Beloved tenured History professor and Socialist Horizon member Tom Alter was summarily fired on September 10th by Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse for expressing his views in a virtual conference unrelated to the university. This action cannot stand. Socialist Horizon calls on people everywhere to join us and demand that Professor Alter be reinstated to his tenured position.
President Damphousse fired Dr. Tom Alter based solely on a video published online by an extreme rightwing provocateur who infiltrated and secretly video-recorded segments of a virtual socialist conference with the intention of publishing information to slander and attack conference participants. In videos posted on their website, this person declares that they are a proud fascist, who tries to monetize exposure of the left as an “anti-communist cult leader”. This grifter publicly exhorts followers to embrace fascist ideology and take action, is an antisemite that states that Jewish people ‘chose to die in the Holocaust’, is a self-declared racist and xenophobe, a homophobe and a transphobe that spews hate speech throughout their platform that is solely designed to inflame and incite.
After the fascist’s ‘exposure video’ reached President Damphousse, he summarily fired Dr. Alter, a tenured professor, without questioning or investigating the content, without considering its authenticity or validity, without any form of due process, and violating existing state law and campus policy which requires a formal due process procedure.
After the fascist’s ‘exposure video’ reached President Damphousse, he summarily fired Dr. Alter, a tenured professor, without questioning or investigating the content, without considering its authenticity or validity, without any form of due process, and violating existing state law and campus policy which requires a formal due process procedure.
What did Alter talk about that triggered fascists, and that Damphousse considers so unacceptable?
The statement issued by Damphousse to terminate Dr. Alter unambiguously affirms that he fired Alter for what he said at that conference, stating no other reason, and accusing Alter of “inciting violence”. But his speech, a transcript of which can be viewed here, in no way calls for violence.
Alter spoke against this cruel and unjust system and argued in favor of replacing it with socialism, and he advocated organizing politically to achieve this. Alter’s political views reflect those of nearly half of the total US population. Almost half now oppose capitalism and 40% favor socialism over capitalism. Alter’s views are far from subversive, they reflect the mainstream. It is a just cause that more and more people are joining, one people believe to be worth fighting for, and represents a change in thinking that is scaring the bigots, fascists, and capitalists.
It is in fact the fascist infiltrator who incites violence against oppressed people, and in this case, directly against Alter. It is Alter’s employer Texas State University that inflicted violence: stripping Alter of his job, refusing him any due process, casting him and his family into the uncertainty of unemployment and making them a target for the extreme right, while slamming the door shut on his free speech and academic freedom. Alter’s First Amendment right to speak, guaranteed by the Constitution, has been violated, as has his academic freedom– a protected right developed by his national faculty union, the American Association of University Professors.
The fact that a marginal fascist streamer with a dangerous and extremist ideology can pressure the president of a prestigious public university system to illegally fire a tenured professor for his opinions is alarming. Most concerning, if we do not stop this, it will set a precedent that will embolden the most dangerous bigots, right wing extremists and fascists who will continue to target people across the country. If they can influence and direct the President of the Texas State University system so easily–who else will they go after?
We call on President Damphousse to stop this flagrant attack on constitutionally-protected free speech, to undo this wrongful termination, and to immediately reinstate Dr. Tom Alter to his teaching position.
We call on President Damphousse to stop this flagrant attack on constitutionally-protected free speech, to undo this wrongful termination, and to immediately reinstate Dr. Tom Alter to his teaching position.
The termination of Dr. Alter is a serious attack that upends his livelihood, his professional and academic career, and sets a very dangerous precedent. President Damphousse’s actions appear to be in accordance with the far-right politics of Texas politicians Greg Abbot and Ted Cruz, as well as being in-line with that of Donald Trump who has used the office of the presidency to wage war on his political opponents.
Damphousse’s actions align with Trump and the far right forces trying to impose and enforce an authoritarian regime that wants to silence critics, crush political dissent, and attack anyone they perceive to be oppositional to their project. Even more threatening, Damphousse’s actions strengthen the power and influence of fascists and enable the most violent and reactionary groups to also attack and take action against anyone they deem to be part of the left.
It is Trump who inflicts violence against millions through his authoritarian political attacks that target people of Color, women, transpeople, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, impoverished and unhoused people, and the working class as a whole . It is the far right and the fascists who are building movements to harm innocent and vulnerable people. It is this capitalist system that Alter spoke against that inflicts mass violence condemning billions to hunger, poverty and war while a handful accumulates ever growing obscene amounts of wealth that is stolen from the rest of us.
Alter is being attacked because he is telling a truth that many people in the United States believe today: that capitalism is ruining their lives and that socialism is a better system. If Dr. Tom Alter can be fired for expressing his personal beliefs and principles, then people everywhere are in danger. If he can be fired for expressing a point of view at a conference, away from his work and in his daily private life, then none of us are safe.
His case must draw support from people of all sectors of society: workers, teachers, nurses, students—anyone and everyone who upholds the value of free speech. As the great anti-slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said, “The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected”.
We call on everyone to join us in building the broadest possible solidarity campaign to win this decisive battle.
We call on everyone to join us in building the broadest possible solidarity campaign to win this decisive battle.
The attacks on Dr. Tom Alter and socialist politics will not intimidate Socialist Horizon. We will defend our comrade and we will continue fighting for the very cause he is being attacked for: justice, freedom, and equality. We will also continue building the organization that it will take to win it.
Dr. Tom Alter is not only a beloved faculty member at Texas State but also an advisor to several student organizations. He is the author of a celebrated history of socialism in the American South, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas (University of Illinois Press). He is also the father of two children. Socialist Horizon demands that Texas State University immediately restore Tom Alter’s position as Associate Professor of History.
