inside Venezuela itself may be in the works, experts note.
Administration officials refuse to say what U.S. military action might come next. Asked on Air Force One en route back to Washington from Britain on Thursday if he had discussed regime change in Venezuela with Mr. Rubio or any of his military leaders, Mr. Trump said no.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said recently that the administration was “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”
In a news conference this week, Mr. Maduro condemned the first strike, carried out on a Venezuelan boat on Sept. 2, as a “heinous crime” and “a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not militarily threatening any country.”
He said that if the United States believed that the boat’s passengers were drug traffickers, they should have been arrested. He accused the administration of trying to start a war. Shortly after the news conference, the U.S. military struck a second boat.
Several current and former military officials, diplomats and intelligence officers say that while fighting drugs is the pretext for the recent U.S. attacks, the real goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power, one way or another.
“The massive naval flotilla off the coast of Venezuela and the movement of fifth-generation F-35 fighters to Puerto Rico has little to do with actual drug interdiction — they represent operational overkill,” said Adm. James G. Stavridis, a former head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command.
“Rather, they are a clear signal to Nicolás Maduro that this administration is growing serious about accomplishing either regime or behavioral change from Caracas,” Admiral Stavridis said. “Gunboat diplomacy is back, and it may well work.”
Mr. Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have both said the military would carry out more strikes in the coming weeks as part of what they describe as a counternarcotics and counterterrorism campaign. The military struck a third boat on Friday, killing three people, Mr. Trump said.
“Narco-terrorists are enemies of the United States — actively bringing death to our shores,” Mr. Hegseth said on social media this week after the second strike, adding, “We will track them, kill them, and dismantle their networks throughout our hemisphere — at the times and places of our choosing.”
That’s the kind of language Pentagon leaders have used for years in their battle against terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Middle East, Southwest Asia and Africa.
“Given the large number of U.S. military assets that have been deployed to the Caribbean, it is clear that the administration intends to continue such operations,” Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said at a Senate hearing on Thursday.
The U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean has the region on edge.
“Attacks on alleged drug boats so far are being read in the region as warning shots that portend the possibility of a further escalation,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Bogotá, Colombia.
Earlier this month, that flashpoint seemed imminent, after two armed but aging Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets buzzed a Navy guided-missile destroyer in the region in a show of force, dialing up tensions between Washington and the Maduro government.
In response, the Pentagon dispatched 10 F-35 stealth fighters to Puerto Rico to deter more Venezuelan flyovers and to be positioned should Mr. Trump order airstrikes against targets in Venezuela.
Mr. Trump claimed on Monday that the boat the U.S. military destroyed on Sept. 15 was heading to the United States and linked it to “drug trafficking cartels” that he said posed a threat to the country. The president said the people killed were “positively identified,” but he did not name a specific organization that they might be associated with.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he had relied on conclusive intelligence to determine the targeted boat was laden with drugs. “We’re very careful — the military has been amazing,” he said, adding: “We have recorded proof and evidence. We know what time they were leaving, when they were leaving, what they had, and all of the other things that you’d like to have.”
“We have proof,” he said. “All you have to do is look at the cargo that was like, it spattered all over the ocean. Big bags of cocaine and fentanyl all over the place.”
But the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department have offered no evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claims.
Legal specialists and congressional Democrats have assailed the U.S. strikes as illegal.
“The president’s decision to use lethal military force against civilians based on unproven claims that they are drug traffickers is morally reprehensible and strategically unsound, and will end up making it harder to prevent dangerous drugs from entering our communities,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would give Mr. Trump broad powers to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any country he says has harbored or helped them, as The New York Times previously reported.
Defense Department officials briefed members of the House Armed Services Committee about the two strikes on Wednesday. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the senior Democrat on the committee, said Pentagon officials had not offered evidence of legal justification, other than Mr. Trump’s assertion of “self-defense” for the two strikes, and had not provided any information on the location of the strikes or who and what was in the boats.
Mr. Smith also said the officials had offered no details on what the military intended to do next. “If they have plans, they’re not sharing,” he said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Trump in July signed a still-secret order directing the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American criminal gangs and drug cartels. In August, the U.S. Navy sent a heavy amount of firepower into the southern Caribbean Sea.
The military so far has deployed eight warships, several Navy P-8 surveillance planes and one attack submarine to the region. The Pentagon has offered few details on the force’s objectives and locations other than to combat drug traffickers.
The Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group — including the U.S.S. San Antonio, the U.S.S. Iwo Jima and the U.S.S. Fort Lauderdale, carrying 4,500 service members, sailors — has been steaming near Puerto Rico. So has the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,200 Marines. The Iwo Jima is equipped with AV-8B Harrier attack aircraft. Mr. Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Puerto Rico last week to meet with commanders.
Two Navy guided-missile destroyers — the U.S.S. Jason Dunham and the U.S.S. Gravely — are operating in the southern Caribbean. Both warships recently joined the campaign against the Houthi militia in the Red Sea. A third destroyer, the U.S.S. Sampson, now in the eastern Pacific, may soon join, one Navy official said.
These warships are Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, equipped with more than 90 missiles, including surface-to-air missiles. They can conduct antiaircraft and anti-submarine warfare, and shoot down ballistic missiles.
In addition, the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Lake Erie and the littoral combat ship Minneapolis-St. Paul are also operating in the Caribbean.
Military historians point to other provocative conditions that preceded important American military episodes in the second half of the 20th century.
In December 1989, the administration of President George H.W. Bush sent more than 20,000 American troops to invade Panama and arrest its strongman leader, Manuel Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges. Mr. Noriega was convicted in 1992 and died in Panama City in 2017.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
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11) Can France’s Palestinian Proposal Change 75 Years of Failed Diplomacy?
The French president has rallied 142 nations behind a road map for a two-state solution after the Gaza war ends. Missing from the list: Israel and the United States.
By Catherine Porter, Reporting from Paris, Sept. 20, 2025
President Emmanuel Macron of France says he will formally recognize a Palestinian state as the United Nations General Assembly convenes next week, part of a broad diplomatic push he has spearheaded in an attempt to salvage a two-state solution with Israel that looks as distant as ever.
The plan, hatched with the Saudis over the last six months, is meant to provide a road map for rebuilding Gaza and securing a peace after the end of the Gaza war, which is close to entering its third year. It has gained support from 142 countries.
Since Mr. Macron announced in July that he would recognize Palestine, more than a half-dozen countries have followed suit, including Canada and Britain, whose prime minister, Keir Starmer, is expected to make his pronouncement this weekend.
The rest are expected to make their declarations on Monday during a summit at the United Nations the day before the General Assembly officially opens.
But even the plan’s staunchest backers in Mr. Macron’s inner circle concede that it misses the essential element: any hint of backing by Israel or the United States.
