Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
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”
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Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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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) Here’s What Trump Could Unleash by Invoking the Insurrection Act
By Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, Oct. 18, 2025
Mr. Bauer and Mr. Goldsmith are the authors of a newsletter about presidential and executive power.
Ioulex for The New York Times
The Insurrection Act is a dangerous law that gives the president broad powers to authorize far-reaching uses of the military in the domestic sphere. It is based on highly permissive standards for action and provides neither a role for Congress nor a basis for serious judicial review.
During the Biden administration, we — and many others — failed to persuade Congress to reform this alarming law. Now, in the second Trump administration, the president is threatening to invoke it for sweeping domestic military deployments in big cities across the country.
We have no illusions that a Congress entirely under President Trump’s thumb will act on this matter now. But if we see instances of reckless or accidental uses of force by American soldiers against American citizens, the public would quickly rediscover the dangers of militarizing the homeland and the politics on these issues would quickly change, too.
That is why Congress should take up Insurrection Act reform.
President Trump’s efforts to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland have taken place under a statute that allows the federalization of National Guard troops and an executive order that specifies their use for protecting federal facilities and functions. These authorities together stay within the constraints of the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that bars the use of federal military for law enforcement — arrests, seizures, nondefensive uses of force and the like — unless “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.”
The Insurrection Act — a collection of laws enacted across the nation’s first century — is different: It offers the president much more robust authorities and gives him several advantages over the current mode of military deployment.
First, it authorizes use of the regular armed forces in addition to the Guard. This gives the president access to a much larger military force without the need to deal with complications that arise when federalizing and organizing state-level National Guard troops.
Second, the act has extremely broad and vaguely worded triggers for its use and thus affords a president the widest conceivable discretion. One provision says the president can use the armed forces “as he considers necessary” to enforce federal law against “obstructions,” “combinations” or “assemblages” that make laws “impracticable to enforce.” Another authorizes the president to order the armed forces to “take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress” any domestic violence or “unlawful combination” if the violence or combination “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.” The act has several other predicates.
Third, the Insurrection Act, once invoked, avoids the Posse Comitatus bar, since it constitutes an express congressional authorization that allows the use of the military for law-enforcement purposes. If the president invoked the Insurrection Act, he could use the military far beyond protecting federal law-enforcement operations related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He could instead use the military as a substitute for ICE in immigration enforcement as long as one of the permissive legal triggers was satisfied.
Fourth, the president would not be limited to using the military for immigration law enforcement. He could use regular forces for any domestic law enforcement function, including to suppress violence in cities — again, as long as one of the lax rules for invoking the law was satisfied.
Fifth, the president will receive very significant deference from courts in his determination that an Insurrection Act predicate is satisfied. The leading case in the Supreme Court suggests that the president has “exclusive” authority to determine the “exigency” that triggers the act. And the act itself contains language — “whenever the President considers” and “as he considers necessary” — that will further encourage judicial deference. Courts will not play dead in reviewing Insurrection Act deployments, but they have very limited tools.
The president recently signaled that he may invoke the Insurrection Act. Vice President JD Vance confirmed that Mr. Trump is “looking at all of his options” because “crime has gotten out of control in our cities.”
But city crime prevention is far from the act’s only potential use. The president in March issued an executive order that contemplated a legally contested federal takeover of federal elections to redress supposed “fraud, errors or suspicion.” Notwithstanding criminal laws that prohibit members or officers of the military from deploying troops to polling places, it is easy to imagine Mr. Trump issuing such orders in next year’s congressional elections on the claim of a president’s complete authority and control over the military to deal under the Insurrection Act with a “combination or conspiracy” that opposes or obstructs the execution of federal election laws.
If the president invokes the act, litigation will almost surely follow. States and localities could sue. But such suits will be very hard to win, given the sweep of the authority.
Most proposals to reform the Insurrection Act have three core elements. Congress should tighten the statutory triggers — for example, by requiring that “domestic violence” overwhelm the safety and security capacities of state and local authorities before the act can be invoked. It should impose consultation and reporting requirements. And, most important, it should establish a time limit on troop deployments of no more than 30 days without new congressional approval.
A handful of bills to reform the act (including one this year) have been introduced, but they never reached a vote. Reform remains critical. U.S. military officials have long been reluctant to use the armed forces for policing at home. There was broad bipartisan support during the Biden years to reform other emergency powers. Congress as recently as 2021 demonstrated its continued commitment to the Posse Comitatus Act by clarifying that it applies to every major component of the federal armed forces.
Conservatives once cared a lot about the dangers of the military in the domestic realm and about protecting state and local authorities from federal military interference. Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, a Republican and the chairman of the National Governors Association, recently articulated traditional conservative concerns in response to the deployment of out-of-state National Guard troops in Illinois. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration,” he said, referring to Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and adding that the deployment violated “states’ rights.”
The Insurrection Act was written for a different century and a different conception of the presidency and presidential self-restraint. It will be a tragedy if Congress does not enact reforms until after the law’s dangers have become undeniably clear.
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2) ‘Everything Is Gone’: Gazans Return Home to Find Devastation and Little Hope
Residents who have gone back to the battered north of the territory after the cease-fire say it is a wasteland that will take years to rebuild.
By Liam Stack, Abu Bakr Bashir and Bilal Shbair, Visuals by Saher Alghorra, Reporting from Tel Aviv and Gaza City, Oct. 19, 2025
Sabah Abu Ghanem and her family made the long trek back to Gaza City after Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire this month, leaving a crowded tent encampment in the south of the territory with the goal of finally going home.
When they arrived, they found that their neighborhood had been destroyed, like most of Gaza City. But the cement skeleton of their home was still standing, so they decided to live in one of its damaged rooms.
“At least, this piece of land is ours,” said Ms. Abu Ghanem, 26. “This rubble I can call mine.”
Since the cease-fire took effect, thousands of Palestinians have returned to Gaza City or other areas in the devastated north of the territory. In many cases, they went back to places that they had fled just weeks earlier, and found their homes and neighborhoods obliterated. Rebuilding their lives in Gaza City feels at best like a faraway goal and at worst, like an impossible one.
For some, the destruction was too much to face. Majdi Nassar, 32, came back to look for his home in Jabaliya, near Gaza City, but returned to Deir al-Balah, in the south, within less than 24 hours. He said he would stay away until clean drinking water had been restored. That could be a long time.
“I could not find any trace of the building where I had an apartment, not even the rubble,” he said. “Everything is gone.”
Gaza was densely populated before the two-year war that was ignited by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza City was the political, economic and cultural heart of the territory. Vast swaths of it are now in ruins.
The city has been hollowed out by the flight of its residents to southern Gaza after the Israeli military launched a ground offensive there last month. Government buildings, universities and many hospitals have been destroyed.
Food supplies are limited. The electrical grid has been down for two years, since Israel cut off supplies in the first days of the war. Clean water is hard to find.
This past week, the United Nations said “real progress” was being made to increase aid deliveries, but the World Food Program said it would take time to reverse conditions that led a U.N.-backed panel of food experts to report that areas in and around Gaza City were suffering from famine in August.
Israel has said there is no famine, and blamed food shortages on Hamas, looters or aid groups that it says are incompetent.
The future is deeply uncertain. The cease-fire has stopped the fighting, but it is not clear if it will end the war. The next round of peace negotiations has not been scheduled, and there is no established timeline for reconstruction.
The Israeli military has pulled back to a new deployment line in Gaza, but it still controls half of the enclave’s territory. On Friday, it said it had opened fire on a vehicle it said had crossed that new boundary. The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said at least nine people, including children, were killed.
For some residents, like Ms. Abu Ghanem, the conditions are so grim that they say they want to leave Gaza.
One of the first things she did when she returned to Gaza City was to walk through the shattered remains of her neighborhood to see if she could recognize anyone or anything.
“There was no one at all around,” she said. “There were no services, no water or electricity, and, of course, no markets to buy food.”
Ms. Abu Ghanem was once a celebrity of a sort in Gaza. She was a surfer in a place where few people, and even fewer women, practice the sport, and she appeared in foreign newspapers and documentary films, like “Gaza Surf Club.”
Social pressure led her to stop surfing, and she got married and had three children. She still swam, though, and used to dream of starting a club to teach girls how to swim and surf.
Now, she said, her dream is to leave Gaza for the sake of her children.
Before the war, they talked about school or what they wanted to be when they grew up. Now, they trade tips on how to start a fire to cook or where to buy water from the trucks that have set up shop around town, she said.