Socialist Horizon also calls on all organizations and individuals that defend the basic democratic right to free speech and reject fascism and authoritarianism, and all socialists in particular, to join this fight. This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
What you can do to support:
*Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
*Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
*Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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,
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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”
——
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 *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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)
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
1) 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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) 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.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) 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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) 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.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) 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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) 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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) 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 MartÃ, 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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) 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.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) 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 GarcÃa Orozco, a high school teacher who showcases the lifestyles of Mexican officials on social media. Credit...Jorge GarcÃa 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 GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa 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. GarcÃa Orozco’s allegation, a court spokeswoman sent a screenshot of the Sears website where Flexi shoes sell for roughly $70.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) The Firing of Educators Over Kirk Comments Follows a Familiar Playbook
Conservative efforts to call out and punish educators over liberal ideas have grown for years, led in part by Charlie Kirk himself.
By Stephanie Saul, Sept. 22, 2025
James Bowley, a professor at Millsaps College in Mississippi, was ordered to leave campus over a comment he made about President Trump’s victory in 2024 that spread on social media. Credit...Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“NO CLASS TODAY,” read the email. It was the morning after the November 2024 presidential election. “Need time to mourn and process this racist, fascist country.”
The email rapidly spread on social media and would soon unravel the career of Prof. James Bowley, who had sent it to the three students enrolled in his “Abortion and Religions” class at Millsaps College. One of them shared it on Instagram. The professor was ordered to leave campus the next day.
The episode reflected a growing clampdown on campus speech that had been gaining steam since the onset of pro-Palestinian campus protests. And it presaged the enormous current backlash against teachers and professors following the killing of Charlie Kirk. Many of those educators now face investigations or dismissal after voicing criticism of Mr. Kirk.
The American Association of University Professors, an organization founded to defend academic freedom, said it was aware of retaliation against about 60 professors and teachers in connection with critical comments they made about Mr. Kirk or people mourning him.
Faculty First Responders, an organization that works with the association to advise educators who are the victim of doxxing and harassment campaigns, has reached out to 35 academic workers in the past week, most of them professors, whose comments about Mr. Kirk have been spread in right-wing media, according to Heather Steffen, the group’s director.
At Clemson University, a public institution in South Carolina, two professors and a staff member have been fired over social media posts, including one that called the murder of Mr. Kirk “swift and ironic” karma because of offensive things Mr. Kirk had said over the years. The firings followed pressure from Republican politicians.
A law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock was suspended after comparing people mourning Mr. Kirk to the Ku Klux Klan.
A retired professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law lost his emeritus status, which gave him special campus privileges, over a social media post that referred to Mr. Kirk. A campus publication, the Independent Florida Alligator, reported that the post said, “I did not want him to die,” and added, “I reserve that wish for Mr. Trump.”
The Texas Education Agency has said it is investigating hundreds of employees at elementary or secondary schools for similar reasons.
The campaigns to silence educators who speak critically of figures on the political right have been effective, suggesting they are likely to expand, Dr. Steffen said. “I’m concerned that this will continue to be a strategy used to limit free speech and academic freedom,” she said.
The strategy has the endorsement of the Trump Administration, as evidenced by comments Vice President JD Vance made recently to Fox News. While acknowledging that the First Amendment protects “very ugly speech,” he added, “If you are a university professor who benefits from American tax dollars, you should not be celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death, and if you are, maybe you should lose your job or your university should face a loss of funding.”
Dr. Bowley, the former Millsaps professor, is a scholar of religion and an expert on the political and social factors that gave rise to the Holocaust. He said he was considering suing Millsaps, a small United Methodist Church-affiliated college in Jackson, Miss., where he had taught for 23 years, over his dismissal.
Dr. Bowley said he believed he was a victim of homegrown American fascism. “I did not use the word fascist lightly,” he said.
Officials at Millsaps declined to be interviewed about the matter, citing privacy concerns. They said in a written statement that “Millsaps is dedicated to academic excellence and open inquiry.”
The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the firings, saying they infringe on the First Amendment rights of the educators.
If they choose to mount a legal fight, fired employees of public institutions, which are bound by the First Amendment, probably have better chances of prevailing in court than those fired from private institutions.
In a letter last week, for example, Alan Wilson, the attorney general of South Carolina, wrote to Clemson, saying that if the dismissed professors believed their First Amendment rights were violated, they may sue the university. “However,” he wrote, “it should be noted that the First Amendment is not absolute.”
Although some states have restricted the ability of private employers to fire employees for their opinions or speech, in many places private employers have broader discretion to do so than public employers do.
The killing of Mr. Kirk, an influential figure on the right, devastated his fans and people close to President Trump, who has himself been the target of assassination attempts. Mr. Kirk’s supporters, including many in the Trump administration, have made strong statements in the past supporting free speech, no matter how ugly. But now, many of those same officials are trying to limit speech that they say could lead to more violence.
Mr. Kirk, who was known for making statements that were often criticized as racist, antisemitic and sexist, declared himself to be a proponent of free speech. Though comments made by some of his critics may seem callous and inappropriate in the wake of his shooting, even some of his right-leaning supporters have defended people’s right to say them.
Most of the attacks on professors have come from the right, but progressive activists have also waged campaigns at times against educators and others they disagreed with.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the unrest that it spawned, Charles Negy, a psychology professor at the University of Central Florida, found himself under attack over his social media posts about race. “Black privilege is real,” he wrote.
When the university tried to fire him, he sued on First Amendment grounds, and in May, a federal judge ruled that his case could proceed.
Proponents of academic freedom see the current crackdown on professors as an assault on freedom of expression that echoes dark periods in American history. At Brooklyn College, where four adjunct professors were dismissed this year for their pro-Palestinian activism, a faculty union called the movement to curb educators’ speech the “New McCarthyism.”
One of the four, Corinna Mullin, who was an adjunct professor of political science, said that recent developments show that academic freedom is not a universal right but a conditional privilege.
“And it seems that it’s granted or withdrawn based on the context of our speech — those who echo power are shielded,” said Dr. Mullin, who was arrested during a police raid on a Gaza Solidarity encampment at City College in 2024. Trespassing charges against her were later dropped.