That has made the effort by Mr. Macron seem destined to join more than 75 years of failed diplomacy since the United Nations in 1947 first called for the creation of an Arab state alongside a Jewish state.
Nonetheless, Mr. Macron and his diplomatic team insist that the diplomacy is worth the effort, even if others consider it quixotic, however well intended.
“The ingredients required to test the possibility of a two-state solution are simply not there,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“I have no objection to the substantive elements of what the Saudis and French are prepared to do,” added Mr. Miller, who was formerly an adviser to U.S. secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations. “But it’s wholly untethered from the current reality.”
That reality includes a ground assault by Israeli forces on central Gaza City this week that has already displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians; a recent declaration by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that “there will be no Palestinian state”; and wholesale condemnation from the Trump administration, which has worked behind the scenes to pressure allies not to sign on to the plan.
This week, while visiting Jerusalem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed any move to recognize a Palestine state as symbolic and said it would only make Hamas “feel more emboldened.” He warned that a fresh push for Palestinian statehood could provoke an Israeli backlash — a likely reference to recent calls by right-wing Israeli ministers for the annexation of the West Bank in response.
Mr. Macron and his team see the pushback as a sign that both Israel and the United States are feeling the growing pressure of international isolation.
From the beginning, Mr. Macron has said that only a strong political commitment to Palestinian statehood could open the way to a two-state peace, persuade Hamas to lay down its arms and eventually advance the region toward stability.
His recognition of a Palestinian state is intimately tied to a 42-point “day after” plan developed with the Saudis, which sets out “tangible, time-bound and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution once a cease-fire is declared.
The plan, also known as the “New York Declaration,” was approved by 142 countries at the General Assembly this month.
Its practical steps include the establishment of a “transitional administrative committee” to oversee governance, and the creation of a stabilization force under the aegis of the United Nations to provide security. Details on which countries would offer up troops remain to be hammered out, French diplomats said.
It condemns the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas in 2023 as well as the forced displacement of Palestinians, and it calls for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages by Hamas. It also demands that Hamas “must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons.”
Given that the document was signed by many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, including traditional allies of Hamas, Mr. Macron’s team considers the agreement a breakthrough.
But, much like the plan Mr. Macron has spearheaded with a “coalition of the willing” for securing a prospective peace in Ukraine, the day-after plan for Gaza depends on the participation of the United States. And it requires buy-in from a recalcitrant Israeli government and from Hamas, which so far has refused to disarm.
It was conceived with the understanding that only the United States has leverage to stop the war, given Israel’s dependence on American arms, said Rym Momtaz, editor in chief of the Strategic Europe blog run by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“France and Saudi Arabia are providing the most constructive concrete assist they can to enable President Trump to achieve the peace he promised, and also regional normalization,” said Ms. Momtaz, an expert on French foreign policy.
Though she believed the plan’s realism was its strength, she also sees it as its “biggest weakness, because America isn’t playing ball.”
Mr. Miller, the former peace negotiator, said the French and Saudis are “not reading Trump correctly.”
“The missing ingredient is Trump’s capacity, will and desire to essentially take on Benjamin Netanyahu,” he said. “I’ve seen nothing in the past nine months to indicate to me that when it comes to Gaza and Hamas, Trump is prepared to press Israel.”
For decades, support for a two-state solution has been official United States policy. But successive American governments also believed that Palestinian statehood should be realized after full peace negotiations settled between Israel and the Palestinians, not through unilateral declarations or U.N. resolutions.
Last year, the United States blocked the U.N. Security Council from moving forward on a Palestinian bid to be recognized as a full member state at the United Nations. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, explained that “Palestinians don’t have control over a significant portion of what is supposed to be their state. It’s being controlled by a terrorist organization,” she said, referring to Hamas.
The United Nations has continually supported the idea of a Palestinian state, and the idea has underpinned peace negotiations over decades. The Oslo Accords, signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, laid out a timeline for Palestinian self-determination, which was dashed by violence and mistrust.
In 2006, Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, won the Palestinian legislative elections, then seized control of Gaza. Years later came the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas fighters killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 people hostage.
Since then, Israel’s war on Hamas has led to widespread destruction, hunger and the death of about 65,000 people in Gaza, according to Gazan health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Recognizing a Palestinian state before the conclusion of a peace process inverts the traditional pattern, said Max Rodenbeck, Israel-Palestine project director for the International Crisis Group in London.
“The trouble is on the ground; the actual state people are talking about is shrinking by the minute,” he said. “Since Oct. 7 on the West Bank alone, the amount of new territory taken by Israeli settlers is about three times the size of Gaza.”
More than 140 countries in the world have already recognized a Palestinian state, including Spain, Ireland and Norway, which did so last year.
What makes France different, perhaps, is its emotional and historical bond to Israel, as well as its diplomatic stature. France is home to the largest Jewish and Muslim populations in Western Europe, and it is the only nuclear power and only permanent member of the Security Council in the European Union.
The symbolism of France’s recognizing Palestine was important to the Arab states, offering Mr. Macron some leverage to get commitments from them, Ms. Momtaz said.
Those included the public pronouncements by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who called on Hamas, its bitter rival, to “hand over its weapons,” immediately free all hostages, and leave Gaza.
The Palestinian leader vowed to hold elections in 2026 and to reform the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank.
He also promised to strip the Palestinian education curriculum of hate speech and incitement, something that addresses a key concern for many Israelis, according to Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and public opinion expert who has worked on peace campaigns in Israel for many decades.
She called the plan “valuable” and said some of its points could be “advanced by individual member states or maybe they can contribute to changing bilateral relations, and yes, they can be a signpost for where to go.”
After his pronouncement on Monday, Mr. Macron has scheduled meetings with partners at the United Nations to continue working on the plan. Among his team, there is hope that pressure from Arab countries might push the American president to act.
But even the plan’s backers understand that is a long shot.
“It’s a gesture of despair,” said Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Israel, United States and the United Nations. “We are heading toward a disaster; we are trying to stop it.”
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12) 4 Takeaways From the Times Investigation Into the J-1 Visa Program
Some American companies have used the cultural exchange program as a supply of cheap, exploitable labor, records and interviews show.
By Amy Julia Harris, Sept. 20, 2025
Workers like Dino Cekic came to the United States on J-1 visas expecting training and cultural immersion. Instead, they found abuse and exploitation. Marko Risovic for The New York Times
Every year, tens of thousands of young people scrape together money to obtain J-1 visas and travel to the United States, participating in a cultural exchange program that promises immersion in American life.
But many of them have suffered abuse and mistreatment at the hands of their American employers in a poorly regulated program that is ripe for exploitation, a New York Times investigation has found.
Some of the employers have forced visa workers to pack dog food on assembly lines in Iowa, hose out pig pens in Nebraska and pressure renters into signing leases in run-down apartment buildings in New York.