“I want them to enjoy a much better life than mine,” she said. “Gaza is not a place for life or dreams.”
But others who returned to Gaza City said they were committed to staying.
Fatima Abu Steita, 27, returned with her husband, Abdallah Abu Nada, 47, to look for their home in the Zeitoun neighborhood. But they never found it because it was “completely erased,” she said.
“Everything around that neighborhood is flat ground,” she added. “Rebuilding life here feels like trying to plant a tree in stone.”
She now lives with relatives in the Shati neighborhood, “10 souls under one cracked roof.”
Ms. Abu Seita said she knew families who “came back, took one look at their street, and left.” But for her, returning to Gaza City felt empowering, no matter what state it was in.
“It’s a return to nothing, yes,” she said. “But it’s also saying: ‘We are still here.’”
Yet for those who have chosen to stay despite the destruction, Gaza City also feels increasingly dangerous.
The territory has been lawless and largely ungoverned for two years.
Since the cease-fire began, Hamas has begun reasserting its authority. In some places, that has meant masked fighters directing traffic. In others, it has meant Hamas gunmen killing rivals in street battles and summary executions.
Even before they returned to Gaza City, Ms. Abu Ghanem said she did not let her children leave home at night because “everyone outside has a gun, a knife, or even a screwdriver.”
Now, some returnees worry they could get swept up in internecine violence.
“There is no law or police — people take the law into their own hands,” she said. “An eye for an eye is the law now.”
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3) New Flare-Up of Violence Strains Gaza Cease-Fire
Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza after it accused Palestinian militants of attacking its forces across cease-fire lines.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Oct. 19, 2025
Israel accused Palestinian militants on Sunday of attacking its forces across cease-fire lines in Gaza and said it had launched airstrikes in retaliation.
The new flare-up of violence reflected the fragility of the truce, which came into effect more than a week ago and has raised hopes that the two-year war might be drawing to a close. It was the latest in a series of violent episodes in Gaza since the cease-fire took hold.
The Israeli military said in a statement that militants had fired an anti-tank missile and gunfire toward its troops in the area of Rafah in southern Gaza. It called the actions “a blatant violation” of the cease-fire agreement.
In response, the military said, Israeli forces were striking in the area “to eliminate the threat” and dismantle tunnel shafts and other military structures. There were no immediate reports of casualties on either side.
Although the military’s statement did not mention Hamas by name, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel blamed the group for the latest violence. He said he had consulted with his defense minister and security chiefs and had instructed them to act forcefully against militant targets in Gaza.
Hamas’s military wing said in a statement that it was “unaware of any events or clashes taking place in the Rafah area.” The military wing added that it has had no contact with its fighters there since an earlier, temporary cease-fire collapsed in March and therefore has “no connection to any events taking place in those areas.”
Hamas’s military wing reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining the cease-fire in a statement.
A Hamas official, Izzat al-Rishq, in a separate statement on Sunday accused Israel of continuing to violate the truce and of fabricating “flimsy pretexts to justify its crimes.”
On Friday, the Israeli military fired on a vehicle in northern Gaza, killing at least nine people, including four children, according to a Gaza rescue service that is part of the territory’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
In relation to that episode, the Israeli military said that the vehicle had crossed over a demarcation line where Israel’s forces have withdrawn to under the terms of the cease-fire. The military added that its forces had fired on the vehicle, which it described as “suspicious,” after the vehicle ignored warning shots.
The Israeli military has repeatedly warned civilians not to cross the new lines or approach its troops in the Israeli-held areas but many Gazans — either lacking internet, puzzling over unclear maps, or simply lost in the devastated enclave — have at times been unsure about whether they have entered a restricted area.
After Sunday’s violence, members of Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-line government immediately called for a full resumption of Israel’s offensive against Hamas, the militant group that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel that set off the war.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist minister of national security, called for a resumption of fighting “at full strength.” Any notions that Hamas would abide by the cease-fire agreement, he added, “are predictably proving dangerous to our security.”
Mr. Ben-Gvir was among the far-right ministers opposed to the cease-fire in the first place, believing that Israel should have continued fighting until Hamas was fully defeated. The cease-fire was, however, approved by a majority of the government.
Israel still controls about half the territory in Gaza and has accused Hamas fighters of operating out of tunnels beneath areas still under Israeli control.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Abu Bakr Bashir from London.
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4) A Squalid Building, a Tip to the Feds, and Then ‘Straight-Up Chaos’
An immigration raid on an apartment building in Chicago followed years of problems with crime, and neglect by landlords. It swept up dozens of U.S. citizens who were detained in the middle of the night.
By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Julie Bosman, Hamed Aleaziz, Jesus Jiménez and Brent McDonald, Videos by Arijeta Lajka, Reporting from Chicago, Oct. 19, 2025
Windows are boarded up at an apartment building in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood where federal agents staged a massive raid. Todd Heisler/The New York Times
On a humid September night in Chicago, Cameo Polk was asleep in his fifth-floor apartment when he heard the thump thump thump of a helicopter overhead.
Outside, hundreds of men with masks and rifles were scurrying around the building. He briefly wondered if an invasion was underway.
But they were U.S. law enforcement agents, rappelling from a Black Hawk helicopter and swarming the 130-unit building he lives in. Once inside, they kicked down doors, emptied bookshelves and overturned mattresses.
By dawn, at least 37 of Mr. Polk’s neighbors, nearly all Venezuelan nationals, would be in the custody of the U.S. government, part of President Trump’s plan to crack down on illegal immigration.
Trailed by drones and a camera crew, federal agents with their guns drawn carried out one of the most aggressive immigration operations in recent memory. The raid has become a defining image of the Trump administration’s surge of federal agents into Chicago, where masked immigration officers for weeks have been chasing down people suspected of being in the country illegally.
And while those arrests have drawn fierce protests, the apartment building raid, which took place on Sept. 30, raised even more concerns. In their effort to capture Venezuelans, agents led by the U.S. Border Patrol pulled dozens of American citizens from their apartments in the middle of the night, pointing their guns at sleepy men and women before zip-tying them and taking them outside.
The operation also highlighted the extent to which immigration enforcement and crime-fighting have become intertwined as bevies of officers from various federal agencies have been sent into American cities. The building, targeted by Border Patrol because undocumented immigrants lived there, has long been a hotbed of drug use and violence, residents said.
The raid focused on a mud-colored brick building that rises five stories tall and sits across from an elementary school in the predominantly Black neighborhood of South Shore along Lake Michigan. Residents said the living conditions had been poor for some time, and had worsened in the last year, as more people squatted in empty apartments and the management company, the landlord and the city government remained unresponsive to their pleas to fix the place up.
There have been nearly 500 calls to emergency services regarding the building so far this year, records show, and the city and a bank had been pressuring the landlord to make improvements. Some residents said after the raid that they hoped it might give the building a new start.
But what unfolded that night was an ordeal spanning several hours that left residents, Venezuelans and Americans alike, terror-stricken and humiliated. They bolted out of their beds at the sound of heavy footsteps in the darkened hallways, splintering doors, flash-bang grenades and barked commands. Restrained at the wrists, interrogated and separated by race and ethnicity, residents were forced onto buses while armed federal agents checked their names and records, determining whether they were living in the country legally or not.
Mr. Polk and his brother, Nate Howard, were not immigrants. But they were forced from their apartment anyway, and his brother was arrested after a federal agent found that he had missed a court date related to a years-old drug charge.
“I don’t understand how they decided who they can do that to,” Mr. Polk said. “They didn’t treat people like they were American.”
The Building
On this, the residents of 7500 S. South Shore Drive could agree: The building was full of danger.
The conditions inside were squalid, with mold, broken pipes and the persistent reek of urine in the darkened stairwells.
“Drugs, gangs, prostitution,” said Twana Pickens, 44, who had lived in the building for three years until she moved out this summer. “Anything illegal? Name it. It happened there. It’s just a very unsafe environment for people who just want to come home, go to work and try to raise their families there.”
Former residents said elevators were routinely broken, the mail was not delivered and trash was regularly left in the hallways. One person said she was once followed by a man with his penis in his hand, asking for sex.
Steven Jordan, 34, said he had long lived within a few blocks of the apartment building, and knew it as a place where people bought drugs and went to get warm in the winter.
“A lot of people go up in there because there are empty apartments and no locks on a lot of the doors,” he said.
Residents said that the Americans and the Venezuelans in the building generally left each other alone, but that the immigrants sometimes had conflicts among themselves and upset other tenants.
