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) Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the Trump administration has launched a McCarthyite assault on freedom of speech. The government, corporations, and institutions have censured, suspended, and fired workers from Jimmy Kimmel to the Washington Post’s only Black woman columnist Karen Attiah and others in almost every imaginable occupation for telling jokes, making statements, or posting critical comments on social media.
Even before Kirk’s assassination, the New McCarthyism was gaining steam. In one of the worst instances, Texas State University fired tenured professor Tom Alter for the crime of speaking at an online socialist conference. Far right grifter and self-declared “anti-communist cult leader” Karlyn Borysenko violated the conference’s protocols, recorded Alter’s speech, edited it to distort his comments, and shared her doctored video on social media, which then went viral.
President Kelly Damphousse responded by summarily firing Alter without due process, violating his First Amendment rights and academic freedom. Alter is a beloved teacher, author of the widely acclaimed book Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas, and a member of the Texas State Employee Union.
CounterPunch’s Ashley Smith here interviews Alter about his firing and the campaign to overturn his dismissal and reinstate him with full pay and benefits and without censure or restrictions.
Ashley Smith: You have just been fired from Texas State University for speaking at a socialist conference. What happened? What was the university’s justification for firing you? Has discipline or firing of this sort ever happened before? Isn’t this a threat to First Amendment rights and academic freedom for everyone?
Dr. Tom Alter: On September 7, I participated in the online Revolutionary Socialism Conference. I gave a talk during the session titled “Building Revolutionary Organization Today.” At the beginning of my talk, I identified myself as a member of Socialist Horizon and the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU). I consciously did not identify myself as a faculty member or employee of Texas State University (TXST) during my talk. I gave the talk over Zoom, from my home, on a Sunday morning, during my own time.
Unbeknownst to conference participants and in violation of the conference rules of no recording or streaming, an online social media grifter recorded the conference. This person is a self-described fascist with horribly antisemitic and anti-queer views. The next day the fascist grifter called a campaign for my firing from TXST.
Two days later, while I was at my son’s soccer practice, I received a text from a local San Marcos community activist group chat drawing my attention to TXST President Kelly Damphousse’s public statement announcing my immediate termination. That’s how I found out I was fired. Damphousse stated that he “was informed about controversial statements that were made by one of our faculty members at a conference” and accused me of “inciting violence.”
Upon seeing this I immediately returned home and found that I had been cut-off from my TXST email. I later found an email from the university Provost in my personal email notifying me of my termination. The provost’s email also refers to my participation “at a recent conference.”
After a review of the conference video, the university determined that I “have engaged in conduct that jeopardizes the health and safety of our university community. You have also engaged in conduct that reflects inappropriate and poor judgement as a faculty member at Texas State University.” The reasons outlined in the provost’s email are the University’s justifications for firing me.
Repression of academic freedom, even that of tenured professors, is not something new in the U.S. What makes my case different is that there was no due process, not even a predetermined sham process. I was a tenured professor at a public university; this entitles me to due process according to TXST policy and state law.
This is in addition to protections afforded to me and all Americans by federal Constitutional rights. My firing is a threat to everyone’s first amendment rights and specifically all educators’ academic freedom. If I can be fired without due process and in violation of my democratic rights, then all our democratic rights are in serious jeopardy.
What makes this threat to our rights even more alarming is that President Damphousse in citing the conference video in connection to my firing has capitulated to a self-described fascist. This erodes the basic underpinnings of a free and democratic society.
Ashley Smith: How have your co-workers, union, and students responded? What does your defense campaign look like? What has been the response from the university bosses to the outpouring of support for you and other targeted professors?
Dr. Tom Alter: While my firing by TXST was quick, the response of students to my firing was even quicker. I was fired on a Wednesday evening and on Thursday students spontaneously protested my firing on campus. Student-led protests on campus lasted for five school days, calling for my reinstatement and defense of free speech. The spontaneous student protests have subsided, but they have launched a long-term campaign in defense of free speech, which includes the demand “FREE DR. ALTER.”
My two unions, the TSEU and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also came to my immediate defense. The TSEU is a statewide union representing all employees of the state of Texas. The union quickly started circulating a petition calling for my reinstatement and has taken this campaign to campuses across Texas. The AAUP has provided legal assistance and statements of support.
Everyone, everywhere, join a union! If my firing results in increased union membership, that will be a win. Statements of solidarity and offers of support continue to pour in. They have come from academic associations and community organizations of all kinds. My email inbox is flooded with so many messages that I am unable to answer them. I want people to know that I have seen your messages, and they are keeping me going. Thank you.
Needless to say, members of Socialist Horizon were there at the beginning and put taking care of me and my family first. Now with the help of other socialist and working-class left organizations a broad united front national campaign is being organized. This campaign will not only defend me but anybody else facing politically motivated attacks from the right.
International solidarity has been extended to my campaign as well. For example, I received a message of support and solidarity sent from the flotilla currently on its way to provide humanitarian aid in Gaza.
As for the university bosses’ response to the vast amount of support and solidarity I have received in defense of due process, academic freedom, and democratic rights? Who knows. You will have to ask them and question their judgement as to why they sided with a fascist.
Ashley Smith: This seems to be part of a broader assault on higher education in Texas. Other professors have been disciplined and fired at different institutions. Is there a pattern to this? Who’s driving the attack and what is their aim?
Dr. Tom Alter: I agree my firing is part of a broader attack on higher education in Texas. A professor at Texas A&M was fired for teaching about gender identity. In the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, primary and secondary school educators in Texas have been targeted by state agencies for posting negative opinions of Kirk on their social media pages.
Students at public Texas universities, including TXST, have been expelled or forced to withdraw from school for using their free speech rights in opposition to public vigils for Kirk. This is only a rapid acceleration of long-standing attacks on free speech and diversity on college campuses in Texas.
During the past few years, university programs in Texas based on equality and diversity have been eliminated. And the Texas legislature has limited free speech on campus to only members of the university faculty, students, and staff. Though as we have seen in my case and those of student protesters, administrators still decide who actually gets free speech, even when we speak off campus.
There is a pattern to these assaults. The far-right conservatives who now govern Texas have a particular view of the world, one driven by capitalist reactionary ideas and profit. Their baseline of society is one that is naturally white, straight, patriarchal, and adherent to a deeply conservative form of Christianity. Others who do not fit this baseline are tolerated, and even accepted in certain circumstances, as long as they do not challenge this baseline.
Everything and everyone else are a threat that must be repressed. Hence, they find no contradiction in defending free speech for people calling for attacks on trans people, while denying free speech to students protesting the genocide of Palestinians.
Texas has long been a diverse and transnational space. Yet, during most of Texas’ history first as a republic and then as a U.S. state, it has been controlled by Anglo elites who concocted a one-sided, celebratory history of heroic Anglos taming a wilderness and triumphing over “savages” and non-white people to justify their rule.
Well, the far-right’s baseline does not reflect the reality of Texas today, which is incredibly diverse. And the heroic Anglo narrative of history has been exposed as a fabrication. Studies often recognize Houston as being the most diverse city in the U.S. in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, religion, and languages spoken. Other areas of Texas are not far behind in reflecting this diversity, though some areas do not.
I honestly love living in Texas because of its diversity—its people, food, and culture. Though Texas can also be cruel. Texas universities in recent years began to reflect the diverse reality of society in Texas and sought to meet the multifaceted needs of such a society. This became too much for the far-right to bear so they launched their assault on higher education. They aim to return Texas society to their baseline.
Ashley Smith: Your firing is part of a much larger attempt to transform higher education in this country. It began under the Biden administration with the repression of Palestine solidarity activism among professors, staff, and students. Trump has now turned that incipient McCarthyism into an attempt to purge the universities not just of left wing but also liberal professors and programs. What are they doing and why?
Dr. Tom Alter: The attack on higher education needs to be placed in context. Working-class and middle-class people in the U.S. are now suffering from high prices, high rents and mortgages, and a predatory health insurance system. The corollaries to this are increased attacks on women’s rights, queer people, immigrants, destruction of the environment, and a rise in police brutality especially against people of color.
Meanwhile, we are undergoing an incredible wealth transfer from working people to billionaires. This is due in part to U.S. imperialism beginning to lose its dominant position in the world economy to rival capitalists around the world. To maintain profit levels, capitalists have to plunder the working class.
What has been the role of the university in a free society? Public universities as classically liberal institutions are entrusted to be centers of education. They have also been at the forefront of scientific research and new technologies. To accomplish this, they must be open to a diverse array of people and ideas, with open debate, acceptance, tolerance, and free speech. They are not to be centers of indoctrination.
Universities have not always met this charge. Yet in recent decades, universities have made significant strides, mainly because of movements of workers and the oppressed. Students could now take courses in gender and women’s studies, Chicano studies, African American studies, and labor history. Universities have gone from being accessible to only the children of the wealthy and middle class to now being increasingly open to working-class students, though at the cost of crippling student loan debt.
All the while, the university served its primary function in a capitalist society of producing a professional and managerial middle class for capitalist production needs. With capitalism in crisis and a shrinking middle class, what then becomes the function of a university in a capitalist-based economy?
Through a bipartisan effort of both Democrats and Republicans, public universities are being run less as places of learning and more as a business. Many public universities have high acceptance rates with low graduation rates. The university receives tuition money with students receiving not a degree, but student debt.
With universities as centers of learning, open debate, tolerance, and free speech, the possibility exists that students might become sensitive to the suffering of other people and question an economy based on profit over people as well as the role of the U.S. military around the world. This does happen occasionally, as we witnessed with the large number of student protests against the genocide in Palestine in the spring of 2024.
University administrations with support from state governments and the Biden administration cracked down, many times violently, on campus protests against genocide. The struggle for a “Free Palestine,” while front and center and vitally important, has become more than a national liberation struggle in the Middle East. Just as the Black Civil Rights Movement was the center around which all other struggles of the 1960s revolved, the Palestinian liberation struggle today is the axis of fighting for free speech, against war, and for social, economic, and environmental justice.
Liberal Democrats like Biden are generally for diversity and tolerance. But at the same time are totally devoted to capitalism, so much so that when diversity and tolerance threaten capitalism, they toss diversity and tolerance out the window. We saw this in the Biden administration’s complete support and enabling of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians, including his support for cracking down on student protestors. Trump has no such liberal qualms. He has launched an open campaign to turn universities into centers of far-right indoctrination, purged of any dissenting beliefs. Any that resist face defunding.
In addition to the assault on higher education, my firing is also part of a broader international right-wing campaign of accusing people of inciting political violence as a way of repressing dissenting voices. We see accusations of inciting political violence thrown at everyone from the Irish hip-hop trio, Kneecap, because of their unwavering support of Palestinian liberation, to me, because of my support for working-class political organization.
Ashley Smith: How should faculty, staff, and students respond to this New McCarthyism? What traps should be avoided? How does resistance on campus fit into the broader resistance against Trump’s attempt to impose authoritarian rule in this country?
Dr. Tom Alter: We are witnessing an open assault on higher education and a march toward authoritarian rule. I obviously became a target in this march. I have always believed and practiced that we must use our rights, or we will lose our rights. Well, I used my rights and lost my job.
If there is a trap people could fall into, it is censoring themselves and not exercising their rights. If you do that, you have done the right’s job for them. We must not surrender our rights but use them collectively. I will say over and over again, join a union, especially on our campuses. The more people who join the labor movement, the more we can transform our unions into instruments of class struggle and liberation.
Resistance on campus is part of the broader resistance against attempts to impose authoritarian rule in the U.S. Universities due to their very nature are centers of free speech. The crackdown began when administrators targeted student, faculty, and staff speaking out and organizing against the genocide in Palestine on campus.
Now, after Kirk’s assassination, Trump, university bosses, and corporations are targeting faculty and students for exercising their free speech on a wide number of political issues. If we lose free speech, we lose freedom of the press and freedom of association as well as our ability to address grievances. This is a fight we cannot lose.
Ashley Smith: Finally, what can people do to support your struggle? And what can they do to support others facing discipline or termination?
Dr. Tom Alter: The outpouring of support for my struggle has been incredible. Large numbers of people, unions, and organizations rightfully see my struggle as part of a broader fight for democratic rights against the rising tide of fascism in the U.S. There are a couple of petitions that people can sign, one by the TSEU and another on Change.org. There is also a GoFundMe to keep my family going during this difficult time.
Statements of support and in defense of free speech are also highly welcomed from unions, academic associations, community groups, and political organizations. Please do the same for other faculty, staff, and students facing attacks. Every single fight for our rights is part of our collective struggle. Solidarity is the only way to win.