The Times spent months reviewing thousands of pages of legal records and regulatory documents and talking to labor lawyers, researchers and J-1 visa workers. The investigation focused on the New York region, which draws more of the workers than nearly anywhere else in the country, and on the visa holders who experts say are most susceptible to abuse: seasonal workers, interns and trainees.
Here are four takeaways from the investigation:
People on the J-1 visa were injured on the job after being sent to dangerous workplaces.
Dozens of visa workers from around the world came in recent years to Kurt Weiss Greenhouses on Long Island, one of the largest plant nurseries in the nation, where they helped grow, harvest and transport the millions of flowers and succulents the company ships to stores around the country.
But the visa workers were unaware of the company’s safety record — one fatal accident and more than 35 injuries were recorded there from 2014 to 2017 — and they were expecting advanced training, good pay and ample time off.
Instead, they worked up to 60-hour weeks for meager wages, doing grueling manual labor while their bosses threatened to have them deported if they did not work fast enough. One visa worker was sprayed with chemicals while working in the greenhouse without protective gear. Another had his hand mangled under a forklift.
A third visa worker from Serbia, Dino Cekic, was loading heavy planters of flowers onto a cart in 2018 when it crashed down on top of him, dislocating his shoulder. Weeks later, Kurt Weiss dismissed him from his job. He returned to Serbia, where he had to dip into his savings to pay for shoulder surgery.
“You get that beautiful story where it’s all sun and rainbows, but it’s really not,” said Mr. Cekic. “For me, it was a disaster.”
A representative of Kurt Weiss said that the company treated all visa workers with respect, and that most had positive experiences, but declined to answer questions about the company’s safety record.
Workers said that they were sexually harassed and cheated out of wages.
Other workers across New York described facing other kinds of workplace abuse.
Seven visa holders said they were choked, spanked or kissed against their will by their boss at a cafe called Marie Eiffel on Shelter Island.
Vannessa Chao Wan Yi, a student from Malaysia who worked at the cafe in 2022, said her boss, Françoise Lapostolle, groped her breasts and touched her anus through her pants, according to a lawsuit she and other workers filed in 2023.
A lawyer for Ms. Lapostolle, who goes by the name Marie Eiffel, said she denies the allegations and “is confident she will prevail.”
Other visa workers said that they were lured to office jobs and cheated out of wages.
When Lina Restrepo, a visa worker from Colombia, began at a Manhattan media firm called Skytop Strategies, her boss promised her $60,000 a year, training in social media and time off to see the city.
Instead, she said, she often worked 12-hour days, including on weekends, until the company stopped paying her and others entirely.
The chief executive of Skytop, Christopher Skroupa, had previously been sued by some of his American employees who accused him of fraud and deceptive business practices. He made excuses and promised the visa workers that the funds were coming, emails and interviews show.
But Ms. Restrepo went months without being paid and quit in May 2023, deeply in debt.
Mr. Skroupa declined to comment.
The State Department outsources most monitoring of the program to labor brokers known as sponsors.
The J-1 visa program was started at the height of the Cold War with the stated goal of fostering good will between the United States and other countries. It is run by the State Department, but that agency has outsourced responsibility for monitoring the program to dozens of nonprofit groups and for-profit companies.
Known as sponsors, the groups act as labor brokers and charge anywhere from $1,000 to more than $2,000 in fees to international applicants to help them with their visa paperwork and with finding jobs with American employers. The sponsors are supposed to vet those employers, but their bottom lines depend on maintaining good relationships with them.
In audits, the State Department has been faulted for poor oversight of the program and for allowing some J-1 holders to toil in jobs while receiving none of the promised training, education or cultural experiences.
A spokeswoman for the State Department said it “takes every case of alleged abuse seriously” and works with law enforcement and other organizations “to safeguard the health, safety and welfare of every exchange visitor.”
Sponsors and their representatives have played down or ignored workers’ complaints.
Sponsors are supposed to intervene when visa workers have problems with their jobs. But workers said that when they have complained about abusive working conditions, sponsors and their representatives have done little to help.
In 2016, Carolina Rodriguez pleaded with her sponsor for help when an architecture studio in Brooklyn refused to pay her the $2,400 monthly salary she was promised, records show. After she was fired from her job, she said her sponsor told her she had just weeks to line up employment elsewhere or would have to leave the country.
She ended up returning to Colombia, forfeiting about $2,000 in fees she had paid the sponsor to come to the United States. She later sued the architecture firm, Studioteka, for breach of contract and received a settlement. (Studioteka’s chief executive disputed Ms. Rodriguez’s account and said she had been fired for performance issues.)
Years later, other sponsors approved the same architecture studio to employ more visa workers.
Iryna Humenyuk arrived at Studioteka in 2019 after her sponsor, Intrax, signed off on the company. She said she soon found a toxic work environment where she was sexually harassed by an employee.
Studioteka’s chief executive, Vanessa Keith, said that she was unaware of the harassment and that most visa workers had positive experiences. Intrax said through a representative that it did not know about previous complaints about the company.
Ms. Humenyuk complained repeatedly to her college, which had helped her find the job. But when she asked whether the architecture firm would be barred from hiring more J-1 workers in the future, she never got a response.
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13) California Bars ICE Agents From Wearing Masks in the State
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to prevent federal agents from concealing their identities with masks. The law is expected to face a legal challenge.
By Soumya Karlamangla, Sept. 20, 2025
Federal agents blocking protesters during a federal immigration raid in Camarillo, Calif., in July. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Saturday to prohibit facial concealment. Credit...Mario Tama/Getty Images
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed legislation on Saturday that would prevent federal immigration agents from wearing masks in the state, a direct response to President Trump’s deportation crackdown in the Los Angeles region.
The new law is believed to be the first such ban in the nation, though it is likely to be challenged in court before it can go into effect in January because it is unclear whether California can enforce such restrictions on federal law enforcement. The bill also applies to local law enforcement.
In recent months, videos have spread across social media showing masked and armed immigration agents handcuffing immigrants in Southern California, drawing protests and criticism in the state.
Democratic leaders and immigration activists have suggested that agents have acted with impunity, knowing that their identities were cloaked and that it would be harder to hold them accountable.
“The impact of these policies all across this city, our state and nation are terrifying. It’s like a dystopian sci-fi movie — unmarked cars, people in masks, people quite literally disappearing,” Mr. Newsom said at a signing event on Saturday afternoon at a Los Angeles high school. “This is a disgrace. This is an outrage, what we’ve allowed to happen in this country.”
It is extremely rare for police officers to wear masks in democratic nations. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began wearing balaclavas and neck gaiters this year, in what might have been the first example of American law enforcement officers wearing masks.
Before this year, state and local leaders had been passing more laws moving in the direction of greater transparency, such as requiring officers to wear body cameras at all times to record footage that could be used in court and seen by the public.