“Some of them were bad boys, I must say,” said Eleanor McMullen, 64, who lives on the third floor. “Sometimes they would break doors and bust the lights out. Foolish stuff, cause they were young.”
But she was friends with some of the immigrants, who greeted her when they passed in the hallway. She gave a tricycle that belonged to one of her grandchildren to one man’s little girl.
“We talked every day,” she said. “He would knock on my door and be like, ‘Oh, I’m home.’”
In recent months, the violence in the building escalated. A Venezuelan man, Gregori Arias, 31, was fatally shot in an apartment in the building in June in what federal officials described as a “brutal, execution-style murder.”
On Sept. 8, officers with the Chicago Police Department arrested another Venezuelan, Jose Coronado-Meza, 25, in connection to the murder.
At the time of the raid, the owner, Trinity Flood, a Wisconsin woman who purchased the apartment building in 2020 for $11.3 million, had been under legal pressure to improve conditions.
Ms. Flood did not return calls and emails seeking comment. Corey Oliver, the owner of Strength in Management, the property management company that handled the property, also did not return requests for comment.
Wells Fargo had sued Ms. Flood in April, seeking to foreclose on three Chicago apartment buildings that she had purchased in 2020 for about $18 million, including the one on South Shore Drive.
Chicago officials met with property managers in June and instructed them to install burglar bars on vacant units and to work with police to remove squatters. A lawyer for the city wrote in August of flooding in the laundry room, urine in the stairwell and “armed occupants,” with criminal activity and shootings taking place.
Ms. Flood’s lawyers told the court on Sept. 26 that the owner had spent $2 million on repairs, maintenance, security and evictions since 2020. They said that managers had “invested hundreds of hours working with law enforcement” to stop squatters and criminals from entering the building.
In response to the continuing complaints, the judge set a hearing on an emergency motion for the appointment of a receiver, giving the parties a court date of Oct. 1.
About 24 hours before the hearing, federal agents raided the building.
The Raid
The operation began with a confidential tip, officials said.
Officials have not said who tipped them off, but records show that agents carried out the raid with the consent of the owner, and that they targeted apartments that they were told were not currently being rented and were presumably occupied by squatters.
Several residents said that agents had left some apartments alone while bursting into others. Miyah Hill, 22, said some residents who peeked into the hallway during the raid were ordered to go back inside. One man who asked not to be identified because he was still living in the building, said he had found a floor plan of the building in the aftermath of the raid with some apartments shaded in green, others in white and some in red.
Brian McGraw, 64, who lives on the first floor and was not targeted by the agents, said that he later found orange tape on his door with the words “NO GO” written on it; two other doors on the first floor had similar tape, he said.
“They must have had some advance intelligence or information, where somehow they knew I wasn’t one of the ones they were looking for,” he said.
Border Patrol officials, who were accompanied on the raid by officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies, said that among those arrested were people they believed to be members of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
“The intelligence was showing that they would move about inside the apartment complex freely and known to carry weapons inside the apartment complex,” David Kim, an assistant chief patrol agent at Border Patrol, said in an interview.
Another Border Patrol official, who did not agree to be named because he works undercover, said that gang members were squatting in units and extorting people in the complex, and that the building owner had not been able to get them out.
Just after 1 a.m. on the night of the raid, Mr. McGraw, the first-floor resident, peered out of his apartment’s first-floor windows and saw federal officers approach and cut through the back door with a power saw.
As the federal agents roamed through the hallway, Mr. McGraw heard one of them say, “There’s a whole village on the second floor.”
On the fifth floor, Keisha Clark’s apartment door came crashing down as federal agents battered their way in and then tossed in a flash-bang grenade.
Ms. Clark, a 43-year-old American, said that federal agents had grabbed her, scratching her left arm, put her wrists in restraints and took her out of her apartment.
“Clearly you can see that we’re American,” she said, recalling her fury at her treatment. “Why are we in handcuffs?”
Brian Boyd, 56, a tenant and lifelong Chicagoan, woke up in a state of shock when he saw what felt like an army of agents swarming the building.
“They were just on straight-up chaos,” he said.
The agents forced everyone to line up. Keep your focus ahead, they told residents, as they marched them downstairs and outside into the night. They brought them through a fence into a school parking lot where dozens of people were collected, including Venezuelan children and their mothers, some of them only partly clothed because they had been pulled out of bed, witnesses said.
Eboni Watson, who lives next to the building, said she had seen a federal agent with a group of Venezuelans forcibly remove a baby from its mother’s arms.
Venezuelans were separated from Americans, and some residents were placed on buses for at least an hour, they said. Officers checked people’s names to see if they had any open warrants before letting them go.
Ms. McMullen, on the third floor, was briefly detained with several Venezuelans who she said had been squatting in the building.
After being questioned and remaining on a bus for hours, she was allowed to go back to her apartment.
“My bed was turned upside down,” she said. “My mattress and stuff flipped over. My paperwork and stuff just thrown out.
Mr. Kim, of the Border Patrol, said agents arrested anyone who was not legally in the country, whether or not the person was an original target of the raid.
“Well, guess what?” he said. “You’re coming with us.”
Aid groups, lawyers and journalists have all had difficulty identifying and locating many of the Venezuelans who were taken by immigration agents. Federal officials have not publicly identified most of them and have not said where they are, making it impossible to verify their claims about the immigrants’ criminal histories. Three people whom The New York Times was able to identify as being arrested in the raid had no known criminal histories.
Mr. Polk said his brother was let out of jail the day after the raid and returned home.
It was not long before state and local officials in Chicago protested the actions of the federal agents, saying they had acted with unnecessary aggression.
“This raid wasn’t about public safety,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said several days later. “It was certainly not about immigration. This was about a show of authoritarianism, a forceful display of tyranny.”
Days after the raid, a walk through the building showed the aftermath of the destruction, and efforts to clean it up. Debris was being cleared and lightbulbs replaced. In the front courtyard, workers trimmed branches from overgrown trees and removed broken windowpanes from a third-floor unit.
Roderick Johnson, 67, a longtime resident, said he was still suffering from the trauma of the raid, recalling federal agents breaking into his apartment with flash-bang grenades while he was trying to sleep.
Now he has a new fear: that the building will be sold, and that the new management will evict him. “The way it looks, they’re trying to close the building down.”
Susan C. Beachy and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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5) This Weekend’s Violence in Gaza Shows How Fragile the Cease-Fire Really Is
A round of violence on Sunday was short-lived, but analysts expect more tensions between Israel and Palestinian militants that will put the truce under strain.
Palestinians in Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza on Monday inspecting the aftermath of an attack. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
Ten days into a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, relief is giving way to grim acknowledgments of the truce’s tenuousness, and of the need for continued outside intervention to keep it alive, let alone to make further progress.
A new round of violence on Sunday showed just how arduous the road to a broader agreement in Gaza will be between the two sides, which have repeatedly accused each other of violating the truce.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another was wounded when Palestinian militants launched an anti-tank missile at an army vehicle, the Israeli military said. The attack took place in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on the Israeli-held eastern side of the cease-fire line. Israel called it a blatant violation of the agreement’s terms. Hamas officials were quick to disavow the attack.
Israel responded quickly, with a punishing bombardment of what it described as Hamas installations, and Gaza officials said that 44 Palestinians were killed across the territory on Sunday. Israel said it was cutting off the supply of humanitarian aid to the devastated territory indefinitely, but later tempered that, saying that aid deliveries would be paused only until the bombardment was over. (By Monday afternoon, the flow of aid was back to normal, relief agencies said.)
Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, demanded an immediate, open-ended resumption of Israel’s offensive against Hamas. “War!” he wrote in a one-word post on X.
But the short-lived, if intense, Israeli military response, and the walk-back of the threat to shut off the flow of aid into Gaza, suggested the restraining influence of U.S. officials, analysts said.
After all, both Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, one of President Trump’s top envoys to the Middle East, arrived in Israel on Monday to try to push ahead with the peace plan, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said. Vice President JD Vance told reporters late Sunday that he might also travel to Israel in the coming days.
“He’s not coming to jointly command Israeli strikes on Hamas,” Shira Efron, an Israeli analyst at RAND, said of the vice president.
Even Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing allies accused him of wilting under pressure from the Trump administration, and not for the first time. “Enough with the folding,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister, wrote on X.