It is also very important that we get organized. Join a union. If a union does not exist at your workplace, organize one. Join a political organization you feel represents your beliefs. I am partial to socialist organizing that connects all the struggles of working-class people in a quest to build a society free of class division that’s genuinely democratic and meets human needs.
Overall, if you hear about a fight for economic, social, and environmental justice, join it. Our future depends on mass struggle for collective liberation here in the U.S. and throughout the world.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) Netanyahu and Trump Meet to Discuss Gaza Plans
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House for talks on Gaza’s postwar future, and as Israel’s international isolation has deepened. Several European countries recently announced they now recognized a Palestinian state.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Sept. 29. 2025
President Trump greeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Monday. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived on Monday at the White House, where he is scheduled to discuss with President Trump the latest U.S.-backed plans for postwar Gaza, which they hope could lead to resolving the two-year conflict.
It will be the fourth meeting between the leaders in Washington since Mr. Trump returned to office in January. Each meeting briefly raised hopes for a cease-fire in Gaza, but the fighting has ground on, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians.
This time, they will meet amid international efforts to develop specific proposals for governing Gaza once the war ends. The Trump administration is considering an idea pitched by Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, while France and several Arab governments have offered their own plans.
The meeting follows a week in which Israel’s international isolation deepened, as Britain, France and other European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, over Israeli objections.
A longtime champion of Israel, Mr. Trump, too, has voiced impatience with the war and has said he “will not allow” Israel to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, which many Palestinians hope will be part of a future state. But it is not clear what leverage Mr. Trump is willing to use if Mr. Netanyahu resists the latest proposal to end the war and usher in a new government for Gaza.
In previous negotiations, Mr. Netanyahu has rejected compromise and opted to press on with the war against Hamas. His far-right coalition allies hope to control Gaza indefinitely and rebuild Jewish settlements there.
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said he hoped Israel could “make it a go” on Mr. Trump’s proposal. “We’re working on it; it’s not been finalized yet,” he said in an interview with Fox News.
He suggested that Israel would be willing to grant amnesty to Hamas members if they ended the war and released the remaining hostages who were abducted to Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas led a surprise attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw hundreds taken captive.
Israel’s counterattack in Gaza has now killed over 65,000 people, including thousands of children, according to Gaza health officials. Their count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Here’s what else to know.
· Cautious optimism: Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that there was a “complicated negotiation” going on among Arab leaders, Israel and the Trump administration over plans for postwar Gaza. While expressing cautious optimism about a breakthrough, Mr. Vance added that a deal could always “get derailed at the very last minute.”
· Cease-fire negotiations: Hamas said on Sunday that it had yet to formally receive a copy of the latest cease-fire proposal. Negotiations have been at a standstill since Israel bombed Qatar on Sept. 9 in an attempt to assassinate Hamas’s top leadership in the Persian Gulf nation, a brazen attack that drew international condemnation.
· Latest fighting: Even as Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Trump discuss plans for postwar Gaza, Israeli forces continue to sweep through Gaza City, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee. Many have been displaced multiple times over the past two years, in a seemingly endless nightmare of fear, hunger and bombardment.
· International diplomacy: The war has shattered Israel’s global standing: Mr. Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court on allegations of war crimes; several of Israel’s longtime European allies recognized a Palestinian state over Israeli objections; and even ordinary Israelis traveling abroad encounter protests and harassment.
· Remaining hostages: Despite the toll on Gaza and its residents, the war in Gaza has not forced Hamas to surrender or to release the remaining hostages held in the territory. At least 20 living captives are still being held, according to Israel, along with the bodies of roughly 25 others.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) New Ideas Emerge to End Gaza Conflict and Govern After War
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Trump head into a meeting on Monday, new proposals are under discussion.
By Liam Stack and Adam Rasgon, Sept. 29, 2025
Palestinians fleeing Gaza City in September. Fighting has intensified as Israel proceeds with a plan to take over the major urban center. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
As President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel prepare to meet at the White House on Monday, several new proposals to end the fighting in Gaza and govern the territory are under discussion.
This year’s U.N. General Assembly was dominated by debate about the conflict and the future of the embattled territory. At the end of the sessions last week, President Trump sounded optimistic on reaching a deal to end the war.
But he has made similar pronouncements before, and any effort to stop the fighting still faces significant obstacles. Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas remain at odds over a number of central points, and fighting has intensified in recent weeks with an Israeli ground offensive to take over Gaza City.
Speaking at the United Nations on Friday, Mr. Netanyahu sounded determined to press ahead with the Gaza City campaign. Hamas said on Sunday that it had not received any new proposals from the mediators and that negotiations are at a standstill.
These are some of the latest plans to end the war, set up a new system of postwar governance and address the devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The Trump plan
Steve Witkoff, the U.S. envoy for peace missions, laid out the broad outlines of an American peace plan in a meeting with leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries at the U.N. last week.
Under the plan, Hamas would agree to return all living hostages and remains of former captives within 48 hours of the agreement, according to an Arab official and another person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues. Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence with Israel will be granted amnesty under the proposal, and those who want to leave will be guaranteed safe passage out of Gaza, the person familiar with the matter said. The Times of Israel reported earlier on the elements of the proposal.
The American proposal also includes a commitment from both sides to begin a new dialogue on peaceful coexistence, and a pledge that Israel will launch no further attacks on Qatar, according to a senior White House official.
Qatar, an important U.S. ally, has played a central role as mediator in negotiations to end the Gaza war alongside Egypt. Israel launched airstrikes on the Qatari capital, Doha, on Sept. 9 in a failed effort to assassinate a group of Hamas officials — a strike that angered U.S. officials.
But whether Mr. Trump can bring the war to an end will probably depend on how much he is willing to push Mr. Netanyahu, who has adamantly refused to back off his military campaign until Israel achieves its goals. He has also grown more defiant as multiple Western countries last week recognized a Palestinian state.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel and the United States were still drawing up the plan, and that he did not want to discuss the details yet to avoid pre-empting those conversations.
“We’re working on it; it’s not been finalized yet,” he said. “I hope we can make it a go.”
The Blair plan
One proposal calls for Gaza to be governed by an entity it calls the Gaza International Transitional Authority. Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, may be considered for a role overseeing Gaza after the fighting ends, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The Transitional Authority would be backed by a multinational security force, which would provide security at border crossings and “prevent the resurgence of armed groups, disrupt weapons smuggling and neutralize asymmetric threats,” according to a version of the proposal viewed by The Times.
The Blair proposal also addresses Palestinian fears of permanent displacement from Gaza. It says the Transitional Authority would be empowered to issue “protected departure certificates” so that people who wish to leave Gaza will be guaranteed the right to return to their homes in the future.
The version of the proposal viewed by The Times did not mention Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that ignited the Gaza war. But it did say the Palestinian Authority, a rival government to Hamas that administers parts of the West Bank, would have a limited role in governing Gaza. The Authority is more moderate than Hamas and cooperates with Israel on security.
Israeli officials have long criticized the Palestinian Authority, accusing it of corruption, mismanagement and fomenting hostility toward Israel. This proposal calls for significant reforms to the Authority, including its security practices.
It adds that the proposed Transitional Authority and the Palestinian Authority should make decisions “consistent with the eventual unifying of all the Palestinian territory under the” Palestinian Authority.
The French-Saudi plan
A third proposal, which gained the support of 142 countries at the General Assembly, is a plan known as the New York declaration, an effort led by France and Saudi Arabia.
It calls for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and an international security force organized by the U.N. to step in. Hamas would be banned from governing Gaza and would agree to hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.
The proposal calls for postwar Gaza to be governed by a transitional committee made up of technocrats that would operate under the umbrella of the Palestinian Authority. The authority would agree to hold elections within a year of the cease-fire.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) Will the Palestinian Authority Play a Role in Gaza’s Future?
The body, led by Mahmoud Abbas, administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and considers itself the rightful government of a future Palestinian state.
By Talya Minsberg, Sept. 29, 2025
Mahmoud Abbas, president of Palestinian Authority, delivered virtual remarks a day before the official start of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Monday. Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Trump on Monday, for ending the Gaza war and governing the territory afterward are circulating. One central question is whether the Palestinian Authority would play any role.
The authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and considers itself the rightful government of any future Palestinian state.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords, a series of agreements signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. It was intended as a temporary administration on the way to what many hoped would be the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state.
It administers areas of the West Bank where Palestinians live and cooperates with Israel on security. But relations with Israel have been fraught.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority’s president, delivered a video address to the U.N. General Assembly last week in which he accused Israel of committing “war crimes” in Gaza.
He spoke by video because the Trump administration denied him and his delegation entry visas to attend the Assembly in New York on national security grounds.
Who is Mahmoud Abbas?
Mr. Abbas, 89, has been president of the Palestinian Authority since 2005. He was first elected to a four-year term, but there have been no Palestinian national elections since 2006.
Critics say the administration under Mr. Abbas’s leadership is corrupt and authoritarian. Recent opinion polls have shown that most Palestinians want him to resign.
Israeli officials have long accused the Authority of mismanagement and fomenting hostility toward Israel.
“The Palestinian Authority is corrupt to the core,” Mr. Netanyahu said in his own address to the U.N. last week.
Supporters of the Palestinian Authority say that it is no more corrupt than other governments in the Arab world and that the Israeli occupation hampers its ability to succeed.
What does recognition of a Palestinian state mean?
This month, a number of countries, including Israeli allies France, Britain and Canada, recognized Palestinian statehood. They joined nearly 150 nations that have recently recognized a Palestinian state or are expected to do so soon.
The move, while mostly a symbolic act supporting Palestinian self-determination, deepened the isolation of Israel. Both Israel and its allies in Washington oppose the recognition of Palestinian statehood, describing it as a reward for Hamas, the Islamist group that has long controlled Gaza and which led the 2023 attack on Israel that set off the Gaza war.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are rivals for leadership of the Palestinian people.
Israeli officials, angered by the recent international endorsements of Palestinian statehood, have suggested that Israel could annex at least part of the occupied West Bank in retaliation.
But Mr. Trump said last week that he would not allow Israel to do that.
What role could the Palestinian Authority play in a postwar Gaza?
Any effort to end the war in Gaza still faces significant obstacles. Israel and Hamas are at odds over central sticking points, and Israel escalated its military campaign in recent weeks with a ground offensive to take over Gaza City.
Mr. Abbas has called Gaza an integral part of a future Palestinian state, and said last week that his government was willing to take responsibility for the enclave. He pledged that Hamas would have no part in governing the territory after the war ends.
Among several new proposals to end the fighting in Gaza and oversee the territory afterward, one proposes that the Palestinian Authority would have a limited role in governing.
But given the criticisms of the Authority as corrupt, this proposal calls for significant changes to the body, including its security practices.
Another proposal, known as the New York declaration, suggests that postwar Gaza could be governed by a transitional committee operating under the umbrella of the Palestinian Authority, which would hold elections within a year of a cease-fire.
Hamas said on Sunday that it had not received any new proposals from mediators and that negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza are at a standstill.
What is the Palestinian Authority’s relationship with Hamas?
A deep feud has long divided the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
In 2006, Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections, narrowly defeating Mr. Abbas’s rival Fatah movement. The following year, Hamas violently ousted the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority from the Gaza Strip, seizing full control.
Various attempts at reconciliation between the factions have failed.
Mr. Abbas has condemned the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, and says Palestinians want a modern state and a peaceful transition of power. There is no place for an armed Hamas in that vision, he said, calling on the group to lay down its weapons.
Hamas rejected Mr. Abbas’s assertion that the group would have no role in a Gaza government after the war, calling it “an infringement on our Palestinian people’s inherent right to self-determination.”
Hamas also said it will not lay down its weapons “as long as the occupation continues.”
Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) The Man Behind Trump’s Push for an All-Powerful Presidency
Russell T. Vought spent years drawing up plans to expand presidential power and shrink federal bureaucracy. Now he is moving closer to making that vision a reality, threatening to erode checks and balances.
By Coral Davenport, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 29, 2025
Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, has exerted his influence over nearly every corner of President Trump’s Washington with his command of the levers of the federal budget. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, was preparing the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal this spring when his staff got some surprising news: Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team was unilaterally axing items that Mr. Vought had intended to keep.
Mr. Vought, a numbers wonk who rarely raises his voice, could barely contain his frustration, telling colleagues that he felt sidelined and undermined by the haphazard chaos of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, according to six people with knowledge of his comments who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
“We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the pieces later,” Mr. Vought told his staff during one flash of irritation, according to three of those people. Mr. Vought’s spokeswoman, Rachel Cauley, denied that he made those comments, and that he felt frustrated by Mr. Musk.