But this week, Department of Homeland Security officials urged Mr. Newsom to veto the bill, which they said would increase harassment and assaults on officers.
“Comparing them to ‘secret police’ — likening them to the Gestapo — is despicable,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the department, said in a statement. “Once again, sanctuary politicians are trying to outlaw officers wearing masks to protect themselves from being doxed and targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers.”
California’s law was opposed by numerous law enforcement agencies, who argued that officers must have the choice to cover their faces to protect themselves and their families from retaliation. Limiting the ways officers can keep themselves safe will make it harder to recruit people to work in law enforcement, they said.
But a number of Democratic-led states have proposed restricting masking by immigration agents. Lawmakers have introduced such bills in New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, among other states, though California is believed to be the only state where such a law has been passed and signed.
California’s measure would bar law enforcement officers from wearing face coverings, such as ski masks, balaclavas and neck gaiters, that shield their identities. It does not apply to medical masks, clear plastic face shields, respirators, eye protection or other safety devices.
Any violation of the law would be a misdemeanor.
Legal experts agreed that California can require local officers to unmask on the job. But it’s a trickier question when it comes to federal agents operating in the state.
A state can’t directly regulate the federal government, but it can require that federal agents follow general state laws, such as requiring officers to follow speed limits or abide by stop signs, as long as doing so does not interfere with their ability to do their job.
Aya Gruber, a constitutional law professor at the University of Southern California, said that the mask law was likely to be immediately challenged along jurisdictional lines, and that the federal government would most likely seek an injunction to prevent the law from going into effect.
“It will definitely be challenged — 100 percent,” Ms. Gruber said, adding that she expected it to eventually be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. “I don’t foresee this particular iteration of the Supreme Court taking the state’s side on this one, so this may be more of a symbolic piece of legislation.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, wrote a letter last week that urged Mr. Newsom to sign the legislation, which Mr. Chemerinsky said he believed was constitutional because it does not limit the federal government’s authority to perform its duties. Mr. Chemerinsky, a well-known constitutional scholar, said that even if a federal challenge was forthcoming, the state needed to make a forceful declaration against what he said was a practice intended to “terrorize” people.
“It’s important that the state take a stand,” Mr. Chemerinsky said in an interview. “It’s obviously not a slam dunk because there are arguments on both sides, but that’s often the case with the law.”
Brian R. Marvel, the president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, which represents over 87,000 public safety officers, said he was outraged by the passage of the law.
He said in a statement that he believed that California did not have the authority to regulate federal agents, so it would ultimately apply only to local law enforcement officers, which he called a “troubling betrayal that California’s local law enforcement community will not soon forget.” He said that limiting face coverings and opening officers up to prosecution would most likely hurt recruitment and drive officers from the state.
“This bill makes local officers collateral damage. It is a political stunt by all parties involved, plain and simple,” he said. “This bill will have a chilling effect on our profession.”
Mr. Newsom on Saturday signed four other bills aimed at restricting ICE activity in California.
One bill prevents immigration agents from entering schools without a warrant. Another requires schools and higher education institutions to notify parents when immigration enforcement is on campus.
Federal agents in April tried to enter two Los Angeles elementary schools, saying they wanted to conduct welfare checks on students they said were undocumented. The Los Angeles Unified School District did not allow the agents to enter, and school officials were outraged that students could be vulnerable to raids.
Another bill bars immigration agents from entering hospitals without a warrant. Undocumented immigrants are allowed to receive emergency care at hospitals under federal law, and California leaders fear that the threat of enforcement may deter people from seeking medical attention.
Before signing the bills, Mr. Newsom posted on X that Kristi Noem, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, was “going to have a bad day today,” adding, “You’re welcome, America.”
In response, Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, posted on X, “We have zero tolerance for direct or implicit threats against government officials.” He said he had referred the matter to the Secret Service for a threat assessment.
When asked about the exchange, Mr. Newsom referenced Ms. Noem, saying: “The laws that we just advanced today run in complete contrast to what she’s asserting, and what she’s pushing.”
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14) A Benefit for the Palestinian Cause Filled an Arena. Are More Coming?
Onstage campaigning for an end to the war in Gaza is now common in the British music scene, and pro-Palestinian benefit shows can sell out huge venues.
By Alex Marshall, Reporting from London, Sept. 20, 2025
Many fans also wore kaffiyehs, the checkered scarf that has become a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.The New York Times
At Wembley Arena in London on Wednesday night, 12,500 excited music fans gathered for what many saw as a landmark moment in British music: the first arena concert to benefit Palestinians in Gaza.
Older stars including Brian Eno, Neneh Cherry and Damon Albarn performed. Trendy young pop acts including PinkPantheress and Rina Sawayama gave heartfelt speeches or chanted “Free, free, Palestine” onstage. Jamie XX performed a pumping techno set with Sama’ Abdulhadi, a Palestinian D.J.
But the audience at the gig, called Together for Palestine, weren’t really there for the music. During the four-hour show, the biggest ovation from the crowd — many of whom were wearing kaffiyehs or draped in the Palestinian flag — went to Francesca Albanese, a United Nations expert on the Palestinian territories who gave a nine-minute speech that included a call to “disrupt, strike, boycott, speak.”
Over the past two years, showing support for the Palestinian cause has become common in Britain’s music industry, with bands regularly displaying Palestinian flags onstage or condemning the war in Gaza between songs. As the humanitarian crisis in the enclave has worsened and young music fans have rallied to the Palestinian cause, more and more acts have begun speaking out.
“It’s a snowball effect,” said Adam Behr, a lecturer at Newcastle University who researches pop music’s relationship with politics: The more artists speak on an issue, the more others feel confident to join them.
There was a tradition in Britain for musicians to rally around causes, Behr added. One of the first major examples, he said, was the Rock Against Racism movement that began in the 1970s.
In 1980s, Behr added, Wembley Stadium — the soccer venue next to the arena where Together for Palestine took place — was the location of a major anti-apartheid concert and Live Aid, which raised money to address famines in Africa.
Billy Bragg, one of Britain’s best-known political singer-songwriters, said in an interview that Together for Palestine was not on the same scale as Live Aid, which featured some of the biggest acts in the world at the time, including Queen, David Bowie and Madonna.
Still, he said, “when you go to a music festival, now, you see so many Palestinian flags.”
“It’s the audience leading on this,” he added.
Though Bragg did not take part in Together for Palestine, he is scheduled to headline another benefit concert for the Palestinians in London on Saturday. A month later, the rock star Paul Weller is set to headline a “Gig for Gaza” in the city.
Support for the Palestinians has certainly grown among young Britons over the past few years. YouGov, a British polling company, has surveyed Britons since 2019 about where their sympathies lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In June, 58 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed said they supported the Palestinians — up from 16 percent when the survey began. Only 6 percent in the latest survey said their sympathies were with Israel, and 36 percent said they didn’t know or had no sympathies.