Sunday’s violence was the heaviest wave of Israeli attacks on Gaza since the fragile cease-fire took hold. Other attacks have also punctured the calm. The Israeli military said last week that it had fired on a vehicle in northern Gaza, saying that the car had crossed a demarcation line where Israel’s forces have withdrawn to since the cease-fire — the so-called yellow line. Nine people, including children, were killed, according to Gazan officials.
“Israelis are really outraged about the killing of two soldiers, but it’s not like there haven’t been deaths of civilians in Gaza in the past week,” Ms. Efron said. “Both sides have pretexts to argue that the cease-fire has been violated. What keeps the negotiation going is the power that is brought by Trump and the mediators.”
Pressure is not only being applied on the Israeli government. After Hamas turned over the bodies of just four hostages last Monday — out of 28 believed to still be in Gaza — mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey passed along Israeli intelligence about the whereabouts of some of the others, prodding the militant group to recover more, according to U.S. officials. As of Sunday, Hamas had turned over the remains of 12 captives.
As Hamas distanced itself from the Rafah attack, the group’s military wing reaffirmed its “full commitment” to putting the cease-fire into effect, even divulging that it had lost contact with its fighters in Rafah in March and did not know whether any of them were still alive.
That admission was one of several aspects of Sunday’s exchange of blows that laid bare the cease-fire’s fragility: If Hamas is indeed unable to control one of its fighting units, it may be unable to fully enforce its side of the cease-fire, making it less likely that Israel will fully withdraw.
The return of all the living hostages has also freed the Israeli military to retaliate against Hamas harder, whenever and wherever it chooses to strike, with no more fear of harming its own citizens, said Tamir Hayman, a former head of Israeli military intelligence who now leads the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Though the violence on Sunday appeared to amount to a single, contained round, several analysts said they expected more such rounds to follow.
Michael Milshtein, an analyst at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University and a former expert on Palestinian affairs for the Israeli military, said that Hamas could be expected to continue to test Israel and see how it responds. And he said the yellow line between Israel- and Hamas-held territory was unmarked and difficult for Gaza residents to heed.
“Things are very unclear, very fragile and sensitive,” Mr. Milshtein said. “I’m afraid that it will lead us during the coming weeks to a kind of attrition — almost everyday violations, clashes and crises, big or more limited. And it will be an ongoing challenge.”
Still, Israeli analysts said the challenge of sustaining the cease-fire paled next to the challenge of advancing the Trump peace plan, particularly given that its call for Hamas to disarm effectively would require the group to renounce its entire ideology of armed resistance.
And Mr. Hayman said that Hamas was trying to sow fear and reestablish its dominance in Gaza, pointing to the executions by Hamas militants of eight rivals on a crowded Gaza City street last week.
“By doing that, they’re stronger, and it creates much more difficulties when you’re trying to demilitarize them,” Mr. Hayman said. “The appetite by Arab or Western countries to be deeply involved in demilitarization is decreasing by the hour.”
Mr. Milshtein said the past week had taught Israelis an unwelcome lesson about Hamas. “It’s very hard for many Israelis to admit, but they weren’t defeated,” he said. “They still exist, and they’re the dominant player in Gaza.”
Still, some Palestinian analysts said Hamas appeared eager to preserve the cease-fire agreement and might even be willing to offer more concessions to ensure the end of the war and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
“Hamas wants to come down the tree, but in a dignified way,” said Mohammed al-Astal, an analyst in Gaza. “It needs an honorable exit ramp.”
Hamas would resist attempts by Mr. Netanyahu to disarm the group in a humiliating manner, Mr. al-Astal said. But if Hamas were given the opportunity to step away from power quietly and maintain some role in Gaza, it could pursue that path, he said. It might even be persuaded to turn over its weapons to another Palestinian entity, he suggested.
“It knows it has no other options,” Mr. al-Astal said. “It has been squeezed both inside and outside Gaza.”
Adam Rasgon and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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6) To Fight ICE, Portland’s Leaders Turn to What They Know Best: Zoning
Portland, Ore., is well known for its dense laws on land use. Now, under pressure from its liberal residents, the city is using those restrictions against immigrant detention.
By Anna Griffin, Reporting from Portland, Ore., Oct. 20, 2025
Police cleared the block near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Portland, Ore., last week. Jordan Gale for The New York Times
With President Trump and Portland, Ore., locked in a fierce battle over immigration policies, the city’s leaders face increasing pressure from their progressive constituents to become more creative in the fight.
So Portland leaders are trying the strategy they know best: land use.
Oregon has one of the most complex sets of zoning and land use laws in the nation. Supporters of the policies say they encourage neighborhoods to be walkable and filled with independent businesses while also preserving vast open spaces and farmland. Critics say the rules have stymied housing construction and kept home prices high.
But in the city’s fight against the Trump administration, those land-use rules may prove to be a not-so-secret weapon, in large part because the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland may be uniquely vulnerable to the codes.
“This is so Oregon of us, so Portland of us,” said Elana Pirtle-Guiney, president of the Portland City Council, “to distill a huge federal policy issue that is also a moral issue that is also about the fundamental question of who we are as a country into a land-use problem.”
The General Services Administration, which manages real estate for the federal government, typically leases space for ICE from other government agencies or private prisons in industrial areas that are away from residential centers or popular commuter routes. The large ICE facility that has drawn protests in Illinois, for example, isn’t in Chicago, but rather the suburban village of Broadview.
Yet when federal officials looked to move Oregon’s ICE “subfield office” from a historic post office near downtown Portland 14 years ago, they chose to lease privately owned property just three miles away in the South Waterfront, a showcase for the state’s history of innovative urban design.
That has kept ICE under the intense scrutiny of both protesters and city planners. In mid-September, city leaders issued the owner of the ICE facility, the developer Stuart Lindquist, a land-use violation notice, telling him ICE had breached the terms of their original agreement for the property.
About 30 years ago, Portland and the city’s largest employer, Oregon Health & Science University, began investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the South Waterfront on the Willamette River. New medical offices, high-rise apartments and condominiums were built. A streetcar and an aerial tram connected the neighborhood to the rest of the inner city and the medical school’s main campus, high on the hills southwest of downtown.
ICE became contentious in the area long before Mr. Trump began his mass deportation campaign. In 2011, when the agency began negotiating to rent and expand a former Bank of America office building on the edge of the waterfront district, residents and business owners worried about what a federal building might look like, the presence of armed officers and “the possibility of demonstrations and/or protest activities,” according to notes from a hearing officer who ruled on the proposal.
But neighbors’ biggest concern was that ICE might release dangerous criminals in the neighborhood late at night after buses stopped running. So the Portland City Council, eager to fill vacant real estate spaces, unanimously backed a compromise. ICE was allowed to add 101 parking spots and a 5,198-square-foot detention center on one condition: People could not be detained for more than 12 hours or overnight.
That covenant has become ICE’s biggest potential vulnerability. According to the land-use notice issued to ICE’s landlord last month, observers outside the facility who track who enters and leaves noted 25 instances over a 10-month period in which ICE detained people for too long.
“What I appreciate about this approach is that it isn’t a political conversation,” said Natalie Lerner, a board member with the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition. “This is about data.”
Representatives of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
The property owner, who has filed paperwork contesting some of the city’s evidence, faces monthly fines that start at about $1,000 if he does not fix the problem. The federal government rents the building for more than $2.4 million annually.
The more serious conversation will come later this month, when city regulators are scheduled to begin reconsidering ICE’s conditional-use permit for the building. Eventually, the matter could end up in front of the full City Council, whose members have been outspoken in their opposition to the president’s plan to send the National Guard to Portland. For now, they said they must choose their words carefully about the ICE building’s future because they may have to rule on it.
Protesters are not so reticent. On Oct. 12, Holly Brown, an organizer, put the demands on city hall succinctly at an anti-ICE rally. “You can’t just sit there doing nothing. You must act to get ICE out of Portland.” She then led the crowd of 100 or so people in a chant of “revoke the permit.”
Leaders in other cities facing ICE protests and potential federal military force are also looking for ways to use the tools of local government to assert their authority. In Broadview, Ill., town leaders successfully convinced a court to force ICE to remove a fence around the immigration processing facility because it was erected without a permit.
But the Broadview facility and most of the buildings in which immigration officers detain people are owned by either the federal government, a private prison company or another government entity, according to records from the General Services Administration, and are thus harder to regulate through permitting and taxes.
