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Beloved tenured History professor and Socialist Horizon member Tom Alter was summarily fired on September 10th by Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse for expressing his views in a virtual conference unrelated to the university. This action cannot stand. Socialist Horizon calls on people everywhere to join us and demand that Professor Alter be reinstated to his tenured position.
President Damphousse fired Dr. Tom Alter based solely on a video published online by an extreme rightwing provocateur who infiltrated and secretly video-recorded segments of a virtual socialist conference with the intention of publishing information to slander and attack conference participants. In videos posted on their website, this person declares that they are a proud fascist, who tries to monetize exposure of the left as an “anti-communist cult leader”. This grifter publicly exhorts followers to embrace fascist ideology and take action, is an antisemite that states that Jewish people ‘chose to die in the Holocaust’, is a self-declared racist and xenophobe, a homophobe and a transphobe that spews hate speech throughout their platform that is solely designed to inflame and incite.
After the fascist’s ‘exposure video’ reached President Damphousse, he summarily fired Dr. Alter, a tenured professor, without questioning or investigating the content, without considering its authenticity or validity, without any form of due process, and violating existing state law and campus policy which requires a formal due process procedure.
Alter spoke against this cruel and unjust system and argued in favor of replacing it with socialism, and he advocated organizing politically to achieve this. Alter’s political views reflect those of nearly half of the total US population. Almost half now oppose capitalism and 40% favor socialism over capitalism. Alter’s views are far from subversive, they reflect the mainstream. It is a just cause that more and more people are joining, one people believe to be worth fighting for, and represents a change in thinking that is scaring the bigots, fascists, and capitalists.
It is in fact the fascist infiltrator who incites violence against oppressed people, and in this case, directly against Alter. It is Alter’s employer Texas State University that inflicted violence: stripping Alter of his job, refusing him any due process, casting him and his family into the uncertainty of unemployment and making them a target for the extreme right, while slamming the door shut on his free speech and academic freedom. Alter’s First Amendment right to speak, guaranteed by the Constitution, has been violated, as has his academic freedom– a protected right developed by his national faculty union, the American Association of University Professors.
We call on President Damphousse to stop this flagrant attack on constitutionally-protected free speech, to undo this wrongful termination, and to immediately reinstate Dr. Tom Alter to his teaching position.
The termination of Dr. Alter is a serious attack that upends his livelihood, his professional and academic career, and sets a very dangerous precedent. President Damphousse’s actions appear to be in accordance with the far-right politics of Texas politicians Greg Abbot and Ted Cruz, as well as being in-line with that of Donald Trump who has used the office of the presidency to wage war on his political opponents.
Damphousse’s actions align with Trump and the far right forces trying to impose and enforce an authoritarian regime that wants to silence critics, crush political dissent, and attack anyone they perceive to be oppositional to their project. Even more threatening, Damphousse’s actions strengthen the power and influence of fascists and enable the most violent and reactionary groups to also attack and take action against anyone they deem to be part of the left.
It is Trump who inflicts violence against millions through his authoritarian political attacks that target people of Color, women, transpeople, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, impoverished and unhoused people, and the working class as a whole . It is the far right and the fascists who are building movements to harm innocent and vulnerable people. It is this capitalist system that Alter spoke against that inflicts mass violence condemning billions to hunger, poverty and war while a handful accumulates ever growing obscene amounts of wealth that is stolen from the rest of us.
Alter is being attacked because he is telling a truth that many people in the United States believe today: that capitalism is ruining their lives and that socialism is a better system. If Dr. Tom Alter can be fired for expressing his personal beliefs and principles, then people everywhere are in danger. If he can be fired for expressing a point of view at a conference, away from his work and in his daily private life, then none of us are safe.
His case must draw support from people of all sectors of society: workers, teachers, nurses, students—anyone and everyone who upholds the value of free speech. As the great anti-slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said, “The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected”.
We call on everyone to join us in building the broadest possible solidarity campaign to win this decisive battle.
The attacks on Dr. Tom Alter and socialist politics will not intimidate Socialist Horizon. We will defend our comrade and we will continue fighting for the very cause he is being attacked for: justice, freedom, and equality. We will also continue building the organization that it will take to win it.
Dr. Tom Alter is not only a beloved faculty member at Texas State but also an advisor to several student organizations. He is the author of a celebrated history of socialism in the American South, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas (University of Illinois Press). He is also the father of two children. Socialist Horizon demands that Texas State University immediately restore Tom Alter’s position as Associate Professor of History.
Socialist Horizon also calls on all organizations and individuals that defend the basic democratic right to free speech and reject fascism and authoritarianism, and all socialists in particular, to join this fight. This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
——
Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Jane Fonda Revives Her Father’s McCarthy-Era Free Speech Group
The actress is leading the revival of the Committee for the First Amendment, a free-expression group that Hollywood stars including her father, Henry Fonda, formed in the 1940s.
By Matt Stevens, Reporting from Los Angeles, Oct. 3, 2025
Jane Fonda and the other new members recalled when the government “repressed and persecuted American citizens for their political beliefs” and warned that “those forces have returned.” Credit...Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Jane Fonda and hundreds of members of the entertainment industry have revived the Committee for the First Amendment, a free-expression group that was originally formed by Hollywood stars including her father, Henry Fonda, during the McCarthy era.
The original group was formed in 1947 to oppose the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee, whose investigations into the film industry led to the blacklist of actors, writers and directors who were suspected of Communist sympathies. The original Committee for the First Amendment included Mr. Fonda, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and others who rallied to defend free expression.
In announcing the revival of the group, Ms. Fonda and the other new members recalled the “dark time when the federal government repressed and persecuted American citizens for their political beliefs” and warned that “those forces have returned.”
“The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry,” they said in a statement, which was signed by Ms. Fonda, Spike Lee, Billie Eilish, Pedro Pascal and more than 800 others.
In a video posted on her social media account Wednesday night, Ms. Fonda, 87, said that she was heartened by the many people who had reached out seeking to be added to the committee. Still, she said, “We’re not looking to build an organization. We’re looking to grow a movement.”
She called for “creative, nonviolent noncooperation” and held up, as one example, the move by some to cancel their Disney+ subscriptions after the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was suspended by ABC.
“We’re artists, we’re creatives,” she said. “Freedom of expression is essential to what we do.”
Though the committee’s statement condemned the federal government, it did not explicitly mention President Trump or any member of his administration. The White House appeared to get the message nonetheless, issuing a statement that attacked Ms. Fonda and what they said were her “bad opinions.”
“As someone who actually knows what it’s like to be censored, President Trump is a strong supporter of free speech and Democrat allegations to the contrary are so false, they’re laughable,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
The New York Times wrote about the original Committee for the First Amendment when it was formed 78 years ago, in October 1947. At that time, the House committee was “conducting an inquiry into the degree of Communist infiltration in the film industry,” according to a Times report. Several actors had been summoned to Washington to testify.
Another group of actors formed the Committee for the First Amendment to oppose the inquiry. Twenty-five actors on the committee, including Mr. Bogart and John Huston, flew to Washington to protest the inquiry. A radio program that the group produced was broadcast nationwide.
Organizers of the renewed effort have posted the radio program online.
“Hollywood fights back!” a man intones to begin it.
Ms. Garland is the first of many stars to speak. “It’s one thing if someone says we’re not good actors. That hurts. But we can take that,” she said. “It’s something again to say we’re not good Americans. We resent that!”
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2) Judge Finds ‘Likelihood’ That Charges Against Abrego Garcia Are Vindictive
The ruling was an astonishing rebuke of both the Justice Department and some of its top officials, including Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general.
By Alan Feuer, Oct. 3, 2025
Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. at a naturalization ceremony in 2018. Judge Crenshaw found that Trump officials may have sought to punish Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia for having filed a lawsuit successfully challenging his initial “unlawful deportation” to El Salvador. Credit...Larry McCormack/The Tennessean, via Imagn
A federal judge in Nashville ruled on Friday that there was a “realistic likelihood” that the indictment filed against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March and then brought back to face criminal charges, amounted to a vindictive prosecution by the Justice Department.
The ruling was an astonishing rebuke of both the department and some of its top officials, including Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general. Mr. Blanche was called out by name in the ruling for remarks he made about Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case on the same day in June he was returned to U.S. soil to face the charges in Federal District Court in Nashville.
In a 16-page decision, Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. said there was evidence that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s prosecution “may stem from retaliation” by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Judge Crenshaw found that Trump officials may have sought to punish Mr. Abrego Garcia for having filed a lawsuit successfully challenging his initial “unlawful deportation” to El Salvador.
Moreover, Judge Crenshaw indicated how he was serious about getting to the bottom of the issue of vindictiveness. He said he intended to permit Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to pry, at least in part, into the Trump administration’s process of deciding to bring an indictment in the first place and how the charges related to the deportation case.
Vindictive prosecution motions are exceedingly difficult to win because of the high threshold required to prove that prosecutors acted improperly by filing criminal charges. Under the law, cases can be considered vindictive only if defendants can show that prosecutors displayed animus toward them while they were seeking to vindicate their rights in court, and that the charges would not have been brought except for the existence of that animus.
While Judge Crenshaw has not yet made a final decision on the issue of vindictiveness, the fact that he is even considering doing so in Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case is a hugely embarrassing blow to the Trump administration. From the moment Trump officials acknowledged that they had mistakenly expelled Mr. Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, President Trump and his top aides began a relentless barrage of attacks against him, calling him a violent member of the street gang MS-13, a wife beater and even a terrorist, effectively blaming him for being the victim of their own administrative error.
The judge’s ruling highlighted the ways in which the habit many Trump officials have of speaking out of court about legal cases has — or could — come back to haunt them.
When Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers filed their motion in August, they pointed out that the administration had removed their client from the United States in violation of a 2019 court order that expressly barred him from being sent to El Salvador. They added that instead of taking the traditional path and quickly bringing him back to U.S. soil, the White House “began a public campaign to punish” him “for daring to fight back, culminating in the criminal investigation” that led to his indictment.
That indictment accused Mr. Abrego Garcia, whom the government is now trying to deport again, of having taken part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the United States. At the heart of the case was a 2022 traffic stop during which he was pulled over and discovered to be driving several Hispanic men, some of whom were in the country illegally.
Even though federal agents learned about the stop at the time, they decided not to do anything about it and Mr. Abrego Garcia was released without charges.
Judge Crenshaw homed in on that fact in his ruling, noting that the Justice Department did not seek to charge Mr. Abrego Garcia until 903 days after the initial stop. The one important event that had occurred during that time, he pointed out, was that Mr. Abrego Garcia had complained about his wrongful deportation in a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Maryland and succeeded in persuading three courts — including the Supreme Court — that he should be freed from Salvadoran custody.