The British musicians rallying at events like Together for Palestine are of little interest in Israel, said Ben Shalev, a music critic at Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. Most of the names on the concert lineup would be unfamiliar to music fans there, he said. “Maybe if someone like Bruce Springsteen appeared at an event like that, then the Israeli public would say, ‘Here’s someone we care about,’” Shalev added.
Israeli news outlets followed more closely a controversy about Kneecap, an Irish-language rap group with a large British following, after British lawmakers and some Jewish groups complained that the band took onstage criticism of Israel too far.
Prosecutors this year charged Mo Chara, one of Kneecap’s rappers, with a terrorism offense for displaying the flag of Hezbollah, the militant group based in Lebanon, onstage. (In interviews, Mo Chara, whose real name is Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, has said that the flag was thrown onstage and that he held it up without knowing what it was.) A judge in London is expected to decide on Friday whether the case will proceed to a trial.
The night after Together for Palestine, Kneecap took the stage at the same venue. Many of its fans wore kaffiyehs or soccer jerseys with the word “Palestine” on them.
At one point, Mo Chara told the crowd that musicians were “filling a void” because politicians had not stopped the conflict. The crowd roared in response.
A dozen fans at the Kneecap show said in interviews that they were primarily there to have a good time but that the group’s activism for the Palestinian cause was a key part of its appeal. Eamonn Flannery, 27, a personal trainer, said that until a few months ago he had avoided the group, believing “they were kicking up fuss just to get attention.” But he changed his mind after watching one of Kneecap’s sets at a festival, he said, and he was impressed by “the way they support people who’re less well off.” Now, he is “getting more into politics,” he added.
At the end of Kneecap’s show, which ran for more than an hour, the group displayed the words “Free Palestine” on a huge screen at the back of the stage, and the sold-out crowd chanted “Free, free, Palestine.” As they left the arena, some were still chanting.
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15) Trump Is Expanding the National Guard’s Role. Some Former Generals Worry.
Responding to crises at home is part of the Guard’s mission. Helping crack down on crime in U.S. cities isn’t, say some former leaders, who fear this shift could hurt the force.
By Chris Hippensteel, Sept. 21, 2025
Some former generals say the National Guard should not be used as a law enforcement agency. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
In the past quarter-century, National Guard troops have hoisted desperate survivors from rooftops in Hurricane Katrina. Fought the flames of devastating wildfires in Maui and Los Angeles. Searched for survivors and secured the skies after Sept. 11. And deployed in the hundreds of thousands to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Delivering relief and maintaining order in times of great need is a well-established part of the Guard’s mission. But as the Guard fulfills a different kind of role envisioned by President Trump, supporting a crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C., that he now aims to expand to Memphis and other cities, several generals who have led Guard troops fear that shift will damage the force.
That includes, they say, hurting morale, weakening recruiting and retention, and straining the Guard’s relationship with the American public.
“The thing that supports the morale of the National Guard is that, for decades, we’ve been the good guys,” said Brig. Gen. Paul G. Smith, the former assistant adjutant general of Massachusetts whose command included responding to Hurricanes Sandy and Irene and the Boston Marathon bombings. “We fish families out of flood waters. We shovel ambulances through the snow to get to women delivering babies.”
But, he added, “patrolling the monuments, creating this sort of military net that’s descended on these urban areas — that’s not something a lot of people signed up for.”
The five generals who spoke to The Times included retired senior leaders at the National Guard Bureau, the agency in Washington, D.C., that oversees the Army and Air National Guard. Two were former top-ranking officers of the Massachusetts and Illinois National Guard, both appointed by Democratic governors. One was an Army general who oversaw one of the largest domestic Guard deployments in modern history. All of them served for decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
It is unclear whether their views are shared by a broader group of their peers. Several other former leaders who were appointed by Republicans to top Guard positions or who became Republican members of Congress declined or did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week, Mr. Trump authorized Guard troops to be deployed in Memphis next, saying that violent crime there had overwhelmed the local government, though the city’s mayor has said that crime had decreased in the city. That order came after weeks in which the president publicly mulled similar deployments to cities like Chicago, New Orleans and Baltimore, drawing backlash from local leaders.
And in late August, he took another step to expand the Guard’s domestic law enforcement role, ordering the establishment of a unit within each state’s ranks dedicated to “quelling civil disturbances” and “ensuring the public safety and order,” deployable at a moment’s notice to anywhere the country.
The president has many supporters in that effort, who see crime in Washington and other urban areas as a dire problem that requires federal intervention because, they say, cities have not done enough to address it, even though violent crime rates in many of them have been on the decline.
That approach has received the backing of defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a former infantry officer in the Minnesota National Guard, several former Guard troops in Congress and seven Republican governors who have agreed to send troops to assist units in Washington.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re from a blue city or a red state, you want to live in a place where it’s safe,” Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania and retired brigadier general in the National Guard, said in an interview with Fox Business in late August.
Several of the generals who were interviewed expressed support for Mr. Trump’s overall goal of tamping down crime in major cities. But they contended he should pursue those goals by leveraging local resources and dedicated law enforcement agencies in cooperation with local leaders, not with the National Guard.
The Guard “is not a law enforcement agency,” said Maj. Gen. William Enyart, a former adjutant general of Illinois — the Guard’s top officer in the state — and former Democratic congressman.
He added: “The military is designed to fight external enemies, not citizens.”
Maj. Gen. Randy E. Manner, former acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Mr. Trump’s decision to deploy the Guard to D.C. represented an attempt to “intimidate the local population,” politicizing the force and misusing its limited resources. He added that using the military to police American citizens “is the beginning of a divide between our military and our citizens, and that is absolutely detestable.”
He also noted that soldiers on deployment cannot train for another part of their mission: serving as a reserve force to support the active-duty U.S. military abroad.
General Enyart said that the risks to morale were especially high given the personal cost that deployments impose on troops.
Unlike service members in the other military branches, most Guard troops serve part time. While deployed, they leave behind jobs, families and businesses, General Enyart said. They often make less income than they would in their civilian jobs, and many are college students for whom a deployment can mean missing weeks or months of school.
“These are all really disincentives for retention, for morale, for recruiting,” General Enyart said. “It’s one thing when you’re out there sandbagging to prevent the Mississippi River from washing the town away. It’s another thing when you’re fulfilling a president’s political desires.”
On recent weekends in Washington, Guard troops were mostly seen taking up posts in subway stations and meandering among crowds on the waterfront. Their mission has included patrolling tourist areas, landscaping and cleaning up trash and graffiti.