Portland leaders are trying to take advantage of how unique the situation is. When the Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, visited the city earlier this month, she demanded that officers with the Portland Police Bureau close off a one-block radius around the building and limit how close protesters can go. Portland’s mayor, Keith Wilson, said that was both against city values and simply not feasible in a quasi-residential neighborhood with few routes in or out.
Mr. Wilson said Corey Lewandowski, an adviser to Ms. Noem, suggested during their meeting that the city might consider buying the property or taking over ICE’s lease. The mayor rejected that idea.
“I would love for this facility to be somewhere else, because South Waterfront is about the worst place you could put it,” Mr. Wilson said. “But this is something the federal government has to figure out. We just want them to comply with our laws.”
It is not clear if Portland leaders actually have the power to fully revoke the permit or simply make detaining people much harder, if not impossible. Some immigration advocates wonder whether that’s even a good idea. If ICE cannot hold detainees in Portland, the next option is to send them two and a half hours away to the Northwest Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma, a 1,575-bed campus that can be hard for lawyers to access and even harder for detainees to leave.
“Tacoma is an actual detention center,” said Angelita Morillo, a Portland City councilor, “so they can actually disappear people there.”
In addition to the land-use process, Ms. Morillo said she planned to ask her colleagues to create an impact fee on detention centers within city limits, essentially a one-time charge similar to those many cities place on new residential subdivisions or shopping centers to offset the cost of adding roads, water lines and other basic public services. In this case, Ms. Morillo said, an impact fee would cover public costs such as cleaning up environmental damage caused by the use of tear gas against demonstrators.
She said such a fee could add hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions to the cost of a property like the ICE building.
That might not force “ICE out of Portland,” as protesters chant, but it could convince private property owners not to do business with federal law enforcement.
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7) Colombia’s Leader Accuses U.S. of Murder, Prompting Trump to Halt Aid
President Gustavo Petro said a U.S. strike in the Caribbean had killed a fisherman. President Trump said he would cut aid and impose new tariffs on Colombian imports.
By Simon Romero, Genevieve Glatsky and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Published Oct. 19, 2025, Updated Oct. 20, 2025
Reporting from Mexico City; Bogotá, Colombia; and Washington
President Gustavo Petro of Colombia accused the United States of murdering a fisherman in an attack on a boat that the American authorities claimed was carrying illicit drugs. President Trump responded on Sunday that he would slash assistance and impose new tariffs on the country.
The feuding between the two leaders reflected rising tensions in the region over the huge U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean targeting Colombia’s neighbor, Venezuela. U.S. forces have killed dozens of people in recent weeks aboard vessels that the Trump administration says were ferrying drugs from Venezuela.
The administration has provided no evidence to support the claims beyond descriptions of intelligence assessments and declassified videos of portions of the attacks. Legal specialists have called such killings illegal, because militaries cannot lawfully target civilians who do not pose a threat in the moment and are not directly participating in hostilities.
“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Mr. Petro wrote on social media. He said the man killed in the mid-September attack, Alejandro Carranza, was a “lifelong fisherman” whose boat had experienced damage and was adrift, probably in Colombian waters, at the time of the attack. His description of Mr. Carranza and his boat could not be immediately confirmed.
Mr. Trump responded by accusing Mr. Petro of not doing enough to curb the production of illegal drugs, calling him an “illegal drug dealer” with “a fresh mouth toward America.” Mr. Trump also said that the United States would halt aid payments to Colombia, which has long ranked among the largest recipients worldwide of U.S. counternarcotics assistance. He later told reporters on Air Force One that he would announce new tariffs on Colombian goods on Monday.
The two presidents have had a stormy relationship since the start of the second Trump administration.
In January, just days after Mr. Trump came into office, he threatened to impose sky-high tariffs on Colombia when Mr. Petro moved to block Mr. Trump’s use of military aircraft to deport thousands of migrants to Colombia.
The United States also revoked Mr. Petro’s visa during the United Nations General Assembly in September, after he called for American soldiers to disobey Mr. Trump at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York.
Still, it was not immediately clear what impact Mr. Trump’s new aid cuts could have. The Trump administration already had slashed aid to Colombia earlier this year, as it did in other parts of Latin America.
Colombia had been set to receive more than $400 million in aid at the start of the year, according to Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research group. He said the earlier cuts had left Colombia with about one fourth of that.
While Colombia and the United States still cooperate on counternarcotics efforts, overall American assistance to the country had also declined from the years of “Plan Colombia,” an early 2000s initiative that wound down a decade ago and was aimed at combating both drug cartels and armed leftist insurgencies.
Beyond the effect on aid, the quarreling underscores how Colombia could face greater fallout from the U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean.
Colombia is by far the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and a much larger player in the global drug trade than Venezuela, which produces negligible amounts of cocaine and plays essentially no role in the production or smuggling of fentanyl.
Soon after Mr. Trump issued his call to halt aid to Colombia, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yet another strike on a vessel, which Mr. Hegseth claimed was connected to a Colombian rebel group, the National Liberation Army. Without providing evidence for his claims, Mr. Hegseth said the boat, which was attacked on Friday, had been carrying narcotics.
The deployment of U.S. forces is the largest in the region in decades, including about 10,000 U.S. troops and dozens of military aircraft and ships. While the Trump administration says it is a counterdrug and counterterrorism mission, officials have privately made clear that the main goal is to drive Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.
Our economics reporters — based in New York, London, Brussels, Berlin, Hong Kong and Seoul — are digging into every aspect of the tariffs causing global turmoil. They are joined by dozens of reporters writing about the effects on everyday people.
Mr. Petro, a leftist and former member of an urban guerrilla group who became president in 2022, has repeatedly expressed support for Mr. Maduro as the crisis simmers between Washington and Caracas. The Colombian president has shown a willingness to spar with Mr. Trump, in sharp contrast to the cautious stances most other Latin American leaders have adopted with the Trump administration.
In Colombia, Mr. Petro’s positioning drew varied responses. Vicky Dávila, a journalist and conservative presidential contender, expressed support for Mr. Trump on Sunday, saying on social media, “Petro and his corrupt Government have favored drug trafficking in every way possible.”
But Senator Iván Cepeda, a supporter of Mr. Petro, suggested Mr. Trump should instead focus on the ample demand for illegal drugs in the United States. “We have a dignified president, one who does not kneel and who demands that the United States take responsibility for its role in the drug trafficking problem,” Mr. Cepeda said.
In social media posts over the weekend, Mr. Petro urged his attorney general to help the family of Mr. Carranza, the fisherman killed in the September attack, to file claims against the United States.
Mr. Petro suggested the Carranza family bring claims in collaboration with a Trinidadian family that also says a relative was killed in another U.S. strike.
Although the U.S. campaign in the Caribbean has been aimed primarily at those suspected of being Venezuelan drug runners, the strikes have killed or wounded individuals from other countries.
Another Colombian, Jeison Obando Pérez, 34, was caught up in the sixth such U.S. airstrike last week, along with a citizen of Ecuador. Both survived.
They were aboard a semi-submersible that was blown up Thursday, and rescued by U.S. forces and initially treated aboard a U.S. Navy ship in the Caribbean.
Mr. Obando Pérez was repatriated Saturday and hospitalized in Colombia with brain trauma and breathing on a ventilator, Armando Benedetti, Colombia’s minister of the interior, said in a social media posting on Saturday night. Once he is awake, he will be “processed by the justice system for drug trafficking,” Mr. Benedetti said.
The other survivor of Thursday’s attack was returned to Ecuador on Saturday and was undergoing medical evaluation.
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8) Lawmaker Demands Hearing on U.S. Strikes on Boats in Caribbean
Representative Adam Smith said the Trump administration had failed to provide a legal rationale for killing rather than arresting drug trafficking suspects.
By Eric Schmitt, Oct. 20, 2025
Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, in June. “President Trump and his administration continue to fail to answer pressing questions regarding the president’s orders to carry out lethal U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea,” he said in a statement on Monday. Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee called on Monday for his panel to hold a hearing to examine the Trump administration’s use of the military in the Caribbean Sea to kill people suspected of smuggling drugs as if they were enemy soldiers in a war, rather than arresting them as criminals.
The demand by the lawmaker, Representative Adam Smith of Washington, came a day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military had attacked another vessel — the seventh since early September — in the region.
The Trump administration has acknowledged killing more than 30 people in the strikes.
“President Trump and his administration continue to fail to answer pressing questions regarding the president’s orders to carry out lethal U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea,” Mr. Smith said in a statement.