The judge also noted that a top prosecutor in the Nashville U.S. attorney’s office, Ben Schrader, had quit on the same day that Mr. Abrego Garcia’s indictment was returned. Moreover, he suggested that administration officials may have strong-armed Mr. Schrader’s boss, Robert E. McGuire, the acting U.S. attorney in Nashville who obtained the indictment, into charging Mr. Abrego Garcia to begin with.
“The timing of Abrego’s indictment suggests a realistic likelihood that senior D.O.J. and D.H.S. officials may have induced Acting U.S. Attorney McGuire (albeit unknowingly) to criminally charge Abrego in retaliation for his Maryland lawsuit,” Judge Crenshaw wrote.
The judge also had harsh words for Mr. Blanche, the No. 2 official at the Justice Department who once served as Mr. Trump’s private defense lawyer. On the day Mr. Abrego Garcia was brought back to the United States to face indictment, Mr. Blanche went on Fox News and declared that the government had started “investigating” the case only after a judge in Maryland had “questioned” the administration’s decision to deport Mr. Abrego Garcia and found that it “had no right.”
“Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights to bring suit against the executive official defendants,” Judge Crenshaw wrote, “rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers may be able to determine with more certainty if that in fact occurred as they start asking questions and demanding documents from the administration as part of the discovery process Judge Crenshaw intends to set in motion.
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3) Israel and Hamas Say They’ll Work With Trump’s Gaza Plan, but Gaps Remain
Israel said it would cooperate with the White House to end the war, but much is still unclear about Hamas’s future and whether it will agree to disarm.
By Aaron Boxerman, Adam Rasgon and Natan Odenheimer, Reporting from Jerusalem, Oct. 4, 2025
Images of Israeli hostages, still held by Hamas inside Gaza, on a banner at a beach in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Israel and Hamas signaled a readiness to move forward with parts of President Trump’s cease-fire plan in what many hoped would lead to a diplomatic breakthrough, but significant gaps will need to be negotiated to bring an end to the war in Gaza.
The Israeli government said on Saturday morning that it was preparing for the “immediate implementation” of the first steps of Mr. Trump’s proposal. Hours earlier, Hamas said in a statement that it would release all of its remaining hostages, a key part of the plan, but the group did not directly address many other parts of it.
Mr. Trump exuded confidence that a deal was imminent, saying it was a “big day” while also exhorting Israel to stop bombing Gaza. He conceded that negotiators still needed “to get the final word down in concrete.”
Neither Israel nor Hamas were explicit in their statements about what had long been seen as the major sticking points to reaching an agreement. Hamas’s statement did not say whether it would accept Mr. Trump’s stipulation, backed by Israel, that the group disarm.
It was also unclear whether Israel was willing to accept any major changes to Mr. Trump’s plan, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he supported during a visit to the White House this week.
Israeli negotiators were preparing on Saturday to travel to Egypt for indirect talks with Hamas in the coming days, but it was not known when they would leave, four officials in the region said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political matters.
Mediators from Qatar and Egypt were holding their own talks with Hamas about the proposal, while the United States was speaking with Israel, according to another two diplomats with knowledge of the contacts, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Israelis and Palestinians were caught between disbelief, tentative hope and utter confusion after the back-to-back developments, which many hoped could at least bring an end to the nearly two-year war.
The Israeli military said it was also preparing for the potential release of hostages. Israeli forces had been instructed to shift to a defensive posture, although they were not withdrawing from their positions in Gaza, said three Israeli officials, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
But it was unclear what that meant for Palestinians in Gaza, where around 66 people were killed on Friday, local health officials said, whose tolls do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israeli forces have been conducting a sweeping operation in Gaza City that has destroyed blocks of residential neighborhoods and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, warned displaced Palestinians against seizing on the optimism around a cease-fire to try to return to the north of the enclave. Israeli soldiers “are still surrounding Gaza City, and attempting to return there poses extreme danger,” he said on social media.
Two Palestinians in Gaza said explosions and gunfire continued into the early morning, suggesting continued Israeli military activity. Many Gazans, exhausted and traumatized by the war, say they hope Hamas makes whatever concessions necessary to reach a deal with Israel.
“Get us out of this situation in any way possible, and quickly,” said Abdelkarim al-Harazin, a doctor who recently fled Gaza City for the south of the enclave. “We’ve been through this before, a million times, thinking that it might happen — only to get burned.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump released a 20-point-plan to release the remaining hostages held in Gaza and to end Israel’s deadly military campaign there. At least 20 living hostages and the bodies of around 25 others are still believed to be held in Gaza.
Under the plan, Hamas would free the remaining hostages within 72 hours and hand over its weapons, and end its rule in Gaza. Israeli forces would gradually withdraw from Gaza and allow an internationally supervised Palestinian administration to assume responsibility for public services there.
Hamas submitted its response to Mr. Trump’s proposal late Friday night. In a statement, the group said it agreed to release all the remaining hostages according to the terms laid out in the plan. That would mean the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israel, along with 1,700 others detained since the start of the war. The bodies of 15 Gazans would be exchanged for each dead Israeli captive.
But Hamas also said it wanted certain conditions on the ground to facilitate the exchange and that this would require further negotiations. The group was vague about whether it would be willing to disarm or fully relinquish its dominant role in Gaza, as Mr. Trump’s plan envisions.
Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official, said on Friday that “security measures” were needed to free the living hostages and he suggested that locating the bodies of others would take time.
“Some have been buried, some are in areas under the occupation’s control, and some — as a result of the destruction and leveling that took place — need to be looked into,” he told Al Araby TV, a Qatar-based broadcaster.
Mr. Trump hailed Hamas’s response as evidence that the group’s leaders “are ready for a lasting PEACE” in a post on social media. He said Israel should “immediately stop the bombing of Gaza” to enable the hostage release to go ahead.
Several hours later, Mr. Netanyahu’s office issued its own statement, saying that Israel was preparing for “the immediate release of all the hostages” and would keep working with Mr. Trump “to bring the war to an end in accordance with the principles set forth by Israel.” Separately, the military reinforced the need “for a rapid response to neutralize any threat.”
David M. Halbfinger, Isabel Kershner and Ronen Bergman contributed reporting.
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4) Cautious Optimism on Gaza Peace Plan, but No Guarantees. Here’s What to Know.
Israel and Hamas said they would work with President Trump’s plan to end the war, but a number of sticking points could derail efforts to reach a diplomatic breakthrough.
By The New York Times, Oct. 4, 2025
Smoke rose from Gaza City from shelling on Thursday. Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
Israel said on Saturday that it was preparing to implement the first steps of President Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza, hours after Hamas said that it was ready to release all remaining Israeli hostages.
Yet several sticking points remain. Hamas did not address stipulations in Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan that the group disarm, which has been a key demand of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The group also signaled that it wished to make changes to the plan, which could be a problem for Mr. Netanyahu.
Mr. Trump extolled Hamas’s response, while also demanding that Israel stop bombing Gaza. The president acknowledged that the details would need to be worked out.
For its part, Israel did not address the ambiguities in Hamas’s statement, and it was unclear whether Mr. Netanyahu would be willing to accept any major changes to Mr. Trump’s plan.
Interviews with Palestinians in the enclave suggest widespread support for Mr. Trump’s proposal, with many hoping that it could finally bring an end to the war.
What happened?
Mr. Trump presented a 20-point-plan on Monday to release the remaining hostages held in Gaza and end Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. At least 20 living hostages and the bodies of about 25 others are believed to still be in Gaza.
On Friday, hours after Mr. Trump said on social media that an agreement must be reached within days, or Hamas would face “all HELL,” the group announced it was prepared to release all of the hostages according to the terms of the plan.
In Mr. Trump’s proposal, the hostages would be exchanged for 250 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and 1,700 Gazans detained during the war.
Mr. Trump hailed Hamas’s response, saying the group was “ready for a lasting PEACE” in a post on social media.
Yet it remained unclear whether Hamas would agree to give up its weapons. And the group did not say whether it accepted to have no future role in the governance of Gaza, saying only that it would hand over administration of the enclave “to a Palestinian body of independent technocrats.”
Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he would not accept any deal in which Hamas remains in Gaza.
How did Israel respond?
Several hours after Hamas released its statement, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said that Israel was preparing for “the immediate release of all the hostages” and would keep working with Mr. Trump “to bring the war to an end in accordance with the principles set forth by Israel.”
The statement made no mention of the uncertainties in Hamas’s response to the plan.
Israeli forces in Gaza have been instructed to shift to a defensive posture, although they were not withdrawing from their positions, said three Israeli officials, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The military launched an expanded ground offensive in Gaza City in September, which has caused hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee from the city to the south of Gaza. Israel has said that Gaza City is one of the last remaining strongholds of Hamas.
Palestinians in Gaza said that explosions and gunfire continued into early Saturday morning.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, warned displaced Palestinians against seizing on the optimism around a cease-fire to try to return to the north of the enclave, adding that Israeli soldiers were “still surrounding Gaza City, and attempting to return there poses extreme danger.”
What happens now?
Hamas’s response to the plan, while welcomed by Mr. Trump and a number of world leaders, does not settle crucial questions about how to end the war.
Negotiations were expected to resume in Egypt, where Israeli negotiators were preparing to travel for indirect talks with Hamas in the coming days, though it was not known when they would leave, according to four officials from the region. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political matters.
Mediators from Qatar and Egypt were also holding talks with Hamas about the proposal, while the United States was speaking with Israel, according to two diplomats with knowledge of the contacts, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
The Israeli military has said it is preparing for the potential release of the remaining captives in Gaza. But Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official, said on Friday that “security measures” were needed to free those hostages still alive, and suggested that locating the bodies of others would take time.
“Some have been buried, some are in areas under the occupation’s control, and some — as a result of the destruction and leveling that took place — need to be looked into,” he told Al Araby TV, a Qatar-based broadcaster.
Have we been close to a breakthrough before?
Efforts to halt the fighting in Gaza have previously ended in frustration. Israel and Hamas have agreed only to temporary cease-fires before: for about a week in November 2023 and for less than three months early this year.
A fundamental obstacle to lasting peace has been that Hamas wants a permanent cease-fire in which it retains influence in postwar Gaza, while Israel has ruled out any agreement that keeps the group in power there.
Hamas’s statement on Friday, indicating willingness to release all of the Israeli hostages, brought at least some optimism that recent negotiations would have an enduring effect.
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5) This Program Rescued Army Recruiting
The defense secretary cites a ‘Trump bump.’ But the Army’s recruiting surge wouldn’t have been possible without the program started three years ago at Fort Jackson.
By Greg Jaffe, Visuals by Kenny Holston, Reporting from Fort Jackson, S.C., Oct. 4, 2025
Joseph King, 42, had given up on ever meeting the military’s enlistment standards until he heard about the Army program that offered assistance.
His journey to the Army began last year when he lost his job as a hotel maintenance man and could only find work picking up trash at an Amazon warehouse.
At 42, Joseph King had given up on ever meeting the military’s enlistment standards.