Many troops, approached in public places, said their job was to follow orders regardless of personal opinions. Two troops said that they had deployed before for hurricane recovery and acknowledged that this mission felt different. Both also expressed a desire to go home. One of them, a carpenter in his civilian life, said he told his mother not to post on Facebook about his mission, because he feared a backlash.
Representative Barry Moore, Republican of Alabama, who served six years in the state’s National Guard, said that in his experience Guard members are eager to serve on any mission they’re called for. He contended that Mr. Trump’s use of the Guard was unlikely to damage the Guard’s ability to attract new soldiers.
“When we sign up, we don’t necessarily have a specific job description,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s to protect the American people — whatever that looks like.”
Several of the former generals also cautioned that maneuvering the Guard into domestic law enforcement against the wishes of state governors veered into legally dubious territory.
Mr. Trump is not the only leader to have summoned the National Guard to cities troubled by crime. The Democratic governors of both New York and New Mexico deployed the Guard in recent years for just that purpose, but those deployments were limited in scope.
An 1878 law called the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the active-duty military, with narrow exceptions, from carrying out law enforcement functions on U.S. soil. The National Guard, on the other hand, can perform those duties, but only when they are called into action at the request of a state governor.
Brig. Gen. David L. McGinnis, former chief of staff for the National Guard Association of the United States, which works as an advocate for the force on Capitol Hill, described any move to deploy the Guard over governors’ wishes as being firmly “outside the constitutional box.”
Washington, D.C., where local law grants the president greater authority to deploy the National Guard, is an exception to that rule. And in Los Angeles, where Mr. Trump deployed Guard troops in response to protests this year over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, the president claimed an exemption by arguing that protesters were impeding the enforcement of federal immigration law.
A federal judge ruled that the president had overstepped his authority in deploying the Guard to Los Angeles. The administration has appealed the ruling.
Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, a retired Army general who commanded the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, which included tens of thousands of Guard members, said he was not just concerned about how Mr. Trump’s contentious deployments might politicize the Guard. He also worries about putting Guard troops in a situation where they could be the focus of hostility from unreceptive citizens.
“Because when it goes bad — like Kent State — it goes bad,” General Honoré said, referencing the day in 1970 when Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on anti-Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University, killing four students.
“We want to make sure we’re on the side of saving lives, not taking lives in America.”
Aishvarya Kavi, Emily Cochrane and Bernard Mokam contributed reporting.
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16) In Assault on Free Speech, Trump Targets Speech He Hates
The president’s complaints about negative coverage undermine the rationales offered by his own officials.
By Peter Baker, Sept. 21, 2025
Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, is covering his sixth presidency. He reported from Washington.
As President Trump threatens a wide-ranging crackdown on mainstream media institutions and political opponents, his aides and allies have cast the administration’s moves as critical to stanching misinformation and hate speech that could lead to political violence.
But Mr. Trump himself has repeatedly made clear in recent days that he has a different goal. For him, it’s not about hate speech, but about speech that he hates — namely, speech that is critical of him and his administration.
He has suggested that a clutch of protesters who yelled at him in a restaurant be prosecuted under laws targeting mobsters. He demanded that multiple late-night comics who mocked him be taken off air. He threatened to shutter television broadcasters that he deemed unfair to him. He sued The New York Times for allegedly damaging his reputation. And that was just last week.
When threatening government action against those who anger him, Mr. Trump can be strikingly transparent about what is driving him. He talks regularly about how journalists, commentators and political actors should not be “allowed” to be so harsh toward him. Having installed a partisan ally to run the F.B.I., he muses openly about which political critics he would like to see investigated.
Mr. Trump is not the only president to bristle at opposition or news coverage, nor the first to try to punish those who angered him. But in modern times, no president has gone so far in using his power to pressure media figures and political opponents, historians say.
At the end of a week dominated by a fraught national debate over free speech that followed the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Mr. Trump summed up his view on Friday in a remark that would have been shocking if made by any previous president.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to network newscasts. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
The president’s outbursts undermine the rationales offered by his own officials. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who initially claimed she had the right to investigate businesses that refused to print memorial vigil posters for Mr. Kirk, later emphasized that the government is focused on hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence. Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C., has argued that many broadcasters have a liberal bias and do not meet the agency’s standard for serving the public interest.
Last week, Mr. Carr threatened consequences if ABC did not take action against the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for his comment that “the MAGA gang” was trying to characterize the suspect in Mr. Kirk’s killing “as anything other than one of them.” The comment was factually wrong, the F.C.C. chairman argued, and part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people.” Disney, the owner of ABC, complied and suspended Mr. Kimmel’s show.
But Mr. Trump then made clear he has a broader, more personal goal.
In a social media post, the president celebrated Mr. Kimmel’s removal and demanded that two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, meet a similar fate. “That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC,” the president wrote. “Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!”
Thomas Berry, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the president effectively refuted Mr. Carr’s attempt to maintain that punishing ABC for Mr. Kimmel’s statement would be a fair and neutral application of F.C.C. guidelines.
“This continues a pattern of Trump being his own lawyers’ worst enemy with his public statements,” Mr. Berry said. “Whereas Carr focused on the alleged falsity of the statement, Trump simply admits that he wants the F.C.C. to go after stations that are unfriendly to him.”
Asked about the disparate justifications offered by Mr. Trump and administration officials, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said, “President Trump is a strong supporter of free speech, and he is right — F.C.C. licensed stations have long been required to follow basic standards.” She added that “the Biden administration actually attacked free speech by demanding social media companies take Americans’ posts down.”
Vice President JD Vance likewise pointed to allegations of censorship lodged against President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to defend the Trump administration’s actions. “The bellyaching from the left over ‘free speech’ after the Biden years fools precisely no one,” he wrote on social media on Friday.
The Biden administration urged social media companies to prevent the proliferation of what it deemed misinformation about Covid-19. Republicans contended that amounted to unconstitutional coercion to censor unpopular views and a judge issued an injunction, but the Supreme Court rejected a challenge, saying the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue.
Mr. Trump, who was barred from Twitter and Facebook after encouraging a crowd of supporters that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to block the transfer of power, has since cast himself as a champion of free speech. Upon returning to office, he signed an executive order “ending federal censorship.”
Craig Shirley, a presidential historian and biographer of President Ronald Reagan, said Mr. Trump’s experience was so searing that he did not believe the president would improperly restrain others’ free speech, whatever his public exhortations.
“We all especially know Biden used government to censor Trump, kicking him off many media platforms, a clear violation of the law,” Mr. Shirley said. “As his own First Amendment rights were abridged, my guess is he’s especially sensitive to anyone else seeing their First Amendment rights taken away.”
Presidents have wrestled with the bounds of free speech since the beginning of the republic. John Adams signed the Sedition Act during what was called the Quasi-War with France, banning “false, scandalous or malicious” criticism that put the government or its leaders “into contempt or disrepute,” a measure that was used to jail prominent journalists.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln likewise shut down some antiwar newspapers, detained journalists without trial and censored dispatches. Woodrow Wilson during World War I signed the Espionage Act, which was used to imprison antiwar leaders and stop post office distribution of antiwar publications.