This had not been Mr. Vought’s plan.
Mr. Vought, who also directed the White House Office of Management and Budget in President Trump’s first term, had spent four years in exile from power. He worked through Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidency from an old rowhouse near the Capitol, where he complained of pigeons infesting his ceiling and coordinated with other Trump loyalists to draw up sweeping, detailed plans for a comeback.
He had carefully analyzed mistakes from the first term. And he had laid out steps to achieve the long-sought conservative goal of a president with dramatically expanded authority over the executive branch, including the power to cut off spending, fire employees, control independent agencies and deregulate the economy.
Mr. Musk, who spent more than $250 million to help elect Mr. Trump, had celebrity, access to the president and political capital that the budget director could never hope for.
But Mr. Vought (pronounced “vote”) had something Mr. Musk did not: He had done his homework.
In the months since Mr. Musk fell out with the president, Mr. Vought has at last begun to put his plans into action — remaking the presidency, block by block, by restoring powers weakened after the Nixon administration. His efforts are helping Mr. Trump exert authority more aggressively than any modern president, and are threatening an erosion of the longstanding checks and balances in America’s constitutional system.
Now, as the government heads toward a shutdown when federal funding lapses on Tuesday, Mr. Vought, 49, is leveraging the moment to further advance his goals of slashing agencies and purging employees, with his office telling agencies to prepare for mass firings unless Congress can strike a deal to keep the government open.
The ultimatum follows a string of achievements for Mr. Vought.
This summer, he pressured lawmakers to enact his plan to cancel $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting that they had previously approved — an unusual bow by Congress to the White House. The new law claimed another prize for conservatives: the death of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. And a deal Mr. Vought cut with House Republicans helped secure passage of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy law that slashed spending on Medicaid and food stamps.
He has spearheaded a push to erase hundreds of regulations on the environment, health, transportation and food and worker safety, telling Mr. Trump at an August cabinet meeting that his efforts had led to 245 deregulatory initiatives this year. He has asserted White House power over independent agencies like the Federal Reserve, championing an executive order that forced them to submit their regulatory actions to his office for approval.
As the acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency charged with enforcing rules to protect people from predatory financial practices, he halted nearly all of the agency’s work, and sought to fire 90 percent of its staff.
At the heart of Mr. Vought’s plan, associates say, is the intentional engineering of a legal battle over Congress’s power to decide how government money is spent, potentially creating a new legal precedent for the president to block spending on any programs and policies he dislikes.
The next step in the fight is a legally untested maneuver in which the Trump administration would cancel another $4.9 billion in foreign aid spending — this time without congressional approval. The gambit, known as a “pocket rescission,” involves the White House eliminating the spending unless Congress votes to stop it by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
The threat has enraged many lawmakers, including some Republicans: Senator Susan Collins, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, called it illegal. But as the deadline has neared, they have done nothing to stop it. Mr. Vought is confident that the White House would win a Supreme Court battle over the moves to stop spending, according to his associates.
“He is lining up the billiards shots, getting each ball in place, one by one, for each consecutive move,” said Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist.
For the leaders of Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, Mr. Vought is seen as the disciplined architect who channeled the passion of MAGA into an actionable policy blueprint. The slain activist Charlie Kirk, whose podcast was one of many where Mr. Vought regularly shared his views with the Republican base, called Mr. Vought “an absolute rock star.”
To many legal experts, Mr. Vought’s work is a threat to the foundations of democracy.
“One of the main sources of power that Congress has over the executive branch is the budget,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a law professor at Georgetown University. “If the executive branch isn’t controlled by the power of the purse, then there is very little that will control the President.”
She added: “It’s a fundamental challenge to liberty for every single person in America.”
Mr. Vought, who declined through his spokeswoman to be interviewed, sees it differently. He said in a speech earlier this month that his mission was to bring to heel an unelected federal bureaucracy he likened to a “cartel working behind closed doors.”
“We have now been embarked on deconstructing this administrative state,” he said. “Step after step, it’s to move quickly, trying to think through what the founders would have done in the circumstances, and be aggressive.”
Over the years, Mr. Vought has made clear how he views his targets. He has said the Education Department promotes “woke-rot” propaganda like “grooming minors for so-called gender transition.” That the Federal Reserve has “been wrong for decades.” That the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development “actively embarrass the United States.” That the Internal Revenue Service targets “struggling families in a craven effort to sustain the broader bureaucracy’s radical progressive agenda.” And, in a remark captured on video unearthed by ProPublica that stung many in Washington, he said he wanted federal employees to be “in trauma.”
Once the budget director has the power to starve those government agencies, Mr. Vought has said, they can wither away. “We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said on Mr. Kirk’s podcast.
MAGA’s ‘Bulldog’
Mr. Vought started envisioning a blueprint to slash the federal government long before Mr. Trump was a Republican.
He grew up the youngest of seven children in a religious blue-collar family in Trumbull, Conn. His father, a Marine Corps veteran, was a union electrician, and his mother was a public school teacher.
In Mr. Vought’s telling, he grew up watching his parents dragged down by big government.
“My parents worked really long hours to put me through school,” he said at his first Senate confirmation hearing. “But they also worked long hours to pay for the government in their lives, and I have often wondered what they would have been free to build and give without such a high burden.”
After graduating from Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in Illinois, Mr. Vought went to Washington to work for Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, a Republican champion of fiscal austerity.
Mr. Gramm recalled his young staff member as prodigiously hardworking, attending law school by night while working by day to help his boss shrink the government.
“Russ worked for me as a child, and I’m proud of what he’s doing now,” said Mr. Gramm, who retired from the Senate in 2002.
Mr. Vought went on to direct budget policy for House Republicans during the rise of the Tea Party movement, when populist demand for smaller government propelled a wave of hard-line conservatives into Washington.
It was not a given that he would join the first Trump administration. Mr. Vought, who friends say is deeply driven by his faith and often leads adult Bible study classes at his Baptist church, considered opting out of Washington to attend seminary and become a pastor. In 2017, he heeded the call of the White House.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Vought argued that the president had the power to block federal spending Congress had approved. He was part of a group of White House officials who froze military spending for Ukraine in defiance of Congress, paving a path to the president’s impeachment.
He also helped come up with the idea of using emergency powers to build a border wall without Congressional approval, and pushed an executive order that could have enabled the president to easily fire tens of thousands of career civil servants.
The budget office was eventually forced to restore the Ukraine money, and the other moves were reversed by the Biden administration.
After the 2020 election, Mr. Vought started the Center for Renewing America, a think tank devoted to sustaining Mr. Trump’s policies.
The clawing of either rats or pigeons in his office walls was so loud that it distracted visitors, according to a recent book, “Mad House." But Mr. Vought remained focused on his mission.
In 2022, he released a 104-page “shadow budget,” a prescription to remove “the scourge of woke and weaponized bureaucracy aimed at the American people”: deep cuts to Medicaid, foreign aid, scientific research and other programs.
Outraged when Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, cut a deal with Mr. Biden to raise the debt ceiling, Mr. Vought pushed House Republicans to take the extraordinary step of ousting their leader.
Mr. Vought was a constant presence in the group text thread of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line conservatives who toppled Mr. McCarthy — bucking them up and pushing them to take what felt like an enormous political risk, said former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the effort.
“When people got scared or concerned about political impact, committee assignments, he was always there, strongly encouraging them,” Mr. Gaetz said. “He was instilling backbone in people.”
Mr. Vought’s public comments began to take on a more hard-line tilt. His think tank published papers establishing a rationale for why it would be lawful to deploy troops on U.S. soil, and advocating the elimination of the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.
Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser whose “War Room” podcast is popular with the base, declared him “MAGA’s Bulldog.”
Back to the White House
After Mr. Trump won a second term, Mr. Vought devoted himself to preparing for a do-over — one that was bigger, bolder and, crucially, lasting.
Eyeing his next role, Mr. Vought described how the White House budget director would be critical in transforming the federal government. “Presidents use the O.M.B. to tame the bureaucracy, the administrative state,” he told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson days after the 2024 election.
Mr. Vought’s research was featured in Project 2025, the policy blueprint prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation for Mr. Trump’s return to office. Mr. Vought also drafted potential executive orders.
But tensions emerged soon after Mr. Musk parachuted into Washington with a mandate to upend the federal bureaucracy.
Mr. Vought was outraged when DOGE sowed chaos by sending out an email requiring federal workers to detail five accomplishments each week or lose their jobs, said three people with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Vought supported purging federal workers, but complained that the email had skirted the legal process for personnel matters, creating what he saw as needless liability.
While Mr. Vought has called for the abolition of the Education Department, he was annoyed when DOGE moved to dismantle the agency’s data office, which tracks student academic performance, according to two people familiar with the events. The administration needed the data to inform efforts to discourage race-based college admissions, cut certain programs for poor and disabled students, and promote charter schools, these people said.
Mr. Vought’s spokeswoman, Ms. Cauley, called the accounts of those episodes “false.” Mr. Musk and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Vought later restored portions of the office, but with limited staffing. The Education Department has posted job openings to refill some of the positions.
“DOGE would have been far more effective from day one had they bothered to ask Russ and team how to achieve their goals,” said Joe Grogan, a friend of Mr. Vought’s who led the White House Domestic Policy Council in the first Trump administration.
Now, in the post-Musk era, Mr. Vought appears to be relishing his moment.
He works long hours and weekends in his suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, where he oversees a staff of more than 500.
On the wall is a photo of his favorite president, Calvin Coolidge, the farm boy and small-town mayor historians say most purely embodied the conservative principles of small government and fiscal austerity.
Around his home in a Virginia suburb, his neighbors — including former federal workers who lost their jobs under the Trump administration — have planted lawn signs that read “We Support Our Federal Employees.”
In the White House, Mr. Vought is not seen as a part of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, according to four people with knowledge of the dynamics. He regularly quotes the Bible and never curses — a sharp contrast with a president who sometimes refers to Christians in the third person. But people familiar with the relationship between the two men say that the president recognizes in Mr. Vought something that he highly values: a seasoned loyalist who knows how to use the federal budget to deliver what Mr. Trump wants.
“Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end weaponized government,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement when nominating Mr. Vought.
Now Mr. Vought is building the case to achieve one of his primary objectives: securing the president’s authority to block congressionally approved spending on programs he dislikes.
To that end, Mr. Vought is laying the groundwork for a legal battle over the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, enacted by Congress in the wake of President Richard Nixon’s moves to block agency spending he opposed.
Mr. Vought, who says the law is unconstitutional, would like to see it overturned.
That goal has driven him to his current “pocket rescissions” package.
Mr. Vought’s friends say that his actions are designed to provoke a lawsuit from the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, which has said the pocket rescission is illegal and “would cede Congress’s power of the purse.”
“Russ absolutely believes he is on sound legal footing and that he will be vindicated at the Supreme Court,” Mr. Grogan said.
Edda Emmanuelli Perez, the general counsel of the Government Accountability Office, disagreed, saying in an interview: “In order to not spend the money, the laws would have to be changed. And the president does not have the unilateral power to change the laws.”
Rob Fairweather, who spent 42 years at the Office of Management and Budget and wrote a book about how it operates, said there is reason for Mr. Vought to have confidence in a legal victory.
“What he’s doing is radical, but it’s well thought out,” Mr. Fairweather said. “He’s had all these years to plan. He’s looked clearly at the authorities and boundaries that are there, and is pushing past them on the assumption that at least some of it will hold up in the courts.”
Mr. Vought is already looking forward to that outcome, declaring on Glenn Beck’s show this spring: “We will have a much smaller bureaucracy as a result of it.”
Stacy Cowley and Charlie Savage contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) ‘I’m From Here!’: U.S. Citizens Are Ending Up in Trump’s Dragnet
As immigration agents take a more aggressive approach, they have stopped and in some cases detained American citizens.
By Jazmine Ulloa, Allison McCann and Jennifer Medina,
Sept. 29, 2025
Jason Brian Gavidia, an American citizen, standing where he was detained by ICE agents in Montebello, Calif., in June. Philip Cheung for The New York Times
U.S. citizens, many of them Latino men, have been stopped and in some cases taken into custody by law enforcement officers who are carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown and who suspect the men are living in the country illegally.
While many of those detained have immediately declared their U.S. citizenship to officers, they have routinely been ignored, according to interviews with the men, their lawyers and court documents. In some cases they have been handcuffed, kept in holding cells and immigration facilities overnight, and in at least two cases held without access to a lawyer or even a phone call.