Then he heard about an Army program, launched three years ago during one of the worst recruiting droughts in U.S. history, that helps those who aren’t eligible to join because they are overweight or unable to pass the military’s aptitude exam.
In late August, Joseph was sitting in a classroom at Fort Jackson, S.C., with 13 other trainees, most of whom were half his age. The instructor was showing them how to calculate a salesperson’s income based on salary, sales and commission.
“What’s a commission?” the teacher asked.
The trainees were silent.
“Guys, I know this is insanely boring,” she said, “but we still have to learn it.”
Joseph rubbed his face. He knew what was at stake: health benefits, housing, a better life for his wife and five children.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has credited the military’s strong recruiting numbers this year to a nationwide surge in patriotism and a love for President Trump. “What changed is a commander in chief that America’s young people believe in,” Mr. Hegseth told lawmakers this summer. “You can feel it in the ranks.”
Mr. Trump echoed the sentiment: “We’re getting the best people that you’ve ever seen.”
Mr. Trump’s election win and a higher unemployment rate among people ages 16 to 24 could have played a small role in improving recruiting, Army officials said. The Army’s recent success, though, would not have been possible without the program at Fort Jackson. About 22 percent of the Army’s more than 61,000 new recruits this year came in through the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a senior Army official said.
Trainees in the program have 90 days to meet the Army’s minimum academic and body fat standards, or they are sent home. Those who pass go directly to 10 weeks of basic training.
A New York Times reporter was granted access to the program at Fort Jackson for a week in August. None of the dozens of trainees interviewed cited Mr. Trump’s election as a factor in their decision to enlist.
Many said they had come to Fort Jackson because they saw no other choice.
“I was tired of being homeless,” a 22-year-old trainee, who had grown up on a South Dakota Indian reservation, said.
A 34-year-old from Ivory Coast graduated from an online college that promised him an I.T. career but instead left him $90,000 in debt. Others had joined to escape home or to make their families proud. Some said their recruiters had told them that military service would protect their undocumented parents from deportation.
Joseph had been trying to pass the test since he was an 18-year-old living in Birmingham, Ala., and knew this class was his last, best chance. Like all the other trainees, he had surrendered his cellphone and was assigned a metal bunk in an open bay.
If he could just make it to basic training, Joseph was sure he would be able to keep up with the younger recruits. “I know it without a shadow of a doubt,” he said. “I know me and my competitive side.”
The class broke for the day, and the civilian teachers went home. The students, their camouflage pants tucked neatly into their combat boots, marched with their drill sergeants to evening chow. Thirty minutes later, they were back in the classroom.
Several trainees who had grown up speaking languages other than English quizzed each other from a list of vocabulary words that frequently appear on the test.
A drill sergeant noticed Joseph’s leg bouncing nervously under the table and walked over to offer help. Joseph’s white scratch paper was a jumble of numbers and equations. The same problems always seemed to trip him up.
“Why are you trying to overcomplicate shit?” the sergeant asked. “It’s so simple.”
Joseph erased his work in a flurry and tried again.
Trainees in the academic portion of the program get three shots at the test during their 90-day stay.
Joseph’s second try was a week away.
‘This was my only option’
Each Monday new trainees needing to raise their test scores or lose weight arrive at the base, where they are immediately greeted by screaming drill sergeants in Smokey Bear hats.
“Let’s go! Move your ass!” one yelled as the newbies rushed to find their green duffel bags. “I don’t have all freaking day to wait for you!”
Once they were in formation — backs straight, heels together, feet at a 45-degree angle — an officer gave them some advice. “This is a place where you find your motivation,” he explained. “You figure out your why, and you stick with it.”
The Army’s why for the course began in 2022, when it missed its recruiting goal by about 15,000 troops, or 25 percent. The following year the Army, Navy and Air Force all missed their goals.
The Pentagon was battling declining interest in military service and a shrinking pool of qualified applicants, caused by falling test scores, high obesity rates and an increase in young people reporting mental health problems. About three-quarters of American youth do not meet the minimum requirements to serve, according to the Pentagon.
Army officials tried to fix their recruiting problem with bigger enlistment bonuses. When that didn’t work, they launched the Future Soldier Preparatory Course at Fort Jackson. Today, about 95 percent of recruits in the program make it to basic training.
The Army still needs the program to make its recruiting goals, said Lt. Gen. Brian Eifler, the Army’s top personnel officer. The program also offers benefits that are harder to measure, he said. It has become a lifeline for people searching for housing, stability and a piece of the American dream.
One of those people was Jonathan Gleich, 34, from Marysville, Ohio. Eight months ago, when he walked into the recruiting office, Jonathan weighed about 330 pounds. He was cleaning medical offices at night. To pay for diapers and formula for their newborn son, he and his wife were donating plasma twice a week.
The recruiter told Jonathan that he had to lose 30 pounds before he could even go to Fort Jackson.
“This was my only option to provide my family a future,” Jonathan recalled.
He worked out at least twice a day with the other trainees in his platoon. In between, they took classes on nutrition, where they learned to think of food as fuel, and on mental resilience, where they were reminded that all “pain is temporary.”
A few weeks in, when Jonathan’s weight plateaued, he began volunteering for extra workouts with the drill sergeants and was now down to about 260 pounds. To meet the Army’s body fat standard, he had to lose a few more pounds and another half an inch from his waistline.
The next weekly weigh-in and tape measuring — Jonathan’s ninth since arriving at the base — was scheduled for the following morning.
Nearby, Mayra Cruz, 18, of Ventura County, Calif., was squeezing in an extra session on a treadmill. One of the walls in the small, airless gym was covered with sticky notes on which the trainees had written their reasons for joining.
“To get out of the hopeless pit that my life was headed to,” one read.
“To show my family that I am not a disappointment,” another trainee had written.
Mayra Cruz was motivated to join the program to help her undocumented mother avoid deportation.
Mayra’s why revolved around her undocumented mother, who had immigrated from Mexico a year before she was born. Her recruiter told her about a program called “Parole in Place,” which allows the parents, spouses or children of active-duty service members to avoid deportation.
Mayra wanted to become a tank crew member. And she wanted to make sure her mother, stepfather and two brothers, ages 1 and 8, were safe.
“It’s pretty ugly right now in California,” she said.
The weekly weigh-in and measuring for the 263 trainees in the fitness program started at 5:30 a.m. The women went first, their black Army T-shirts tucked into the bottom of their bras so the drill sergeants would be able to quickly measure their waists.
“Female! Why are you still looking at me?” a drill sergeant yelled when one of the trainees hesitated in line. Some cried when they learned that they had not lost weight or inches. Others received quiet messages of encouragement.
“You got this, female!” a drill sergeant whispered to one recruit. “You got this!”
Mayra, who had lost 21 pounds and five inches during her two months at the base, came up just short of passing. She had three weeks left to lose the last bit of body fat.
Once the women had finished, the men followed.
Jonathan stepped on the scale, which showed he had shed two more pounds. His biggest worry was his waistline. A decade earlier, his weight had peaked at 430 pounds, leaving folds of skin that no amount of exercise could melt away. A drill sergeant with cold hands looped a tape measure around his stomach.
Then he followed a strip of dingy white tape on the floor to the last station, where he gave his numbers to an officer who plugged them into a laptop and told him that he had made it.
He pumped his fist and smiled. A trainee from his platoon rushed over to hug him.
“This whole process has been absolutely life-altering,” he said.
He still had to endure another 10 weeks of basic training without his phone, his freedom or his family, but if everything went as planned, he would make it back to Ohio for Thanksgiving. By then, he would be a soldier.
The sun was rising. All the trainees had been weighed and measured, and now they were marching in a tight formation to breakfast. A drill sergeant shouted the cadence for them to repeat.
“My way’s the right way,
Your way’s the wrong way,
If you wanna be a soldier
you gotta do it my way.”
Another nerve-racking test day
It was test day for Joseph and the other 13 trainees in his platoon. They filed into a room with scuffed yellow walls and took a seat behind a computer screen.
A drill sergeant ordered them to lift their arms over their heads to show they hadn’t scribbled any notes on their skin. To pass, the trainees needed to score in the 31st percentile or higher. They had three hours.
Beneath the table, Joseph’s leg was pumping anxiously.
The first recruits finished with an hour to spare and strode to the back of the room. They dropped their scratch paper on a table, stood with their hands folded behind their back and waited for the drill sergeant to tell them their score.
“Let’s go!” a 19-year-old from Idaho quietly cheered when she learned she had passed.
She took a seat with a few other trainees who had also notched passing scores. “In a few months we’re actually going to be soldiers,” she whispered. “That’s wild.”
Joseph was among the last to finish. A drill sergeant asked for the last four digits of his Social Security number and glanced down at his computer.
“You got a 24,” he said tersely. “Sit over there.”
Joseph joined the other trainees who had finished the test. Those who had passed spoke in hushed tones about the Army jobs that might now be available to them. One trainee was hoping to be a helicopter mechanic. Another wanted an airborne infantry slot.
“I don’t care what job I get,” a third said, “as long as I get out of here.”
Joseph closed his eyes, rested his forehead on the table. Somehow, despite three weeks of studying, his score had dropped four points.
“I don’t get it,” he said to himself.
He thought about all the times he had taken the test and failed — at least five since he turned 18. And he thought about how much he missed his family. The youngest of his children had turned 1 only a week earlier.
The recruits gathered in front of the brick barracks where they attended class, studied and slept. Ten of the 14 trainees had passed.
Lawrence Flores, a 21-year-old from Guam, was among those moving on to basic training. A few minutes earlier he had been celebrating. Now, as he approached Joseph, tears were streaming down his face.
Joseph didn’t want to take away from his friend’s joy.
“Don’t think it’s bad because one person can’t go with you,” Joseph told him. “Savor the moment. Savor the moment.”
One last chance
A recruiter was waiting nearby to help the trainees who had passed pick a job.
Most Army recruits have some say over their career field. Those who come in through the Future Soldier Preparatory Course are typically limited to the toughest-to-fill positions — another reason the Army has been eager to keep the program in place.
First up was Bryan Soto, 27, who told the recruiter that he had joined to provide a better life for his daughter in Puerto Rico. He had raised his score by more than 30 points — the biggest jump in his class — and was hoping for a job as a helicopter mechanic.
“Realistic expectations,” the recruiter sighed.
His options: infantry, artillery or armor.
He settled for artillery.
The other trainees cycled through just as fast. The Army recruiter asked about their why, and they talked about providing for their families and pushing themselves out of their comfort zones.
Then she laid out their choices: “Do you want to train to kill? Do you want to learn to blow stuff up or do you want to ride in a tank?” Most reluctantly picked artillery. They were going to blow stuff up.
Joseph and the other trainees who came up short on the test were cleaning the barracks. He was trying to decide whether he should take the exam one last time or go home to his family. His drill sergeants, who could see the makings of a good soldier, were urging him to stay.
Joseph replied that he was going to “pray on it.” Privately, though, he said he was leaning toward leaving.