She said she believed that activists on the right will continue to expand their attacks to take in “all speech on the left associated with social justice, racial justice, all these uncomfortable truths that challenge power in this country.”
In a written statement, a spokesman for Brooklyn College, Richard Pietras, said the school strongly supports freedom of expression. He said the college chose not to reappoint the four adjunct faculty members based on their conduct, not their political beliefs. He declined to give more specifics.
Katherine Franke, a well-known professor at Columbia Law School, was forced to retire in January following comments she made criticizing Columbia students who had served recently in the Israeli Defense Forces over what she viewed as the students’ harassment of Palestinian students.
She said in an interview that the growing attacks on Mr. Kirk’s critics was a frightening, but not surprising, next step.
“In some ways, this bears a family resemblance to the Red scare of the 1950s,” Ms. Franke said. “In other ways, this is different. It’s not just a single ideology, and it’s not just one senator. It’s an across-the-board exercise of the whole of government to bully universities, law firms, the media, all of us into a kind of obedience.”
A recent case at Texas A&M University illustrates the increasing breadth and depth of outside influence over speech on university campuses. A professor there was fired over a lecture about gender expression, an episode that also spurred last week’s resignation of the university’s president, Gen. Mark A. Welsh III.
The controversy arose after a student circulated a video of an exchange with the professor over the lecture — an increasingly common worry for professors. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and other Republican state politicians complained ti the university about the lecture.
Turning Point USA, the campus group Mr. Kirk led, often placed giant beach balls on campuses and invited students to write on them, in a symbolic exercise of their free speech rights. Mr. Kirk also invited students to debate him, advocating “reasonable disagreements.”
In several instances, Mr. Kirk has used the First Amendment to sue universities that tried to block his organization’s campus presence.
But critics have argued that Mr. Kirk’s promotion of free speech was riddled with hypocrisy. Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia who has written a book that focuses heavily on Mr. Kirk, “The Seven Mountains Mandate,” called Mr. Kirk’s stance “an empty support of free speech.”
Turning Point’s efforts to target professors it sees as radical dates back nearly a decade, to 2016, when it began asking students to report professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Some of the educators whose names were put on the group’s “watch list” have said they became the targets of merciless harassment on social media.
A spokesman for Turning Point USA, Andrew Kolvet, said the watch list “doesn’t target professors.” “It simply organizes already public statements, articles or quotes professors make, putting them in one easy-to-find places as a resource for parents and prospective students,” Mr. Kolvet continued. “Families deserve to know what professors really believe.”
But Dr. Boedy, whose name was placed on the list over an opinion piece he wrote criticizing legislation that permitted weapons on campus, said the list was “a prime example of their free speech hypocrisy — they’re targeting people they don’t like.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
11) Trump Appointees Roll Back Enforcement of Fair Housing Laws
Interviews and internal documents show that signature civil rights protections in housing are being dismissed as ideologically driven and D.E.I. in disguise.
By Debra Kamin, Sept. 22, 2025
Debra Kamin reviewed dozens of memos, text messages and emails written by employees of HUD’s Fair Housing Office.
Whistleblowers within HUD’s Office of Fair Housing say it has become increasingly difficult to do their jobs. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
In one email, a Trump appointee at the Department of Housing and Urban Development described decades of housing discrimination cases as “artificial, arbitrary and unnecessary.”
In another, a career supervisor in the department’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity objected to lawyers being reassigned to other offices; the supervisor was fired six days later for insubordination.
In a third, the office’s director of enforcement warned that Trump appointees were using gag orders and intimidation to block discrimination cases from moving forward. The urgent message was sent to a U.S. senator, who is referring it to the department’s acting inspector general for investigation.
The emails are among dozens of pages of internal communications, memos and other documents reviewed by The New York Times that show efforts by the Trump administration to limit enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark civil rights law that has prohibited discrimination in housing for nearly six decades.
In interviews, half a dozen current and former employees of HUD’s fair housing office said that the Trump political appointees had made it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs, which involve investigating and prosecuting landlords, real estate agents, lenders and others who discriminate based on race, religion, gender, family status or disability.
Several lawyers said they had been blocked from communicating with clients without approval from a Trump appointee, and had been barred from citing some past housing civil rights cases when researching legal precedent for possible new prosecutions.
One internal memo from a top Trump appointee in the office said that archival documents that were “contrary to administration policy” would be removed or replaced, and that “tenuous theories of discrimination” would no longer be pursued.
“If you’re not enforcing the Fair Housing Act, then it’s just another dead law,” said one of the career lawyers in the office, Palmer Heenan, who has been told without explanation that he will be reassigned next month.
65%
The staff reduction at HUD’s fair housing office
Some of the internal documents framed the changes as efficiency measures, and the resulting cuts to the office have been drastic. When the so-called Department of Government Efficiency initiated its cost-cutting spree, federal offices lost, on average, about 10 percent of their employees. Within the Office of Fair Housing, the reduction was 65 percent. There were 31 employees in January; once mandatory transfers go through next month, there will be 11.
Kasey Lovett, a spokeswoman for HUD, said in a statement that it was “patently false” to suggest the department was looking to blunt enforcement of the Fair Housing Act. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, she said, “is using its authority to uphold the law, protect the vulnerable, and ensure meaningful access to housing.”
Ms. Lovett also said that the new administration had inherited a “deeply inefficient case system,” and accused the Biden administration of allowing cases to “languish.”
Since President Trump took office, the department has handled over 4,100 cases, according to the statement, which is on par with previous years, accounting for cases that carry over from one year to another. Ms. Lovett did not address, however, how many of the cases had been investigated or had resulted in legal action.
Lawyers in the office contend that cases often take longer than expected because of complexity and insufficient resources. Before the cuts, the office had 22 lawyers working on fair housing cases, fielding around 2,000 new complaints a year. Local fair housing nonprofits receive around 32,000 additional inquiries each year.
32,000
The number of inquiries made to local fair housing nonprofits each year
By Oct. 5, when the latest rounds of reductions will take place, there will be six of those lawyers remaining, according to several staff members who have received notices of reassignment.