“They have failed to demonstrate the legality of these strikes, provide transparency on the process used or even a list of cartels that have been designated as terrorist organizations,” he added. “We have also yet to see any evidence to support the president’s unilateral determinations that these vessels or their activities posed imminent threats to the United States of America that warranted military force rather than law enforcement-led interdiction.”
Holding any committee hearing would be up to the House Republican leadership. Speaker Mike Johnson has kept the House in recess during the three-week government shutdown.
The Republican-led Congress (especially the House) has ceded its oversight powers since Mr. Trump returned to office, opting not to scrutinize policies and actions that push the boundaries of presidential power.
Mr. Smith also called on Adm. Alvin Holsey, the head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America, to testify before the committee. Admiral Holsey unexpectedly announced last week that he was stepping down, less than a year into what is typically a three-year job and during the biggest operation in his 37-year career.
Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats, according to one current and one former U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
“Never before in my over 20 years on the committee can I recall seeing a combatant commander leave their post this early and amid such turmoil,” Mr. Smith said.
The White House has told Congress that Mr. Trump “determined” that the United States was in a formal armed conflict with various drug cartels that his team had deemed terrorists, making the boat crews “unlawful combatants.”
The administration’s recent strategy of designating various Latin American drug cartels as terrorists has been disputed because the groups are motivated by profit, not ideology.
Some Trump administration officials, including Marco Rubio, who is both the secretary of state and the national security adviser, have argued that designating a drug cartel as a terrorist organization conveys the authority to use military force against it.
That is false as a matter of legal reality. The law that empowers the executive branch to deem foreign groups terrorists enables steps like freezing their assets and making it a crime to do business with them — not to attack them.
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9) Lower-Income Americans Are Missing Car Payments
Inflation and a tough job market are making it harder for some people to pay back the car loans they signed in better times.
By Sydney Ember, Reporting from New York, Oct. 20, 2025
Because many Americans need their cars to get around, auto loan delinquencies can be a telling gauge of financial hardship. Credit...Chona Kasinger for The New York Times
More Americans are struggling to make their monthly car-loan payments, a sign that lower-income consumers are under growing financial pressure.
The share of subprime auto loans that were 60 days or more past due reached a high of nearly 6.5 percent in January and has lingered near that level, according to Fitch Ratings. Repossessions have swelled, more drivers are trading in vehicles that are worth less than they owe and lenders such as CarMax and Ally Financial have warned investors about auto loan performance.
Despite stubborn inflation and punishing tariffs, the U.S. economy on its surface has appeared to hold up relatively well. The stock market continues to climb, company executives for the most part remain upbeat and consumers overall are still spending.
But the weakness in the auto market is one of the clearest indications that low- and middle-income families — the economy’s foundation — could be starting to buckle. Because many Americans need their cars to get around, auto loan delinquencies can be a telling gauge of financial hardship.
“Is this evidence that we have some consumers under stress?” asked Jonathan Smoke, the chief economist at Cox Automotive, a research firm. “I would say yes, most definitely.”
Jennifer Alba, 48, decided to buy her first car while she was stuck on Seattle’s light rail for an hour one day in November 2021. She found a maroon 2018 Subaru Outback online, lined up a six-year, $565-a-month loan from Ally Financial, hopped off the train and headed straight for the dealership.
Ms. Alba, who was making about $100,000 a year and had received a small inheritance after her grandmother’s death, made a $1,500 down payment. She named her car “Ruby Subie” and made plans to take it camping.
“I didn’t think that I was doing anything irresponsible with my finances,” she said.
In February, she lost her contract job in operations at a nonprofit. She has applied to hundreds of jobs, she said, without success. Her unemployment benefits ran out in August.
With no income and no savings, she stopped paying her rent, credit card bill, student loans and, finally, her auto loan. She still owes $16,000 on her car but can’t sell it because it is now worth much less.
“I would rather be a financially solvent person,” she said. “My reality is that I am not.”
Borrowers with higher credit scores are also showing evidence of strain. Roughly 2 percent of all auto loans were significantly overdue last month, slightly more than a year ago, a Cox Automotive analysis of credit data showed. And researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the rate at which loans transitioned into delinquency has been rising for borrowers across ZIP codes and credit score bands.
“Higher car prices combined with higher interest rates have driven monthly payments upward and have put pressure on consumers across the income and credit score spectrum,” the researchers wrote. They noted that borrowers with lower incomes and credit scores were under additional pressure because they might have purchased used cars whose prices soared in the pandemic and have since declined.
Alarm bells in the auto industry started ringing in recent weeks after First Brands, an auto-parts maker, and Tricolor Holdings, an auto lender that specializes in loans to undocumented immigrants and poor borrowers, filed for bankruptcy. Their implosions appear to be a result of possible fraud and mismanagement, but some analysis suggested that they might also signal distress among lower-income borrowers and herald turbulence to come.
“Tricolor just gave us a warning sign that something is going to crack here,” said Tracy Chen, a portfolio manager at Brandywine Global, an investment firm.
During the pandemic, government stimulus money and unemployment checks, along with a pause in student loan payments, buoyed household savings and improved credit scores. Wages rose rapidly when the economy began to recover, particularly in low-paying jobs, as employers competed intensely for workers.
With interest rates low, lenders relaxed their underwriting standards, allowing would-be buyers to obtain auto loans more easily. To keep monthly payments low, many borrowers took out longer-term loans.
But since 2021, prices for goods including cars have climbed, and higher interest rates have made borrowing more expensive. Pandemic-era savings have been depleted. The boom in wage growth for the lowest-paid workers has subsided. A once-ebullient job market has started to slump.
Compounding those challenges for some borrowers, student loan payments, which were paused during the pandemic, have resumed, sucking up household cash. Student loan delinquencies also returned to credit reports, depressing credit scores.
As a result, a rising number of borrowers, especially those on the lower end of the income spectrum, are locked in auto loans that carry hefty monthly payments, with dwindling financial resources to pay them.
“Folks can manage that for a while,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, “but now they’re having trouble.”
The squeeze in auto loans is unlikely to threaten the wider financial system, analysts said. Auto loan balances in the second quarter accounted for less than 10 percent of the $18.4 trillion in household debt, according to New York Fed data. Subprime auto loans are a fraction of total auto loans.
And newer auto loans appear to be performing better than loans that originated in 2022 and 2023. That could be because lenders have tightened their loan requirements, preventing low-credit-score borrowers from securing risky loans so freely.
In a call with investors on Friday, Russ Hutchinson, Ally Financial’s chief financial officer, acknowledged that economic conditions were uncertain. But he said the company’s lower-credit loans were “performing better than our expectations” because of changes the company had made to its underwriting and servicing process.
Still, Fitch said last month that it expected auto loan performance to worsen from last year “amid weaker economic growth, higher unemployment and tariff-related inflation.”
“Ultimately, the biggest worry is, do we see job losses and is that the beginning of a recession,” said Mr. Smoke, the Cox Automotive economist, “because that does create credit problems.”
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10) Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots
Internal documents show the company that changed how people shop has a far-reaching plan to automate 75 percent of its operations.
By Karen Weise, Visuals by Emily Kask, Oct. 21, 2025
Karen Weise reported from Shreveport, La., and has covered Amazon since 2018. She welcomes tips at nytimes.com/tips.
Rows of carts are prepared for shipping in Amazon’s facility in Shreveport, La.
Over the past two decades, no company has done more to shape the American workplace than Amazon. In its ascent to become the nation’s second-largest employer, it has hired hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, built an army of contract drivers and pioneered using technology to hire, monitor and manage employees.
Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.
Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. That would save about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers.
Executives told Amazon’s board last year that they hoped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. work force in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn’t need to hire.
At facilities designed for superfast deliveries, Amazon is trying to create warehouses that employ few humans at all. And documents show that Amazon’s robotics team has an ultimate goal to automate 75 percent of its operations.
Amazon is so convinced this automated future is around the corner that it has started developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs. Documents show the company has considered building an image as a “good corporate citizen” through greater participation in community events such as parades and Toys for Tots.
The documents contemplate avoiding using terms like “automation” and “A.I.” when discussing robotics, and instead use terms like “advanced technology” or replace the word “robot” with “cobot,” which implies collaboration with humans.
Amazon said in a statement that the documents viewed by The Times were incomplete and did not represent the company’s overall hiring strategy. Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon, noted that the company planned to hire 250,000 people for the coming holiday season, though the company declined to say how many of those roles would be permanent.