There are many reasons why people join the Army. In this moment, his lowest since arriving at Fort Jackson, Joseph had begun to think that maybe his why had changed.
“I’ve touched a lot of lives,” he said. “That was the main purpose. To see them leave and do good in their lives makes me happy.”
In the days that followed, Joseph decided to take his drill sergeants’ advice. He studied for three more weeks and on Thursday took the exam for a third and final time.
This time Joseph passed. He was on his way to basic training and a new life as a soldier.
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6) What Happens When Socialists Are in Charge? Portland Offers a Glimpse.
A West Coast version of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is playing out in Portland. But the socialist city councilors, who say the city has been “run by the rich” for too long, are facing significant opposition.
By Kellen Browning, Photographs by Jordan Gale, Reporting from Portland, Ore., Oct. 4, 2025
A group of socialists on the City Council in Portland, Ore., have faced establishment backlash as they promise sweeping changes aimed at improving the lives of everyday residents.
A group of socialists on the City Council in Portland, Ore., have faced establishment backlash as they promise sweeping changes aimed at improving the lives of everyday residents.
Too extreme. Too inexperienced. An absolute disaster.
Mainstream politicians are sharpening their attacks, and the wealthy are threatening to move away as a socialist revolution sweeps through the city.
They’re not talking about Zohran Mamdani or his plans for New York City.
Rather, they are agonizing over the scene in Portland, Ore., where the democratic socialist principles espoused by Mr. Mamdani — the front-runner to become New York’s next mayor — have already taken root at City Hall.
Four members of the Democratic Socialists of America, along with their left-wing allies, have occasionally formed a working majority on Portland’s 12-person City Council this year, promising sweeping changes aimed at improving the lives of everyday residents. The socialists advocate raising taxes on the rich, enacting a widespread government-owned housing plan and opening city-run grocery stores — an idea Mr. Mamdani has also endorsed.
The establishment backlash to their tenure echoes the opposition Mr. Mamdani has faced in New York since winning the Democratic primary. Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon, a Democrat, has criticized Portland’s high taxes and a costly universal preschool program the socialists cherish. Portland’s business community is warning that a war on capitalism and an exodus of job creators could send the city spiraling.
“If you start trying to create a socialist utopia in Portland, Oregon, I don’t see how you can avoid the fact that people with money are not going to be attracted to it,” said Frank Dixon, the former chair of the Oregon Democratic Party. “Isn’t that common sense?”
Still, for all the outrage, the first nine months in office for the Portland socialists — some of whom speak glowingly of Mr. Mamdani and display posters with his face and the phrase “Hot Commie Summer” at their offices — offer a cautionary tale about political outsiders’ abilities to upend the status quo.
The socialists have been limited by the same barriers that snarl more traditional politicians: a finite budget, the votes needed to pass legislation and an occasionally dysfunctional government. Although moderates are spooked by their talk of higher taxes and social housing — government-owned units not subject to fluctuations in rental prices — the socialists have not yet tried to muscle through such policies.
The socialists themselves say they have big goals but are trying to be responsible leaders, studying the impact of policies before working to enact them. They argue that the dire rhetoric about them reflects the anxieties of an out-of-touch establishment, refusing to cede power to a younger generation focused on the working class.
“Portland is a progressive city, but it hasn’t had progressive politics in a meaningful sense,” said Mitch Green, one of the socialist councilors. “This city has generally always been run by the rich, for the rich.”
Mr. Green traveled to Vienna last month to study that city’s government-owned housing program — a taxpayer-funded trip skewered by critics. (He plans to propose a similar program for Portland next May.)
He said he and his allies had been “hammered” by business interests urging them to lower taxes and cut regulations, so watching Mr. Mamdani rise “as an unabashed, pro-working class hero” was inspiring.
“It’s a reminder that I got elected because I talked about those same things,” he said. “We’re building a movement, from coast to coast.”
Portland’s Peacocks
The socialists’ emergence traces back to 2022, when voters approved changes to Portland’s century-old form of governance. They expanded the City Council to 12 members, from five, and adopted ranked-choice voting.
Nearly 100 candidates ran for the new City Council last year, and a handful earned the backing of Portland’s D.S.A., which plays an outsize role in a city where Republicans are an endangered species. Three D.S.A. members — Mr. Green, Sameer Kanal and Tiffany Koyama Lane — were elected. Another new councilor, Angelita Morillo, joined the D.S.A. in March.
The extent to which the four socialists and two other left-wing councilors were working together became clear in May, when they won a contentious vote to reallocate $2 million from the city’s proposed police department budget to parks maintenance. It was a provocative move at a time when many Democrats have backed away from calls to defund the police.
The hand-wringing over the socialists’ cohesion escalated in August, when Willamette Week, a local newspaper, reported on a group text in which the six progressives, referring to themselves as “Peacock” — shorthand for “progressive caucus” — closely coordinated their votes and occasionally mocked their more moderate colleagues.
Those six occasionally pick up support from a seventh councilor, giving them a majority on some legislation.
Rather than making its mark with a flurry of left-wing legislation, however, much of the council’s tenure has been defined by gridlock and infighting as it works out the basics of a new government on the fly.
That was on display last month, when Mr. Kanal and Eric Zimmerman, a moderate, traded barbs from the dais over a mundane procedural issue.
Olivia Clark, another moderate, chimed in. “What this conversation says to me,” she said, “is that we really need some marriage counseling.”
Some have tried. Two consulting firms offered to help mediate disputes, but some councilors balked. Dan Ryan, one of the moderates, said he was pushing for a more drastic step: a three-month pause on meetings so councilors could work out disagreements.
In the 2010s, millennials flocked to Portland, and the city’s restaurants and quirky cultural scene attracted national headlines.
But in recent years, the city became known for boarded-up storefronts, open-air drug use, homeless encampments and explosive protests. Portland’s real estate market ranked 80th out of 81 cities in a national survey last year, ahead of only Hartford, Conn., underscoring a slow pandemic recovery. Oregon decriminalized all drugs in 2020, then reversed course last year after a surge in overdose deaths. Portland’s new mayor, Keith Wilson, has escalated sweeps on homeless encampments.
Last week, President Trump said he was authorizing the deployment of the National Guard to protect Portland, which he described as “war-ravaged,” as a small group of protesters camped outside an immigration enforcement facility have occasionally clashed with law enforcement. City and state leaders sued to block him.
Despite Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, violent crime has declined, and many of Portland’s leafy neighborhoods remain as appealing as ever. Still, the downtown was nearly empty on a recent muggy afternoon, and tents dotted the sidewalks.
How to respond to the problems here is at the heart of the divide between the socialists and the moderates.
Councilors like Ms. Clark and Mr. Ryan say they are plenty progressive themselves — simply more moderate by Portland’s standards — but residents want leaders focused on public safety, not expansive programs. The socialists counter that wealth disparity and an affordability crisis are at the root of Portland’s problems — a debate also reminiscent of New York’s mayoral race.
One of moderates’ biggest gripes is over taxes. The socialists have mulled higher taxes on the rich, but some residents and business owners say they already endure some of the highest taxes in the country without seeing improvements in basic city services.
“Why are you chasing the shiny objects when you really should be taking care of your fire stations, your parks, your streets?” Ms. Clark said. “Things are really deteriorating.”
They argue that high taxes are pushing wealthy residents away. Though not definitive, some data supports that premise: Fewer top filers contributed to the preschool tax in 2023 than in 2021, the county found. And federal migration data analyzed by the local research firm ECOnorthwest showed that the average income of those leaving the area has been outpacing those arriving.
The issue remains hotly debated, and Mr. Green’s office has published studies arguing that the claims are overhyped.
The moderate voices seem to have an ally in the governor’s mansion. A task force advising Ms. Kotek has urged the Portland region to lower taxes, and the governor has exhorted the county to “ease the current tax burden” imposed by the universal preschool program that local voters passed in 2020 — a request that Portland’s D.S.A. said was tantamount to “declaring war on preschool.”
At a downtown art gala last month, affinity for Portland’s socialists among champagne-sipping attendees was in short supply. The event celebrated the opening of a museum exhibit showcasing the collection of Jordan Schnitzer, a local billionaire and philanthropist.
Echoing concerns over Mr. Mamdani’s proposed tax on millionaires in New York, Mr. Schnitzer said many of his wealthy friends had left Portland in recent years, which he feared was harming the local economy.
Portland’s socialists “think business is a dirty word,” Mr. Schnitzer said.
But the socialists say Portland’s existential problems call for ambitious solutions, and the pushback comes from conservatives intent on maintaining the status quo.
“If the Democrats had been delivering materially and emotionally for the public, there would not be a need for socialists in office,” said Ms. Morillo, who was homeless for a time in college. “We would not see Zohran Mamdani succeed in New York.”
In a city considered one of the most progressive in the country, the debate over just how far-left to be has amused some longtime residents.
“In Portland, our political spectrum is not Republican to Democrat,” said Amy Ruiz, a local political consultant and lobbyist. “It’s, ‘Which shade of blue are you?’”
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7) Israel at War With Itself
By Roger Cohen, Visuals by David Guttenfelder and Saher Alghorra, Oct. 5, 2025
At Kibbutz Nir Oz, time is frozen. The tricycles, dollhouses and washing detergent piled outside charred homes testify to lives that stopped two years ago when a Hamas assault left 117 people dead, kidnapped or missing from this small Israeli farming community near the Gaza border. Wind chimes tinkle over the collapsed swings of absent children.
Of the 384 residents at the time of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, a handful have returned, but like Israel as a whole, they find themselves gripped still by a horror that the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 was intended to prevent. “Every conversation ends with the 7th of October,” said Ola Metzger, who recently came back with her family.
Her husband, Nir Metzger, whose father was taken hostage by Hamas and killed last year in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, is the general secretary of the kibbutz. A big issue confronting him is whether to demolish burned and shattered houses or to preserve them as a memorial.
“It’s a heated debate,” he said, sitting in the bright kitchen of his newly constructed house. “I say demolish and rebuild. I don’t want kids passing incinerated homes. It’s time to move forward.”
But how? Whether in a divided and more isolated Israel, or in a devastated Gaza, the future is for now shackled by new levels of distrust and hatred. Although Hamas said on Friday that it had agreed to release all of the remaining Israeli hostages, live and dead, it did not say that it would accept most aspects of a plan presented by President Trump, including the demand that it disarm. Mr. Trump welcomed the statement, and Israel said it would work with him.
The longest war of an endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not over yet and has come to challenge Israel’s image and understanding of itself. Its military has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, raining down such destruction on every aspect of life in Gaza that much of the world accuses it of genocide. Antisemitism is on the rise. The attack this week on a synagogue on Yom Kippur in Manchester, England, was only the most recent example.
For Palestinians, a statehood that more countries have recognized of late remains a remote aspiration, at best, and that is the immovable issue at the heart of war after war.