“I never thought I would be in this position,” said Paul Osadebe, another fair housing lawyer. “We have people who are trying to destroy a baseline that people relied on.”
More concerning than the vacant desks, the current and former employees said, were the hundreds of cases that had been halted or dropped.
6
The number of lawyers who will soon remain at HUD’s fair housing office, down from 22 lawyers
The shift began during President Trump’s first week in office, they said, when he issued a series of executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in both the public and private sectors.
That same week, fair housing employees received a stop-work order via email from HUD leadership, ordering them to “cease and desist all work activities associated with environmental justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
In short, the staff members said, much of the office’s fair housing work was being characterized as an offshoot of D.E.I. Documents reviewed by The Times show that the work was repeatedly referred to as “not a priority of the administration.”
Are you a federal worker? We want to hear from you.
The Times would like to hear about your experience as a federal worker under the second Trump administration. We may reach out about your submission, but we will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.
Data from the first seven months of the Trump administration show the nearly instant results of the changes.
In each of the last five years, the fair housing office typically collected between $4 million and $8 million in legal settlements for Americans who accused housing providers of discrimination. From January to July, however, the office approved less than $200,000, said Jacy Gaige, until recently its director of enforcement.
4
Charges of discrimination issued by HUD’s fair housing office since Trump took office, down from an average of 35 a year
Charges of discrimination are also sharply down. When investigators find evidence of a crime, they issue a formal document that requires the accused to appear before a judge. On an average year, HUD issues 35 charges; since the beginning of the Trump administration, there have been four, according to lawyers in the office.
‘Tenuous Theories of Discrimination’
The slowdown can be traced, at least in part, to new procedures that stripped career officials of the authority to approve settlements or issue charges, said Ms. Gaige, a career employee for the past 13 years.
Instead, only a small number of Trump appointees now have that authority. While every new administration brings political appointees to top roles, not one has monopolized the work flow so thoroughly, including the first Trump administration, Ms. Gaige said.
“With one email, the entire process was shut down,” she said. “It essentially stopped the settlement process, which is time sensitive because complainants and respondents come to an agreement about what they want to do to resolve a case. And often that is driven by specific deadlines that are occurring in people’s lives.”
In addition, hundreds of pending fair housing cases were frozen, and some settlements revoked, even when accusations of discrimination had been substantiated, according to the interviews and the internal communications.
In one instance, a large homeowner’s association in Texas was found to have banned the use of housing vouchers by Black residents. That case had been referred to the Justice Department, but the referral was abruptly withdrawn by the new Trump appointees.
“The sudden abandonment of the case was a pretty significant about-face,” said Rebecca Livengood, a lawyer with Relman Colfax in Washington, D.C., who represented the housing authority that had sued the homeowner’s association. “There’s every reason to think that in another administration, what were, at that point, sustained allegations of widespread racial discrimination would have been pursued.”
Fair housing cases have historically covered a broad range of civil rights violations.
They have involved landlords refusing to rent to single mothers with children, or people of a certain religion. They have combated discrimination against disabled veterans who needed to live with a service animal. They have targeted real estate agents who did not want to show Black buyers homes in white neighborhoods. And in recent years, they have protected survivors of domestic violence from being denied housing assistance when attempting to escape a stalker or abuser.
Last week, John Gibbs, the Trump-appointed principal deputy assistant secretary for fair housing, sent two memos detailing how “future enforcement efforts will proceed.”
In previous administrations, he wrote, fair housing offices “leveraged the Fair Housing Act” against mortgage providers, appraisers and others “in an ideological matter,” but that would now change.
Cases involving “tenuous theories of discrimination” would “no longer be prioritized,” he wrote.
The types of cases identified by Mr. Gibbs had been central to the office’s work.
They included appraisal bias, which typically involves white appraisers undervaluing homes owned by Black families; zoning restrictions used to block housing that might be occupied by Black and Latino families; and gender or gender expression cases, including new housing protections added under the Biden administration.
The memos also described previous approaches to redlining and reverse redlining as “legally unsound.” The two racist practices involve denying mortgages to minorities and those in minority neighborhoods, and other predatory and discriminatory lending practices. A full review of the organization’s guidance on those subjects, he added, was ongoing.
‘In Mortal Danger’
The staff reassignments and cuts have been particularly hard felt in the handling of housing complaints under the Violence Against Women Act, a 1994 law designed to protect women from stalking, assault and domestic violence that was updated in 2022 to include new housing protections for the growing number of survivors of domestic violence.
About 500 women a year reach out to HUD to request help under the law, but only two of the six lawyers remaining in the fair housing office have experience with the law, according to interviews with the lawyers.
“These are life and death requests,” said Mr. Osadebe, one of the lawyers being transferred next month. “These women are legitimately in mortal danger, and often without the government stepping in, nothing will be done.”
Mr. Osadebe said he and his fellow lawyers were told in January that they could not communicate directly with the people who filed complaints, making it virtually impossible to do their jobs. “They cut us out of the process,” he said.
Mr. Osadebe is an organizer with the Federal Unionists Network, a group of workers and their supporters who are working across the federal government to push back against the Trump administration changes.
“This is a deliberate plan, and it’s about shutting down fair housing,” he said.
‘Dire Consequences’
Ms. Gaige took a different protest route. She quit in July, but only after firing off an email to Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee responsible for overseeing HUD.
The nation’s fair housing laws were no longer being enforced, she wrote. Someone needed to intervene.
Others in the office sounded the alarm as well.
Erik Heins, a lawyer in charge of enforcement, wrote two emails to HUD’s Office of General Counsel in June, outlining the serious repercussions of the staffing reassignments to other offices.
“It was very clear pretty quickly that this was not about solving a need in those offices,” Mr. Heins said in an interview. “My staff was being retaliated against for being civil rights practitioners, and losing a dozen civil rights attorneys would cripple HUD’s ability to enforce its civil rights protections.”
