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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.
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.
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.
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
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
——
Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Big Banks Credit ‘Resilient’ Economy for Profit Growth
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citi and Wells Fargo reported strong earnings, mostly topping analyst expectations and showing broad growth.
By Stacy Cowley, Oct. 14, 2025
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase at the bank’s new headquarters in New York last month. “The U.S. economy generally remained resilient,” he said in an earnings release on Tuesday. Credit...Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Even as President Trump’s tariffs and trade restrictions have upended industries and generated a swirl of economic uncertainty, Wall Street keeps humming along.
Some of the nation’s biggest banks reported strong quarterly earnings on Tuesday, mostly topping analyst expectations and showing broad growth across their key lines of business. While bank leaders warned about the growing risks of a slowdown, “resilient” was the word many chose to describe the economy.
For the three months through September, JPMorgan Chase reported a 12 percent year-over-year increase in profit to $14.4 billion on revenue of $46.4 billion. Investment banking fees rose 16 percent, and credit card and auto lending revenue rose 12 percent, a sign of solid business on both Wall Street and Main Street.
But the bank added more padding to its reserve for credit losses, as charge-offs on soured loans ticked upward.
“The U.S. economy generally remained resilient,” Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan, said in a statement. “There continues to be a heightened degree of uncertainty stemming from complex geopolitical conditions, tariffs and trade uncertainty, elevated asset prices and the risk of sticky inflation.”
On a call with reporters, Mr. Dimon elaborated on his comment about asset prices. “You have a lot of assets out there which look like they’re entering bubble territory,” he said. The stock market has set a series of records this year, although it has wobbled in recent days after the latest outbreak of tit-for-tat trade restrictions by the United States and China.
The bank is keeping a close eye on the labor market for signs of trouble, Jeremy Barnum, the bank’s chief financial officer, said on the call.
“If that were to deteriorate, we would expect in the normal course to see that flow through to consumer credit,” he said. “It’s not happening yet.”
A surge in deal making helped Goldman Sachs earn $4.1 billion in the third quarter, a jump of 37 percent from the same quarter last year. The bank recorded its highest-ever revenue for the third quarter, which totaled $15.2 billion. Its investment banking fees surged more than 40 percent to about $2.7 billion, allowing the division to easily exceed analyst expectations.
Citi also beat expectations with a profit of $3.8 billion, up 16 percent from the year before. It recorded revenue of $22.1 billion, up 9 percent, and growth in all five of its major business lines.
Mark Mason, the chief financial officer at Citi, echoed the sentiment of other bankers that companies and consumers had proven surprisingly durable.
“We’ve been in kind of recession-ready mode for over a year,” he said. But the company hasn’t seen any of the warning signs, like missed payments, that would cause alarm, he added.
Wells Fargo reported a profit of $5.6 billion, up 9 percent from the same quarter last year, on revenue of $21.4 billion. It, too, profited from growing credit card spending and balances — as well as higher fees for managing wealthy customers’ assets.
Credit and debit card spending has increased among its most affluent clients and lower-income customers, according to Mike Santomassimo, its chief financial officer.
“I think that’s a good sign for sort of what’s happening in the overall economy at this point,” he said.
The bank celebrated a long-sought milestone last quarter, as the Federal Reserve freed it from the asset growth cap it imposed seven years ago as punishment for extensive misconduct, including the creation of sham bank accounts and improper home foreclosures.
“While some economic uncertainty remains, the U.S. economy has been resilient and the financial health of our clients and customers remains strong,” Charlie Scharf, the bank’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Since Mr. Trump’s re-election, a wide range of companies have announced plans to invest billions in the United States, often drawing praise from the president.
JPMorgan joined those ranks on Monday, saying that it would facilitate $1.5 trillion in financing and investments over the next 10 years, focused on industries “critical to national economic security and resiliency” in the United States. The plan includes up to $10 billion in direct equity and venture capital investments by the bank in a group of mostly American companies.
“It has become painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing,” Mr. Dimon said in a statement.
Asked on Tuesday about the simmering trade tensions between the United States and China, Mr. Dimon took a wait-and-see stance.
“In general, the trade effect has been less than people expected, including us,” he told reporters. “This still is going to play out. Hopefully it won’t have a major effect, but I wouldn’t take it off the table as having any effect.”
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2) Protests in Brussels Halt Flights and Disrupt Public Transit
The demonstrations, organized by Belgium’s major trade unions, oppose austerity proposals that would affect pensions and other social welfare.
By Koba Ryckewaert, Reporting from Brussels, Oct. 14, 2025
A demonstration against the Belgium government’s proposed austerity measures, in Brussels, on Tuesday, October 14, 2025. Credit...Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Demonstrators took to the streets of Brussels on Tuesday, disrupting air traffic and public transit during a national strike protesting proposed austerity measures by the government.
The strike was led by the country’s major trade unions, who object to proposed changes in laws that affect pensions, working conditions and salaries.
The strike is the latest in a series organized by the trade unions since a new federal coalition government took office earlier this year, vowing to put Belgium’s ailing budget in order. The police estimated that 80,000 people protested on Tuesday.
At Brussels Airport, Belgium’s largest, all departing flights and around half of incoming flights were canceled as security staff and baggage handlers joined the strike, an airport official said. More than 300 flights and 48,000 passengers were affected. All flights were canceled at Charleroi Airport, the country’s second largest, an official there said.
Trains within Belgium ran as usual, but public transit was disrupted in Brussels and elsewhere. In the region of Flanders, four out of 10 buses and trams were not in service, an official there said.
Protesters gathered at Brussels North Station in the morning, with some setting off firecrackers and flares, and marched through the city center to Brussels South Station.
At around noon, the police arrested several dozen protesters after a government building on Pacheco Boulevard was vandalized with projectiles, paint bombs and firecrackers, the police said in a statement.
In July, the government proposed changes in laws governing pensions, the labor market, health care and taxation in what Prime Minister Bart De Wever called “the biggest socio-economic reforms of the century.” Unions and opposition parties criticized the proposals as eroding the country’s welfare system.
The government is currently in budget talks and wants to reduce the country’s deficit by at least another 10 billion euros — about $11.6 billion — by 2029.
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3) ICE Is Cracking Down on Chicago. Some Chicagoans Are Fighting Back.
Residents have begun forming volunteer groups to monitor their neighborhoods for federal immigration agents. Others honk their horns or blow whistles when they see agents nearby.
By Julie Bosman, Visuals by Jamie Kelter Davis, Reporting from Chicago, Published Oct. 14, 2025, Updated Oct. 15, 2025
Residents gathered on Tuesday in a far South Side neighborhood after federal agents were involved in a vehicle crash.
Federal agents deployed tear gas on Chicago residents and more than a dozen police officers on Tuesday, the latest clash in the nation’s third-largest city as the Trump administration has carried out its immigration crackdown.
The clash began on Tuesday morning when federal agents were seen chasing a car through a working-class, heavily Latino neighborhood on the city’s far South Side, witnesses said. An S.U.V. driven by the federal agents collided with the car they were pursuing, the Chicago Police Department said, sending that car into another vehicle that was parked nearby.
After the crash, dozens of additional immigration agents in masks arrived and residents emerged from their houses, gathering on streets and sidewalks, throwing objects at agents and shouting, “ICE go home!”
As the agents left, they released tear gas, apparently without warning, sending people coughing and running for cover. Among those affected by the gas were 13 Chicago Police Department officers, the police department said, and at least one officer was seen rinsing his eyes out with water from a neighbor’s garden hose.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said that the federal agents were conducting an immigration enforcement operation when two people tried to flee and hit the agents’ vehicle.
“This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest and agitators and criminals ramming cars into our law enforcement officers,” the D.H.S. said in a statement. The statement said that federal agents used “crowd control measures” after a group of people gathered and turned hostile.
It was one of many turbulent episodes to erupt in Chicago in recent days. Federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol have roamed the city and suburbs making arrests, often pulling up to people walking along sidewalks, stopping them and questioning them.
The agents repeatedly have been observed releasing smoke bombs, tear gas and pepper balls to disperse residents who gather or capture videos on cellphones, including when the agents were making arrests in densely populated neighborhoods. Chicago police officers, who have been called to the scenes of some clashes, have been exposed to tear gas from federal agents twice in the last two weeks.
As the intensity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has risen, residents of Chicago are increasingly pushing back with fury.
In the last several weeks, Chicagoans have formed volunteer groups to monitor their neighborhoods for federal immigration agents, posting alerts on Facebook and in Signal group chats when agents are seen.
If agents are spotted on the street, motorists lean on their horns as a warning and sometimes give chase. Around the city last weekend, pairs of volunteers were seen with orange whistles around their necks, blowing the whistles at the first sight of immigration agents.
One Chicago resident, Chris Molitor, stationed himself on a street corner on the North Side on Tuesday, holding a sign denouncing President Trump and wearing a shirt critical of ICE.
“We’re seeing videos of people being abused,” said Mr. Molitor, 64, who works in hospitality, nodding in the direction of a local taqueria whose owners were questioned by ICE. “There’s got to be a pushback of some kind.”
Last month, Andre Vasquez, a City Council member who is chairman of Chicago’s Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, sponsored a “community defense workshop” to inform residents of their rights and help them organize politically.