Mr. Trump, shrugging off more than a century of failed Western interventions in the Middle East, has proposed a form of tutelage over Gaza that posits prosperity “crafted by well-meaning international groups” as a “pathway” to peace.
It is an ambitious plan for a strip of land where destruction has reached apocalyptic proportions. The proposal was seemingly prepared in part to allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to claim victory over Hamas. If the hostages are freed, it would certainly bolster Mr. Netanyahu’s standing.
But Mr. Trump’s idea of turning Gaza into a coastal business emporium with “preferred tariff and access rates” and a marginal Palestinian role in governance seems at once demeaning to the people who live there and unlikely to work.
“This plan does not guarantee our rights as human beings with dignity,” Riwaa Abu Quta, a young Gazan woman who has been living in a tent in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi for more than a year, told me in a telephone interview. She has lost her home, her job and her hopes since the war began. “It gives us the feeling that displacement will be our identity.”
Displacement and the quest for a homeland are, of course, intrinsic to the intertwined fates of Israelis and Palestinians. The Holocaust and the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, in which some 750,000 Palestinians were driven out during Israel’s War of Independence, vie for greater weight on the sterile scales of competitive victimhood. By rekindling nightmarish memories of these disasters, the Oct. 7 attack and retaliatory war in Gaza have pushed the two sides deeper into enmity.
“The Oct. 7 slaughter and seizure of hostages reinforced Holocaust associations for Israel, and for many Palestinians in Gaza, the war has been a new Nakba,” said Yuval Shany, a professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “So narratives feed themselves in an endless loop.”
At the two-year mark of the greatest defeat in the country’s 77-year history, Israelis find themselves mentally and physically exhausted, and not only the 295,000 reservists who have been called up again and again. Some 83,000 Israelis emigrated in 2024, 50 percent more than the previous year. Seven members of the Israeli military died by suicide in July and August alone.
People either compulsively follow the news or, simply spent, do not follow it at all. They speak of being overloaded. Posters and stickers of hostages and fallen soldiers in Gaza fade and peel on walls and benches. Anger flares at the smallest thing. After repeated ugly brawls over lanes, the beachside Gordon swimming pool in Tel Aviv, established in 1956, sent a letter on Aug. 7 urging its members to “avoid any expression of physical or verbal aggression.”
Arab neighbors speak of an imperial Israel after Mr. Netanyahu’s decapitation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and blow to Iran’s nuclear program. But in Israel, there is no triumphal sense of regional military ascendancy.
Rather, Israel has found its weakest enemy, Hamas, the most intractable, perhaps because defeating an idea is never easy, and is consumed by doubt. An intensely interconnected society, where the collective, forged in school and through military service, is fundamental, now debates whether it has lost its way and its ideals.
“There is no history, as in America, of the rugged individual in Israel,” said Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli author and historian. “The mythology here is of the rugged commune, and it is that sense of shared responsibility that has been shattered.”
The Two Israels
The former defense minister and chief of staff of the Israeli military, a man once close to Mr. Netanyahu, was angry. More than angry, he was shaking with indignation.
“We have lost our way. Eighty years after the Holocaust, we are talking about ethnic cleansing, Jewish supremacy, clearing Gaza City of its inhabitants,” Moshe Yaalon told me. “Are these the values of the state of Israel?”
Tears welled up, and he had to pause.
“I fought to defend the Jewish, democratic liberal state in the spirit of our Declaration of Independence,” he said. “What we have now with this government is a tyrannical, racist, hateful, corrupt and boycotted leadership. That must be the main issue for the next election.”
The prime minister’s office declined to comment.
Of course, Israel is still a Middle Eastern country that holds elections — one is due next year — and where it is possible to say such things, at least as an Israeli Jew, without retribution. Still, Mr. Yaalon’s fury reflects the widespread conviction that a fundamental compact of Israel’s democracy was broken over the past two years and may be hard to repair.
At the heart of that compact is the idea that you never leave a soldier on the field. In allowing the hostages’ agony to persist for two years in Gaza, where at least 41 were killed, Mr. Netanyahu transgressed against this core national tenet.
Worse, in the view of his critics, he placed his own interests above the nation’s, doing everything to put off a commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 debacle that stemmed in part from his policy of supporting Hamas to ensure that the Palestinian national movement remained divided and ineffectual.
Not so, say Mr. Netanyahu’s many supporters. They view him as the nation’s savior who, through a war of “resurrection,” as he calls it, has vanquished Hamas and made Israel safer. The jury will likely be out for a long time, but to suggest that Israel’s leader, after a total of 18 years in power, has no political future would be rash.
“Most Israeli prime ministers would probably have made the same decisions as Bibi,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and deputy minister in Mr. Netanyahu’s office, calling the prime minister by his nickname. “He may have no credibility in the world, but he saw Oct. 7 as a summons to history and stepped up.”
The price has been high. Mr. Netanyahu has polarized Israelis and incensed the world.
Largely shielded from the extent of the terrible Palestinian suffering in Gaza, or in some cases untroubled by it, Israelis are consumed by their nation’s internal fracture. The Oct. 7 attack brought the apotheosis of a long-brewing struggle between two Israels.
The first, a growing Messianic religious movement, now a decisive presence in the government, sees the Oct. 7 massacre of an estimated 1,200 people as a “miraculous moment that forced the Jewish nation to take another step toward redemption,” as Daniella Weiss, a prominent leader of the settler movement, put it to me.
That redemption, for Ms. Weiss and her many followers, takes the form of Israeli control of all the land of Eretz Israel, bequeathed — as they see it — by God to the Jews.
The second Israel, secular, liberal and committed to safeguarding the nation’s democracy, sees this rightward drift as a mortal threat to the values embodied in the nation’s founding charter. This calls for “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex.”
That lofty goal has proved unattainable in a Jewish state where two million citizens, or 20 percent of the population, are Arab or Palestinian. But many still believe that abandoning the struggle for its ideals would betray Israel’s essential promise.
“Bibi has done terrible things not only to Palestinians, but to us,” said Gadi Shamni, a retired major general and a former Israeli military attaché in Washington. “He has thrown away our basic values, of sanctifying life and of ethics in war, for which we sometimes paid a heavy price.”
Mr. Shamni said that, “with ministers demanding that we act as war criminals,” officers confronting a shadowy enemy embedded in Gaza’s civilian urban fabric had struggled to uphold values considered sacrosanct during his own time in the military.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, a man convicted several times of inciting racism, has suggested that not even “a gram of food or aid should get into Gaza,” and has called for “the clearing of one million people out of there” through “voluntary immigration.”
Bezalel Smotrich, the hard-line Israeli finance minister, has called for “total annihilation” in Gaza. “They are to be destroyed, destroyed, destroyed,” he said last year.
Such statements have fed the charges of Israeli genocide against Palestinians.
A Dream Foreclosed
Both Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gvir reside in the occupied West Bank, where more than a half-million Israelis live. Freed of all constraints since the Oct. 7 attack, the settlers have rapidly stepped up their land grab in an attempt to foreclose the already distant possibility of a Palestinian state.
The new Israeli flags that line West Bank highways proclaim a colonization that, 58 years after the 1967 battlefield victory that extended Israeli authority to the Jordan River, seems irreversible.
Across the biblical land Israelis call Judea and Samaria, Bobcats and other earthmovers heave rocks in clouds of dust. They carve dirt roads into terraced hillsides topped by the white caravans of yet another Israeli settlers’ outpost.
Cameras are ubiquitous; no Palestinian life goes unwatched. Israeli authorities have installed hundreds of automated yellow gates at the entrances to Palestinian towns and villages. They may slam shut, fencing in their populations, at any hint of disturbance.
In Al Mughayir, a hillside village of about 3,000 people with a view of ancient olive and almond groves, recent Israeli depredations have been exacting. An incident on Aug. 21 involving an overturned tractor and an injured settler — the exact circumstances were never clarified — led hundreds of Israeli soldiers to swarm into the village, detaining the mayor for nine days and searching more than 500 homes. At the same time, settlers hacked and bulldozed countless olive trees across the villagers’ fields.
“I felt they were uprooting my own heart,” said Aisha Abu Alia, 53, as she stood in the fields gazing at the devastation.
Later, in her house at the center of the village, wearing a purple head scarf, she sat flanked by several family members, two of them engaged in intricate embroidery. Over the course of her life, Ms. Abu Alia said, she had experienced ever greater pressure and humiliation, aimed at “throwing out every Palestinian from this land.”
Unmarried, because “I know many people who got married and regretted it,” Ms. Abu Alia lives in her parents’ house. She has one sister and seven brothers, two of them in the United States who have constantly urged her to move there.
“But it’s impossible to leave,” she said, as if stating an evident truth. “Never.”
Her house commands a view of the village and the fields beyond it where settlers bring their sheep to graze, as well as of the main road, and so it has been requisitioned several times by the Israeli military. On June 16, she said, dozens of soldiers burst into her home. An officer explained that she lived in a “terrorist neighborhood.”
“Why don’t you love Israel?” he asked, as Ms. Abu Alia recalled.
“Why don’t you love Palestine?” she responded.
“There is no such thing as Palestine,” the officer said.
“With God’s will, one day there will be a Palestine and no Israel,” she said.
This enraged the soldiers. Thirteen years ago, Ms. Abu Alia had sewn an elaborate tapestry depicting Palestine on all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. It gives particular prominence to Al Aqsa, the sacred mosque compound in Jerusalem that has long been a flashpoint.
An Israeli soldier hurled the framed tapestry to the floor, breaking the glass, Ms. Abu Alia recalled. She indicated the damage and escorted me around the house, pointing to slashed couches, a smashed clock and defaced photographs of her nephews.
I asked her about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. “I did not celebrate, even if we did not feel anything for the Israeli victims because we have had so many dead,” she said. “I knew our lives would be turned upside down.”
Her 17-year-old niece, Sara, interjected: “Even if it had not happened, Israel would have done something like this. It just put everything into fast forward.”
“Gaza spilled over,” said Samar, Ms. Abu Alia’s cousin, pausing in her embroidery. “We lost homes, we lost trees, we lost many of our own. There is no law, nothing that stops them any longer. Our children are traumatized.”
Her 8-year-old daughter, Nour, wearing a purple T-shirt emblazoned with the words, “Be a Younicorn,” smiled bravely, a portrait of innocence. I wondered if the cycle of war would sweep away her life one day or if some almost inconceivable act of statesmanship might protect her.
“I don’t see any possibility whatsoever of a two-state solution,” Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, told me. “There is too much history here now and too little geography.”
Israel, Hostage
Viki Cohen fondled the charred Rubik’s Cube found in the disabled tank from which, on Oct. 7, 2023, her then 19-year-old son Nimrod was dragged by masked Hamas operatives into Gaza. The other three members of his tank crew were killed.