“Donald Trump is hardly the first president to crack down on the press and cause controversy by doing so,” said Harold Holzer, author of “The Presidents vs. the Press,” the definitive history on the subject. “But he is the first to do so in what is not a national emergency.”
Mr. Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York, said that at least Adams, Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt were acting in times of war or national security crisis. “Trump,” he said, “has no such justification.”
Other presidents sought to pressure news organizations in less expansive ways. President Richard M. Nixon tried to block publication of the Pentagon Papers, which detailed the U.S. government’s failures in the Vietnam War, and his allies challenged the licenses of television stations owned by the publisher of The Washington Post, whose Watergate coverage infuriated him.
President George W. Bush’s White House barred The Times from Vice President Dick Cheney’s plane for a time out of pique at a story. President Barack Obama’s administration conducted more leak investigations than all his predecessors combined and once tried to exclude Fox News from a joint interview for television reporters, only to back down when other networks protested.
But Mr. Trump’s campaign against news media outlets has gone far beyond those of his modern-day predecessors, taking form long before the Kirk assassination. Even before his latest lawsuit against The Times, he sued ABC, CBS and The Wall Street Journal. He slashed federal funding for PBS and NPR. He moved to dismantle government broadcasters like Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Martí, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
He threw The Associated Press out of the White House press pool because it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” And the White House seized control of the press pool altogether, determining which news organizations would be permitted into the Oval Office or on Air Force One to question him, something no other president attempted.
His Pentagon has similarly sought to curtail beat reporters covering defense issues by removing certain outlets from their work space and limiting access to the building. On Friday, the Pentagon went further, announcing that journalists must agree not to seek unauthorized information or risk losing their credentials to cover the military.
The administration has sought to stifle speech beyond news organizations, penalizing universities and other institutions that advocate diversity and threatening to bar foreign visitors who express disfavored opinions about Gaza or Mr. Kirk. Books about sensitive subjects have been removed from military academy libraries and information about topics like climate change scrubbed from government websites.
Mr. Trump has increasingly shown his willingness to invoke government reach to go after those who openly question or criticize him. When former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican and estranged ally, said on television last month that Mr. Trump “doesn’t care” about maintaining separation between his office and criminal investigations, the president proved the point by threatening a criminal investigation of Mr. Christie.
This past week brought more examples. On Monday, Mr. Trump said that he had asked Ms. Bondi to consider “bringing RICO cases against” the protesters who yelled at him in the restaurant, referring to the racketeering statute used to prosecute the mafia.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump erupted at Jonathan Karl of ABC News for asking about Ms. Bondi’s plan to target “hate speech.” She would “probably go after people like you,” he snapped, “because you treat me so unfairly.” When Mr. Karl revisited the subject in the Oval Office on Friday, Mr. Trump berated him again. “You’re guilty, Jon,” he said.
During his flight home from London on Thursday night, Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One that his administration should curtail broadcasters that air coverage that is excessively negative toward him. “I would think maybe their license should be taken away,” he said.
Asked if he really thought the restaurant protesters should go to jail, he doubled down. “When you take a look at the way they acted, the way they behaved, yeah, I think they were a threat,” the president said.
His undisguised motives leave even some on the political right stunned. Mr. Berry, the Cato scholar, said he used to think that government coercion of private speakers, a practice often called “jawboning,” would be effective only if it was secret.
“But now we see the Trump administration engage in jawboning out in the open, in public interviews, and we mostly see the administration’s allies cheer it on,” he said. “It seems the attitude of most Trump allies is no longer ‘jawboning is wrong,’ but ‘Biden did it first, so two wrongs make a right.’”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
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17) The World’s Warlords Are Watching Sudan
By Suliman Baldo and Mai Hassan, Sept. 21, 2025
Dr. Baldo is the director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker. Dr. Hassan is an associate professor of political science at M.I.T.
Refugees waiting for food in Adre, Chad, in April 2024. Since the beginning of Sudan’s civil war in 2023, over 600,000 displaced Sudanese have fled to Chad. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
When a landslide last month struck a mountainous region in western Sudan, it leveled a village and left as many as 1,000 people dead. In the race to help survivors, though, international aid agencies had to navigate administrative red tape that officials say has routinely been put in place by the Sudanese Armed Forces, the military group seen by some as Sudan’s de facto government after two years of devastating civil war. The group and its rivals have been accused of restricting aid flows into territories they do not control — the stricken region is in a rebel stronghold — and although some aid did eventually reach the area, the bureaucratic obstacles cost valuable time in the effort to save lives.
The delay is a stark example of how granting legitimacy to one side in a civil war has become a matter of life or death for Sudanese.
Now, the international community may be poised to entrench the Sudanese Armed Forces’ rule. After months of negotiations, the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have proposed a road map for peace in Sudan. With further discussions expected to take place on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly this week, who gets a seat at that negotiating table could either pave the way for democratic rule or solidify the grip of the very military leaders who derailed Sudan’s democratic transition.
After the country rose up in 2018 and 2019 against 30 years of dictatorship, a transitional government was appointed to steer the country toward democracy. In October 2021, the Sudanese Armed Forces, the country’s army, and the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that emerged from a militia notorious for slaughtering people in Darfur, teamed up to topple the civilian government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. But by April 2023, the two had turned on each other in a battle for dominance.
Now, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces are locked in a stalemate that has triggered what experts consider one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, displacing some 14 million people and pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation. Unlike in other civil wars, these two forces are primarily fighting to entrench their own financial and political interests, not those of any civilian bloc.
Each side has created a puppet government to push its agenda on the global stage: The Sudanese Armed Forces are propping up the so-called “Government of Hope,” whereas the Rapid Support Forces have created the “Government of Peace and Unity.” Neither of these administrations represents the Sudanese people, nor do they embody hope or peace. The belligerents behind these supposedly civilian governments are responsible for sabotaging the country’s democratic transition, stand accused of war crimes and continue to funnel the nation’s resources into private coffers.
Broad swaths of civil society continue to support the country’s pro-democracy coalitions, one of the most prominent of which, Somoud, is headed by the ousted Mr. Hamdok. Although Somoud operates mainly from abroad, many of its constituent groups — political organizations, youth and women’s groups and trade unions — remain active inside the country, providing vital humanitarian aid and coordinating community efforts for peace.
Despite Somoud’s civilian backing, the Government of Hope has come to be seen by the international community as Sudan’s de facto government, given its backing by the armed forces and control of the organs of the state. In the past, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has represented Sudan at the U.N. General Assembly. Because the United States imposed sanctions on General Burhan in January, this year, the Government of Hope’s civilian prime minister is likely to attend in his place. The Rapid Support Forces lacks widespread international credibility because of its conduct during the war: even though both parties stand accused of serious human rights violations, the Rapid Support Forces’ widespread and systematic attacks against civilians, often based on their ethnicity, have led to the United States designating it as a genocidal force.