Six days after sending those emails, he was informed by Amy Brown, HUD’s deputy general counsel for housing programs, that he had engaged in “unacceptable conduct.” He was fired the same day.
“As a manager, you are expected to be professional and trustworthy in your conduct to support the Agency’s goals and mission,” Ms. Brown wrote.
In other emails about the cuts and reassignments, HUD managers told lawyers who raised concerns that they “appreciate your feedback,” but were committed to having a “full-time staff reassigned who are fully committed to the workload, goals and objectives of that office.”
Those not wanting to be “voluntarily reassigned” were told that they would be “subject to removal,” according to memos reviewed by The Times.
Early this month, four current staff members of the fair housing office also reached out to Ms. Warren and provided her with documents they had compiled backing up their allegations.
On Monday, according to a spokesman for Ms. Warren, the senator sent a request to Brian Harrison, HUD’s acting inspector general, to open an investigation into the office. The allegations, she wrote, “suggest that HUD is no longer enforcing Fair Housing and Civil Rights Laws — with dire consequences.”
Mr. Osadebe, who like some of the lawyers describes himself as a whistle-blower, said he knows his job may be on the line for speaking up.
“We took an oath to defend the constitution,” he said. “These are the moments we took that oath for.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
12) Europe Talks Big on Gaza but Struggles to Act
Even as criticism of Israel ramps up and a growing number of countries say they’ll recognize a Palestinian state, concrete actions remain limited.
By Jeanna Smialek, Reporting from Brussels, Sept. 22, 2025
A rally in Brussels this month in support of Palestinians. European efforts to punish the Israeli government for its actions in Gaza have stalled amid opposition, notably from Germany. Marius Burgelman/Belga, via Agence France-Presse
European nations are lining up behind a plan to recognize Palestine as a state at this week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York. Top officials widely condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza, and some have even begun to call the war “genocide.”
But big talk has yet to lead to big action.
The European Union has proposed higher tariffs on Israeli goods, but it is not clear if that will happen. Other efforts to punish the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have stalled amid opposition, notably from Germany.
Actions by individual countries have also fallen short of the rhetoric. Attempts to funnel aid into Gaza have been limited, even as starvation grips the territory. And nations have been accepting only a trickle of asylum seekers from Gaza, with immigration often a domestic political flashpoint.
Belgium has more Palestinian asylum applicants than anywhere else in Europe, likely because of its relatively permissive immigration practices and large existing Palestinian community. But even there, applying for asylum can be difficult. Many hopefuls have been rejected this year. While Belgium has been evacuating its citizens and the family members of its own residents and refugees from Gaza, the country closed its evacuation list, which then numbered about 500 people, in April.
Bahjat Madi, 34, from the southern Gaza city of Rafah, has been in Belgium since 2022 and has been a resident since 2024. He is witnessing the fallout firsthand: Mr. Madi’s father is still in Gaza, he said, struggling to get out.
“I want to do anything for my father to be alive,” said Mr. Madi, who is bringing a court case to get his father’s visa application accepted remotely.
His father is seeking a humanitarian visa but is required to apply at the consulate in Jerusalem, which is all but impossible for someone trapped in Gaza. If he can get the visa, he might eventually be added to an evacuation list. It is a long shot and could take years.
“I want to talk to myself at night and say, ‘I do my best,’” Mr. Madi said. “But it’s not enough.”
For policymakers, the question is whether Europe will turn words of condemnation and concern into more powerful action. European public opinion has turned against the Israeli conduct of the war, but longstanding alliances and fraught political histories have kept nations like Germany and Italy from supporting major action.
“I haven’t seen any moment where such international momentum has built up in such a short time, so I think there’s a real opening,” said Kristina Kausch, deputy managing director for the German Marshall Fund South, a think tank focused on international relations. “But we will have to see what tangible commitments come, beyond the wording.”
“This is not only about Palestinians,” she added. “This is about whether the West, and Europe, can uphold international law and uphold multilateralism.”
Luxembourg announced last week that it would join Belgium, Britain and a raft of other nations in recognizing a Palestinian state at the U.N. meeting in New York, a push spearheaded by President Emmanuel Macron of France that is meant to increase pressure on Israel. Last Tuesday, a United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza said Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians, a topic poised to be prominent at the U.N. meeting. Israel calls such an accusation “distorted and false.”
Some individual European nations have taken more concrete actions. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain recently pledged a permanent ban on the sale of weapons and ammunition to Israel, for instance, after canceling a contract worth 700 million euros, or about $825 million, to buy rocket launchers. Belgium recently announced plans for a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
But such moves have had little impact on the course of the war. And other measures — like helping people to flee the region — are politically more difficult.
After big flows of Syrian refugees in 2015 helped to fuel the rise of the far right in Germany and elsewhere, countries have been cautious about accepting displaced Palestinians in large numbers. That has left many from Gaza either trapped in place or stuck in limbo in neighboring countries like Egypt.
Nations have argued that there are limits to what any one country can do and have urged the European Union, with its economic and diplomatic might, to respond. Taken together, the bloc is Israel’s biggest trading partner, and in 2024, accounted for 32 percent of Israel’s total trade in goods.
“It is really an emergency for Europe to take action,” Maxime Prévot, the Belgian foreign minister, said in an interview this month. “Many, in public opinion, do not understand why Europe is so timid.”
But bloc-wide efforts have struggled to get off the ground.
When the European Union’s diplomatic branch conducted a review this year of a treaty that governs the bloc’s relations with Israel, it found indications that Israel had breached its human rights obligations under the pact.
After that conclusion, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, proposed that Europe’s political leaders could ban Israel from participating in a research-funding program called Horizon Europe. But even that step struggled to garner enough support among member states.
More than 200 former bloc ambassadors and diplomatic staff members wrote to European Union leaders last month expressing their “profound disappointment” in the failure to pressure Israel more effectively.