How many U.S. citizens have been swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps is difficult to say. No comprehensive log of such encounters is available from the federal government, and immigration agents are not required to document stops of citizens.
A review by The New York Times of publicly reported cases and court records found that since January, at least 15 U.S. citizens have been arrested or detained and questioned about their citizenship by immigration agents or local law enforcement officers enlisted to work with the federal authorities.
In late January, Julio Noriega, 54, of Chicago, had been handing out copies of his résumé to local businesses in Berwyn, Ill., when ICE officers approached him as he walked out of a Jiffy Lube auto service shop.
They handcuffed him and loaded him into a van, without allowing him to explain he was a citizen, according to a motion filed in the Federal District Court for Northern Illinois. He was released about 10 hours later, the court filing states.
Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, was born and raised in West Palm Beach, Fla., where he lives with his mother and two brothers.
He was on his way to work with his mother and two friends in May when troopers from the Florida Highway Patrol stopped them in their employer’s pickup truck for what the agency said was a “commercial motor vehicle inspection.” Initially, Mr. Laynez-Ambrosio was calm, he recalled in an interview. But the situation escalated as troopers learned that others in the car were undocumented and ordered everyone out.
When no one got out of the vehicle, the troopers began to pull the three men out. At one point a trooper fired a Taser at one of them.
Mr. Laynez-Ambrosio, recording on his phone, repeatedly told the officers, “I’m from here!”
“You’ve got no rights here. You’re illegal, brother,” a trooper is heard saying. In Florida, a new state law requires all local and state law enforcement agencies, including the Highway Patrol, to participate in immigration enforcement.
All three men were taken to a nearby Border Patrol facility, and though Mr. Laynez-Ambrosio continued to say he was a citizen, he was held there for about six hours.
Asked about the U.S. citizens identified by The Times, the Department of Homeland Security defended its actions as “highly targeted.”
“If and when we do encounter individuals subject to arrest, our law enforcement are trained to ask a series of well-determined questions to determine status and removability,” Tricia McLaughlin, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Federal officers’ tactics remain a source of contention in the courts. This summer, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that the roving patrols are targeting Latinos and violating the Fourth Amendment, which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” A federal judge in Los Angeles ordered a halt to stops based on a person’s apparent race or ethnicity, or other factors that suggest they are Latino, such as speaking Spanish or accented English.
But this month, the Supreme Court put the order on hold. The lawsuit will still make its way though the lower courts and may end up back at the Supreme Court. In the meantime, federal agents in and around Los Angeles will not be constrained by the lower court’s finding that such stops were unconstitutional.
Immigration enforcement agents have for decades focused on workplace raids or targeted unauthorized immigrants in order to arrest them for deportation. But during some immigration sweeps in heavily Latino communities, particularly in Southern California, federal agents have roamed the streets, courthouses and workplaces demanding proof of citizenship from residents. The roving patrols and impromptu interrogations have been a striking departure from the understanding that the Constitution allows citizens to remain silent and places limits on who officers can question, hold and detain.
As videos of these encounters have spread online, many Latino men and women who are citizens have begun to carry their passports as they go about their daily lives, fearful that they too will be stopped and questioned by immigration agents.
A report by the Cato Institute found that a substantial number of ICE actions have targeted workplaces and neighborhoods that are heavily Latino. One in five of the agency’s arrests has been of a Latino resident with no criminal past or removal order, according to Cato, a prominent libertarian think tank, which analyzed ICE arrest records obtained through the Deportation Data Project.
In upholding a lower-court ruling against the government, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit cited the experience of Jason Brian Gavidia, 29, who was born in California, the son of Salvadoran and Colombian immigrants. Mr. Gavidia, who refurbishes old cars, was raised in East Los Angeles, where Latinos make up the overwhelming majority of the population.
According to videos of the encounter, interviews and court records, officers did not identify themselves as they entered his auto business in Montebello, Calif., in June, masked and with guns drawn. They wrestled another owner, Javier Ramirez, 32, to the ground, holding him at gunpoint, and pushed Mr. Gavidia against a fence.
“The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American — and they repeatedly ignored his answer: ‘I am an American,’” the ruling stated.
The officers, who were from Customs and Border Protection, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, took Mr. Ramirez away in a van, driving him around for hours before taking him to a federal detention center downtown, according to a statement he submitted to the court. Mr. Ramirez did not speak to a lawyer or any family member for three days, he said in an interview.
Asked about the men’s cases, D.H.S. has said that Mr. Gavidia interfered with their enforcement operations and that Mr. Ramirez assaulted officers. But Mr. Gavidia was never charged, and a charge against Mr. Ramirez was dropped. Security videos of the incident reviewed by The Times do not show Mr. Ramirez assaulting officers.
In several of the cases, D.H.S. officials told The Times that the citizens assaulted officers; prosecutors have not pursued charges in any of those incidents.
As Mr. Trump campaigned for re-election, promising to carry out the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, he often cited as a model a 1950s initiative named after a racial slur, “Operation Wetback.” In the decades since, federal courts have ruled that immigration agents cannot detain people without having a specific, factual basis for believing a person is in the country illegally.
The Supreme Court emergency ruling earlier this month effectively allows agents to stop anyone on suspicion of being an immigrant living in the United States illegally.
George Retes Jr., 25, a U.S. Army veteran who works as a security guard at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, Calif., said he had been trying to report to work in July as people protested an immigration sweep. He said that he tried to explain to officers that he was not involved with the demonstration and needed to get inside, but that he received conflicting instructions from the officers. He said he got back in his car and tried to reverse as some officers directed, but protesters were massing behind his vehicle.
Federal officers then deployed tear gas on the crowd, broke his windshield, cast pepper spray on his face and took him into custody, he said. “As they’re walking me away, I’m telling them: ‘I’m a U.S. citizen. I’m American. I’m a veteran. I didn’t do anything wrong,’” he said.
He was held for three days without a phone call.
In an essay published this month in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mr. Retes reiterated that he was wrongfully detained and warned that what happened to him could happen to “any one of us.” In a response to the essay, the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X that the arrest of Mr. Retes during the raid was “for assault.” A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said they filed a complaint but later asked the court to dismiss the case, which it did.
In August, a 15-year-old U.S. citizen with developmental disabilities was sitting in a car with his mother outside a high school in Los Angeles as his cousin registered for classes when agents surrounded him at gunpoint. The 15-year-old was handcuffed for several minutes before agents let him go, according to an interview with his lawyer and a claim filed with federal immigration authorities.
Asked about the case, immigration officials said they had been in pursuit of a man from El Salvador with gang ties. In their claim, lawyers for the boy, identified only as B.G., contend they racially profiled a Mexican American citizen and put his family in danger.
The tactics and the results have raised questions even among some who support the administration’s overall approach on immigration.
“If you’re going to be aggressive on deportations in the interior, you cannot make a mistake,” said Daniel Garza, a former police officer who backed Mr. Trump and heads the Libre Initiative, a conservative group focused on Latino voter outreach. “If people are being stopped solely because of the way they look, that is a problem.”
Leonardo Garcia Venegas, who was born in Florida, said that in May he tried to keep going about his work at a construction site in Foley, Ala., when he saw immigration agents shove his brother, who is undocumented, to the floor.
He pulled out his phone to film and was quickly tackled to the ground by other officers, Mr. Venegas said. They kept him in handcuffs for hours, claiming his identity documentation was fake, he said. A spokeswoman for D.H.S. said that Mr. Venegas tried to physically obstruct immigration officers; no charges were filed and he said he stood filming from several feet away.
More than a month later, at another construction site in Fairhope, he was confronted again, Mr. Venegas said. This time, agents didn’t handcuff him, he said, but they again questioned his citizenship, escorted him out and held him for at least half an hour.
“I cannot work in peace anymore,” Mr. Venegas said in an interview. “I am always nervous.”
Indeed, for Americans caught up in the immigration dragnet, those encounters can remain visceral memories, even as they move on with their lives.
Miguel Angel Ponce Jr., 33, said he still feels paranoid after what happened to him in July. Mr. Ponce was driving to work in Houston when, he said, he was pulled over by ICE agents just minutes from his house. He was not told why he was being arrested, only that he looked like someone they were looking for. He was cuffed, placed in the back of their car and driven to a parking lot nearby, where he remained for over two hours.
A D.H.S. spokeswoman said Mr. Ponce was “temporarily taken into custody by mistake,” adding that once the agents confirmed he was not the person they were after, “they took him back to his residence and apologized for the confusion.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) She Was Fired for a Comment on Her Private Facebook Account
A look at how one state has turbocharged the crackdown on anyone who has criticized Charlie Kirk after his death.
By Sabrina Tavernise, Reporting from Muncie, Ind., Sept. 29, 2025
Suzanne Swierc was fired from her job as the director of health and advocacy at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. Kaiti Sullivan for The New York Times
Two days after Charlie Kirk was killed, Suzanne Swierc, an employee at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., woke up to a cascade of missed calls, texts and voice mail messages from numbers she did not know.
“They were calling me all kinds of names, threatening my job,” Ms. Swierc said. “It was every awful curse word under the sun.”
“I immediately texted my supervisor, and I said, ‘I think I have a situation.’”
Ms. Swierc (pronounced swirtz) discovered that the barrage stemmed from something she had posted on Facebook the day before: “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” Her Facebook settings were private, but one of her followers must have taken a screen shot and sent it on without her knowledge.
Within hours, Libs of TikTok, a social media account known for transphobic content and smear campaigns against schools, hospitals and libraries, posted it publicly on its popular X account. Ms. Swierc got her first message 19 minutes later. Elon Musk posted about it. So did Rudy Giuliani. Indiana’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita, also mentioned it on X, calling her comments “vile,” and saying that they “should make people question someone’s ability to be in a leadership position.”
When someone from a Buffalo area code left a voice mail message stating Ms. Swierc’s home address and saying maybe she “should get the same treatment as Charlie,” Ms. Swierc called the police. Eventually, the post would get 6.9 million views.
The experience, Ms. Swierc said, affected her physically.
“I had the hardest time moving around my house that morning,” she said. “My brain was not processing things. Space and time became kind of their own thing. I wanted to vomit.”
She added: “September 12th was one of the worst days of my life.”
Five days later, Ms. Swierc was fired from her job as the director of health and advocacy at Ball State, one of more than 145 people around the country who’ve lost their jobs for posting negatively about Mr. Kirk. Mr. Rokita, the attorney general, noted the firing approvingly.
“Ball State’s legal analysis was also 100% correct here,” he said on X on Sept. 17, the day she was fired. He then listed other institutions of higher and lower education in the state and said they “should take notice,” and added, “We are waiting.”
The rash of firings, which are raising questions about the limits of free speech, has been supercharged in Indiana, where top officials have been channeling public anger about posts that criticize Mr. Kirk into a kind of internet hotline, where submissions — that can include someone’s name, social-media posts and employer’s contact information — are displayed publicly on a government website.
The portal, called Eyes on Education, was started early last year as a way for parents of school children to submit examples of “inappropriate materials.” The concept spread to public universities later that year, after the passage of a law intended to take on liberal bias in higher education. Ball State University has its own portal, EthicsPoint, where students can anonymously report professors for biased behavior.
Ms. Swierc’s was the first submission in the Charlie Kirk section of Eyes on Education. As of Saturday, 32 others in education were listed as targets for firing. Mr. Rokita declined to be interviewed for this article.
‘People Are Afraid’
The firing compelled Sarah Vitale to get involved. An associate professor of philosophy at Ball State, Ms. Vitale is part of a local progressive political group called Muncie Resists, and is the secretary of the American Association of University Professors at Ball State, an advocacy group for university employees.
University faculty in Indiana were already on edge after last year’s law exposed them to anonymous complaints. They have started to accompany one another to meetings with human resources, in a sort of buddy system. Ms. Vitale went with Ms. Swierc to hers. But while she knew people were nervous, she was unprepared for what came next. When she and her colleagues began to circulate a petition opposing the firing, many were too afraid to put their names on it. Some gave only their first names. Others said they’d agree only if others in their department did.
“People are afraid,” Ms. Vitale said in an interview last week. “They’re afraid for their jobs.”
The fear is a measure of how much pressure higher education is under in Indiana. Another set of changes, which drew little notice because it was tucked into this year’s budget bill, eliminates programs that draw fewer than 15 graduates in a major. One colleague, a chair of a department that is close to the 15-student threshold, messaged Ms. Vitale to say that he was concerned that signing would lead to retaliation, and his first responsibility was to his faculty and their livelihoods.