“Chicago’s been doing just fine, and then these guys showed up,” Mr. Vasquez said of federal immigration officers. “There is big concern about what these unidentified, masked men are doing in this city without accountability. Chicagoans are just trying to live their life. We’re not going to tolerate unconstitutional authoritarianism.”
Bystanders have posted videos of arrests that appear unrelated to violations of immigration law.
Debbie Brockman, an employee of the TV station WGN, was pinned to the ground and arrested by Border Patrol agents on Friday while walking to a bus stop. A Border Patrol official said that Ms. Brockman had thrown an object at federal agents. Ms. Brockman’s lawyer called the arrest an attack. Ms. Brockman was released without charges.
Yarelly Jimenez, 21, a resident of Chicago’s East Side neighborhood, said that immigration arrests had been the talk of the neighborhood and among her family.
Ms. Jimenez and two others were recording federal agents in a Walgreens on Tuesday and hurriedly left the store to get away from them, she said.
Inside, shoppers yelled at federal agents, videos taken by bystanders show. “Real Americans don’t want you here!” one man said.
An agent grabbed one of Ms. Jimenez’s companions, Warren King, 19, on his way out, asking him why he was running and pinning him to the ground. It was uncertain what Mr. King was accused of, and D.H.S. officials did not immediately provide a reason for his arrest.
Video taken by another bystander and posted to social media captured Ms. Jimenez shouting at the agent in a panic.
“He’s a citizen!” she said.
Robert Chiarito and Arijeta Lajka contributed reporting.
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4) L.A. County Declares State of Emergency Over Immigration Raids
The move would allow county officials to provide financial aid to those affected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
By Jonathan Wolfe, Oct. 15, 2025
California National Guard members stand ready as people protest against the detention of migrants by federal law enforcement in downtown Los Angeles in June. Credit...Philip Cheung for The New York Times
Los Angeles County voted on Tuesday to declare a state of emergency over federal immigration raids, the latest move by the county to push back against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Southern California.
The emergency declaration, traditionally used in response to events like natural disasters, would allow the county to provide resources for those who have been affected by the raids.
County officials say the move will provide help for those who have refrained from going to work for fear of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or who lose their income after family members are detained.
The declaration, which was passed in a 4-to-1 vote by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, also gives officials the ability to vote later to impose an eviction moratorium and other protections for tenants who might have fallen behind on rent payments because of the raids.
In justifying the declaration, county officials argued that federal immigration sweeps, in which thousands of people have been detained by heavily armed and masked immigration officials, have produced a climate of fear.
“We have residents afraid to leave their homes,” said Janice Hahn, a board member who voted in favor of the declaration. “We have entire families who are destitute because their fathers or mothers were taken from their workplaces and they have no way to pay their rent or put food on the table.”
Last month, county officials approved around $30 million in rental relief assistance for residents who were affected by wildfires or federal immigration raids. The county plans to begin accepting applications for that relief in December. The board did not provide an estimate for how many residents have been affected by immigration raids or how many might apply for relief.
County lawyers have warned that the emergency declaration could create issues for landlords and tenants, as well as invite litigation from the Trump administration. They said the declaration could lead to significant income loss for landlords and expose tenants to lawsuits from landlords seeking to recover debts. It could also prompt tenants to publicly disclose their immigration status, the lawyers said, inviting enforcement action from the federal government.
Kathryn Barger, the member of the board of supervisors who voted against the declaration, argued that the raids did not meet the criteria for an emergency.
“Emergency powers exist for crises that pose life and death consequences like wildfires — not as a shortcut for complex policy issues,” she wrote in a statement provided to the news media after the vote. “Stretching emergency powers for federal immigration actions undermines their purpose, invites legal challenges, and circumvents the public process.”
Los Angeles County — home to 10 million people and the country’s largest population of undocumented immigrants — became the primary battleground this summer in the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration. A spike in immigration arrests led to protests, and the federal government responded by deploying National Guard troops and Marines to the region.
Local and state officials have sought to push back, banning federal officials from wearing masks in the state, filing lawsuits over the deployment of troops and challenging the tactics used by ICE.
In July, a judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from making indiscriminate immigration arrests in the county, and a sense of normalcy returned to Los Angeles. But last month, the Supreme Court overturned the order, reinstating fear among immigrants there.
Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting.
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5) With Truce in Place, Hamas Pursues Bloody Crackdown on Rivals in Gaza
A video this week captured Hamas fighters in Gaza executing Palestinian rivals as the militant group tries to assert that it is still the dominant force in the territory after two years of war with Israel.
By Iyad Abuheweila, Aaron Boxerman and Sanjana Varghese, Oct. 15, 2025
“Military analysts say a major target for this Hamas crackdown will likely be the string of small Palestinian militias that have sprung up in Gaza over the past several months, though it is not clear whether Hamas has already moved against them in force. None have mounted a serious challenge to Hamas yet, the analysts said. Some of these smaller militias say they worked in coordination with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel confirmed in June that Israel was “using clans in Gaza” who were fighting Hamas on its behalf. Israeli officials later confirmed helping to arm one operated by Yasser Abu Shabab in eastern Rafah. Mr. Abu Shabab was notorious for ransacking humanitarian aid from U.N. convoys earlier in the war, according to aid officials. Later, he set up a militia in an Israeli-controlled zone inside Gaza, saying this zone would be peaceful and free of Hamas.”
Palestinian militants standing guard on the day that hostages held in Gaza were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, as part of a cease-fire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Monday. Credit...Ramadan Abed/Reuters
The public execution was captured on video.
Masked gunmen, some wearing green headbands associated with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, lined up eight captives in the middle of a crowded street in Gaza City on Monday. They forced the men to bend over, leveled their rifles at them, and opened fire, leaving their bodies in the dirt.
A Hamas internal security official confirmed that the video, which The New York Times geolocated to Gaza City, showed Hamas fighters executing Palestinian rivals in the Gaza Strip. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.
The execution took place just days after a cease-fire with Israel began on Friday and Israeli forces pulled back in parts of Gaza. Analysts say that Hamas appears to be trying to assert that it is still the dominant force in the territory, no matter how weakened it is after two years of war with Israel.
Hamas lost many of its top commanders and thousands of fighters in the conflict, and some Gaza residents launched rare protests against the group’s iron-fisted rule earlier this year.
Israel has acknowledged that it also sought to undermine Hamas’s control by backing rival Palestinian clans in Gaza, with mixed results.
“Hamas is sending a message: ‘We are here. We are the sole authority in Gaza,’” said Tamer Qarmout, a Palestinian political analyst and academic from Gaza, who is based in Qatar.
Since Monday, at least 10 members of Hamas’s security forces and at least 20 members of rival Palestinian groups have been killed in the internecine fighting, according to a Gaza health official and the Hamas internal security official.
It was not clear whether the eight men who were executed in the video were included in those tolls. They included members of the Doghmosh family, which has a long-running rivalry with Hamas, Nizar Doghmosh, a family leader, told The Times on Wednesday.
The outbreak of internal violence in Gaza, which has been limited to a few incidents so far, could further complicate President Trump’s vision for a postwar Gaza. His plan to end the war requires Hamas to lay down its weapons, allow an international force to stabilize the territory, and effectively end its two-decade control — demands the group has rejected so far.
After a visit to Israel on Monday coinciding with Hamas’s release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, Mr. Trump was asked by a reporter about the possibility of the group reasserting itself as a police force in Gaza and shooting rivals.
Mr. Trump suggested the United States was not opposed, at least for now.
“They’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time,” he said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump addressed the issue again, saying Hamas had “taken out a couple of gangs that were very bad,” and adding: “That didn’t bother me very much, to be honest.”
During the war, uniformed Hamas fighters were rarely seen on the streets of Gaza. They avoided moving in the open as much as possible so they would not be targeted by Israeli airstrikes.
Palestinian witnesses in Gaza say groups of masked, rifle-toting Hamas security officers are appearing again now, including when Hamas handed over the remaining hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Monday.
Some of the Hamas activity does appear to entail restoring public order in daily life.
In the central city of Deir al-Balah, armed men have been spotted in the streets directing traffic this week, which they had hardly done during two years of war.
Hamas officials publicly acknowledge that they are also launching operations against people they deem to be lawbreakers or collaborators with Israel.
Two Hamas internal security officials said the killings shown in the video were in retaliation for the Doghmosh family’s killing of several Hamas militants during the war.
The clashes that led to the killings shown in the video began on Sunday, Mr. Doghmosh said, after some members of the family shot and killed the son of a Hamas commander who accused them of being collaborators. Mr. Doghmosh denied that the family was working with Israel.
Later that evening, Hamas fighters and armed members of the Doghmosh family fought a pitched gun battle in Gaza City, according to two Gaza health officials, two Hamas internal security officials and Palestinian residents.
One of those killed in the clashes was Naim Naim, whose father, Basem Naim, is a senior Hamas leader, according to two family members and one of the Gaza health officials.
After the clashes, armed Hamas fighters burst into nearby houses, checking identity cards to see who belonged to the Doghmosh family, said a Palestinian witness who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. He said his family spent hours huddled in the center of their home amid a hail of gunfire and explosions outside.
Then Hamas fighters showed up and ordered them to flee, he recounted.
At least 24 bodies arrived at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City from the Hamas-Doghmosh clashes on Sunday night, said Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the medical facility’s director. He said he did not know how many were from each side.
On Monday, the day after the Gaza City clashes, the Hamas gunmen were filmed shooting the masked and blindfolded men in the middle of neighborhood where the clashes took place, surrounded by a large crowd of bystanders.