Nimrod Cohen, along with an estimated 20 hostages — and the corpses of 25 others — has now been held in Gaza for more than 725 days. He recently turned 21. Every few months, Ms. Cohen and her husband, Yehuda, have received “signs of life” communications from the Israeli military. For many other families, a dreaded knock on the door has signaled the slaying of their loved ones.
“He loved the Rubik’s Cube,” said Ms. Cohen, who used to work for a company providing caregivers for the aged, but quit more than a year ago. “All my time goes to bringing Nimrod back home.”
Israel, for two years now, has been taken hostage. Whether this nightmare will end with an exchange of the hostages for Palestinian prisoners in the next few days or weeks remains to be seen.
“We hope it’s a matter of days,” Mr. Cohen said, after hearing that Hamas had agreed to free all of the hostages. His whole family was gathered on Saturday in a state of extreme tension and emotion. He struggled for words, his wife struggled for breath. “I can’t talk now, I am counting the minutes and even the seconds,” he said. “I have to take care of my son.”
The nation is on tenterhooks. Turn on the TV, and there is a discussion about the hostages. Look around, and there are the empty plastic yellow chairs or yellow ribbons that have become their symbol. Listen to anyone, and, at the very least, it seems, some personal bond ties them to the hostage nightmare. Israel can seem very small.
There are live hostages and dead hostages because this is a conflict in which even corpses are used to inflict psychological torment on the enemy and are considered tradable assets.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets at different times to demand that the government recognize the nation’s anguish and prioritize the hostages’ release. Many, including the Cohens, have been protesting for almost three years, first against Mr. Netanyahu’s attempt to debilitate the Supreme Court as a means to exercise unfettered power, and then against his perceived neglect of the hostages.
In an earlier interview, Mr. Cohen, an algorithmic engineer in a tech company, wore a black T-shirt with the words, “Ceasefire Hostage Deal Now.” Nimrod is a normal child, he said. “He’s special to us because he’s our son. We’re only talking about him because he had the misfortune to be kidnapped, and we’re fulfilling our basic responsibility to fight for his release.”
His tone was matter-of-fact. This “now needless war” has been going on a long time, far too long in his view. His wife cannot sleep thinking of her son who never sees sunlight.
“We are disgusted, we are frustrated,” Mr. Cohen said. “We see Netanyahu’s government as our enemy. He’s only prolonged the war so he can survive. My son Nimrod is being held in a tunnel financed by money Netanyahu pushed into Gaza.”
He looked at me hard. “Everybody is to blame except him, except Caesar,” he said. The only way to end the war, he believes, is for Mr. Trump to force Mr. Netanyahu to do so.
The Cohens think that if their son survives, he will be one of the last ones out. He is young. He is a soldier. Hamas has every reason to hold on to him. Still, they hope, and now that hope is fervid.
I asked how they feel about their nation, two years into its trauma. “I don’t want my country to be a country that rules others,” Mr. Cohen said. “I don’t want to live in a country whose international borders are not declared and recognized. I want to live in a normal country.”
‘The Place of Funerals’
Over several weeks, I spoke regularly by phone to Riwaa Abu Quta in Gaza. The war has taken her from her home in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, now largely razed by Israel, to Al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis, where she lives in a tent in a camp with hundreds of other displaced people.
At 30, she has lived through many wars, but none so brutal. She is scared and angry, “as any human being would be.” She has tried to care for her younger sister Alaa, who has muscular dystrophy, but the required medicine long since disappeared.
Her tasks are boring, she said. Finding food of some kind, perhaps canned beans; securing drinkable water; cleaning the tent where her family lives. All the while listening to the hum of Israeli drones or the roar of fighter jets that could deliver more carnage in the rubble.
Sometimes, she puts sand in the pockets of clothes draped over the tent as protection from bullets or shrapnel. She knows it is ridiculous. But so is her crazed situation. There is no safe place. Her nightmares begin at daybreak.
She feels history is repeating itself. Her forebears were driven out of a village near Jerusalem. In a way, she said, she is losing that village again.
Her voice is always calm. It is also full of pain. She has lost countless friends. Gaza, she said, has become “the place of funerals.” More than 66,000, according to the Gaza health authorities, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
She had a world: an online job with an educational company, an application for a scholarship to study in Britain, her gym, her home. That is gone. All she has now is sand.
She blames Israel above all for killing the innocent; Hamas for bringing disaster on the Palestinian people; and a feckless world that chooses this moment to recognize a Palestinian state when the step is “too late and so small compared to the destruction we live.”
Mutating Rage
At Kibbutz Nir Oz, the demolition of charred and damaged houses began on Aug. 31. Backhoes were used to break down the “safe rooms,” the hardest to tear down, even if in many cases they proved anything but safe. It was grim work, but perhaps a signal of a new beginning.
Some houses will be left untouched, at least for now, including the remains of the home of the Bibas family, whose suffering was spread over three generations.
Yarden Bibas and his wife, Shiri, and their two young children, ages 5 and 9 months, were taken by Hamas as hostages. Shiri was killed in captivity and her corpse returned after 505 days, one day after the bodies of her children. Yarden was released alive after 484 days. Shiri’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silverman, were burned alive in their Nir Oz home.
“Yarden, we’re glad you’re back. Sorry, forgive us,” says a message on the ruin that was his home.
Such slaughter revived Holocaust memories, mocked the “Never Again” embodied in Israel’s very creation, and so roused the country to a deep rage. The lesson of docile death learned over centuries was that Israel hits back, always. If this fury was disturbing to some, it was also understandable to many, at least for a few weeks, when much of the world rallied to Israel’s side.
That sympathy, after Gaza’s obliteration, has generally vanished. Israel is isolated, as was illustrated last month when Mr. Netanyahu was left to detail what he considers his war’s successes to a nearly empty meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Representatives from around the world walked out.
In Israel, anger over Oct. 7 persists, redoubled by what is seen as the Hamas attack’s rapid relegation to a small detail of the war, and by the conviction that fervid anti-Zionism around the world has crossed a line into resurgent antisemitism. “After the Holocaust, it was unsavory to hate Jews,” said Mr. Oren, the former Israeli ambassador. “But that period has ended, and the world has reverted to form.”
There is also a strong feeling, however, that the way Mr. Netanyahu prosecuted the war led Israel to a sustained brutality in Gaza that will haunt the nation for many years. Mr. Netanyahu denies the charge that he persisted in the war in order to remain in power and evade taking responsibility for a disaster, but the charge seems unlikely to abate.
Mr. Gorenberg, the Israeli historian, rejected the accusation against Israel of “genocide,” noting that the term was first used in the very early weeks of the war when Hamas missiles were raining down on Tel Aviv, and so was evidently stained from the start with “an unjustifiable animus.”
However, he added, “There have been horrible, reprehensible war crimes in a war that at some point, I would say early 2024, ceased serving the purpose of defending Israel.”
This long war has transformed young Israelis from the TikTok generation to a cohort forged in a crucible of violence that has known few restraints. How the experience will affect them, and what trauma they will carry, is as yet unclear, but it will bear heavily on the direction that Israel takes.
The same may be said of the Palestinians, many killed, displaced, wounded, their national aspirations in tatters despite all the pious words of support from an indignant world.
“Enough of blood and tears. Enough,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel declared on the White House lawn 32 years ago in the time of hope that was the close of the 20th Century. But this century’s thirst for blood has so far proved unquenchable.
Adam Rasgon and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Fatima AbdulKarim from the West Bank.
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8) Israel and Hamas Prepare for Talks on Trump’s Plan to End Gaza War
Indirect negotiations through mediators are planned for Monday in Egypt and are expected to focus on one main issue, swapping hostages for Palestinian prisoners. That may leave talks on other obstacles to ending the war until later.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Oct. 5, 2025
A protest calling for the release of Israeli hostages and an end to the war in Gaza was held on Saturday in Tel Aviv. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Israeli and Hamas negotiators were preparing for talks in Cairo planned for Monday, which mediators hope will pave the way for the end of the war in Gaza.
But American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators will face numerous roadblocks that could delay or undermine the chances for a quick cease-fire. This round of talks is expected to focus on one main issue — swapping the remaining hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners — which may leave negotiations on other formidable obstacles to ending the war until later.
Israel believes that about 20 living hostages still remain in Gaza, as well as the bodies of at least 25 others. But because Hamas views the captives as their most significant leverage with Israel, the group is unlikely to free them unless other elements of the deal are worked out.
Under the terms of President Trump’s latest plan to end the nearly two-year-old war, the hostages would be swapped for 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in prison and for 1,700 Gazans jailed by Israel during the war. Israel would also hand over the bodies of 15 Gazans for each dead Israeli.
Mr. Trump suggested in a post on social media on Saturday that the hostages might be released as soon as Hamas agrees to the latest terms, particularly how far Israeli forces would withdraw from their current position in Gaza.
But that is only one element of Mr. Trump’s sweeping plan, which envisions the creation of an internationally supervised Palestinian government and a postwar security force drawn from foreign countries, as well as the disarming of Hamas.
Hamas officials have expressed significant reservations about many of these points, particularly about laying down their weapons. But even the terms of exchanging hostages for Palestinian prisoners will most likely present difficulties, analysts say.
Mr. Trump’s proposal demands that Hamas return all of the surviving captives and the bodies in its possession within 72 hours of Israel’s agreeing to the cease-fire.
Both Israeli and Hamas officials say that the Palestinian group might need more time. Some living captives are believed to be held deep underground, while the bodies of others would need to be located and dug up.
Another thorny issue will be how far Israeli forces commit to withdrawing from their current positions within Gaza.
In previous talks, Hamas had agreed for Israeli troops to withdraw to a buffer zone close to the enclave’s borders. But the lines envisioned by Mr. Trump would leave Israeli forces deployed far deeper in Gaza, which Hamas could object to.
Israel and Hamas have now fought for two years since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war and killed about 1,200 people. The devastating Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed more than 65,000 people — including thousands of children — according to local health officials.
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9) Judge Blocks Trump’s Deployment of National Guard in Portland, Ore.
A federal judge appointed by President Trump issued a temporary restraining order, siding for now with Oregon and Portland lawyers who called federalizing the guard a presidential overreach.
By Anna Griffin, Reporting from Portland, Ore., Published Oct. 4, 2025, Updated Oct. 5, 2025
Department of Homeland Security agents, police officers and U.S. Border Patrol Agents stand guard at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., on Thursday. Credit...John Rudoff/Reuters
A federal judge on Saturday blocked the Trump administration from using Oregon National Guard soldiers in response to nightly protests at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Ore.
Judge Karin Immergut, of the U.S. District Court in Oregon, sided with Democrats who run the state government when she issued a temporary restraining order blocking the mobilization. President Trump and the Defense Department had ordered 200 Oregon soldiers for a 60-day deployment.
In her ruling, Judge Immergut wrote that she expected a trial court to agree with the state’s contention that the president exceeded his constitutional authority in mobilizing federal troops for local work and likely violated the 10th Amendment.