A colleague in a different state who serves with Ms. Vitale in the leadership of the Radical Philosophy Association took their name off its website, as did several people in the A.A.U.P. at Ball State because they were worried about doxxing by outside groups. Ms. Vitale said she was fine with keeping her name public, but in the end all of their names came down.
As of Sunday, the petition against her firing had 83 signatures, out of about 3,000 full-time faculty and staff.
In interviews, faculty members said they opposed the firing, even if they didn’t want to be on the record saying it. But the reaction among the broader public was mixed. The Ball State announcement, which was viewed millions of times on X, got 25,000 likes.
A number of conservatives in Indiana made the argument that the left had been canceling people for years, so in some ways, they created the norm — and the right is merely using it. They also said it’s not so unusual for political leaders to involve themselves in cancellations. Democratic political leaders called for Donald Trump to be cut off from Twitter, and celebrated when he was.
“I do not see this as Republicans going after the left,” said Charlie Mandziara, the president of the College Republicans at Ball State. He said the calls for the firings were an effort to tamp down political violence, which inflammatory social media posts, he said, only encourage.
Mr. Mandziara, a 19-year-old sophomore, said that most of his friends who are not conservative had been respectful about Mr. Kirk’s death, including a fraternity brother who is the head of the College Democrats. But he did see people on campus laughing about Mr. Kirk after the killing, and saw comments on social media that implied he deserved it.
“That encouragement, if left rhetorically unopposed, can devolve into further violence,” he said, adding, of Ms. Swierc, “the university made the correct decision in letting her go.”
But others disagreed with the firing, including Michael Hicks, a former army officer and veteran who is a prominent Indiana conservative.
Mr. Hicks, an economics professor at Ball State, said he broke down for the first time in 35 years of teaching while talking to students in class the day after Mr. Kirk was killed. The moment was a shock for students too. Some on campus compared it to this generation’s 9/11. But in the days since, what could have been a chance to teach students about the First Amendment, why it is essential to honor it, and how to fight against the undertow of anger and revenge, turned into something else.
“We chose to indulge the most base motivations of those who just want to see people fired,” he said, “because we lacked the courage to say that we defend speech with which we disagree.”
He said students asked him to mentor a chapter of Turning Point USA, which was led by Mr. Kirk, at Ball State back when it was first starting. Initially, he was pleased, but when he visited Turning Point’s webpage, he recoiled. He found a “watch list” of liberal professors.
“I told the student that I thought conservative voices on campus needed a bit of boosting, but that I didn’t work with people who made enemies lists,” he said. “It’s just a different version of cancel culture.”
‘I Only Feel Anger’
Ms. Swierc is still struggling to understand the reaction to her post. She had said she could not be friends with someone who thought Mr. Kirk was wonderful, but her post also said she believed in the Resurrection and was praying for his soul. She said she was trying to say that two things could be true: His death was a tragedy, and he was more conflict-entrepreneur than peacemaker.
On Sept. 22, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on her behalf against the university president, Geoffrey Mearns, on the grounds that her firing violated her First Amendment rights. Her last full paycheck came on Friday, and her health insurance ends Sept. 30.
A university spokesman declined to comment.
I asked if she regretted what she said, after all that had happened. She said no.
“I am trying to start talking about what is good and right and what is not,” she said. “I feel that we’re reaching a point in the timeline of affairs in the United States where it’s time to say something.”
That night, a vigil for Mr. Kirk was held on campus. A crowd of about 100 young men and women filed into John J. Pruis Hall. A few held signs that read “I am Charlie.”
Several College Republicans were there. They had been working on a joint statement with the College Democrats that had hit a snag over whether it should support freedom of speech in addition to opposing political violence. They eventually all agreed that it should.
Mr. Mandziara was there. He strode across the stage to the lectern.
“I only feel anger, a righteous, focused anger, not toward people I disagree with or any political party, but toward lying hypocrites who think that past a certain threshold of disagreement, you deserve to die,” he said. “People who encourage and justify political violence while screaming from the hilltops that people that they disagree with are evil, are wrong and should be condemned.”
He added that conservatives do not have to “tolerate calls to kill us,” or “let any of the people who have encouraged this violence to hold power over us, whether it be in office, in education, or in any other field.”
He ended by asking for a moment of silence “for the state of this nation.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) ‘Mine, Baby, Mine’: Trump Officials Offer $625 Million to Rescue Coal
The new effort, which includes opening 13.1 million acres of federal land for mining and eliminating pollution limits, aims to save an industry that has been declining for decades.
By Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 29, 2025
A coal mining operation in West Virginia. Credit...Adrees Latif/Reuters
The Trump administration on Monday outlined a coordinated plan to revive the mining and burning of coal, the largest contributor to climate change worldwide.
Coal use has been declining sharply in the United States since 2005, displaced in many cases by cheaper and cleaner natural gas, wind and solar power.
But in a series of steps aimed at improving the economics of coal, the Interior Department said it would open 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal mining and reduce the royalty rates that companies would need to pay to extract coal. The Energy Department said it would offer $625 million to upgrade existing coal plants around the country, which have been closing at a fast clip, to extend their life spans.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it would repeal dozens of regulations set by the Biden administration to curb carbon dioxide, mercury and other pollutants from coal plants. The agency would also revise a regulation limiting wastewater pollution from power plants that the industry considers costly.
In what has become a familiar tableau, miners in hard hats stood as a backdrop as administration officials gathered at the Interior Department and repeated a phrase that President Trump said he now expects of any employee who discusses the black, combustible rock: “Clean, beautiful coal.”
The announcements came days after Mr. Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that the United States would “stand ready to provide any country with abundant, affordable energy supplies if you need them,” referring to liquefied natural gas, oil and coal. Mr. Trump has promoted the coal industry ever since campaigning frequently with coal miners 2016.
While coal plants once generated nearly half of America’s electricity, they produced just 16 percent last year. Hundreds of coal plants have retired since the mid-2000s as utilities switched to natural gas, wind and solar power. Stricter regulations on air and water pollution have also made burning coal more expensive. Coal mining, which has been linked to significant air pollution and water contamination as well as black lung disease in coal miners, has also faced increased federal restrictions.
“This is an industry that was under assault,” said Doug Burgum, the Interior secretary who along with Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, blamed regulations on what they described as an ideological war on coal. Chris Wright, the Energy secretary, said Monday morning on Fox that coal was “out of fashion with the chardonnay set in San Francisco, Boulder, Colo., and New York City.”
The phrase “climate change” was not mentioned during the hourlong coal event. Instead, the officials described coal as an economic necessity. “In addition to to drill, baby drill, we need to mine, baby, mine,” Mr. Burgum said.
It is unclear how much the Trump administration can revitalize the industry. In recent years, growing interest in artificial intelligence and data centers has fueled a surge in electricity demand, and utilities have decided to keep more than 50 coal-burning units open past their scheduled closure dates, according to America’s Power, an industry trade group. As the Trump administration moves to loosen pollution limits on coal power, more plants could stay open longer or run more frequently.
The Trump administration has previously taken other extraordinary steps to keep coal plants operating. In June, the Energy Department issued an emergency order to prevent a coal plant in Michigan from closing as scheduled, although neither the grid operator nor the local utility had asked the agency to do so. The cost of that extension is expected to fall on consumers.
Mr. Wright has hinted that more such orders could be on the way. All told, more than 100 plants have announced plans to retire by the end of Mr. Trump’s term.
“I think this administration’s policy is going to be to stop the closure of coal plants, most of them cooperatively working with utilities,” Mr. Wright said during an onstage interview last week at The New York Times’s Climate Forward event.
At Monday’s announcement, Wells Griffith, the under secretary for energy, said that a recent Energy Department study found that America’s grid faced a higher risk of blackout if too many coal plants retire. That study has been criticized by a number of clean-energy groups and Democratic-led states for being overly pessimistic about the ability of other fast-growing sources like wind, solar, batteries and natural gas to help fortify the nation’s power system.
Holly Bender, the chief program officer at the Sierra Club, an environmental group, said the administration’s actions would increase air and water pollution and raise electricity bills. “The Trump administration’s reckless actions announced today will hurt the American people, all to prop up the aging and outdated coal industry,” she said.
While it champions fossil fuels, the administration has taken steps to restrict the use of wind and solar power nationwide, criticizing those sources as unreliable and too dependent on the weather.
Coal power has been growing around the world in China and other countries. Last year, global coal demand reached a record high, according to the International Energy Agency, although the agency says it still expects coal demand to plateau in the coming years.
Mr. Burgum cited that trend as a reason for the United States to invest in coal. “China is absolutely the number one user of coal and they are aggressively adding more power,” he said. “Our nation can lead in technology but if we don’t lead in electrical production, we’re going to lose the A.I. arms race.”
Even as it burns more coal, China has also led the world in building wind and solar power. Last week the country announced for the first time plans to start reducing its planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) In Coal-Powered West Virginia, Sky-High Energy Costs Strain Residents
As residents’ electricity prices have increased, nearly one out of five customers of the leading utility company in the state is behind on monthly bills.
By Ivan Penn, Visuals by Alyssa Schukar, Reporting from Charleston, W.Va., Sept. 29, 2025
A coal-fired power plant owned and operated by a subsidiary of American Electric Power in Winfield, W.Va. Coal provides about 86 percent of the state’s electricity.
As his electricity bill soared in recent years, Martec Washington decided not to replace his broken-down car and started riding the bus. He has taken on multiple jobs, including scheduling surgeries and teaching hip-hop fitness classes. And he is trying to use less energy.
Yet his electric utility bill keeps climbing. In some months, he owes his utility company more than the $750 rent on his house in Charleston, W.Va.
“Electric bills shouldn’t be equal to rent or mortgage,” said Mr. Washington, a community activist who in 2022 lost the Democratic primary for mayor. “The bill is freaking ridiculous.”
West Virginia is awash in coal, natural gas and oil, making it the fifth-leading producer of energy in the United States. Yet the state’s electricity costs have risen much faster than the national average. Some energy experts say West Virginia is a harbinger of what could happen as President Trump champions fossil fuels and throttles renewable energy.
Trump administration officials have ordered aging coal power plants to stay open and pushed for the quick approval of new oil and natural gas projects while denying permits or ordering work to be halted on solar and wind energy projects.
On Monday, the Energy Department said it would spend $625 million to upgrade coal power plants and the Interior Department said it would make 13.1 million acres of federal land available to coal mining.
In the past few decades, generating electricity from coal has become much more expensive than other energy sources like natural gas, wind and solar. Coal plants are also relatively inefficient and expensive to maintain.
Mr. Trump’s coal push comes as monthly utility bills are rising from coast to coast. People are paying more because utilities are having to upgrade aging grids and prepare for extreme weather driven by climate change. They are also investing billions of dollars in new power plants and lines to meet the voracious energy demands of artificial intelligence data centers.
In West Virginia, the situation is even worse.
Over the past 15 years, electricity rates in the state have risen almost twice as fast as the national average.
Many residents are buckling under the strain. American Electric Power, a company that owns two utilities in the state, told state regulators last year that nearly one in every five of its customers in West Virginia, or 84,000 households, is typically behind on its electric bill every month.
Regulatory filings show that those two utilities, Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power, cut power to 56,000 households for not paying what they owed in 2023, the most recent year for which data were available. That is up from 3,300 during the pandemic in 2020. The company’s disconnections were more than 10 times that of a typical state, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
“Shutting them off from power is not a humane solution,” Mr. Wolfe said. “It forces people to choose between buying food and paying their energy bill.”
Appalachian Power is locked into contracts that require it to buy coal at relatively high prices. Rates are also high because they include the cost of the expensive turbines and other equipment that burn coal to generate electricity.
Coal provides about 86 percent of West Virginia’s electricity, a number that has not decreased much even as the United States has reduced its reliance on coal to less than 20 percent of all electricity, from two-thirds, several decades ago.
The state’s utilities could invest in new wind and solar farms that generate power more cheaply, but the utility and its customers would still be paying off its coal plants for years to come.
“There was a time some years ago when West Virginia had some of the lowest rates in the country,” said Jim Kotcon, chairman of the West Virginia Sierra Club. Now, he added, the state is in such a pickle that “even the utilities will testify to the Legislature that they have no plans to build a new coal plant.”
But Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican ally of Mr. Trump’s, remains committed to coal. “Baseload generation from coal, natural gas and nuclear are critical to our way of life,” he said this month, a reference to the amount of power needed to meet fundamental demands.