Hamas’s interior ministry has warned rival groups that it will come after any “criminal gangs” that threaten “civil peace.” Mahmoud Mardawi, a Hamas official, vowed on social media on Tuesday that the group would not allow “chaos to spread in beloved Gaza nor criminals to escape punishment.”
Military analysts say a major target for this Hamas crackdown will likely be the string of small Palestinian militias that have sprung up in Gaza over the past several months, though it is not clear whether Hamas has already moved against them in force. None have mounted a serious challenge to Hamas yet, the analysts said.
Some of these smaller militias say they worked in coordination with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel confirmed in June that Israel was “using clans in Gaza” who were fighting Hamas on its behalf. Israeli officials later confirmed helping to arm one operated by Yasser Abu Shabab in eastern Rafah.
Mr. Abu Shabab was notorious for ransacking humanitarian aid from U.N. convoys earlier in the war, according to aid officials. Later, he set up a militia in an Israeli-controlled zone inside Gaza, saying this zone would be peaceful and free of Hamas. His militia uploaded videos showing makeshift classrooms and quiet tents in an effort to attract displaced Gazans to join.
“This adventure was only ever going to end one way,” said Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer. “We armed and supported these militias, and now Hamas is coming for its revenge.”
If Hamas attacks any of the clans affiliated with Israel, it would pose a “heavy dilemma” for the Israeli authorities, who would have to decide whether to defend them — thus breaking the cease-fire — or allow them to be killed or arrested, Mr. Milshtein said.
For now, many of the militias say they have no plans to surrender to Hamas.
“We are preparing to defend ourselves by any means necessary should Hamas attack,” said Mohammad al-Mansi, 21, whose father leads a small armed group opposed to Hamas in northern Gaza.
“We won’t turn ourselves in. We would rather die.”
Bilal Shbair and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
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6) The Shadow of Jim Crow Looms Over the Supreme Court
By Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, Oct. 15, 2025
Mr. Carter and Mr. Fields, both Democrats, represent the two majority-Black congressional districts in Louisiana.
Civil rights demonstrators in Montgomery, Ala., during the Selma March in 1965. Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos
The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could topple what remains of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At question is whether one-third of our state’s population — Black Louisianians — will continue to have an opportunity to elect representatives of their choice, or if decades of hard-won progress will disappear under the guise of “colorblind” politics.
For over a decade, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been chipping away at this landmark civil rights legislation. Now the law’s Section 2, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate based on race, is at risk. If the court declares it unconstitutional, it is all but certain that one of our congressional districts will be dissolved, and quite possibly both districts.
Let’s be clear: Section 2 is still necessary, especially in Louisiana. Despite what some people may argue, there is no evidence to support the idea that our state’s Black voters can elect candidates of their choice without the existence of majority-Black districts.
Critics of the Voting Rights Act would have you believe that protecting the rights of minority voters is by definition redistricting by race. They argue that standards should be colorblind and that America’s strides toward greater racial equality make voting protections unnecessary.
History illustrates the farce of this argument. Grandfather clauses, poll taxes and literacy tests were all technically colorblind. Louisiana’s literacy test is cited in schools across the country as a textbook example of how purportedly neutral standards can be used for discriminatory ends.
Today’s numbers tell the same story. Approximately one-third of Louisiana is Black. In our state’s entire history, only five Black citizens have been elected to the U.S. House and served, out of 171 Louisianans sent to the House. These facts underscore the persistent racial polarization in voting patterns and the enduring need for legal protections that ensure all voices are heard, not just those of the majority.
When Black communities lose representation at both the state and federal levels, their concerns are often ignored or deprioritized. Black elected officials, already too few in number, are left to shoulder the burden of constituents outside their districts who feel they have nowhere else to turn. That’s not how a representative democracy is supposed to work.
The consequences of unequal representation aren’t theoretical. Just seven years ago, Louisianans voted to end the state’s practice — shared by only one other state — of allowing nonunanimous juries to convict people of felonies. The state’s 1898 Constitution enshrined this practice with the explicitly racist intent to limit Black people’s power in the justice system and to make it easier to convict them.
Louisiana’s 1974 Constitution retained these so-called Jim Crow juries, and for decades many didn’t think of them as abnormal. It was Black representation that unearthed the insidious nature of this relic. Under scrutiny by Black members of the State Legislature, an elected district attorney opposing the change stated: “I’ve heard a lot about this system being adopted as a result of a vestige of slavery. I have no reason to doubt that. I’m not proud of that — that that’s the way it started. But it is what it is.”
Sadly, this is not the only artifact of Jim Crow lingering in our government. The South is still a place where people who look like us must pass the statues of Confederate soldiers to enter courthouses seeking justice.
The Voting Rights Act, including Section 2, has garnered bipartisan support. When it was last reauthorized, in 2006, it passed overwhelmingly under a Republican president and Congress. Not a single senator voted against it. At the time, lawmakers across the political spectrum recognized that, left to their own devices, some states would turn back to a time when certain voices did not matter and could be disregarded. That’s just as true today as it was then.
Even though the Supreme Court’s decision isn’t expected until next year, political powers in Baton Rouge, recognizing Section 2 of the law may very well be declared unconstitutional, reportedly took steps to convene a special session of the Legislature in which they originally planned to redraw the congressional map. This move suggests leaders in our state’s capital are eager to create a new map that dismantles our majority-Black districts and disperses our current constituents across predominantly white districts. It should be a warning sign to the Supreme Court that without the Voting Rights Act, state leaders seem intent on denying Black voters fair representation.
America stands at a crossroads. We can either move forward, ensuring that every community — Black, white, urban, rural — has a voice in shaping our future, or we can slide back into a past where the decisions are made by only some.
The Voting Rights Act is not a relic. It is a living promise to all Americans that our democracy belongs to everyone. For nearly 200 years, Black Americans had virtually no representation in our collective governance. Section 2 was enacted to right that wrong.
It remains as vital today as it was when it was first signed into law 60 years ago. The law represents progress on our nation’s trek to a more perfect union. We must not allow the erosion of its promise; not now, not in Louisiana, not anywhere, and not on our watch.
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7) A Lesson From the German Resistance That Applies Today
By Jonathan Freedland, Oct. 15, 2025
Mr. Freedland is a columnist for The Guardian and the author of the forthcoming “The Traitor’s Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany — and the Spy Who Betrayed Them.”
Bianca Bagnarelli
As authoritarian rulers gain ground across the democratic world, making inroads not only in Hungary and Turkey, but even in the United States, a question from the 20th century has resurfaced in the 21st, one that presses on individuals as well as institutions. Put simply, who bends the knee to tyranny and who stands up to it?
A clue can be found in an extraordinary episode from inside the Third Reich that has lain, almost forgotten, for nearly 80 years. At the heart of it is a loose grouping of 10 or so friends and acquaintances drawn from German high society, both the aristocracy and professional elite. Their circle included not one but two countesses, an ambassador’s widow, a diplomat, high-ranking government officials (current and former), a doctor, a pioneering headmistress and a former model, among others. What they found in one another was a shared willingness to defy Hitler, in ways large and small.
Except their assumption of common purpose was fatally flawed. In September 1943, they met for a tea party — unaware that one of them was poised to betray all the rest to the Gestapo. That act would lead to arrest and jail and, for several of those present that day, death, whether by the guillotine or the hanging rope. Its ramifications would eventually reach the apex of the Nazi state.
The core mystery that runs through this story is not just the identity of the betrayer, but also why people of privilege and rank, who could so easily have kept their heads down, risked everything. Had they fallen in line, their fortunes, careers and country estates likely would have remained intact. They could have survived the war unscathed. But they chose another path.
Consider Otto Kiep, 57 years old at the time of the tea party, a diplomat who had secured the glamorous post of German consul general in New York City in the last years of the Weimar Republic. In 1933, an invitation had come to attend a dinner in honor of an eminent fellow countryman, Albert Einstein, who also happened to be the world’s most famous Jew. To accept would be to incur the wrath of his new Nazi masters, installed in power just a few weeks earlier. To refuse would be to side with their campaign of antisemitic persecution. Kiep accepted the invitation and delivered a toast in Einstein’s honor. That brought a summons back to Berlin where he would be hauled before the Führer himself.
Or take Maria von Maltzan, the young countess who turned her Berlin apartment into an unofficial refuge for “submarines” — Jews forced to live in hiding, whose safety depended on staying silent and unseen. (Among them was Ms. von Maltzan’s own forbidden Jewish lover.) Or her fellow countess, Lagi Solf, who broke the rules banning contact with Jews, in order to fetch groceries for the submarines. Carrying full shopping bags, one in each hand, had long been her habit. That way, if she ran into someone on the street she would be unable to give the requisite Heil Hitler salute.
In scouring the archives, including letters, diaries and court testimonies left behind by the group, and by speaking with their surviving relatives, I’ve begun to form an answer to why some were capable of saying no to a mighty and terrifying regime while the vast majority of their neighbors were bowing their heads and saying yes.
Several were committed Christians, adamant that they would ultimately have to answer not to Adolf Hitler but to Jesus Christ. Perhaps the most devout was the hostess of the fateful tea party: the innovative educator, Elisabeth von Thadden, whose school, the Evangelical Rural Education Home for Girls, founded six years before the Third Reich, discreetly took in Jewish pupils while their families scrambled to secure the papers that would enable them to flee the country. Her belief that she was accountable to God alone helped Ms. von Thadden face down the Gestapo inspector who came to examine her school for “deficiencies of conviction,” after the authorities learned that she had recited an Old Testament psalm, which, to them, bore the unforgivable taint of Hebrew scripture. (A 13-year- old pupil was the informant.)