Now, the commission is making its biggest push yet, attempting to suspend part of the bloc’s trade agreement with Israel. Doing so would remove preferential treatment from billions of euros of trade.
“What is happening in Gaza has shaken the conscience of the world,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the commission, said in a recent speech.
The proposal signals a condemnation of what Israel is doing. Because passing it would require a large majority — but not unanimity — analysts said it was possible that it could become policy.
But that remains far from guaranteed.
Germany in particular, with its Holocaust history, has hesitated to criticize Israel too overtly. Italy, too, has been reluctant.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany warned last week that criticism of Israel was “increasingly a pretext under which the poison of antisemitism is spread.” Mr. Merz suggested on Thursday that his government would decide by the start of next month whether to support the European Union’s attempts to punish Israel.
Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s top diplomat, suggested on Wednesday that the challenge in finding agreement might persist.
“The political lines are very much in the place where they have been so far,” Ms. Kallas said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
13) Palestinians Need More Than the Gesture of Statehood
By Mustafa Barghouti, Sept. 22, 2025
Mr. Barghouti is the leader and a founder of the Palestinian National Initiative. He wrote from Ramallah, the West Bank.
A collapsed residential building in Gaza City after it was hit in an Israeli airstrike on Sept. 8. Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
Britain, Canada, Australia and Portugal on Sunday recognized the State of Palestine ahead of a conference this week at the United Nations. Other countries were expected to do the same during the gathering, which was designed to revive prospects for a two-state solution as a basis for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
Recognition of Palestinian statehood — now formalized by some 150 countries — is welcome in the face of Israel’s decades-long denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination and a settlement expansion plan that “buries the idea of a Palestinian state,” as Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, recently put it.
However, it is empty symbolism at best, and at worst, a distraction from a lack of action to stop Israel’s war in Gaza and the starvation and forced displacement of roughly two million Palestinians living there. Any recognition of Palestinian statehood should be accompanied by concrete action to hold Israel accountable for its illegal, destructive policies.
Watching from the West Bank, where for decades Israel has been expanding its settlements to block Palestinian statehood, I am struck by a strong sense of déjà vu at how the push for a two-state solution never seems to take into account the one-state, apartheid reality Israel has imposed on Palestinians and is entrenching more deeply every day.
In August, in an apparent response to France and others announcing plans to recognize Palestine, the Israeli government approved settlement expansion in the so-called E1 area east of East Jerusalem. That will effectively sever in two the occupied West Bank, which is supposed to form the heartland of a Palestinian state. Israel had refrained from building settlements in the area for decades out of concern for the international repercussions. Doing so had been seen as a death blow to the two-state solution, even though to many it already appeared to be moribund.
Since Israel’s far-right government took power in December 2022, the E1 approval is just the latest in a wave of illegal settlement expansion, including the approval of 22 new settlements in the West Bank this spring. As explained in a joint statement by Mr. Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz, those settlements “are all placed within a long-term strategic vision, whose goal is to strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory, to avoid the establishment of a Palestinian state and to create the basis for future development of settlement in the coming decades.”
Israel already illegally annexed occupied East Jerusalem 45 years ago and has deepened its control of the city with a ring of settlements cutting it off from the West Bank. Since October 2023, Israel has laid waste to Gaza, rendering it largely uninhabitable, and with the new offensive is in the process of systematically destroying Gaza City and driving Palestinians into confined areas in the south. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have said in May that the destruction in the Gaza Strip would force Gazans to emigrate elsewhere.
Simply recognizing a Palestinian state and producing a document with recommendations will do nothing to change any of this. Instead, action is needed.
First, the international community must stop Israel’s war in Gaza, which rights groups and a growing number of other experts have concluded is genocidal, and to prevent Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Second, there must be serious pressure applied to Israel to force it to change its policies regarding the Palestinians, including repealing the law establishing that only the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in historical Palestine and recognition of the State of Palestine.
To achieve these objectives, governments — especially Israel’s Western backers — must impose economic sanctions, as some are considering, and a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, which rights groups have been demanding for years over Israel’s settlements and other violations of international law.
Palestinian freedom cannot be conditioned on Israeli approval. The power disparity between Israelis and Palestinians must be recognized. One of the biggest mistakes of past efforts to make peace was falsely equating the two sides, as if Palestinians have been colonizing Israeli land and systematically dispossessing Israelis for nearly eight decades, rather than the other way around. Neither side will enjoy security unless the root causes of injustice are dealt with.
Millions of Palestinians are a stateless, occupied people oppressed by Israel, a nuclear-armed regional superpower. A new paradigm is needed to address this imbalance and support the people struggling for their freedom, as was done to support the struggle of South Africans against apartheid in their country.
About 7.4 million Palestinians live under Israeli control, either as citizens or in the occupied territories; there are about 7.2 million Jewish Israelis. The Palestine Liberation Organization accepted the partition of the land decades ago, even though it meant effectively giving up more than half of what the United Nations had decided in 1947 should be the Palestinian state.
It was a major compromise. The P.L.O. went on to officially recognize Israel twice, first in 1988 and again in 1993. Israel, on the other hand, has continued to deny the right of Palestinians to have an independent state or self-determination of any kind. To the contrary, successive Israeli governments have spent more than half a century working to entrench their apartheid system.
The international community must finally recognize the failures of the past and the reality on the ground. No true or lasting peace can be made without the dismantling of Israel’s apartheid system. Real pressure must be applied to Israel for this to happen.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
14) Did Amazon Trick Customers Into Prime? A Jury Will Decide.
A trial in federal court in Seattle will determine if millions of customers signed up for Prime because it’s a great deal, or because they were duped.
By Karen Weise, Sept. 22, 2025
Karen Weise is based in Seattle and has covered Amazon since 2018.
Subscriptions, primarily Prime, brought more than $44 billion to Amazon last year. Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
A trial in federal court in Seattle set to begin this week will cut to the heart of how Amazon defines itself as a champion for the hundreds of millions of consumers who regularly use its online shopping service.