Higher Prices, Lower Incomes
In June 2010, West Virginia’s electricity rates were more than 30 percent lower than the national average. That gap closed to just 10 percent this June, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
A household in West Virginia using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity — a rough estimate of an average American home’s monthly consumption — will pay almost $160 a month, compared with the national average of $175.
But that does not account for weather or the insulation of homes. Actual electricity bills for many West Virginians can run into the hundreds of dollars when it is very hot or cold.
In addition, residents there usually earn much less than elsewhere. The median household income in West Virginia last year was about $61,000, compared with about $84,000 nationally.
“West Virginia is high up on that list of energy burden,” said Frank Rambo, executive director of Horizon Climate Initiative, an environmental nonprofit based in Charlottesville, Va.
For Mr. Washington, 37, it’s a big hardship. He lives in the neighborhood where he grew up, a low-income community near state government offices.
His city is home to the University of Charleston, hip coffee shops and a restaurant helmed by a James Beard Award-winning chef. But Mr. Washington can’t enjoy any of that.
In December, he skipped paying his natural gas bill to cover the nearly $1,000 he owed for electricity.
“I chose to pay a higher electric bill because at least with that one, I can turn the heaters on when we’re in the house and turn them off when we don’t need them,” Mr. Washington said.
But when he was out one day, the home was so cold that a pipe burst because his gas had been shut off.
The Public Service Commission of West Virginia, which regulates Appalachian, Wheeling and other investor-owned utilities, declined to comment for this story.
Across the country, many are in arrears on their electric bills. Missing payments totaled $14.5 billion at the end of 2023, up from roughly $10.5 billion in 2021, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
A record seven million people have sought help from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. But recent federal budget cuts have meant fewer dollars are available to them.
‘Had Them Over a Barrel’
Electric bills are climbing for various reasons. In addition to increased spending on maintenance by utilities, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted supply chains and drove up prices for coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels. Electricity made from burning such fuels is generally more expensive than from renewable sources, but it becomes much more so during geopolitical crises.
Though West Virginia has a lot of coal, some mining companies have filed for bankruptcy protection or shut mines because of falling demand for their products nationally.
At the same time, state regulators have demanded that West Virginia’s utilities rely more on coal plants, which cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in construction, maintenance and operation expenses. That led Appalachian Power to enter the expensive long-term contracts for coal.
In addition, the war in Ukraine has hit the state hard, said Robert Williams, the state official who represents utility customers before the West Virginia Public Service Commission.
“There was a global squeeze in the natural gas market and coal market,” Mr. Williams said. And because West Virginia’s utilities are so reliant on coal, the suppliers “had them over a barrel.”
Given the state’s coal mines, West Virginia’s elected officials are reluctant to embrace renewable energy. Its vast mountain ranges are not ideal for large solar farms, though wind power has significant room to grow. The state has no nuclear power plants.
Appalachian Power, the American Electric Power utility that is the state’s largest, said it was “making significant investments in West Virginia to enhance reliability and improve service for all our customers.”
The utility said it was reviewing and proposing ways to reduce customer bills, including by helping the state attract more businesses so the cost of running the system could be spread over more customers.
The utility “is committed to working with state leaders to ensure we can help them achieve their policy goals, while always keeping customer affordability at the forefront of the conversation,” Aaron Walker, Appalachian’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Drew Galang, a spokesman for Governor Morrisey, said West Virginia could generate more power than it used. By using more of that capacity, including by selling more electricity to other states and data centers, it hopes to lower energy prices for its residents.
Mr. Morrisey has signed legislation to encourage the development of data centers and microgrids to help power them. Officials also plan to push for upgrades to existing power plants to make them more efficient, reducing costs.
“In order to meet these goals, West Virginia will consider all of its options, including nuclear power,” said Mr. Galang. “We must focus on providing reliable and consistent baseload generation. Coal and natural gas generation provides security, which is very important for consumers and businesses.”
But to some energy experts, West Virginia’s experience highlights the potential pitfalls of investing more in fossil fuel power plants, coal in particular. Customers could get stuck paying for them for a while.
Since 2012, U.S. coal plants have collectively lost about $14 billion, according to RMI, a research group formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. Many of those losses were borne by residents and businesses through their electricity bills.
In West Virginia, electricity bills will probably remain high because customers have to pay the remaining debt on coal plants along with the cost of any new energy sources.
“We’re going to have the coal plants here since they’re on our backs for the next few decades,” Mr. Williams said.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) Americans’ Support for Israel Dramatically Declines, Times/Siena Poll Finds
A majority of American voters now oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel, a stunning reversal in public opinion since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
By Lisa Lerer and Ruth Igielnik, Sept. 29, 2025
Nearly two years into the war in Gaza, American support for Israel has undergone a seismic reversal, with large shares of voters expressing starkly negative views about the Israeli government’s management of the conflict, a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University found.
Disapproval of the war appears to have prompted a striking reassessment by American voters of their broader sympathies in the decades-old conflict in the region, with slightly more voters siding with Palestinians over Israelis for the first time since The Times began asking voters about their sympathies in 1998.
In the aftermath of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, American voters broadly sympathized with Israelis over Palestinians, with 47 percent siding with Israel and 20 percent with Palestinians. In the new poll, 34 percent said they sided with Israel and 35 percent with Palestinians. Thirty-one percent said they were unsure or backed both equally.
A majority of American voters now oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel, a stunning reversal in public opinion since the Oct. 7 attacks. About six out of 10 voters said that Israel should end its military campaign, even if the remaining Israeli hostages were not released or Hamas was not eliminated. And 40 percent of voters said Israel was intentionally killing civilians in Gaza, nearly double the number of voters who agreed with that statement in the 2023 poll.
Taken together, the findings in the Times/Siena survey show a major deterioration in support for a staunch American ally that has enjoyed decades of bipartisan backing. The drop is an unusually large shift in public opinion in this hyper-polarized era, when public opinion has tended to move incrementally over long periods unless affected by cataclysmic events such as war.
Austin Mugleston, a Democrat from Blackfoot, Idaho, said his views on U.S. support for Israel had weakened as the conflict dragged on.
“I actually was pretty pro-Israel the last few years, especially hearing about the devastating terrorist night of Oct. 7,” said Mr. Mugleston, 33, who works in communications. “Nobody should go through that. But for how long it’s taking and from how much worse Israel is doing to Palestinians, it just doesn’t feel like a level playing field anymore.”
The survey also hints at challenges for the U.S.-Israel alliance in the future. Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding in 1948, receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in support.
Younger voters, regardless of party, were less likely to back continuing that support. Nearly seven in 10 voters under 30 said they opposed additional economic or military aid.
Much of the shift in views on Israel has been driven by a sharp decline in support by Democratic voters. Republicans largely continue to support Israel, though there has been a modest decline.
Nearly two years ago, Democrats were evenly divided, with 34 percent sympathizing with Israel and 31 percent with Palestinians. Now, rank-and-file Democrats across the country overwhelmingly side with Palestinians — 54 percent said they sympathized more with Palestinians, while only 13 percent expressed greater empathy for Israel.
More than eight in 10 Democrats said Israel should stop the war even if the country had not achieved its goals, a notable increase from the roughly 60 percent who said the same two years ago.
Nearly six in 10 Democrats believe Israel is intentionally killing civilians, double the share who said the same in 2023.
Shannon Carey, 39, a Democrat from a suburb of Hartford, Conn., said the Israeli government’s response to the initial Oct. 7 attacks had become “unreasonable.” She said she would like the United States to stop supplying Israel with military and financial support because it was funding a “humanitarian crisis.”
“As a mother, seeing those children is horrifying,” Ms. Carey, a physician assistant, said. “This isn’t a war. It’s a genocide.”
The biggest movement within the Democratic Party has come from an unexpected place: White, college-educated, older Democrats who have become the backbone of the party in recent elections. Younger Democrats and Democrats without a college education were already much more sympathetic to Palestinians when the conflict began nearly two years ago.
In 2023, Democratic voters ages 45 and up sympathized with Israel over Palestinians 2-to-1. That is now reversed, with 42 percent saying they sympathize more with Palestinians, compared with 17 percent who feel more sympathetic toward Israel.
Patti West, 67, a retiree from Central Florida, said she had long considered herself a strong supporter of U.S. involvement in the region. She struggled with the idea of stopping aid, but came to believe it wasn’t helping end the conflict.
“Why do we keep funding this?” Ms. West, a Democrat, said. “This has been going since I was kid, and it’s still going on.” She added, “They are going to hate each other forever.”
Diminished backing for Israel among white Democrats was also more pronounced than shifts among nonwhite Democrats. Nonwhite Democrats were already more sympathetic to Palestinians when the conflict began.
Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. faced fierce criticism of his support for Israel during his term, including disruptive protests that continued even as he increasingly took a harder stance with Israel’s government.
Republican voters, by contrast, largely back President Trump.
As multiple Western countries have moved to recognize a Palestinian state, Mr. Trump has placed little separation between himself and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Seven in 10 Republicans said they supported providing additional aid to Israel. A majority of Republicans said Israel should continue the military campaign until all hostages were released, even if it meant civilian casualties. And 47 percent said that the Israeli military was taking enough precautions to prevent civilian deaths.
“The Israelis can pretty much fend for themselves and take care of it, but we have to make sure no one comes up on them,” said Edward Johnson, 51, a self-described conservative from Minneapolis who voted for Mr. Trump.
Yet even Republican support has fallen, albeit by significantly less.
Republicans still sympathize with Israel more than Palestinians, 64 percent to 9 percent. But those numbers indicate a drop in support of 12 percentage points since 2023, when 76 percent sided with Israel.
About a third of Republicans said Israel’s military was not taking enough action to prevent civilian deaths.
Mason Northrup, 29, a Trump supporter from St. Louis, said he supported the Israeli military but would like to see the president decrease American involvement in the conflict.
“He needs to back off a little bit because the Israelis are capable of pulling off some pretty crazy stuff,” Mr. Northrup said of Mr. Trump. “We should let them fight their own war.”
Here are the key things to know about this poll from The New York Times and Siena University:
· The survey was conducted among 1,313 registered voters nationwide from Sept. 22 to 27, 2025.
· This poll was conducted in English and Spanish, by telephone using live interviewers and by text message. Overall, 99 percent of respondents were contacted on their cellphone. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
· Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For this poll, interviewers placed more than 152,000 calls or texts to more than 56,000 voters.
· To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the results and methodology page, under “Composition of the Sample.”
· The margin of sampling error among the electorate that is likely to vote in November is about plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
11) Here Is the Full Text of the Gaza Plan Released by the White House
“If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end,” the White House proposal says.
By The New York Times, Sept. 29, 2025
Smoke billowed in Gaza City during Israeli military operation on Monday. Credit...Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
The White House released a lengthy plan on Monday calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and laying out plans for the territory. The conditions include many proposals that have long been rejected by Hamas.
Here is the full text of the proposal provided by the White House.
· Gaza will be a de-radicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.
· Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.
· If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.
· Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.
· Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after Oct. 7, 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.
· Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.
· Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the Jan. 19, 2025, agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.
· Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the Jan. 19, 2025, agreement.
· Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.
· This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
· This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.
· A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza.
· A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.
· No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.
· Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors. New Gaza will be fully committed to building a prosperous economy and to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors.
· A guarantee will be provided by regional partners to ensure that Hamas, and the factions, comply with their obligations and that New Gaza poses no threat to its neighbors or its people.
· The United States will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (I.S.F.) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The I.S.F. will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza, and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution. The I.S.F. will work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces. It is critical to prevent munitions from entering Gaza and to facilitate the rapid and secure flow of goods to rebuild and revitalize Gaza. A de-confliction mechanism will be agreed upon by the parties.
· Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the I.S.F. establishes control and stability, the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and time frames linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the I.D.F., I.S.F., the guarantors, and the United States, with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens. Practically, the I.D.F. will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies to the ISF according to an agreement they will make with the transitional authority until they are withdrawn completely from Gaza, save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.
· In the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the I.D.F. to the I.S.F.
· An interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values of tolerance and peaceful coexistence to try and change mind-sets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace.
· While Gaza redevelopment advances and when the P.A. reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.
· The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
12) President Tells Top Brass American Cities Should Be ‘Training Grounds’ for Military
By Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Shawn McCreesh, Reporting from Washington, Sept. 30, 2025
President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned more than 800 of the country’s top brass to a military base in Virginia on Tuesday to voice a familiar litany of culture war talking points and criticize a military that they complained had become distracted by political correctness.