The soldiers have been training on the Oregon coast and were expected to be in place by the weekend, though federal officials have not said what duties they would perform beyond assisting ICE.
The restraining order expires in two weeks. During that time, the judge is expected to rule on a request for a longer injunction against the deployment. Federal lawyers have appealed the restraining order, which is part of a larger lawsuit filed by Oregon and Portland that accuses the president of violating his constitutional authority.
“President Trump exercised his lawful authority to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following violent riots and attacks on law enforcement,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman said. “We expect to be vindicated by a higher court.”
The decision comes as the president pushes to deploy the National Guard in several major U.S. cities to combat crime and support immigration enforcement. On Saturday, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, said that Mr. Trump planned to send 300 Guard troops to Chicago soon.
Before the judge’s ruling, Oregon National Guard troops were not the only Guard troops who were on the cusp of deploying in the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he was told by the federal government that, against his wishes, California National Guard troops who had been deployed in Los Angeles under federal orders were going to be sent to Oregon to help train troops there, according to a state official close to the governor who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.
During almost two hours of arguments Friday, lawyers for Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, contended that the president did not have the authority to use the National Guard at the ICE facility and warned that the arrival of federal forces would lead to greater violence.
State and city attorneys described Mr. Trump’s selection of Portland for deployment as “at best, arbitrary, and at worst, a politically motivated retaliation for the adoption of policies” that the president viewed as too liberal.
The president’s actions “represent one of the most dramatic infringements on state sovereignty in Oregon’s history,” Scott Kennedy, an attorney for Oregon said in court. “They radically reshape the balance of federal-state power,”
State lawyers also questioned the timing of Mr. Trump’s decision, noting records from the Portland Police Bureau that showed the size of the nightly demonstrations had dwindled before the president posted on his social media website last Saturday that he planned to ask the Department of Defense to use federal troops to “protect” Portland.
Portland Police commanders checked in with ICE officials every evening, according to records they filed in support of the temporary restraining order, and for several weeks prior to the president’s declaration, ICE employees reported that things were relatively quiet and that they did not need help.
Judge Immergut, who was appointed by Mr. Trump during his first term, agreed that the timing of the president’s order did not meet the legal standard for calling in the National Guard, saying the state provided “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days — or even weeks — leading up to the President’s directive.”
Mr. Kennedy also said the situation in Portland did not meet the standard required for mobilization of federal soldiers for domestic work; the law allows federal troops to be used domestically in times of foreign invasion, rebellion or when normal law enforcement efforts are not capable of maintaining order.
Federal lawyers contended that the protests in Portland constituted both a potential rebellion and a law enforcement challenge beyond what federal officers on the ground could handle. But Mr. Kennedy said the federal government was defining “rebellion” so broadly it could include any political demonstrations or “opposition to its authority.”
Judge Immergut agreed, writing that the federal government had shown evidence of “sporadic violence” but not “any evidence demonstrating that those episodes of violence were part of an organized attempt to overthrow the government as a whole.”
Eric Hamilton, a Justice Department lawyer, told the judge the decision to use National Guard soldiers was prompted by the Sept. 24 shooting that killed two detainees at a Dallas ICE facility and months of demonstrations in Portland that have left federal employees frightened and exhausted.
“Violent and cruel radicals have laid siege,” he said. “The evidence we have submitted at least reflects a danger of a rebellion, monthslong targeting of the Portland ICE building with violence, intimidation and threats.”
In the order released Saturday evening, Judge Immergut wrote that the president’s argument about the need for mobilization was contradicted by evidence that recent protests had been comparatively quiet and nonviolent, supporting the state’s case that the decision to use troops “was not ‘conceived in good faith.’”
The nightly demonstrations at Portland’s ICE building began in early summer and have included occasional skirmishes between protesters and federal agents as demonstrators tried to block vehicles from entering and exiting a parking garage. Multiple times a day, ICE agents in riot gear march out of the building to clear the driveway. During daylight hours, the crowd disperses quickly. At times federal officers have used pepper balls, tear gas and other crowd dispersal weapons to move people back.The Portland Police Bureau reported 27 arrests since early June outside the building, and court records show at least two dozen arrests by federal officers.
The protests have turned rougher since the president’s announcement last weekend with the arrival of right wing counterprotesters, some of whom have been spotted observing the crowd from the ICE building roof. A march to protest the potential deployment Saturday afternoon ended with federal officers using tear gas and pepper balls against a crowd that had gathered in the road in front of the building.
Judge Immergut, a former U.S. attorney in Oregon, is the second federal judge assigned to Oregon’s lawsuit against Mr. Trump. The first recused after a request from the federal lawyers because his wife, Representative Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat, had spoken out against the National Guard deployment.
Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.
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10) Illinois and Oregon Intensify Efforts to Block Trump’s Guard Deployments
By Julie Bosman, Shawn Hubler, Anna Griffin and Eric Schmitt, October 6, 2025
Federal law enforcement officers in Broadview, Ill., on Friday. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
Officials in Oregon and Illinois stepped up efforts to block what they denounced as President Trump’s “invasion” of their cities with National Guard troops, fighting legal battles on multiple fronts on Monday even as 200 soldiers from Texas were headed for Chicago.
Illinois officials sued Mr. Trump on Monday, hours after the president ordered hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers to deploy for “federal protection missions” in Chicago and Portland, Ore. The lawsuit in Illinois followed a stern ruling by a federal judge in Oregon on Sunday blocking Mr. Trump from sending Guard members from any state to Portland.
The torrent of moves by the Trump administration to deploy the military to U.S. cities in support of immigration enforcement efforts has left courts across the country scrambling to keep pace with a raft of orders that some judges have already deemed unconstitutional.
Here’s what else to know:
· Local opposition: Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, called the order to deploy Texas troops to his state “Trump’s invasion.” In their lawsuit, Chicago and Illinois officials argue that the administration’s “provocative and arbitrary actions have threatened to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry.” A U.S. military official said Monday morning that the first group from Texas Guard troops were moving to Chicago.
· Judge’s ruling: The ruling Sunday night by the federal judge in Oregon, Karin Immergut, came in response to the administration’s bid to circumvent a restraining order she had issued a day earlier, blocking Mr. Trump from sending hundreds of California Guard troops to Portland. After Mr. Trump moved to replace the California troops with soldiers from Texas, Judge Immergut broadened her order to cover all Guard troops. Read more ›
· Chicago: Federal immigration agents have inflamed tensions and drawn large crowds or demonstrators with aggressive tactics such as deploying tear gas on city streets with no warning, raiding apartments in the middle of the night, and handcuffing a City Council member at a hospital. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat, said Monday that he would establish “ICE-free zones,” preventing federal agents from staging without a warrant.
· Portland: Mr. Trump has described Portland as a city “burning to the ground.” But the demonstrations there have rarely expanded beyond a one-block radius of the immigration detention facility in the city. Until the president’s announcement that he was sending in troops, protests rarely numbered more than two dozen people. Clashes have turned more violent since Mr. Trump’s announcement, and two people were arrested Sunday night.
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11) Ravaged by War: Trying to Survive Gaza’s Present, Hoping for a Future
Two years of intense warfare in Gaza have left its people with a dismembered and disordered society. The destruction is vast and many Gazans have mental and physical wounds that could scar a generation.
The Israeli military brought down a high-rise building last month in Gaza City. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
The pallets of aid dropped from the plane, their parachutes popping as they fell to the battered and hungry people of Gaza below.
On the ground, most people in the seaside strip have been forced from their homes into a fraction of the territory. Living in tent camps, they struggle to find food, water and medicine. Many of the houses, businesses and neighborhoods that framed their former lives have been pulverized, leaving them little to return to whenever the war might end.
In the two years since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has unleashed tremendous military might in Gaza, causing destruction that has few parallels in modern warfare. The result is a dismembered and disordered society. Entire branches have been lopped off family trees, with more than 67,000 killed, or one in every 34 Gazans, according to local health officials.
Last month, a United Nations commission concluded that Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel denies the accusation, saying it seeks to destroy Hamas and return the hostages taken in the group-led attack that killed 1,200 people.
Israeli and Hamas negotiators were expected to hold talks in Cairo on Monday about a possible swap of Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Such an agreement could push forward a new plan laid out by President Trump to end the war after many failed attempts.
But it remains unclear who — if anyone — would govern the territory or pay for reconstruction to restore the lives of the people of Gaza.
In the meantime, most are too busy surviving to ponder the future.
“The thinking about life after the war comes only when the war ends,” said Hamza Salem, a former gas station attendant who lost both legs during heavy Israeli bombardment early in the conflict.
Damaged Bodies, Upended Lives
Before the war, Mr. Salem lived in northern Gaza with his wife and children, three sons and a daughter, Rital. She was 5, liked to make beaded bracelets and had just started kindergarten.
“Life was moving, praise God,” Mr. Salem said.
The war changed everything.
An Israeli strike during the war’s early weeks hit near Rital, severing her right arm above her wrist, according to Mr. Salem and his father, Abdel-Nasr Salem, who was injured in the same attack. The Israeli military said it struck Hamas military infrastructure.
Three months later, after the family had fled to southern Gaza, another strike hit near Mr. Salem, and he had to have both legs amputated above the knee, he said.
Both have struggled to get treatment as Gaza’s health system has collapsed.
Israeli forces have repeatedly evacuated, raided and struck hospitals, accusing Hamas of using them for protection. Fewer than half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partly functional, the World Health Organization says.
As the war progressed, medicine ran short and cancer treatments and dialysis became scarce. After Israel blocked all aid from entering Gaza this spring, hunger spread. In August, a group of global experts declared that more than half a million people in Gaza were experiencing a “man-made” famine whose effects included starvation, acute malnutrition and death.
Malnutrition and trauma can hamper mental and physical development, experts say, meaning the health effects of the war could echo through a generation.
“There is an ever-present threat of illness and death which children are having to battle with every day,” said Tess Ingram, the UNICEF spokeswoman in Gaza. “This creates a level of toxic stress that is not just harmful, but potentially life-threatening long term.”
Israeli officials have played down the severity of hunger in the enclave, saying they work to facilitate the entry of aid into the territory. The government has called the famine report “an outright lie.”
The Israeli military said in a statement that it strikes only military targets and adheres to international law. It accused Hamas of building military infrastructure — including command centers, weapons depots and combat tunnels — in densely populated civilian areas as well as booby-trapping roads and civilian homes.
More than a quarter of the 167,000 Gazans who have been wounded have sustained “life-changing injuries,” the World Health Organization says. More than 5,000 have lost limbs.
With the borders sealed by Israel, people cannot readily flee the enclave to seek safety from the bombardment, as refugees from Syria and Ukraine did. The wounded cannot easily seek care abroad because permissions for medical evacuations are hard to obtain.
Rital’s severed arm was lost in the chaos of the strike that injured her, so it could not be reattached, Mr. Salem said. Because of shortages at the hospital, he had to buy anesthesia and medications from nearby pharmacies.