Others among the rebels were children of the nobility, convinced their highest loyalty was not to national socialism but to their own ancestors. Hitler might have dreamed of a 1000-year Reich, but these families had already ruled Germany for centuries. They believed that those of their class represented the deep and true Germany, defined in part by its patrician ideal of compassion for the weak. Nazism would be a passing fad; it was they, and the aristocratic inheritance they embodied, that would last.
So it was that Maria von Maltzan could speak to the Gestapo men who raided her apartment with imperious impatience. When they demanded she open up the wooden compartment under a sofa-bed — inside which her lover was hiding, holding his breath — she explained that it could not be opened, and that if the secret police were so certain someone was hiding inside, they should aim their guns at it and shoot. She all but dared them to do it. But, she insisted, if they did, they would have to compensate her for the damage, and promise to do so in advance and in writing. Her gambit, deployed with all the hauteur of her caste, worked. Her lover survived.
Several key players in the drama were women whose upbringing shared another striking aspect: a close relationship with a strong father. That was true of Ms. von Thadden and both countesses, Maria and Lagi. In all three cases, the women were not just loved by their fathers; they were trusted by them. In a way that was unusual in the era before modern feminism, they were deemed by their fathers to be the equal of any man, capable of taking on any task. Long after their fathers were dead, the women carried that confidence with them. By the time the Nazis ruled Germany, it had blossomed into courage.
The strength of those women was buttressed by that deeper conviction that is perhaps the key determinant of who defies an oppressive regime and who buckles before it: belief in an authority higher than the government of the day. Most rebels at the tea party also came to understand that such a belief demanded action as well as thought.
For some, that translated into small gestures of defiance, like Lagi Solf and her shopping bags. For others, such as Otto Kiep, it meant acts of audacious resistance, coming within touching distance of a plot to assassinate Hitler. Through deeds large and small, they demonstrated — to themselves and one another — that obedience was not the only option.
To be clear, most aristocratic Germans did not rebel against Hitler. On the contrary, the German nobility largely fell in line behind the Nazis, drawn in part by the Führer’s pledge to restore titles abolished in the Weimar era. And of course, we cannot neatly read across from that place and that time to our own age.
But if there is a lesson to be gleaned from the deadly fate of those men and women, it might just be that the best safeguard against tyranny is a legion of people who believe in an authority higher than any political program, prince — or president.
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8) When Children of Public Figures Go Public With Their Dissent
The conversation heats up on social media.
By Callie Holtermann, Oct. 15, 2025
Maddie Block took to social media to criticize her father, Jay Block, a New Mexico state senator, for participating in a trip for American lawmakers that was paid for by the Israeli government. Maddie Block; Adria Malcolm/The Washington Post, via Getty Images
Maddie Block was scrolling on social media last month when she saw a post from a New Mexico state senator about his recent trip to Israel, where he heard remarks from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ms. Block, 28, who lives in New York and is a vocal defender of Palestinian rights, was stopped in her tracks. The post dismissed the idea that Israel was committing genocide in its war in Gaza, saying that “Israel does everything possible to avoid killing Gazan civilians.” To Ms. Block, the post amounted to misinformation, and sought to excuse Israel for killing tens of thousands of people in Gaza, she said in an interview.
So she decided to post a TikTok video disagreeing with its author — who also happens to be her father.
“It looks like my dad and a bunch of other, just like, loser politicians from New Mexico went to meet with Netanyahu,” Ms. Block said in a video that has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and gained national media attention.
In the video and a series of follow-up posts, she speculated that her father, State Senator Jay Block, a Republican representing parts of northwestern Albuquerque, was being paid to repeat pro-Israel talking points. (He denies this.) She questioned why a state senator needed to get involved in the Middle East, anyway: “How does meeting with Netanyahu help the local people of New Mexico?” she asked.
The political rifts that exist in families across the country often play out behind closed doors. But in an era of intense polarization, some young family members of political figures have taken to social media to condemn the positions of their elders.
Social media has had a “profound impact in terms of taking these disagreements public,” said Ioana Literat, an associate professor of communication at Teachers College, Columbia University, and an author of “Not Your Parents’ Politics.” Whether or not they are from high-profile families, members of Gen Z “don’t have to rely on traditional media gatekeepers or family approval to be heard.”
The phenomenon has left some lawmakers in the awkward position of having to field phone calls from reporters about their child’s TikTok account. Reached by phone last week, Senator Block said he was proud of his daughter, and that he supported her right to say whatever she wanted about his political positions. The two are not currently in contact, he said.
“I love my daughter very much,” he said. “Anything she has said to hurt me, whether politically or financially or relationship-wise, I forgive her.”
In the interview, Mr. Block reiterated his support for Israel, which he thinks has been justified in how it has conducted its strikes in Gaza. He said he had visited as part of a bipartisan cultural exchange program paid for by the Israeli government, motivated in part by his concerns about rising antisemitism in the United States after the Oct. 7 attack.
He said that after his daughter posted her video, he and a member of his staff had received death threats. “Reckless comments can really push people toward violence, and unfortunately we’ve seen that a lot today, quite frankly, with the left,” he said.
The Block family is not alone in navigating their political disagreements in public. Political scions have long applied public pressure to their parents. Patti Davis, for instance, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, was a thorn in her father’s side throughout his presidency, loudly denouncing his policies on nuclear weapons. In recent years, the dynamic more often results in political sparring and family drama that tends to draw an audience online.
Take Jack Schlossberg, who called his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign “an embarrassment” and has continued to oppose his efforts as President Trump’s health secretary. Or Christian Walker, a conservative social media figure who publicly criticized his father, the Senate candidate Herschel Walker, in 2022 after reports that he paid a girlfriend to have an abortion.
And then there is Vivian Wilson, a daughter of Elon Musk, who wrote on Threads last year that her father had misrepresented her experience as a transgender woman “in a last-ditch attempt to garner sympathy points.” She called the Trump administration, which her father helped into office, “cartoonishly evil” in an interview this year with Teen Vogue.
Some of the young, digitally savvy family members speaking up are estranged from the relatives whose politics they oppose. But not all of them. Claudia Conway, daughter of the former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, made news as a 15-year-old for a series of posts disapproving of her mother’s political views. (In one, she begged Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to “adopt” her.)
In an interview with The New York Times last year, Ms. Conway said she regretted the way she had worded some of her posts in 2020. In the years since, she said that she and her mother had worked to repair their relationship.
Ms. Block, who has not spoken to her father in more than two years, does not expect that kind of reconciliation. In a recent interview, she said she grew up mostly sharing the Republican viewpoints of her father, a former lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. When he retired from the military and ran for a seat on the Sandoval County Commission in 2016, Ms. Block helped with his campaign. “I couldn’t have won my first election without her,” he said in the interview.
The two began to have private arguments about abortion rights and immigration as the Trump administration got underway, Ms. Block said. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 strained their relationship further. “He was so anti-vax and not wanting to wear masks and saying this was some form of government tyranny,” Ms. Block said.
Children of politicians are already exposed to the public’s approval or disapproval of their parents’ politics, said Christopher Ojeda, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Merced. In many cases, those young people end up choosing between conflict with their families and conflict with their peers. “They’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he said.
Ms. Block, who now works for a nonprofit and is pursuing a master’s degree, said she would have been more willing to overlook their disagreements if her father were not in office. However, he was influencing policies that she believed were hurting people, she said, and he had not been receptive to her private confrontations. “That was when I was like, I think I kind of need to start speaking out about this,” she said.
Ms. Block said she did not want her posts to result in threats for either her or her father. She said she hoped her videos on TikTok, where she has more than 50,000 followers, would encourage people to pay attention to politics at the local and state level.
She is quickly learning that even criticism can become fodder for more content.
When she saw that her father had spoken to The Daily Mail about their relationship, describing her actions as “horrible,” she posted on TikTok again.
“I had a good laugh,” she wrote.
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9) Hamas Says It Has Returned All Hostage Remains It Can Recover
The militants said they would need special equipment to retrieve more bodies in Gaza. The announcement could put the truce with Israel at risk.
By Ephrat Livni, Oct. 15, 2025
Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said on Wednesday night that it had handed over all of the remains of Israeli hostages that it had been able to recover without additional equipment, potentially putting a cease-fire with Israel in the Gaza Strip at risk.
In a statement, the Palestinian militant group said that it has “committed to what was agreed upon and handed over everyone it had in terms of living captives and what it had in terms of bodies that it could recover.” But it said that it needed “special equipment” to find and extract the remains of the rest of the deceased captives, adding that it was “making great efforts.”
According to the terms of a cease-fire brokered by international mediators last week, Israel and Hamas would stop fighting and the militant group would return all the hostages it held — both living captives and the bodies of those who had died, totaling 48 people — in exchange for the freeing of Palestinians held by Israel, among other provisions.
Hamas freed the 20 living hostages on Monday, and militants in Gaza had in the days since handed over the remains of eight people. Israel has identified six of those bodies as Israeli and one as Nepali. The identity of the eighth was not yet clear.