The rare and highly anticipated call-up drew the country’s military commanders, who flew in from Asia, Europe and points between on short notice. The president delivered a rambling address that including familiar talking points and critiques, and also Mr. Trump’s revelation that he had told Mr. Hegseth to use American cities where he has deployed troops as “training grounds” for the military.
It was unclear why, with a shutdown of the federal government looming, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary needed to gather the country’s senior military leaders from overseas deployments to tell them face to face that they were straight out of “central casting,” as Mr. Trump characterized the gathering.
“I’m thrilled to be here this morning to address the senior leadership of what is once again known around the world as the Department of War,” Mr. Trump said. (Though Mr. Trump has renamed the department, Congress has not yet approved the change.)
Mr. Trump praised his own tariff and border policies and insulted former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Discussing his efforts to send troops to American cities, he said: “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
Mr. Hegseth spoke first, telling the assembled generals and admirals that he was tightening standards for fitness and grooming, cracking down even more rigorously against “woke garbage” and getting rid of attacks on “toxic” leadership that he said had gone too far.
In his address, Mr. Hegseth railed against what he called “stupid rules of engagement” that he said limited soldiers and commanders in the field. He defended his firing of more than a dozen military leaders, many of them people of color and women.
And he said that, from now on, promotions would be based on merit, complaining that, in his view, they previously were not.
“We’ve already done a lot in this area, but more changes are coming soon,” he said.
It was standard fare for Mr. Hegseth, who will undoubtedly come under criticism for the expense of flying the commanders to the Washington area as a federal shutdown looms. President Trump acknowledged the cost of the gathering as he boarded a helicopter to head to the Marine base at Quantico, where the gathering was being held.
“These are our generals, our admirals, our leaders, and it’s a good thing, a thing like this has never been done before, because they came from all over the world,” the president said. “And there’s a little bit of expense, not much, but there’s a little expense for that. We don’t like to waste it. We’d rather spend it on bullets and rockets.”
The generals and admirals assembled were mostly quiet during the remarks by Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Trump. It is tradition for the military to present a nonpartisan posture.
When Mr. Hegseth summoned the senior officers last week, he gave no reason for the meeting, which has no precedent in scope and scale in recent memory. The military leaders were told to expect a speech from the secretary heralding a so-called war-fighter culture he has championed since taking office, but they were given little other information.
The event took a new twist on Sunday when Mr. Trump said he would attend. That raised alarm among military specialists over his tendency as commander in chief to use U.S. troops as political props and visits to bases as occasions to bash political rivals, Democrats and the news media. During a speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., in June, Mr. Trump led troops to boo journalists and Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump has sought to downplay the gathering, telling NBC News on Sunday, “It’s just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has ordered National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles, Washington and Portland, Ore., over the objections of local political leaders, to assist immigration efforts and combat crime. He also directed the military to attack boats in the Caribbean that he said were carrying drugs to the United States, but he offered no detailed legal justification.
The top four-star combatant commanders and Joint Chiefs of Staff typically meet at least twice a year in Washington, often holding a working dinner with the president. But the large number of lower-ranking generals and admirals at Tuesday’s meeting was highly unusual, military officials said.
In the days before the event, Democratic lawmakers and military specialists questioned the cost and disruption to daily operations caused by the meeting, as well as the security risks of concentrating so many top military commanders in one place. All, it appeared, for Mr. Hegseth to be able to lecture military leaders with decades of combat experience on an enhanced “warrior ethos” in a forum that was televised live.
“It appears to be one more demonstration of Secretary Hegseth mistakenly believing our military leadership needs to be directed to focus on fighting wars,” said Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who directs foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
13) ‘A Hard Moment’: Memphis Braces for an Influx of Federal Force
Drained by years of crime and conservative criticism, Memphis is set to receive a wave of federal agents that residents are divided over.
By Emily Cochrane, Reporting from Memphis, Sept. 30, 2025
Demonstrators participated in a “No Cooperation with Occupation” march in Memphis on Saturday. Brad J. Vest for The New York Times
Miriam Cordero, a longtime Memphis resident who owns a downtown flower shop, sounded torn last week about the arrival of federal forces in the city in the coming days.
“If they come to help with the crime, I think we can be OK with that. But if they’re going to scare people?” Ms. Cordero said. “It’s so vague, the information we have.”
President Trump’s decision to send the National Guard and other agencies into the city has many residents feeling similarly uncertain: They are weary of the crime rate, one of the highest in the nation, and open to some federal help. Yet some are also wary of more heavy-handed policing that fails to address systemic problems.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who supports the plan, has offered few specifics about personnel or assignments, beyond that at least 13 agencies would be present in the city beginning this week to help with local law enforcement. The National Guard will act in a support role to the local police and deputies, he has said, without the authority to arrest people.
For some, the prospect of troops in fatigues has invoked one of the city’s most fraught periods, during the sanitation workers’ strike and the aftermath of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, when the Guard was sent to quell unrest. Even among residents who are open to the idea of federal help, there are concerns about optics and skepticism about how effective it will be.
“I don’t want it to just be a show, because we’ve got real issues in our community,” said Charlie Caswell Jr., a commissioner in Shelby County, home to Memphis, who represents some of the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. He added, “My people, they want to see the change.”
More than the National Guard, some people have asked questions about possible fallout from the involvement of a number of federal agencies in the intervention, including the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Marshals Service.
Sharon Becton, 66, who was taking a break from selling flavored popcorn in the Midtown neighborhood last week, said simply, “I just hope and pray it helps.”
Few, if any, will deny the challenges Memphis faces, especially related to crime rates in some of its neighborhoods. But in one of the nation’s largest majority-Black cities, many of those challenges can also be traced to decades of racist oppression and disinvestment.
A University of Memphis analysis published in 2024 found that the city’s poverty rate of 22.6 percent was among the highest in the nation, with Black residents disproportionately affected. Wages tend to be low and have stayed stagnant.
The city’s pride is evident in its artistic ingenuity, investments by local philanthropists and even the local N.B.A. franchise. As readily as they acknowledge its challenges, some residents still bristle at outsiders defining Memphis by its worst moments, like the King assassination or the high-profile beating of a motorist by members of its police force in 2023.
Memphis is “a city that has so much potential, so much opportunity, so much talent, but yet and still the resources aren’t there,” said K. Durell Cowan, the founder and head of Heal 901, a local nonprofit. He questioned why his organization had lost access to federal grants this year, yet money remained for an influx of agents and officers.
Violent crime has decreased in the city recently, slowly mirroring a national trend, after a series of high-profile murders and carjackings in 2022 and 2023. In some neighborhoods, however, there is a desire for more progress.
“Maybe they are trying, but trying is not keeping these people alive,” said Pastor Leon Jones Jr., who works in the neighborhoods of Raleigh and Frayser in north Memphis, where crime rates often outpace those of the rest of the city. “We need some help.”
As recently as August, Governor Lee told reporters that there were no plans to send the National Guard to Memphis. He had already sent state troopers in to help the local police, and the F.B.I. had coordinated a crime reduction operation that led to nearly 500 arrests.
But by mid-September, the governor was in the Oval Office, standing next to Mr. Trump as the president signed an executive order creating a Memphis-specific federal task force to help address crime in the city.
At a news conference last week, Mr. Lee said that “it was never off the table” that the National Guard would be deployed to Memphis and that there was a broader conversation about more federal assistance.
“It became evident that it’s exactly what needs to happen,” he said, “because we know that if we have access to those resources, this problem can be solved.”
The announcement was quickly welcomed by Tennessee Republicans.
“I think the show of force is hugely important to reinforce the idea that we are getting control of the problem,” said Luke Cymbal, the vice chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party. He added, “we’re not trying to infringe on people’s rights here. We’re just trying to arrest criminals.”
Among some Democrats, there is a desire to challenge the federal intervention. But the political dynamics are different in Memphis, compared to Democratic-led California, Oregon or Illinois. The Republican supermajority in the state legislature has been quick to threaten or overrule the Democratic-led city and its leaders over policies it opposes, making the deployment feel inevitable.
Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat who has focused on public safety in his first term, has said that he does not think the National Guard is the best solution, but has stressed that the city should work with the federal government regardless. At the news conference last week, he stood alongside Mr. Lee, along with the police chief and other officials.
“Crime still exists — I never said crime was over,” Mr. Young said. He added that “we have a lot of work to do to get crime at a level where people really, really feel” a change for the better.”
Some organizations have railed against what they have described as a looming militarization of the city, uniting behind a “Free the 901” campaign, a reference to the Memphis area code. Community leaders are quietly reminding neighbors of their rights and to address any unpaid tickets or minor infractions.
“This is going to do untold damage to this community’s ability to govern itself and to make its own decisions,” said Josh Spickler, the executive director of Just City, a criminal justice organization.
There are also fears about federal agencies taking a punitive approach in certain communities, including as part of the Trump administration’s broader campaign to detain undocumented immigrants. And there are questions about what an uptick in arrests would mean for a clogged court system and an overcrowded county jail with a record of poor conditions.
At a moment when household and business costs are already rising, business owners also worry that the visible presence of federal troops could scare residents into staying home and tourists into staying away.
Ms. Cordero’s flower shop revenue has dropped by at least 35 percent in recent months, she estimated, citing higher costs and fewer sales driven by tariffs and inflation.
“This is a hard moment,” she said.
There is also some distrust of the Memphis Police Department. Senator Brent Taylor, who has led a call for a more aggressive crackdown on crime, and State Representative John Gillespie have asked for an audit of the department’s crime data, while others have questioned its transparency.
After the 2023 beating and death of Tyre Nichols, a Justice Department investigation found that the department had a pattern of excessive force, particularly against Black residents. The report, issued shortly before President Biden left office, was retracted after Mr. Trump returned to the White House. (Mr. Young and Chief Cerelyn Davis said the department has made changes in response to Mr. Nichols’s death.)
Even those who are cautiously open to the infusion of federal resources said they were conflicted over ceding some local control on the issue of crime.
“Aren’t we the best people to solve the problem?” asked Leslie Taylor, co-founder of the nonpartisan Memphis Crime Beat, which focuses on tracking the city’s court system. “And yet we haven’t been able to, so here we are.”
Ms. Taylor added, “Somebody asked me the other day, ‘What’s your goal in five years?’” referring to her organization. She said her response was, “Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to talk about crime all the time?”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
14) U.S. Deports Planeload of Iranians After Deal With Tehran, Officials Say
The deportation flight to Iran is the most stark push yet by the Trump administration to deport migrants even to places with harsh human rights records.
By Farnaz Fassihi and Hamed Aleaziz, Sept. 30, 2025
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly last week, President Trump insisted that the United States would double down on efforts to deport masses of migrants. Doug Mills/The New York Times
The Trump administration is deporting a planeload of about 100 Iranians back to Iran from the United States after a deal between the two governments, according to two senior Iranian officials involved in the negotiations and a U.S. official with knowledge of the plans.
Iranian officials said that the plane, a U.S.-chartered flight, took off from Louisiana on Monday night and was scheduled to arrive in Iran by way of Qatar on Tuesday at the earliest. The U.S. official confirmed that plans for the flight were in the final stages. All the officials spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details publicly.
The identities of the Iranians on the plane and their reasons for trying to immigrate to the United States were not immediately clear.
The deportation is one of the starkest efforts yet by the Trump administration to deport migrants no matter the human rights conditions in countries on the receiving end. The expanding deportation campaign has sparked lawsuits by immigrant advocates, who have criticized the flights.
For decades, the United States had given shelter to Iranians fleeing their homeland, which has one of the harshest human rights records in the world. Iran persecutes women’s rights activists, political dissidents, journalists, lawyers, religious minorities and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, among others.
In the past several years, there has been an increase in Iranian migrants arriving at the southern U.S. border and crossing illegally, including many who have claimed fear of persecution back home for their political and religious beliefs.
Hossein Noushabadi, the director general of parliamentary affairs in Iran’s foreign ministry, said on Tuesday that U.S. immigration authorities planned to deport 400 Iranians living in the United States back to Iran over the coming months.
“In the first phase, they decided to deport 120 Iranians who entered the U.S. illegally, mostly through Mexico,” he told Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards force.
Some who will be deported held U.S. residency, he said, adding that all of those being deported left Iran legally.
The United States had long hesitated or had trouble deporting migrants to certain countries like Iran because of a lack of regularized diplomatic relations and an inability to get travel documents in a timely manner.
That had forced American officials to either hold migrants in detention for long periods or release them into the United States. The United States deported more than two dozen Iranians back to the country in 2024, the highest number in years.