The Federal Trade Commission claims, in a lawsuit filed two years ago, that Amazon tricked tens of millions of people into signing up for its Prime membership program, and then made it hard for customers to cancel when they wanted out.
“Amazon was aware for years that it was taking consumers’ money without their consent, yet chose to do nothing about it,” the F.T.C. wrote in a recent court filing.
Amazon, which denies those claims, hopes a jury will believe that customers signed up for Prime simply because they thought it was a good deal.
“The way Amazon drives Prime subscribers is by making the service useful and valuable,” Mark Blafkin, an Amazon spokesman, said in a statement. “And our approach works — Prime, with hundreds of millions of members, is among the highest performing subscription programs of any kind, as measured by renewal rates and customer satisfaction.”
Though less sweeping than the F.T.C.’s antitrust case against Amazon, targets the company for the way it runs a popular subscription program central to its business and ubiquitous in the lives of many of its customers.
“The Trump-Vance F.T.C. intends to secure justice for Americans harmed by Amazon’s practices,” Joe Simonson, an F.T.C. spokesman, said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to the trial.”
Since Prime was introduced two decades ago, it has grown into what the F.T.C. called “the world’s largest subscription service.” Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has long called it a “pillar” of the company. It costs $139 per year or $14.99 a month, and includes fast shipping, video streaming, discounts at Whole Foods, which Amazon owns, and other perks.
“We want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member,” Mr. Bezos wrote in 2016.
Judge John H. Chun of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled last week that at least two senior executives, Neil Lindsay and Jamil Ghani, would automatically be considered personally liable if a jury finds that Amazon violated the law.
Amazon said the executives acted properly and put customers first.
Judge Chun also scolded Amazon for withholding tens of thousands of documents he ruled were improperly marked privileged. He wrote that it “appears that the desire to gain a tactical advantage led to such conduct” and that was “tantamount to bad faith.”
“We remain confident that the facts will show these executives acted properly and we always put customers first,” Mr. Blafkin, the Amazon spokesman, said in a statement.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday, with opening arguments starting on Tuesday. The case is set to last for about a month. If the jury concludes that Amazon broke the law, the judge will determine any penalties. The F.T.C. has not yet asked for specific monetary damages.
An estimated 200 million people in the United States use Prime to shop on Amazon. Subscriptions, primarily Prime, brought in more than $44 billion last year, but it’s value to Amazon goes far beyond the monthly fees. Prime members are the company’s best customers — they buy more things, and more often, than people not signed up for the service.
Customers rarely drop Prime, and the subscription feeds shopping habits, said Michael Levin, whose company, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, has surveyed Amazon shoppers for more than a decade. His firm estimates that Prime members spend twice as much on Amazon compared with non-Prime customers.
“We can’t stress enough how important Prime is to Amazon’s retail business,” he said in an interview.
The F.T.C. case centers on the idea of “dark patterns” — whether a website’s design knowingly steers customers into subscriptions they don’t really want or makes it very difficult for them to cancel. The F.T.C. said documents show the process for canceling a Prime membership internally was called Iliad, after the ancient epic poem about the long war between the Greeks and the city of Troy.
“Rather than simply allowing consumers to cancel, each page of Amazon’s Iliad process bombards consumer with links, offers and other information to remove them from the cancellation flow,” the F.T.C. argued in a court filing last week.
The company built its business with a patented “1-Click” ordering button, making it faster to buy an item. But executives said in an internal meeting that they wanted customers “to pause and think a bit before canceling” the subscription, the F.T.C. said in a court filing.
Amazon countered that nudging customers to try new services and requiring a few clicks to cancel was standard industry practice that customers had come to expect. “Consumers are familiar with — and therefore readily understand and navigate — cancellation processes that contain offers and other marketing information,” the company argued.
Amazon said in its own court filings that the F.T.C.’s case misinterprets internal data and takes correspondence out of context. “Leadership consistently emphasized that customer trust — which will be broken if customers feel tricked, confused or deceived — was paramount,” the company wrote.
Amazon first heard from the F.T.C. in March 2021, two months into President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s term, when the agency issued a civil investigative demand for various documents related to Prime. It was just a few days before Mr. Biden announced he planned to nominate Lina Khan, a scholar who built her career on legal arguments critiquing Amazon, to the commission, and she eventually became the chair.
When the F.T.C. sued Amazon in 2023, it was the first time the agency had taken Amazon to court under Ms. Khan.
But the F.T.C. didn’t actually start looking into Prime until the waning days of the first Trump administration, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly. Under the second Trump administration, the F.T.C. has continued pursuing the case. This summer it settled with the education technology company Chegg and the dating app Match over similar subscription issues.
Amazon “knew about the staggering amount of harm their practices caused Prime consumers, and yet they did nothing to solve the problem, or even required it to continue, out of fear of harming Amazon’s bottom line,” the F.T.C. argued in a recent filing.
Amazon countered that given Prime’s scale, it was inevitable that some customers would be frustrated or make mistakes. “Evidence that a small percentage of customers misunderstood Prime enrollment or cancellation does not prove that Amazon violated the law,” the company said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
15) How Universal Child Care Could Change the Economy
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, has proposed no-cost, universal child care, helping to reignite a national conversation.
By Sydney Ember, Sept. 22, 2025
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, said the lack of universal child care was a “major cost to our economy.” Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Universal child care has long been viewed as a pie-in-the-sky item on the progressive policy agenda.
But the idea recently took on new life in some circles, after Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, pledged to make free child care available to every resident in the country’s largest city.
Even proponents of free universal child care acknowledge that the United States is unlikely to establish a national program along these lines anytime soon. Yet Mr. Mamdani’s promise has jolted the conversation about the government’s role in child care and the potential economic impact of a more comprehensive system.
“There are a lot of reasons building a child care system that works for everyone is important to our children, to parents, to employers and to economic growth,” said Julie Kashen, the director for women’s economic justice and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank.
“Most families need all parents to be working right now in order for them to have any sort of economic security,” she added, “Having access to child care helps with that.”