The announcement that Hamas was unable to retrieve the remains of additional hostages came after the militant group handed over two more coffins to the Red Cross on Wednesday, putting the total number of bodies it has handed over at 10. That, however, left the remains of over a dozen people unaccounted for.
While the office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, acknowledged receipt of two coffins from the Red Cross late on Wednesday night, a representative for Mr. Netanyahu declined to immediately comment on Hamas’s latest statement.
The truce agreement called for the immediate handover of all remaining bodies of hostages in Gaza — there were about 25 deceased captives thought to be held there before the cease-fire. But the deal acknowledged that some bodies could be difficult to locate and may take more time to retrieve because of the widespread destruction in the enclave. Two years of Israeli strikes have reduced much of Gaza to rubble.
On Monday, the Israeli government had been weighing measures to penalize Hamas for not turning over more bodies, according to two diplomats briefed by Israeli officials and three Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics.
On Wednesday, after Hamas’s announcement, the office of Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, said in a statement that he had directed the Israeli military to prepare a plan for the total defeat of Hamas in Gaza if the group did not abide by the terms of the deal unveiled by President Trump late last month, which also demanded Hamas’s disarmament.
“If Hamas refuses to abide by the agreement, Israel, in coordination with the U.S., will return to fighting and work to completely defeat Hamas, change the reality in Gaza and achieve all the goals of the war,” the statement said.
The question raised by Hamas’s latest statement is whether Israel and the United States will interpret it as a violation of the agreement.
Mr. Trump had previously criticized Hamas on Tuesday, saying in a post on Truth Social that “the job is not done.”
“The dead have not been returned, as promised,” he wrote.
Mr. Trump also claimed that Hamas had agreed to disarm, though the group has not publicly confirmed that it would.
In an interview with CNN earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that if Hamas refused to disarm, “Israel will return to those streets as soon as I say the word,” suggesting that fighting in Gaza could resume. But Mr. Trump also celebrated the deal and said the long-term prospects for peace were positive, given regional support for his plan.
Qatar, Egypt and Turkey were all mediators on the deal, along with the United States, and on Monday their heads of state and Mr. Trump signed a pledge to “work collectively” to implement the deal at a conference on the cease-fire held in Egypt and attended by dozens of world leaders.
Under the terms of the deal, Hamas must share whatever intelligence it has about where bodies may be found, and there is still some chance that Israeli officials may accept what were the group’s expected protestations of being unable to retrieve the remains given the conditions in the Gaza Strip.
The truce deal outlined how the remains of former hostages in Gaza might be located and returned if Hamas was unable to do so right away. It calls for the establishment of a joint task force, to include the United States and other mediators, that would share information and help find the remaining bodies, according to three Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak publicly.
Those officials said Israel believed that Hamas knew the location of many, but not all, of the bodies.
Adam Rasgon, Aaron Boxerman and Liam Stack contributed reporting.
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10) The Israel-Gaza War Always Had an Unacknowledged Third Front
By Andrew Ross, Oct. 15, 2025
Mr. Ross is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University.
Nothing can undo the staggering loss of life and the bloodshed of the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, the relentless bombardment and starvation of Gazans and the increasing violence directed against West Bank communities.
But amid the prospects of a lasting cease-fire and Palestinian self-determination, there must also be pressure to end the unsparing detention of the thousands of Palestinians who continue to be held in Israel’s prisons, many under conditions that defy international laws mandating humane treatment of detainees.
Under the hostage-prisoner exchange agreement of the cease-fire plan, Israel released about 2,000 prisoners and detainees this week. They represent only a small fraction of the total number of Palestinians held in Israeli facilities. The vast majority are being left to rot.
In the West Bank and Jerusalem, far from Hamas-controlled Gaza, more than 19,000 Palestinians were swept up since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. Some were released, but as of early October, more than 11,000 Palestinians were still locked up in Israeli prisons, almost a third of them under “administrative detention,” without charges or a trial.
Some people were arrested for nothing more than messages they posted on social media. Thousands of Gazans were also held in Israeli military detention, many as “unlawful combatants,” without any legal process. Their numbers are difficult to verify, though a recent investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call found that as few as one in four of them had been classified as fighters even in Israel’s own military databases.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, echoing reports by Amnesty International and B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, documented testimony by Palestinians who said that while incarcerated they have been subject to beatings, torture, rape and extreme deprivation. Men and women spoke about loud music played for hours on end, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, suspension from ceilings and severe sexual and gender-based violence. Some of the prisoners released this week confirmed that they, too, had been exposed to brutal conditions and abuse. (The Israeli Army has previously said it “rejects outright allegations of systematic abuse of detainees.”)
Legal experts and scholars will decide whether the alleged torture, denial of adequate food and death in these prisons meet the criteria to be termed genocide according to international law. There can be no doubt, however, that Israel’s war on prisoners was the third front in its assault on Gaza and the West Bank, and it involves possible crimes under the Geneva Conventions that have gone largely unseen by anyone but the victims. These prisoners, too, are hostages to the conflict, and they, too, deserve justice.
This past summer, as part of a New York University research project, I conducted in-depth interviews with more than a dozen Palestinians who had recently been released. Working through local contacts, I spoke with some people remotely and others in person in the West Bank. Among them were longtime detainees who had contributed to the longtime Palestinian prisoners’ movement, which started in the late 1960s.
Since then, incarcerated Palestinians organized themselves into an effective pressure group, struggling to attain rights and privileges consistent with international law. Through hunger strikes and hard sacrifices, they gained access to, among other things, books, medication and visits by family members and lawyers — although they are held in Israeli locations largely inaccessible to Palestinians, a violation of international law.
They have not been successful in their bid for recognition as political prisoners or even prisoners of war, categories that should entail special protections. Nor have they been able to win repeal of the practice of administrative detention, introduced by British authorities in the 1940s as an emergency regulation to punish Palestinian resistance fighters and Jewish paramilitary organizations. This regulation was adopted by the Israeli state in 1948 and has been renewed every year since.
The rights that the movement won melted away after Oct. 7. Israel’s extremist security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, began to transform prisons into what many detainees have described as lawless places of torment where inmates are subject to a condition of bare life. “Everything was taken away,” said one middle-aged man I met who was held for more than 25 years for political activism. (I am withholding his name because he, like all the other people I interviewed, fears rearrest.) Mr. Ben-Gvir’s orders “destroyed the movement in one day,” the man said without visible emotion. “Food was reduced to a survival diet, we had no hot water, yard time or hygiene items, no contact with the outside world, and were crammed into three-by-four-meter cells that used to hold half as many.”
Another man in his 20s, whom I spoke to in one of the West Bank’s refugee camps, told me he had been rounded up after Oct. 7 and incarcerated for 18 months, during which time he said he had not seen any family members or lawyers. He trembled as he recounted that he and his 10 cellmates were tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets in that confined space. “I have been to prison before,” he told me, “and this was no longer a prison; it was Dante’s Inferno.”
Several female detainees independently described their transitional stay in Hasharon prison, a facility largely for men, in a cell overrun by rodents and furnished with only a urine-soaked mattress. Some of the men said they lost up to 50 pounds and bore serious physical and mental health problems from the denial of medical care. Even Israel’s Supreme Court recently ruled that the government was not providing subsistence levels of food.
In more than a decade of conducting interviews in the West Bank for various research projects, I have heard many stories about the suffering imposed by the Israeli occupation. No trauma was more brutal than that left by the prisoners’ ordeal. I will never forget the anguish of one soft-spoken, middle-aged man I interviewed in his village near Bethlehem a few months after his release.
He told me he wakes up in terror multiple times every night for fear of being seized again and beaten, as had happened almost every day while he was behind bars. According to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights group that monitors prisoners, at least 77 detainees have died in custody over the past two years, including Walid Daqqa, the best-known prison intellectual, whose writings are widely circulated and who was an educational mentor to so many over the years. Very few bodies were returned to their families. The cease-fire agreement calls for Israel to release 15 bodies for every deceased Israeli hostage whose remains are returned by Hamas. The first 90 have arrived in Gaza.
Only three weeks after the aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip began, Hamas proposed an “everyone for everyone” exchange: the 240 or so Israeli hostages for all the Palestinian prisoners (up to 10,000 at that time), which would have been consistent with asymmetric prisoner exchange ratios in the past. Representatives of the families of Israeli hostages urged their government to accept. The blunt rejection of that proposal was the first public signal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition would pursue a different goal: the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its entire population.
Cruel carceral practices haven’t made Israel any safer. Since 1967, an estimated one million Palestinians have been arrested and locked up. That would be one-fifth of the current population in the West Bank and Gaza. Surely every household has felt the impact.
These policies, and these numbers, bear comparison with the mass incarceration of Black South Africans during apartheid or African Americans during the first decade and a half of this century. International condemnation of those practices helped to generate change: Apartheid is officially gone, and the rate of African American imprisonment decreased by nearly 50 percent between 2000 and 2021.
The treatment of Palestinians in Israel’s carceral system has rightly come under harsh scrutiny from human rights organizations for decades, but it has yet to draw that kind of international outrage, let alone diplomatic censure. It’s not too late to hold Israel accountable and to end its arbitrary detention and systematic abuse of civilians for what is clearly collective punishment.
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11) Chicagoans Resist I.C.E. Agents
Immigration agents are using aggressive tactics. Residents of the sanctuary city are trying to resist them.