Amazon also said that it’s not insisting executives avoid certain terms, and that community involvement is unrelated to automation.
Amazon’s plans could have profound impact on blue-collar jobs throughout the country and serve as a model for other companies like Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, and UPS. The company transformed the U.S. work force as it created a booming demand for warehousing and delivery jobs. But now, as it leads the way for automation, those roles could become more technical, higher paid and more scarce.
“Nobody else has the same incentive as Amazon to find the way to automate,” said Daron Acemoglu, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies automation and won the Nobel Prize in economic science last year. “Once they work out how to do this profitably, it will spread to others, too.”
If the plans pan out, “one of the biggest employers in the United States will become a net job destroyer, not a net job creator,” Mr. Acemoglu said.
The Times viewed internal Amazon documents from the past year. They included working papers that show how different parts of the company are navigating its ambitious automation effort, as well as formalized plans for the department of more than 3,000 corporate and engineering employees who largely develop the company’s robotic and automation operations.
Udit Madan, who leads worldwide operations for Amazon, said in an interview that the company had a long history of using the savings from automation to create new jobs, such as a recent push to open more delivery depots in rural areas.
“That you have efficiency in one part of the business doesn’t tell the whole story for the total impact it might have,” he said, “either in a particular community or for the country overall.”
A Template for the Future
For years, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and longtime chief executive, pushed his staff to think big and envision what it would take to fully automate its operations, according to two former senior leaders involved in the work. Amazon’s first big push into robotic automation started in 2012, when it paid $775 million to buy the robotics maker Kiva. The acquisition transformed Amazon’s operations. Workers no longer walked miles crisscrossing a warehouse. Instead, robots shaped like large hockey pucks moved towers of products to employees.
The company has since developed an orchestrated system of robotic programs that plug into each together like Legos. And it has focused on transforming the large, workhorse warehouses that pick and pack the products customers buy with a click.
Amazon opened its most advanced warehouse, a facility in Shreveport, La., last year as a template for future robotic fulfillment centers. Once an item there is in a package, a human barely touches it again. The company uses a thousand robots in Shreveport, allowing it to employ a quarter fewer workers last year than it would have without automation, documents show. Next year, as more robots are introduced, it expects to employ about half as many workers there as it would without automation.
“With this major milestone now in sight, we are confident in our ability to flatten Amazon’s hiring curve over the next 10 years,” the robotics team wrote in its strategy plan for 2025.
Amazon plans to copy the Shreveport design in about 40 facilities by the end of 2027, starting with a massive warehouse that just opened in Virginia Beach. And it has begun overhauling old facilities, including one in Stone Mountain near Atlanta.
That facility currently has roughly 4,000 workers. But once the robotic systems are installed, it is projected to process 10 percent more items but need as many as 1,200 fewer employees, according to an internal analysis. Amazon said the final head count was subject to change.
The documents also show that after the Stone Mountain retrofit is done, it should need fewer workers and depend more on temporary employees than full-time staff. (Amazon said some facilities would have more employees after they were retrofitted.)
Bracing for job cuts, some employees working on the transition have strategized ways to “control the narrative” in Georgia by focusing on new technician jobs and “innovation to give local officials a sense of pride,” documents show.
Amazon said that local officials knew about the retrofit and that its involvement in local efforts was unrelated.
A Million Robots
Amazon’s automation plans became more pressing after the pandemic’s surge in online shopping sent Amazon on a hiring spree unrivaled in the history of corporate America. Mr. Madan said the company had embarked on a complete redesign of its typical warehouses.
In March 2024, when executives working on the automation plans gave a presentation to the Amazon board, the directors pressed them to do more with less. By the fall, the robotics team had made progress. It reduced the cost of the automation plan to less than $10 billion, and increased the expected savings to $12.6 billion from 2025 to 2027.
Andy Jassy, who took over as chief executive in July 2021 when Mr. Bezos stepped aside, has pushed to cut costs across the e-commerce business. “For years and years, they were really investing for growth, and in the last three years the company’s focus has shifted to efficiencies,” said Justin Post, a Wall Street analyst at Bank of America who has covered Amazon for two decades. Robotics “really does make a big difference to the bottom line.”
Amazon has said it has a million robots at work around the globe, and it believes the humans who take care of them will be the jobs of the future. Both hourly workers and managers will need to know more about engineering and robotics as Amazon’s facilities operate more like advanced factories.
At the Shreveport facility, more than 160 people work as robotics technicians, and they make at least $24.45 an hour. Most of Shreveport’s 2,000 employees are regular hourly workers, whose pay starts at $19.50.
Training workers for these new roles is “something close to my heart,” Mr. Madan said. He pointed to data that almost 5,000 people had gone through Amazon’s mechatronics apprenticeship program since 2019. “It can be a very successful path,” he said.
There are concerns automation could affect people of color particularly hard because Amazon’s warehouse workers are about three times as likely as a typical American worker to be Black.
That dynamic could play out at the warehouse in Stone Mountain.
This summer, a 28-year-old Black man who lived near the facility posted on Reddit looking for help landing a job at Amazon. The man, who in an interview declined to be named to protect his privacy, wrote that he had passed the initial screening for a job earlier this year, but that there were no time slots available for the final appointment to check his identification and do a drug test. And he hadn’t seen a single job listing there for five months.
He said he checks Amazon’s hiring website constantly, even using a computer tool that refreshes the site every 10 seconds.
The job hunter did not know that even though Amazon is not planning layoffs at the Stone Mountain facility, it plans over time to shrink its 4,000-employee work force through attrition.
Though it is only five years old, the Stone Mountain warehouse is already outdated. Work is underway to transform it into a robotic facility that, eventually, could need a thousand fewer workers.
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11) The Robots Fueling Amazon’s Automation
Meet Sparrow, Cardinal and Proteus. They’re the robots that, step by step, are replacing human workers in the company’s warehouses.
By Karen Weise, Oct. 21, 2025
Karen Weise reported from Shreveport, La., and has covered Amazon since 2018. She welcomes tips at nytimes.com/tips.
Amazon hired the founding team of the A.I. company Covariant. Its robotic arm is shown here in a photo last year. Balazs Gardi for The New York Times
Amazon is building robots that do everything from moving individual shirts and bottles of soap to neatly stacking packages for the shipping dock. Amazon executives hope these robots will help the company avoid hiring hundreds of thousands of employees in the coming years.
Here’s a rundown of what Amazon is doing to automate its facilities, and previously unreported plans for what’s ahead.
How Amazon Got Its Start With Robotics
In 2012, Amazon bought the robot maker Kiva, which made squat, circular robots that could lift a stack of goods and take it to a worker.
Since then, Amazon has categorized all its operations into six types of automation: movement, manipulation, sorting, storage, identification and packing, the chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, Tye Brady, said in an interview last fall. “We want to have a world-class capability in each of those,” he said.
This approach tries to address a central tension in developing robotics, between creating a system that can do many things but is harder to develop and creating one that has a narrower focus but is more likely to succeed.
The company has developed robots that tackle particular challenges. That includes Greek-named updates to Kiva, like Hercules, which moves heavy carts, and Pegasus, which shuttles and sorts packed orders. There is also a flock of robotic arms, including Robin and Sparrow, that manipulate items and packages.
The Robots Amazon Is Using Now
Several years ago, Amazon began rethinking how its primary warehouses operated. The single biggest change was overhauling how Amazon stored and moved items.
In the old system, Amazon stored products in towers of cubbies that had a fabric front; workers put a hand into the cubby and fished around for the desired product.
In the new system, called Sequoia, those cubbies have been replaced with plastic bins that robotically slide in and out of a frame. Products can move around the warehouse in those bins, and using computer vision, Amazon can look into the bins from overhead to identify items. Then robotic arms move the items with suction cups.
“We thought that change could be a simplifier in allowing the robots around the system to be more effective and allow us to take away a part of the process in a way that could actually lead to safer outcomes and to more efficient output,” said Udit Madan, Amazon’s head of operations.
At Amazon’s most advanced warehouse, in Shreveport, La., employees touch products at just a few stages, such as taking them out of shipping boxes and placing them in bins.
After that, the Sparrow robotic arm looks into a bin of items, picks the one it wants and puts it in another bin. The robotic arm called Robin places packed packages on a small robot called Pegasus, which shuttles packages to drop down specific chutes depending on where they will be shipped. Beneath that chute, a beefy, tall robotic arm called Cardinal grabs sealed boxes and stacks them into carts.