The two Iranian officials who spoke to The Times said the deportees included men and women, some of them couples. Some had volunteered to leave after being in detention centers for months, and some had not, they said.
The officials said that in nearly every case, asylum requests had been denied or the people had not yet appeared before a judge for an asylum hearing.
The deportation is a rare moment of cooperation between the United States and the Iranian government, and was the culmination of months of discussions between the two countries, the Iranian officials said.
One of the officials said that Iran’s foreign ministry was coordinating the deportees’ return and that they had been given reassurances that they would be safe and would not face any problems. Still, he said, many were disappointed and some even frightened.
“Iran will certainly welcome migrants who, for any reason, had previously emigrated to the United States,” Mr. Noushabadi told Tasnim.
In addition to inflicting political oppression, Iran is in the throes of an economic and energy crisis with a plunging currency, sky-high inflation, unemployment, and water and power cuts.
The economic situation is bound to get even worse with the return of United Nations Security Council sanctions, which went into effect on Saturday.
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
15) With New U.S. Proposal to End Gaza War, a Rare Moment of Triumph for Netanyahu
In President Trump’s plan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got almost everything he hoped for in the end, despite mounting international isolation.
By David M. Halbfinger and Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Sept. 30, 2025
President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel outside the White House in Washington on Monday. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Heading into their meeting on Monday, the question was whether President Trump would apply enough pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to end the war in Gaza.
Ultimately, Mr. Netanyahu got almost everything he could have hoped from Mr. Trump’s proposal — a demand that Hamas release the hostages immediately and lay down its weapons, without which Israel would have carte blanche to keep pummeling Gaza.
As for Israeli troops, they would get to remain in Gaza’s perimeter for the foreseeable future. There was such a stinting nod to the aspiration of statehood for Palestinians that the proposal all but suggested they just keep dreaming. And the Palestinian Authority would be left playing no role in Gaza anytime soon.
It was a rare moment of triumph that showed Mr. Netanyahu could still get much — if not all — of what he wanted despite Israel’s mounting international isolation. Just last week, several European countries recognized a Palestinian state over Israeli objections, while a diplomatic walkout left Mr. Netanyahu addressing a mostly empty room at the United Nations.
On Monday afternoon, standing alongside Mr. Trump, Mr. Netanyahu praised the U.S.-backed plan as fulfilling his own conditions for ending the war with Hamas. And Arab and Muslim governments, including the Palestinian Authority, appeared ready to fall in line.
As for Hamas, it would have no say at all in the future governance of the Gaza Strip, making explicit what had been left vague in earlier attempts at ending the conflict.
Still, the group and its leadership have been so decimated by the war, and it faces so much apparent pressure from Muslim countries including its patrons in Qatar and Turkey, that its acquiescence is not impossible to imagine.
Hamas’s leaders now must decide whether to accept Mr. Trump’s plan, negotiate its terms or reject it outright. All the options carry serious risks for the Palestinian armed group, which has managed to survive two years of an Israeli onslaught by fighting a dogged insurgency.
Hamas negotiators were expected to meet with Turkish officials on Tuesday in the Qatari capital, Doha, “to push for an end to the war through this plan,” according to Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump told reporters in Washington that he would give Hamas “three or four days” to respond to the proposal.
Hamas would struggle to accept a deal that would amount to surrendering its rule in Gaza, but brushing off a clear path to ending the conflict would risk further angering Palestinians who have lived through nearly two nightmarish years of killing and devastation. Some Gazans accuse Hamas of fighting a war for its own political survival at their expense.
Ibrahim Madhoun, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas, said the Trump plan was “based on excluding Hamas,” making it difficult for the group to accept. Hamas officials have previously said key elements, such as surrendering their weapons, would be a red line.
Hamas could still agree to the proposal — or at least accept it as a basis for negotiations — to end the war, he said. But many of the plan’s 20 other points were downright unclear, meaning that they would require protracted talks to hammer out, he added.
“Each clause is such a minefield as to require its own separate agreement,” Mr. Madhoun said.
After hearing the terms of the proposal, Mahmoud Abu Matar, a 27-year-old sheltering in central Gaza, said a vast majority of Palestinians living there would most likely support the deal so as to put an immediate end to the violence.
“We don’t want any more war and bloodshed,” he said. “The ball is now in Hamas’s court.”
Some of the most important players in the Trump-Netanyahu vision for Gaza did not speak at the White House on Monday. Among them were Arab and Muslim nations that have offered to provide troops or funding for a peacekeeping force to provide security in Gaza, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Those countries had laid down clear conditions for their postwar involvement, including that Israel fully withdraw from Gaza and commit to a pathway to a Palestinian state. They also stipulated that the Palestinian Authority must invite them to Gaza, so they would be seen as supporting the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people rather than as another occupying power.
The plan outlined by Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu met none of those conditions. Not only would Israel retain a security buffer inside Gaza’s borders, but the multinational peacekeeping force would also take possession of territory directly from the Israeli military. The Palestinian Authority, for its part, would be cut out of the picture until it so completely reformed itself that Mr. Netanyahu scoffed at the prospect as a “miraculous transformation” unlikely to happen.
As for a Palestinian state, the proposal said only that as Gaza is rebuilt, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” — if the Palestinian Authority’s reform program “is faithfully carried out.” Yet nothing was said about who would determine this or how.
As favorable as the proposal appeared to Mr. Netanyahu, it did entail concessions that he could find politically costly to make. The references to Palestinian statehood someday, the encouragement that Palestinians remain in Gaza and the flat rejection of Israeli annexation of Gaza “completely shatter the far right’s dreams,” Nadav Eyal, a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth, a centrist Israeli newspaper, wrote on Tuesday.
The foreign ministers of eight Arab or Muslim-majority countries offered a qualified embrace of the Trump-Netanyahu proposal in a joint statement early Tuesday, affirming their readiness to cooperate with it. They made it clear, however, that they still insisted on a “full Israeli withdrawal” and on the establishment of “a just peace on the basis of the two-state solution, under which Gaza is fully integrated with the West Bank in a Palestinian state.”
To Nimrod Novik, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator and envoy for former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, that “yes, but” was unsurprising.
“We could be in for very prolonged negotiations during which the war goes on, the hostages are at risk, Palestinians die and the ball — in terms of the need to argue with Trump — is in the Arab court,” Mr. Novik said.
More surprisingly, the Arab ministers said nothing about the Palestinian Authority.
Without any role planned for it in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority nonetheless welcomed Mr. Trump’s “sincere and determined efforts” to end the war and affirmed its “confidence in his ability to find a path toward peace.” It went on to say that it wanted “a modern, democratic and nonmilitarized Palestinian state.”
The P.A. also said that it was committed to changing textbooks that critics say demonize Israel and to abolishing the payment of stipends to Palestinian prisoners and their families. It said it would invite international scrutiny of those changes.
That response showed how much has changed since 2020, when Mr. Trump released a peace plan for the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was similarly skewed toward Israel’s preferences. Back then, in an American election year, the P.A. rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal out of hand, and he was voted out of office that November.
Today, the P.A. is being allowed by Mr. Trump to cling to the hope of a future for itself. Hamas is not.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
16) Five Takeaways About the Culture of Lawlessness in the U.S. Special Forces
Until now, many of the troubling events that took place during the war in Afghanistan have been shrouded in secrecy.
By Matthieu Aikins, Sept. 30, 2025
Green Berets training support staff at Camp Mackall in North Carolina in May. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
In Afghanistan, during the United States’ longest war, special operators like the Green Berets shouldered a disproportionate share of the fighting. At home, they were held up as heroes for their highly publicized exploits. But behind the glory, there was a dark side the public did not see: a culture of rule-breaking that led to war crimes and, eventually, a vigilante ethos openly embraced by leaders at home.
This troubling history has been shrouded by the Army’s intense secrecy around its operators. In the past four years, I interviewed two dozen current and former members of Army Special Operations, including some who were willing to publicly accuse the organization of misconduct. The Times filed lawsuits that yielded thousands of pages of previously unpublished investigations, detainee files and other military records. To track down and interview scores of local witnesses, I made multiple trips to Afghanistan, where I have been reporting since 2008.
A spokeswoman for Army Special Operations, Lt. Col. Allie Scott, defended the organization. “We have fully investigated and adjudicated the cases you cover,” she wrote. “We are confident our actions stand up to the strictest scrutiny.”
Until now, it hasn’t been possible to reckon with many of these events because they were kept secret. Doing so helps us to understand not only the toll of the war on the U.S’s elite forces but also our current political moment, as the Trump administration loosens restraints on the military, orders lethal military strikes on alleged Venezuelan “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean and deploys troops to American cities.
Here are five takeaways from the four-part magazine investigation.
The Special Forces’ culture of rule-breaking emerged from the pressures of an unconventional war.
Deployed on isolated firebases in violent enemy territory in Afghanistan, some Green Berets developed practices that skirted or even broke Army regulations, ones that were often tolerated by commanders for the sake of the mission. But rule-breaking could escalate into more serious crimes. The operators I spoke to told me they had employed Afghan guards and translators for offensive firepower and used local forces to hold detainees. Some soldiers carried “drop guns” that they could plant on bodies.
A number of Green Berets were convicted in corruption-related cases. Others were accused of extrajudicial killings. Many of them came from the Third Special Forces Group, which had a lead role in the mission in Afghanistan.
Special Operations commanders overlooked evidence of what might have been one of the worst war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
After a team of Green Berets and their secret Afghan proxy force were accused in 2012 of killing nine detainees in Nerkh, a farming district in Wardak Province, Special Operations commanders carried out three investigations — and cleared the unit.
But after local protests, the Special Forces were pushed to leave Nerkh, and human remains identified as the missing nine were found outside their base. The Army opened a criminal investigation that lasted for nearly a decade. Until now, its results have never been revealed.
To understand what really happened in Nerkh, I traveled there and spoke to scores of local witnesses and former detainees. I also interviewed two Afghans who worked for the Green Berets, Zikria and Kazem, who admitted to having abused and killed detainees and said Americans had been involved as well.
Through a lawsuit, I also obtained files from the military’s three initial investigations, which show that commanders ignored clear evidence of misconduct by the team. A retired Green Beret brigadier general I spoke to agreed.
The Army’s aggressive prosecution of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn reveals how it could pursue Green Berets, if it chose to.
At a job interview with the C.I.A., Maj. Mathew Golsteyn admitted to killing a bombmaking suspect in Afghanistan in 2010. Golsteyn — who told me he had done the right thing for his men and his mission — was kicked out of the Special Forces. When he went public, the Army pushed to court-martial him for murder.
I obtained previously unreported files from the Golsteyn investigation that show how Army commanders pressured former members of his team into confessing their role in dismembering and burning the body of the bombmaking suspect. The Army’s actions stand in stark contrast to the Nerkh case, in which the bodies of nine detainees were found outside a former U.S. base. The case file I obtained showed that investigators amassed substantial evidence of misconduct, but the case was quietly closed by the Army without charges in 2022. Members of the Nerkh team were decorated and promoted.
Golsteyn told me he believed that his true crime was breaking the Green Berets’ code of silence.
This wartime culture of lawlessness has reverberated in a wave of domestic crimes committed by soldiers with Army Special Operations.
In recent years, Army Special Operations has been plagued by murders, drug-trafficking, fraud and sex crimes committed by its soldiers. Many of these were committed around Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters to both Army Special Operations and the Third Special Forces Group.
To understand the scale of the problem, I collected news and police reports of incidents around Special Forces bases and obtained the personnel records of the soldiers involved, as well as vital records and court documents. The picture was one of serious crime at all levels, from young operators to senior leaders.
The problem of crime has led to questions in Congress, where military leaders promised accountability. Yet Special Forces commanders whose soldiers were involved in misconduct have been repeatedly promoted.
The operators’ vigilante ethos has been embraced by leaders like Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, rose to prominence in part through his vociferous defense of Golsteyn and other service members accused of war crimes. “They’re not war criminals; they’re warriors,” he said in 2019, shortly before Golsteyn and others received a pardon from President Trump.
In the current administration, Trump and Hegseth have pushed to loosen legal restraints on the armed forces, both abroad and in the United States, and to expand the role of the military at home. They have purged the military’s top lawyers, deployed active-duty troops to patrol American streets and authorized lethal strikes on those they designate as “narco-terrorists,” summary killings that experts say violate international law.
The article reveals that the vision of unbridled power held by the Trump administration has its roots in the lawlessness of the United States’ wars overseas.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