By Julie Bosman, I’m the Chicago bureau chief., Oct. 16, 2025
Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
During a recent run near Lake Michigan, I watched a black S.U.V. make a U-turn and chase down three young men. Two armed immigration agents, their eyes peeking out from behind their balaclavas, jumped out and approached them. One asked what visas they held.
“H-1B,” they responded, looking bewildered. That’s the visa for foreign workers with special expertise.
Nothing that I could see would have attracted the attention of the agents, except for the fact that the men had brown skin. After questioning them, the agents let them go.
This scene is now unfolding across Chicago every day.
Federal immigration agents have been asking people about their legal status outside churches, homeless shelters, apartment buildings, parks and even a cemetery. Officers have questioned both U.S. citizens and legal residents, asking for passports and visas as proof of identity.
The presence of officers from Border Patrol and ICE has brought forth an intense backlash. Chicagoans are shouting at immigration agents, calling them fascists and Nazis, throwing objects at them and chasing their unmarked S.U.V.s or minivans, honking their horns to warn bystanders of ICE’s presence.
In response to what a Homeland Security official called “a surge in assaults,” the officers are using increasingly aggressive tactics. In recent days, they’ve hurled tear gas, pepper balls and smoke bombs at the public, protesters, journalists and even Chicago police officers, often without warning. Today’s newsletter is about the conflict on the streets of Chicago.
The intervention
The Trump administration began a crackdown on illegal immigration here five weeks ago, promising to help the city by arresting “criminal illegal aliens.” But the tactics are unusual.
Schools. Officers are lingering just off campus in some places. So principals have ordered “soft lockdowns,” keeping students in classrooms until the agents are gone. Last month, ICE tried to arrest a father after a day care drop-off; in the confrontation, he was shot and killed. Now some schools use neighborhood volunteers, at parents’ request, so white adults can walk Latino children home.
Restaurants. Kitchens are often staffed by undocumented immigrants, and ICE knows it. Workers are afraid to leave their homes, and many have cut their hours. One Mexican spot I like keeps its door locked — even when it’s open — as a shield against ICE, allowing customers in one at a time.
Public spaces. Many people, even those with legal status, are asking friends to do their grocery shopping for them. Streets are quieter. One man with legal residency got a $130 ticket for not having his papers, The Chicago Tribune reported.
Why here? It is not surprising to people here that the administration has focused on Chicago, which calls itself a sanctuary city. That means it doesn’t help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants. Half a million Chicagoans, nearly one-fifth of the population, were born outside the United States, and support for immigrants is generally strong in the area. Local police officers won’t ask suspects about their immigration status.
Trump and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, have an adversarial relationship, and Trump regularly criticizes Chicago’s Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson. The president wrote online that they “should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers!” City and state leaders said they were receiving no communication from the Department of Homeland Security or the White House about the operations.
The fury over immigration enforcement has expanded in the last few days. After a car chase and crash involving agents, more than 100 people came out of their homes and shouted, “ICE go home.” At least one person threw eggs at the agents, hitting an agent directly in the head. (Trump ordered National Guard troops into Illinois over Pritzker’s objections, but a federal judge blocked their deployment last week.)
In response, federal officers released tear gas on the crowd, including 13 Chicago police officers who had been called to the scene. For weeks, Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have dispersed people filming and shouting at them by shooting pepper balls and tear gas.
This is very different from norms of modern policing: Officers typically release chemical agents only in extreme situations, and only after warnings. Agents have pointed guns at people who get in their way.
On Wednesday, Pritzker complained that ICE was causing “mayhem” and warned that other cities would face the same fate. In the Oval Office yesterday, Trump named San Francisco. He said, “We’re just at the start. We’re going to go into other cities.”
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12) How FEMA Is Pushing Communities to Fend for Themselves
President Trump has said he wants to eventually shift the burden of disaster relief and recovery onto states. It’s already happening.
By Scott Dance, Oct. 16, 2025
Roger King, a resident of Canton, N.C., earlier this month. Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina a year ago and the town is still operating out of trailers and awaiting some federal funds. Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times
Life is inching back to normal in the town of Cave City seven months after a tornado slammed into its corner of northeastern Arkansas. The only grocery store is about to reopen. Crews are starting to dig the foundation for a rebuilt funeral home.
But the town — like so many others facing daunting recoveries from recent disaster — has had to go it alone, Mayor Jonas Anderson said.
The Trump administration denied Cave City’s requests for Federal Emergency Management Agency money to help it recover. Mr. Anderson was forced to forge ahead anyway, racking up a bill of about $300,000 he said could end up eating 15 percent of the small town’s annual budget.
Some of the nearly 2,000 residents have gotten federal help. FEMA agreed to cover repairs to the more than 50 homes damaged or destroyed when 165 mile per hour winds struck in March. The state pledged relief money, too. But Mr. Anderson said Cave City is carrying more of the burden of recovery than expected.
“We’re making a really good recovery not because of some big FEMA reimbursement we got, but in spite of not getting it,” Mr. Anderson said. “People here are super resilient.”
This could be the future for more communities across the country, based on Mr. Trump’s vision for emergency management in the United States: one that would transfer responsibility for disaster recovery from the federal government to the states in all but the largest catastrophes. For many places, it is already the reality.
FEMA has been delaying disaster declarations and aid payments to communities, adding new hurdles to access some grant funds and cutting off the flow of money intended to boost resilience and prevent future disasters from causing so much damage.
Emergency managers and elected officials across the country are adjusting to a system in which they can no longer count on the sort of disaster aid they typically expect from FEMA, which was established in 1979 to coordinate and professionalize disaster response. They are figuring out how to prepare for future disasters without key FEMA grants, raising private funds to replace federal aid and turning to state governments to beef up their preparations. In some places, volunteer disaster recovery squads have sprung up.
In an emailed statement, the FEMA spokesman Daniel Llargues said that the agency has held back some disaster relief funding, saving it for the future. For example, a monthly report on the agency’s spending this summer showed it withheld $11 billion for projects tied to a coronavirus pandemic disaster declaration that states had expected to receive by Sept. 30. Agency officials said those payments are not canceled, but rather deferred into the new fiscal year to ensure the solvency of the government fund used to pay for disaster aid.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, FEMA remains committed to supporting disaster survivors,” Mr. Llargues wrote. He said the agency is managing disaster funding “in a way that prioritizes immediate needs and long-term recovery efforts.”
Still, the consequence of such delays could be that communities find themselves less prepared when disaster does strike, critics said.
“They’re making good on their promise to shift the burden onto states without giving the states any runway to prepare for that,” said Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who tracks disaster recovery spending across the country.
Slower-than-expected hurricane and wildfire seasons have meant few recent tests of the evolving emergency response system, allowing FEMA to stretch its disaster relief fund further than it might otherwise. The fund had been forecast to run out of money by now but as of the end of September, it was projected to contain more than $2 billion, down from a routine $22.5 billion infusion from Congress in March.
Since January, Mr. Trump has approved 32 federal disaster declarations, which make available a variety of federal aid programs to communities and individuals. That’s far fewer than the average of more than 60 declarations per year from fiscal years 2015 through 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service. Mr. Trump has rejected nearly a dozen state requests for FEMA aid so far this year, on par with the numbers of rejections during his first administration as well as President Joe Biden’s term, according to FEMA data.
A steady backlog of pending disaster aid requests has persisted this year, sitting at a dozen as of Tuesday. Under previous administrations, there have rarely been more than a handful of outstanding requests at any given time.
Normally, Congress would appropriate tens of billions of dollars to refill the disaster aid fund at this time of year. Amid a government shutdown stretching into its third week, there has been little discussion of disaster funding on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of members is supporting a House bill that would make FEMA a Cabinet-level agency, removing it from the Homeland Security Department while streamlining its payment process and speeding up agency investments in disaster resilience around the country.
Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, said a strong FEMA is important for coordinating among states that may have differing capabilities when it comes to handling a crisis.
“These disasters tend to be multistate,” Mr. Pallone said. “If you have to do everything yourself, it’s not going to work because you don't have the expertise.”
Proponents of a trimmed-down FEMA, on the other hand, argue that too much federal aid can prevent communities from investing in their own preparedness. State and local governments are more closely attuned to communities’ needs, and should be equipped to handle the most common and predictable types of disasters, said Dominik Lett, a budget policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a right-leaning research organization.
But in places still recovering from historic disasters, slow and unpredictable support from FEMA demonstrates the limits of those ideas. In western North Carolina a year after Hurricane Helene — and four years after an earlier bout of devastating flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred — the town of Canton is still operating out of trailers and waiting for federal money it expected for a new town hall and police station, Mayor Zeb Smathers said.
“We should not have to count on recovery like it’s raffle money,” Mr. Smathers said. “It should be streamlined, efficient, dependable. It’s not.”
Camille Rivera, president of La Brega Y Fuerza, a nonprofit group focused on connecting the diaspora of Puerto Ricans spread across the United States, said that if FEMA shifts more responsibility to states and territories, poor communities will suffer. That is already evident in Puerto Rico, where blackouts are common and damage remains from storms going back to Hurricane Maria in 2017. Many residents are turning to crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe instead of waiting for FEMA, Ms. Rivera said.
“We have people who still have tarps on their roofs who haven’t been able to rebuild,” she said. “A lot of communities aren’t even relying on the federal government anymore.”
At the same time, the Trump administration has either paused or canceled grant programs designed to help communities improve their resilience to disasters.