In a short video explaining his plan, Mr. Mamdani said the lack of universal child care has had a “major cost to our economy.” He nodded to a report from the New York City Economic Development Corporation that found that parents leaving the city or cutting back their work hours because of caregiving responsibilities cost the city $23 billion in 2022.
Critics of universal child care typically cite the significant cost to taxpayers of subsidizing not just low-income families but also higher-income families.
“Child care money that is spent at any level of government should really be targeted to those most in need,” said Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Mr. Mamdani’s campaign, for instance, estimates that his plan would cost $6 billion annually. He said money to fund his policies, including his child care program, could be generated by lifting the state’s corporate tax rate, raising the city’s income tax by 2 percentage points on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year and collecting fines the city is owed.
In interviews with economists and child care policy experts, however, many said that zeroing in on the cost to taxpayers of a universal system did not factor in its potential economic effects.
Most arguments in support of universal child care — as opposed to programs with income limits, say — revolve around more readily quantifiable economic impacts, including an increase in the share of mothers with young children in the labor force, a rise in their number of hours worked and greater lifetime earnings. Because families would no longer have to devote large portions of their budgets to child care, proponents say, they would have more disposable income.
Some economists also pointed to possible benefits for companies such as more stable work forces, which could improve productivity and reduce spending on recruiting and training.
“What free child care does is basically take the economic costs to families, and all of the disruptions to the economy overall that come from those costs, out of the equation,” said Kathryn Anne Edwards, a labor economist and policy consultant.
The share of women in their prime working years who are in the labor force was 77.7 percent last month, down slightly from its all-time peak last August of 78.4 percent. Among women with children under 5, that number was about 68 percent in May. That is down from an all-time high of 71 percent in September 2023, according to an analysis in July from the Hamilton Project, an economic policy research group at the Brookings Institution. The labor force participation rate for men ages 25 to 54 was 89.8 percent last month.
“You are looking for those pockets of slack — and those pockets of places where those policy interventions would make a big difference,” said Lauren Bauer, the associate director of the Hamilton Project. “This is clearly one of those places.”
In January, the New York City Office of the Comptroller released a report estimating the economic impact of free, universal child care for mothers of young children. The report found that 14,200 mothers in families earning up to 150 percent of the city’s median income would enter the city’s labor force, and would generate earnings of $670 million a year. The policy, according to the report, would also result in an addition 8.8 million hours worked annually by mothers who were already employed. Taken together, the increase in labor force participation and hours worked would lift mothers’ earnings by about $900 million.
Economists have pointed to history as evidence that more expansive child care policies could meaningfully change the broader economy. The Lanham Act, a federal infrastructure bill passed in 1940, was used to create a near universal, federally-backed child care program during World War II so that mothers with young children could contribute to the war effort.
The Lanham Act made federal funds available to help set up and maintain child care facilities and train and pay teachers. The program was not free but was heavily subsidized and available to families regardless of income.
The Lanham Act “had pretty profound impacts on mothers’ employment both in the short run and in the longer run,” said Chris Herbst, a professor at Arizona State University who studies the economics of child care and early childhood education. “A lot of the mothers who started to work during the war because of this child care program continued to work well after the war ended.”
Mr. Herbst also noted that the children who attended its child care centers were more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to attend and graduate college and had better labor market outcomes and higher career earnings than children who were less exposed to the program.
“When these policies are done right, they have two-generation effects,” he said. “There are positive effects that accrue in the short run to parents through the increase in employment, and also to their kids.”
There is already a large body of evidence that universal preschool programs pay big economic dividends. A working paper published in May that analyzed the effects of universal prekindergarten programs in nine cities and states found that they resulted in a 1.2 percent rise in labor force participation, a 1.5 percent increase in employment and 1.6 percent growth in hours worked. The paper analyzed programs in Georgia, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, Washington, D.C., Vermont and New York City.
Mothers experienced the greatest employment bump, according to the paper. But the benefits also extended to other women, suggesting that universal prekindergarten programs also allowed informal caregivers to seek employment as well.
“Not only is it helping mothers with young kids work more but it might actually have this spillover to neighbors and relatives, and it might help this local economy,” said Jacob Bastian, an assistant professor of economics at Rutgers University and one of the study’s authors.
The child care system in Quebec offers another salient case study. In 1997, the Canadian province introduced universally accessible, highly subsidized child care, extending the coverage to all children up to age 4 by September 2000.
Research published last year found that the Quebec program’s impact — including improving maternal labor force participation rate — was attributable to the increased availability of child care, not just its reduced price.
“The effects are much bigger in places were the supply expanded more,” said Sébastien Montpetit, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Warwick and one of the study’s authors. “So we care about affordability but availability is at least as important.”
A separate study found that the program bolstered the performance of businesses in terms of sales growth and increased labor productivity. And because child care was not tied to their firms, women were more likely to voluntarily switch employers for more ambitious careers.
Earlier this month, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, a Democrat, announced that her state would become the first in the country to offer free universal child care starting Nov. 1. The plan, which is expected to cost about $600 million in its first full year, builds on a program in the state that offered free child care to families making up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level. Money for the program will come from an early childhood education trust endowed with oil and gas tax revenue, as well as federal funding and other state contributions.
But whether there is the political will to institute any kind universal child care system across the country is an open question.
There is generally bipartisan support for making some form of child care more affordable, but universal care has been a harder sell for Americans. The cost to taxpayers of a new social service is one impediment. Another is the argument, advanced largely in conservative circles, that children should be at home with their mothers.
Still, the fact that Mr. Mamdani has put universal child care front and center in his campaign has given supporters of these policies a reason for optimism.
Mr. Mamdani’s proposal was “one of the first times in the U.S. that we’ve seen a political figure truly embrace universal child care,” said Elliot Haspel, an early childhood education expert at Capita, a family policy group.
Although he is skeptical that the federal government will enact a universal child care program in the near future, he said, “I think we could start building the momentum now.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