“As the packages come down into the chutes, Cardinal is able to pick those boxes, lift it, and play Tetris very nicely” to fit the boxes in the carts, said Abhishek Gowrishankar, who runs the Shreveport facility.
A tortoise-looking robot named Proteus slides under those carts and autonomously carries them to shipping docks. When it navigates around workers, its lights form a smile.
There are other smaller advancements. Different machines pack items into boxes and envelopes, depending on the customer order. One blows air to keep the sides of a paper envelope apart so a worker can easily slide in an item. And the first new address labeler in two decades has an arm that moves in different directions to place the labels on 3,000 packages an hour.
What’s Ahead for Amazon’s Robots
For now, the Sparrow arm is used for consolidating inventory between the bins. But internal documents viewed by The New York Times show that Amazon has tested arms to pick inventory for individual customer orders, one of the key tasks currently done by workers.
A process known as “decanting” — cutting open boxes, unpacking products and getting them into bins — has remained stubbornly manual.
So far, robotic decanting prototypes have not kept pace with the rest of the automated systems. People are needed to ensure that the inventory isn’t damaged, or that it matches the expected shipment. For now, workers at the Shreveport facility stand at an updated station that uses computer vision to detect which bin a product is placed in, requiring fewer steps.
In the smaller facilities that Amazon uses for same-day deliveries, it has experimented with a system called Jupiter to store and robotically retrieve a lot of inventory. But Amazon is still years away from what internal documents describe as the goal of “near lights-out automation” at those buildings.
Executives have been focusing on everyday products, like deodorant and groceries, which customers buy more of when they are delivered quickly. Those products are housed at ultrafast facilities that are already highly efficient because they are geographically close to customers. But because these are low-margin items, cutting costs to fulfill the orders and being able to store more inventory in the buildings are critical.
And Amazon has only begun to integrate this next generation of artificial intelligence into its systems. The company paid $400 million a year ago to hire the founding team and license the technology of Covariant, a start-up developing A.I. systems that act like a robot’s “brain.”
Mr. Madan said the team had already improved the vision models of the Sparrow system, letting the arm better understand what is in a bin, which item to grasp and where to best place it in another bin.
Those advanced systems are part of Amazon’s experiments to create a new generation of robotic arms, called Bluejay and Starling, that can manipulate items and packages in a broader range of tasks and in different types of buildings.
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12) Nations Hesitate to Send Troops to Gaza, Fearing Clashes With Hamas
The Trump peace plan calls for an international security force in the Gaza Strip, but countries that might send troops are wary of danger, an unclear mission and being seen as occupiers.
By Adam Rasgon, Michael D. Shear, David M. Halbfinger, Aaron Boxerman and Natan Odenheimer, Oct. 21, 2025
Adam Rasgon, David Halbfinger, Aaron Boxerman and Natan Odenheimer reported from Jerusalem. Michael Shear reported from London.
A member of Hamas during the handover of Israeli hostages in Deir al-Balah in Gaza this month. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
The fragile cease-fire in Gaza that came into force last week rests on some key assumptions: that Hamas militants give up their weapons and that an international troop presence keep the peace as Israel withdraws its military from the enclave.
But the countries that might make up that force are skittish about committing soldiers who could potentially come into direct conflict with Hamas while it is still an armed group, diplomats and other people familiar with the deliberations say.
President Trump’s 20-point plan, which led to an Israel-Hamas cease-fire and an exchange of hostages for prisoners and detainees, envisioned the immediate deployment of a “temporary International Stabilization Force” in Gaza. The idea was for the international corps to secure areas where Israeli troops have withdrawn, prevent munitions from entering the territory, facilitate the distribution of aid and train a Palestinian police force.
The creation and deployment of an international force in Gaza could determine whether the current cease-fire has a chance to evolve into a lasting agreement, and whether Israelis and Palestinians move toward the broader aim of a durable peace.
Diplomats and other officials from several countries who are familiar with the situation say there has been little progress on when the force might be assembled because of confusion over the force’s mission, which appears to be the most serious stumbling block.
Representatives from several countries seen as likely participants have said privately that they will not commit troops until there is more clarity about what the force will be expected to do once it arrives in Gaza, according to two diplomats briefed on the discussions in recent days.
Their main concern is that their troops should not be expected to fight Hamas militants, some of whom remain heavily armed, on Israel’s behalf. For several of the countries, that prospect alone would be reason enough to back out, the officials said.
Some of the countries have also indicated in private discussions that they do not want their troops to be in the centers of Gaza’s cities, because of the danger posed there by Hamas and its tunnel networks, according to discussions with people familiar with the talks.
All of the people spoke on condition of anonymity, and insisted that the reluctant countries not be identified, to discuss the sensitive discussions.
An eruption of violence in Gaza on Sunday underscored those concerns. An attack by Palestinian militants in Israeli-held territory killed two Israeli soldiers, according to the Israeli military. Israel responded with a punishing bombardment of what it described as Hamas installations, which killed 45 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties.
Under the Biden administration, preliminary efforts were made to form a force including personnel from Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Italy, according to Jamie Rubin, who served as an adviser to Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state at the time, and helped develop a plan for postwar governance in Gaza.
Recent discussions have included Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey and Azerbaijan, according to two diplomats.
Mediators who negotiated the current cease-fire are eager to get an international force into Gaza quickly to stabilize the area before Hamas consolidates its power in the roughly half of Gaza that Israel has ceded so far.
A Turkish government statement stated that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said Turkey would join a task force that it described as overseeing the cease-fire. It was unclear whether he was referring directly to the stabilization force. Some in Israel’s leadership are likely to be skeptical about Turkey playing a leading role in Gaza given that Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly condemned Israel during the past two years.
President Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia said during a speech at the United Nations last month that his country was ready to deploy 20,000 or more troops to “help secure peace in Gaza” and other war zones.
Uncertainty about who would be responsible for security in Gaza could leave parts of the enclave without any military presence to counter Hamas for weeks, if not months. The situation has produced some difficult contradictions as diplomats try to move forward with plans for the region.
Without such a force and government, diplomats said, Gaza could be left with Hamas as the only governing authority. Moreover, Israel’s military is unlikely to withdraw further — a key inducement for Hamas to accept the Trump plan — until an international force is ready to take its place.
Much depends, however, on whether Hamas gives up its weapons — which its leaders have been reluctant to do thus far.
Asked about how Hamas would disarm, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and one of the architects of the cease-fire told CBS’s 60 Minutes last week: “So in order for that to occur, we need to create the international stabilization force and then the international stabilization force needs to create a local Palestinian government.”
Analysts say Arab states would be unlikely to deploy soldiers in Gaza if they feared they could be drawn into clashes with armed Hamas gunmen resisting their presence, and also if their participation was not connected to a pathway to Palestinian statehood — which Israel’s government opposes.
“Getting militarily involved in Gaza is politically risky for Arab countries,” said Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on Palestinian affairs and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Middle East-focused think tank in Washington. “They don’t want to come in and be seen as doing Israel’s dirty work. So they need a Palestinian invitation and the U.N. Security Council mandate.”
He added, “They also don’t want their contribution to be merely coming to secure a cease-fire that doesn’t lead to ending the Israeli occupation.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has suggested that Israel would act to disarm Hamas “the hard way” if the Palestinian militants refused to do so on their own.
The idea of an international peacekeeping force in Gaza has been under discussion since soon after Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel began its two-year military response. Various proposals from France, the United States and others have suggested that such a force would be needed quickly after the fighting between Israel and Hamas ended.
Discussions are also underway about the establishment of a separate, Palestinian police force that might operate in the urban areas of Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority, which runs a large police force in the West Bank, would seem a natural candidate, except for the opposition of Israel. Mr. Netanyahu, who has long sought to prevent both the West Bank and Gaza from winding up under the control of the same Palestinian entity, has firmly rejected any meaningful involvement of the authority in Gaza. When his cabinet outlined its terms for ending the war in August, it included an explicit statement that the Palestinian Authority would not govern Gaza.
And even Palestinian officials say that the authority’s reassertion of control in Gaza — from which it was ejected by Hamas in a 2007 civil war — would likely require careful planning and further training for its security forces.
Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister, told reporters on Thursday that Egypt and Jordan were providing training to some of the authority’s officers and that the authority would “gradually operate” in Gaza after the war.
But asked when that might happen, he did not provide a timeline.
“War did stop but a lot of arrangements still are not in place,” Mr. Mustafa conceded at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, “on governance, on security, on logistics.”
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