Erik Thorsen, chief executive of Columbia Memorial Hospital on the Oregon coast, said that as construction continues on a $300 million expansion that could withstand a powerful earthquake and tsunami, he is scrambling to replace a $14 million FEMA grant that is no longer coming.
A lawsuit filed by 20 states is seeking to reinstate the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program, saying that since it was established in 2018 during Mr. Trump’s first term, its roughly $4.5 billion in investments have prevented $150 billion in disaster damage.
In Cave City, where plans for a new park and community center are on hold because the town has to devote its tax revenue to tornado recovery, Mr. Anderson said he understands why President Trump would want states to handle more disasters. They know their residents’ needs best, after all.
But when that shift happens seemingly overnight, it creates uncertainty that makes it harder for local officials to make decisions, and can leave livelihoods hanging in the balance, Mr. Anderson said.
“It’s definitely going to have to be an adjustment,” he said. “Nobody has the resources that the federal government can have.”
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13) Trump Administration Authorizes Covert C.I.A. Action in Venezuela
The development comes as the U.S. military is drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including possible strikes inside the country.
By Julian E. Barnes and Tyler Pager, Reporting from Washington, Published Oct. 15, 2025, Updated Oct. 16, 2025
“The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean. … The scale of the military buildup in the region is substantial: There are currently 10,000 U.S. troops there, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean. … The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power. … In 1954, the agency orchestrated a coup that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, ushering in decades of instability. The C.I.A.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 ended in disaster, and the agency repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro. That same year, however, the C.I.A. supplied weapons to dissidents who assassinated Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic. The agency also had its hands in a 1964 coup in Brazil, the death of Che Guevara and other machinations in Bolivia, a 1973 coup in Chile, and the contra fight against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.”
A street market in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, has said little about what his agency is doing in the country. Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
The Trump administration has secretly authorized the C.I.A. to conduct covert action in Venezuela, according to U.S. officials, stepping up a campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader.
The authorization is the latest step in the Trump administration’s intensifying pressure campaign against Venezuela. For weeks, the U.S. military has been targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs, killing 27 people. American officials have been clear, privately, that the end goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.
Mr. Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that he had authorized the covert action and said the United States was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory.
“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president told reporters hours after The New York Times reported the secret authorization.
Any strikes on Venezuelan territory would be a significant escalation. After several of the boat strikes, the administration made the point that the operations had taken place in international waters.
The new authority would allow the C.I.A. to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean.
The agency would be able to take covert action against Mr. Maduro or his government either unilaterally or in conjunction with a larger military operation. It is not known whether the C.I.A. is planning any specific operations in Venezuela.
But the development comes as the U.S. military is planning its own possible escalation, drawing up options for President Trump to consider, including strikes inside Venezuela.
The scale of the military buildup in the region is substantial: There are currently 10,000 U.S. troops there, most of them at bases in Puerto Rico, but also a contingent of Marines on amphibious assault ships. In all, the Navy has eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean.
The new authorities, known in intelligence jargon as a presidential finding, were described by multiple U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the highly classified document.
In a statement, Venezuela rejected Mr. Trump’s “bellicose” language, and accused him of seeking “to legitimize regime change with the ultimate goal of appropriating Venezuela’s petroleum resources.”
Venezuela said it planned to raise the matter at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, calling Mr. Trump’s actions “a grave violation of the U.N. charter.”
Mr. Trump ordered an end to diplomatic talks with the Maduro government this month as he grew frustrated with the Venezuelan leader’s failure to accede to U.S. demands to give up power voluntarily and the continued insistence by officials that they had no part in drug trafficking.
The C.I.A. has long had authority to work with governments in Latin America on security matters and intelligence sharing. That has allowed the agency to work with Mexican officials to target drug cartels. But those authorizations do not allow the agency to carry out direct lethal operations.
The Trump administration’s strategy on Venezuela, developed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with help from John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, aims to oust Mr. Maduro from power.
Mr. Ratcliffe has said little about what his agency is doing in Venezuela. But he has promised that the C.I.A. under his leadership would become more aggressive. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Ratcliffe said he would make the C.I.A. less averse to risk and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
The C.I.A. declined to comment.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he had made the authorization because Venezuela had “emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”
The president appeared to be referring to claims by his administration that members of the Tren de Aragua prison gang had been sent into the United States to commit crimes. In March, Mr. Trump proclaimed that the gang, which was founded in a Venezuelan prison, was a terrorist organization that was “conducting irregular warfare” against the United States under the orders of the Maduro government.
An intelligence community assessment in February contradicted that claim, detailing why spy agencies did not think the gang was under the Maduro government’s control, though the F.B.I. partly dissented. A top Trump administration official pressed for the assessment to be redone. The initial assessment was reaffirmed by the National Intelligence Council. Afterward, the council’s acting director, Michael Collins, was fired from his post.
The United States has offered $50 million for information leading to Mr. Maduro’s arrest and conviction on U.S. drug trafficking charges.
Mr. Rubio, who also serves as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, has called Mr. Maduro illegitimate, and the Trump administration describes him as a “narcoterrorist.”
Mr. Maduro blocked the government that was democratically elected last year from taking power. But the Trump administration’s accusations that he has profited from the narcotics trade and that his country is a major producer of drugs for the United States have been debated.
The administration has asserted in legal filings that Mr. Maduro controls Tren de Aragua. But an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies contradicts that conclusion.
While the Trump administration has publicly offered relatively thin legal justifications for its campaign, Mr. Trump told Congress that he decided the United States was in an armed conflict with drug cartels it views as terrorist organizations. In the congressional notice late last month, the Trump administration said the cartels smuggling drugs were “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
White House findings authorizing covert action are closely guarded secrets. They are often reauthorized from administration to administration, and their precise language is rarely made public. They also constitute one of the rawest uses of executive authority.
Select members of Congress are briefed on the authorizations, but lawmakers cannot make them public, and conducting oversight of possible covert actions is difficult.
While U.S. military operations, like the strikes against boats purportedly carrying drugs from Venezuelan territory, are generally made public, C.I.A. covert actions are typically kept secret. Some, however, like the C.I.A. operation in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, are quickly made public.
The agency has been stepping up its work on counternarcotics for years. Gina Haspel, Mr. Trump’s second C.I.A. director during his first administration, devoted more resources to drug hunting in Mexico and Latin America. Under William J. Burns, the Biden administration’s director, the C.I.A. began flying drones over Mexico, hunting for fentanyl labs, operations that Mr. Ratcliffe expanded.
The covert finding is in some ways a natural evolution of those antidrug efforts. But the C.I.A.’s history of covert action in Latin America and the Caribbean is mixed at best.
In 1954, the agency orchestrated a coup that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, ushering in decades of instability. The C.I.A.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 ended in disaster, and the agency repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro. That same year, however, the C.I.A. supplied weapons to dissidents who assassinated Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the authoritarian leader of the Dominican Republic.
The agency also had its hands in a 1964 coup in Brazil, the death of Che Guevara and other machinations in Bolivia, a 1973 coup in Chile, and the contra fight against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.
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14) Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People
The proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted.
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz, Reporting from Washington, Published Oct. 15, 2025, Updated Oct. 16, 2025
Some of the dozens of white South Africans who accepted an invitation from the Trump administration to come to the United States as refugees arrived at an air hangar in Dulles, Va., in May. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.
The proposals, some of which already have gone into effect, would transform a decades-old program aimed at helping the world’s most desperate people into one that conforms to Mr. Trump’s vision of immigration — which is to help mostly white people who say they are being persecuted while keeping the vast majority of other people out.
The plans were presented to the White House in April and July by officials in the State and Homeland Security Departments after President Trump directed federal agencies to study whether refugee resettlement was in the interest of the United States. Mr. Trump had suspended refugee admissions on his first day in office and solicited the proposals about how and whether the administration should continue the program.
Trump administration officials have not ruled out any of the ideas, according to people familiar with the planning, although there is no set timetable for approving or rejecting the ideas. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential plans.
The proposed changes would put new emphasis on whether applicants would be able to assimilate into the United States, directing them to take classes on “American history and values” and “respect for cultural norms.”
The proposals also advise Mr. Trump to prioritize Europeans who have been “targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties.”
That appeared to be a reference to the European far-right political party Alternative for Germany, whose leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, revived Nazi slogans and denigrated foreigners. Vice President JD Vance has criticized Germany for trying to suppress the views of the group, which is known as the AfD.
A senior official said the Trump administration was monitoring the situation in Europe to determine whether anyone would be eligible for refugee status. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan had not been finalized.
Mr. Trump enacted some of the proposals in the documents even before the plans were submitted to him, including slashing refugee admissions and offering priority status to Afrikaners, the white minority that once ran South Africa’s brutal apartheid system.
Mr. Trump has claimed that Afrikaners face racial persecution in their home country, a claim vigorously disputed by government officials there. Police statistics do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in South Africa.
Taken together, the proposals provide a window into Mr. Trump’s intentions for a program that has come to symbolize America’s role as a sanctuary.
Mr. Trump and many American voters have rejected that role after years of record illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. Although the refugee program, with its meticulous screening processes and yearslong waits, is considered the “right way” of seeking protection in the United States, Mr. Trump has made clear he wants to crack down on immigration in general — both legal and illegal.
According to the rationale laid out in the documents submitted to Mr. Trump, America’s acceptance of refugees has made the country too diverse.