Now, with a potential peace process on the horizon, the international community risks repeating a grave mistake. Should peace talks proceed under the status quo, the Sudanese Armed Forces would effectively be seated at the bargaining table, acting as a legitimate government quelling an insurrection. This ignores the fact that both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces are equally responsible for usurping civilian democratic rule. If the United States and others are serious about achieving lasting peace in Sudan, they must empower the country’s civilian representatives, not its warlords.
The dilemma of deciding who should represent Sudan isn’t new; it highlights a core tension in international affairs. The world recognizes states — the unchanging, legal entity of a country. But it must deal with governments — the temporary political leaders who hold power. This becomes a crisis when a country has rival groups that each claim to be the legitimate government, especially when each controls swaths of territory.
In the past, the international community has often defaulted to a blunt principle: recognize whoever is in charge. This unwritten rule, known as the doctrine of effective control, means that legitimacy is granted to anyone who successfully controls a country’s land and population, no matter how they got there. In cases such as Libya, where territorial control is split, rule over the capital city is often important both symbolically and practically. Those who control the capital are often recognized as the government of the day. This approach might be borne out of expediency, but it has also put dictators and unelected rulers on the same footing as leaders chosen by their own citizens.
It has also created perverse incentives across Africa’s dictatorial states. Rebels and would-be leaders see a shortcut to power if they can overtake the capital by force, leading to cycles of unconstitutional coups and destructive civil wars, as occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Sudan has been sucked into a similar cycle.
The world doesn’t have to condone entrenched military rule in Sudan. The African Union, for instance, freezes a state’s membership in the event of a successful coup or military takeover. Sudan’s membership has been suspended since the 2021 coup. The United Nations and other international bodies could do the same.
And when the next wave of negotiations does come, international actors must demand that Somoud and other pro-democracy forces be at the forefront of these talks. Sudan’s civilian leadership may not have guns or hold territory, but they have something much more powerful: the support of the Sudanese people.
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18) The High School Teacher Leading Mexico’s ‘Fashion Police’
A teacher and journalist has gained a large following for highlighting the apparent luxury items worn by politicians. It has also earned him high-profile detractors.
“There’s a disconnect between the official discourse and the lifestyle of the politicians,” said Jorge García Orozco, a high school teacher who showcases the lifestyles of Mexican officials on social media. Credit...Jorge García Orozco
Mexican politicians have new reason to be cautious.
The fashion police are watching.
Over the last few months, social media users have been hunting for designer labels, luxury watches and other hints of wealth on Mexican politicians, asking — even in a country where many are jaded by corruption — how could public servants afford such apparent luxuries?
“There’s a disconnect between the official discourse and the lifestyle of the politicians,” said Jorge García Orozco, a high school teacher and journalist who has built a growing social media following by showcasing the lifestyles of Mexican officials and questioning how they can afford them on government salaries.
“Many citizens, myself included, were fed up with the ruling political class,” he said.
Garnering over 100,000 followers on his X account, Mr. García Orozco’s work exploded in popularity this summer. Many of his posts started with online tips from people acting as what he called the “fashion police for politicians.”
The attention has also made him enemies. Gerardo Fernández Noroña, a senator who has been featured in his posts, has called some of his work “despicable” and accused him of working for the government’s opponents.
In an interview, Mr. García Orozco, 37, denied that accusation and said he was actually inspired by remarks once made by the man who founded the senator’s leftist party, Morena. He recalled being a teenager and hearing the founder, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, rail against corruption long before riding a wave of populist energy to the presidency in 2018.
“He said that Mexicans are fed up with braggart politicians who earned a lot of money, were ostentatious, had a lot of advisers, wear designer watches and shoes. And what people want is good public services,” Mr. García Orozco said. He said he remembered thinking then, “That’s what I want for my country.”
He added, “Maybe they changed, but not me.”
Mr. García Orozco, who also teaches high school Spanish in Guadalajara, has spent years digging up public records and investigating officials, recently for the online outlet Eme Equis. (His followers include some students, he said.)
But it was his recent social media posts about politicians’ appearances that struck a chord, especially as Morena has come to dominate all three federal branches of government, in part with mottos of austerity and helping the poor first.
Mr. García Orozco admitted that he has made some inaccurate posts. He recently deleted a claim that a Morena senator was wearing a Cartier watch, and shared her message saying it was a cheaper Anne Klein.
“Because I don’t have an agenda, I gave her a space to reply,” he said.
The surge of interest in his X account is making money for Mr. García Orozco, too, though he declined to say how much. But he insisted his main goal is to show the public how politicians are behaving, saying, “You have to keep questioning the powerful.”
Mr. García Orozco’s prominence rose as he showcased what appeared to be the luxurious lives of Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, then the president of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, and his wife, Diana Karina Barreras, also a lawmaker.
He posted screenshots of them wearing what he claimed were, among others, Hublot or Cartier watches, Moncler jackets, Chanel sunglasses and Dolce & Gabbana shoes. He also raised questions about expensive paintings at their home and V.I.P. Formula 1 tickets.
Ms. Barreras and Mr. Gutiérrez Luna did not respond to requests for comment. But last month he claimed that the attention was a campaign by opponents targeting him. He denied some items were expensive and said his critics had not considered that he had worked as a private lawyer for a dozen years.
“You have to distinguish the private from the public part,” he said, adding, “During periods of my life, I wasn’t a public servant.”
Mr. García Orozco acknowledged that he cannot know for sure the origin of items worn by politicians. But he said most scenarios were a bad look.
If the opulent accessories are real, he said, they are incongruous with the typical salary of lawmakers in Mexico’s lower house, about $56,000 a year.
If they are fakes, he said, it raises a different set of uncomfortable questions.
“They are politicians who are supposed to be examples and piracy here is a crime,” he said, adding, “This type of person doesn’t wear knockoffs.”
Mr. García Orozco has focused on more than just federal lawmakers, making waves with claims that the mayor of a city in western Mexico wore Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry — he valued one item at $21,000 — and Cartier watches as expensive as $16,000. (The mayor did not respond to an email seeking comment.)
And when Mexico’s new Supreme Court justices took office this month, Mr. García Orozco showed what he said looked like Salvatore Ferragamo shoes worth $900 on the chief justice, Hugo Aguilar Ortiz.
In July, Mr. Aguilar Ortiz laughed off such suggestions, saying he actually wore “sad Flexi shoes.” Asked about Mr. García Orozco’s allegation, a court spokeswoman sent a screenshot of the Sears website where Flexi shoes sell for roughly $70.
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