“The sharp increase in diversity has reduced the level of social trust essential for the functioning of a democratic polity,” according to one of the documents. The administration should only welcome “refugees who can be fully and appropriately assimilate, and are aligned with the president’s objectives.”
To that end, the documents say, Mr. Trump should cancel the applications of hundreds of thousands of people who are already in the pipeline to come to the United States as refugees, many of whom have gone through extensive security checks and referrals.
And Mr. Trump’s federal agencies proposed imposing limits on the number of refugees who can resettle in communities that already have a high population of immigrants, on the basis that the United States should avoid “the concentration of non-native citizens” in order to promote assimilation.
Thomas Pigott, a spokesman for the State Department, would not comment on specific details of the documents, but he said: “It should come as no surprise that the State Department is implementing the priorities of the duly elected president of the United States.” He added: “This administration unapologetically prioritizes the interests of the American people.”
The administration has made some exceptions to its refugee ban. According to the documents, federal agencies have worked to resettle a limited number of Afghans who assisted U.S. soldiers during the war.
Critics say the plans exposes the president’s vision for what America should look like.
“It reflects a preexisting notion among some in the Trump administration as to who are the true Americans,” said Barbara L. Strack, a former chief of the refugee affairs division at Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. “And they think it’s white people and they think it’s Christians.”
Other changes include more intensive security vetting for refugees, including expanded DNA tests for children to ensure they are related to the adults they are traveling with.
Mr. Trump also is planning to slash the number of refugees allowed into the United States to 7,500 in the upcoming year, a drastic decrease from the limit of 125,000 set by the Biden administration last year.
Mr. Trump is required by law to consult Congress on imposing a refugee limit, but White House officials say the government shutdown has delayed that.
Administration officials are not done submitting proposals to the White House. According to a draft of a third report, obtained by The New York Times, the latest proposal calls for U.S. embassies to make referrals for who should be considered for refugee status, rather than the United Nations, which has long been the practice. The change would allow for greater American control of who gets funneled into the refugee pipeline.
At the United Nations General Assembly summit last month, Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, defended the Trump administration’s approach during a panel on refugee policies.
“Saying that the process is susceptible to abuse is not being xenophobic, it is not being a mean or bad person,” Mr. Landau said.
The administration has argued that allowing thousands of refugees from all over the world to enter the nation would overwhelm American communities that have already called for additional resources to assist the record number of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.
Migrants at the border, however, seek protection through a program separate from that of refugees, who often wait years overseas before they are vetted to travel to the United States. The refugee program has historically received bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats.
Mr. Trump and the architect of his immigration restrictions, Stephen Miller, have for years sought to limit the number of refugees entering the United States, particularly from Africa or Muslim-majority nations. During his first term, Mr. Trump demanded to know at a White House meeting why he would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as “shithole countries,” rather than Europe.
His administration now appears prepared to turn those sentiments into policy.
In the report, administration officials also proposed banning refugees from resettling in U.S. communities that have requested federal aid to assist migrants in recent years.
But many local leaders and refugee advocates argue that not only can refugees adjust to life in America effectively, they also benefit local economies.
Marian Abernathy, a lay leader at the Judea Reform Congregation synagogue in Durham, N.C., has helped refugees who had settled in her community since 2016, including a dozen families in the last four years from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Venezuela and Syria.
The refugees have worked as nursing aides, engineers, Uber drivers, medical technicians and lunch coordinators at local schools, she said.
“They come to dinner at our houses,” she said. “We go to dinner at their houses. We go to events together, hang out at the museum. I don’t feel like they’re not integrated.”
“I’ve rarely seen a group of people,” she said, “who work harder and who want fewer handouts.”
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15) Renting a San Francisco Apartment in the A.I. Boom? Good Luck.
The artificial intelligence gold rush has pushed San Francisco’s residential rents up by the most in the nation, as A.I. companies lease apartments and offer rent stipends to employees.
By Natallie Rocha, Reporting from San Francisco, Oct. 16, 2025
Roy Lee, Cluely’s chief executive, at his home in Cluely’s office in San Francisco. His start-up has leased apartments for its employees. Amy Osborne for The New York Times
After Roy Lee’s artificial intelligence start-up, Cluely, landed $5.3 million in venture capital funding this spring, he orchestrated a San Francisco real estate coup.
In May, Cluely leased eight apartments for its employees at a new luxury complex — where rents start at $3,000 a month and reach $12,000 a month for penthouse units — just a one-minute walk from its office in the city’s South of Market neighborhood. The apartments were a mix of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units in the 16-story building, which offers a fitness center, a rooftop bar, and concierge and housecleaning services.
“Going to the office should feel like you’re walking to your living room, so we really, really want people close,” said Mr. Lee, 22, who chose not to move into the apartments and lives in Cluely’s office, which is housed in a loftlike single-family home. “I feel like I’m more trying to build a frat house, and you don’t commute to a frat house.”
Driven by a boom in A.I. companies like Cluely, San Francisco’s residential rents have soared the most in the nation over the past year. Apartment prices in the city rose an average of 6 percent in that time, more than double the 2.5 percent increase in New York City, according to the real estate tracker CoStar. That now puts the average rent for a San Francisco apartment at $3,315 a month, right behind New York City’s $3,360, which is the nation’s highest.
The A.I. frenzy’s effect on rents has put pressure on San Francisco’s already strained housing supply, leading to heated competition among techies and non-techies to pounce on listings. Applicants are showing up to apartment tours with envelopes of cash in hand and waiting in long lines to see properties. And the rejections for would-be renters are coming fast.
That has raised questions about the affordability of San Francisco, which has long been one of the most expensive U.S. cities. Daniel Lurie, the mayor, has made addressing affordable housing a cornerstone of his policies, while also embracing the growth of local A.I. companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
“Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Will Goodman, a principal at Strada Investment Group, which developed the luxury complex that Cluely leased from. Within two months of the development’s opening in May, he said, half of the 501 units had been rented.
Ted Egan, the chief economist for the City and County of San Francisco, said the city’s market rents today are still below prepandemic levels when adjusted for inflation. But many service workers who left rent-controlled apartments during the pandemic would now find it difficult to return, he acknowledged.
“Tech is setting the bar for housing prices,” Mr. Egan said.
Caroline Roche, 25, a demand planner at Backroads, a travel company, recently experienced the rental scarcity firsthand. She has moved twice in San Francisco since arriving in 2022 for her first job after college. But as she prepared for a third move this summer, Ms. Roche was stunned by how much harder it was to find apartments in her desired neighborhoods.
When she and her partner showed up to a property tour in the North of the Panhandle neighborhood, they found 20 other couples waiting. In some cases, she said, she has received same-day denials for her rental applications.
“It was frustrating to just feel like you’re kind of doing things right in life — you have your job, you’re paying off your credit card — and you still aren’t in the demographic that can afford necessarily what you want,” she said.
Ms. Roche and her partner treated the apartment hunt as a second job and did 25 tours in a week, she said, before getting “super lucky” by finding a one-bedroom apartment in their $3,200 monthly budget near Golden Gate Park. She does not plan on moving for at least two years, she said.
Landlords used to receive only a few rental applications within a month of listing an apartment, but now are getting one to three on the same day an apartment lists, said Ryan Shane, president of the Housing Guild Management Company, which manages mostly Victorian and Edwardian-style apartment buildings.
“It’s much, much easier than it has been in a very long time,” he said.
Neighborhoods near A.I. companies — such as Mission Bay, where OpenAI has its headquarters — are particularly popular. Rents in Mission Bay jumped 13 percent over the past year, according to CoStar. Many techies at A.I. start-ups work long hours and want to live close to their offices, said Strada’s Mr. Goodman.
Flo Crivello, 33, the chief executive of Lindy, a start-up that makes A.I. software, said he offers his approximately 40 employees a $1,000-a-month rent stipend if they live within a 10-minute walk of the company’s office.
Two employees accepted the offer a few years ago when Lindy was in an office near the Hayes Valley and Duboce Triangle neighborhoods, he said. But he has not had any takers since moving Lindy to an office in the SoMa area and is considering expanding the radius.
“People are so much happier and healthier when they live close to work,” Mr. Crivello said. “This makes them stick around for longer, perform better and work longer hours.”
In August, Taylor Cordoba, 23, who is working on an A.I. medical technology start-up, waited in line at an apartment showing in North Beach as about 15 other people milled around.
Ahead of her in line, someone showed rental paperwork to the landlord and offered to pay the deposit on site, with about $7,000 in an envelope, she said. At another showing in Pacific Heights, a person in line showed the landlord a job offer letter, offered to pay the deposit and begged to sign immediately, she said.
It was “stressful,” said Ms. Cordoba, who visited more than a dozen apartments over two months. She finally found a three-bedroom apartment for $6,000 a month with two roommates in the Cow Hollow neighborhood.
Ia Balbuena, 27, resorted to posting signs on telephone poles around neighborhoods that she wanted to live in during a summer search for a studio apartment. “If you or someone you know are moving out of their studio or 1br send me a text!” she wrote, with an illustration of herself and her two cats, Miso and Frida.
The signs did not work. But after about eight tours, said Ms. Balbuena, who works as an office manager at a venture capital firm, she got “really lucky” and found a studio near Haight Ashbury for $2,500 a month.
The whole process was “crazy,” she said. “But in this climate, it feels completely normal.”
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