The blast that wounded him also knocked him unconscious, Mr. Salem said. He woke up 10 days later to find that he had no legs.
Inadequate sanitization led to an infection, he said, and he was later discharged with no medication, leaving him to cope with the pain.
The family fled again in September after Israel launched a new assault on Gaza City, he said. They went by foot to central Gaza, his father and sons struggling to push his wheelchair on damaged and sandy streets.
The family is now sheltering at his sister’s house, Mr. Salem said, but they have few clothes, little money and no tent to sleep in should they have to flee again.
“We have no other place to go,” he said.
Ravaged Communities
The United Nations estimates that nearly four out of five buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. As of last December, the U.N. said there were more than 50 million tons of rubble, so much that 105 trucks would take 21 years to remove it. In February, the World Bank priced the physical damage in Gaza at $29.9 billion — 1.8 times the annual economic output of Gaza and the West Bank.
The numbers do not capture all that is lost. Erase enough of the landmarks in someone’s daily life — the shop where they bought tomatoes, the cafe where they met with friends — and that life fades away.
For Nidal Eissa, a father of three who owned a bridal shop in Gaza City, life centered around the apartment building he shared with about 30 relatives. It is now in ruins, satellite imagery shows, as is the orange grove down the street, his local butcher shop and the barbershop where he used to take his son.
Nidal Eissa’s neighborhood
His family’s building was packed with memories.
“I lived my best days and years in this home,” said Mr. Eissa, 32.
The family gathered there for milestones, he said. New babies were welcomed with sweets. Brides and grooms were feted with meals. Departed relatives were mourned with bitter coffee and dates.
His children attended nearby schools, and the family received medical care at a local clinic, all run by the United Nations.
His bridal shop, White Angel, was a short drive away.
Early in the war, amid intense Israeli bombardment, a strike on a nearby truck damaged his shop, he said. He salvaged as many dresses and accessories as he could and moved them to his apartment.
The goods were lost in August, when Israel bombed the building, according to Mr. Eissa and his cousin Walid Eissa. The Israeli military, both men said, warned a neighbor beforehand who alerted the family. They fled the area, but the building was destroyed. The Israeli military said the strike hit “a military target.”
Suddenly homeless, his extended family scattered to find shelter. Mr. Eissa and his wife and children ended up in southern Gaza, where they sleep in a tent.
He hopes to rebuild his life in a Gaza no longer ruled by Hamas.
“If the war ends with solutions and the ruling system changes, I will open a business and stay in my country,” he said. “Most important is that they change the regime that dragged us into ruin and destruction.”
Childhoods Lost
Mahmoud Abu Shahma, 14, also lives in a crowded tent near the beach.
He spends his mornings waiting to fill up jugs of water for drinking and bathing. He makes tea on a wood fire and eats bread sprinkled with spices — or whatever else he can find to fend off hunger. The rest of the day, he wanders around the camp where he lives. He has been out of school for more than two years.
“No one has asked me to study,” he said. “If there was a school, I would go.”
His parents cannot fill the void because they were both killed, leaving him among the many thousands of orphans created by the war.
The conflict has all but done away with conventional childhood. Children have been wounded and killed, lost loved ones and endured prolonged deprivation.
“You are creating extremely difficult conditions for mental, human and physical recovery,” said Tareq Emtairah, the director general of Taawon, a Palestinian charity that supports orphans.
In April, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, part of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, said that more than 39,000 children had lost at least one parent in the war. Of those, some 17,000 had lost both.
Mahmoud Abu Shahma lives in one of seven tent camps in southern Gaza that house more than 4,000 children who have lost at least one parent. An additional 15,000 rely on the camps for food, medical care and other services, said Mahmoud Kallakh, who manages the camps.
Aid workers say many of the children have frequent nightmares or anxiety. Some have been through such extreme mental or physical anguish that they have stopped speaking.
The education system has crumbled even for children whose families remain intact.
More than 700,000 children lack formal schooling, and nearly all schools need rehab or reconstruction, according to UNICEF.
All universities are closed, many of them destroyed by Israeli forces who accused Hamas of operating inside them.
Ad hoc schools have popped up in camps for displaced people, where children gather under tarps and sit on the ground.
Mayasem, an arts and culture organization, runs a school in southern Gaza that offers classes in Arabic, English, math and science.
One student, Rateel al-Najjar, 8, said that she was happy to be studying again, but that the school lacked chairs, crayons, notebooks and pencils.
She loves math, she said, and wants to be an architect like an uncle of hers who was killed in the war.
Najla Abu Nahla, the executive manager of Mayasem, said the school focused less on academic achievement and more on fun, sports and music to support the children’s mental health.
When classes end, she said, they do not want to go back to waiting in line for food or fetching water.
“Here,” she said, “they can just feel like children.”
An Economy in Tatters
Before the war, Mona al-Ghalayini was a rare woman who had worked her way into Gaza’s business elite.
She co-owned a supermarket and owned and managed an eatery called Big Bite and the upscale Roots Hotel, which rose next to the marina on Gaza City’s Mediterranean coast.
Little remains of her holdings.
The supermarket?
“Burned and looted,” she said by phone from Egypt, where she fled early in the conflict.
Big Bite?
“Also gone.”
The hotel?
“It needs to be completely restructured.”
Last year, she opened a Palestinian restaurant, Jouzoor, in Cairo. She thinks about returning to Gaza, someday, but said it must have stability, running water and electricity — what she called “the components of life.”
She cannot anticipate when that might be.
“There is no clear vision for anything that you can build on,” said Ms. al-Ghalayini, 55. “The future is not clear for anyone.”
Gaza before the war was poor, a condition exacerbated by a partial Israeli-Egyptian blockade aimed at weakening Hamas. But Gazans with means invested in shopping malls, restaurants, factories and farms that helped feed and employ the population.
The war halted nearly all formal economic activity, and unemployment is at least 80 percent, according to the World Bank.
The conflict has undermined Gazans’ ability to feed themselves, with more than 70 percent of irrigation wells, greenhouses and fishing boats damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations. As of July, less than 2 percent of cropland was both undamaged and accessible to farmers.
The share of Gazans living in what the World Bank calls “multidimensional poverty” — meaning the lack of access to income, education and services like electricity and clean water — is projected to increase to 98 percent, from 64 percent before the war.
The conflict has shredded the finances of many enterprising Gazans.
Hassan Shehada, 61, once employed more than 200 workers who sewed jeans, jackets and other clothing, much of it to be sold in Israel, he said by phone from Gaza.
During the war, one workshop with 60 sewing machines was destroyed, he said. When his family fled Gaza City for central Gaza, they took 20 sewing machines and other supplies with them, but they have struggled to find enough electricity to put them to use. So he cannot work or go home and tries to keep up with reports about former employees who have been killed.
Still, he hopes that peace will come and that the people of Israel and Gaza will realize that their fates are intertwined.
“Israel can’t give up on us, and we can’t give up on Israel,” he said. “If there is no real peace built on solid foundations between us, nothing will work.”
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12) With Trump’s Gaza Plan on the Line, Negotiators Gather in Egypt for Talks
Though significant issues remain to be hashed out between Israel and Hamas, some are saying that after two years of death and destruction, a breakthrough may be near.
By Ephrat Livni, Oct. 6, 2025
Destroyed homes in the center of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Thursday. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
Under pressure to end the war in Gaza after two brutal years of combat, negotiators for Israel and Hamas will meet on Monday with mediators in Egypt to discuss a sweeping peace plan presented by President Trump last week.
Much still remains unresolved.
The indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, are likely to focus on two aspects of the 20-point proposal that Mr. Trump unveiled: exchanging Israeli-held Palestinians for captives taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that set off the war, and an Israeli pullback from parts of Gaza.
Israel believes that about 20 hostages are still alive in Gaza, and also seeks the remains of about 25 others. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Sunday that Hamas had “agreed to the president’s hostage release framework.”
Under that plan, the hostages will be exchanged for 250 Palestinians prisoners serving life sentences and 1,700 Gazans jailed by Israel during the war. For every hostage whose remains are released, Israel will also release the remains of 15 Gazans.
While the plan calls for the release of the hostages within 72 hours of Israel agreeing to it, that would be logistically difficult, experts say. And the two sides have yet to agree on which Palestinian prisoners will be released.
Those are just some of the issues that remained to be hashed out.
On Friday, Hamas said it was willing to release the hostages. But Hamas has not addressed major points in the American peace plan, among them demands that it has objected to in the past. The proposal, for example, calls on the group to disarm and for it to have no role in the governance of Gaza — both key Israeli positions that Hamas has long rejected.
Questions also remain about the withdrawal of Israeli forces from positions in Gaza.
In a social media post on Saturday, Mr. Trump said that Israel had already agreed to an initial withdrawal line within Gaza for the first phase of the deal.
“When Hamas confirms, the Ceasefire will be IMMEDIATELY effective, the Hostages and Prisoner Exchange will begin, and we will create the conditions for the next phase of withdrawal,” he pledged.
But Hamas may still seek to negotiate those lines.
In previous talks on ending the conflict, Hamas agreed to Israeli troops withdrawing into a buffer zone near Gaza’s border with Israel. But Mr. Trump’s plan would leave Israeli forces deeper in Gaza, and Hamas has signaled that it may object to elements of the plan.
In a speech to Israelis over the weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to cast the Trump plan as a victory. He said the stage for a possible deal to end to the war had been set by his decision to keep up the pressure on Hamas with a devastating military campaign, which drew condemnation from much of the world. He also cited diplomatic efforts.
Members of Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition have long objected to a deal and have threatened to dissolve his government if he agrees to one. The prime minister has sought to appease them, but he is also under pressure from many Israelis who want a hostage deal and an end to the conflict, as well as from the international community, not least Mr. Trump.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump posted images of Israelis rallying in Tel Aviv for a hostage deal. He added no comments, but the images appeared to speak for themselves.
Defying Mr. Trump does not appear to be an option, even for Mr. Netanyahu. By Saturday, the Israeli military was limiting its actions to what Israeli officials called defensive operations and responses to immediate threats.
Hamas, too, is under pressure to end the war.
Many Palestinians in Gaza see the Trump proposal as their best hope after nearly two years of extreme privation and repeated displacement. Much of Gaza has been destroyed, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, including thousands of children, and Mr. Trump has said that Israel will have a green light to destroy Hamas if the group does not agree to a deal.
Mr. Trump demanded on social media that Israel stop bombing Gaza to allow the agreement with Hamas to move forward. The Israeli military instructed its forces to focus on defense, curbing military operations in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli officials.
The fighting on the ground has nonetheless continued. The Israeli military said that it launched multiple attacks on Sunday against what it described as militants threatening troops. Emergency workers in Gaza said that they had been unable to reach some of those killed because they were in combat zones.
Israel and Hamas have held indirect talks off and on throughout the war, with negotiations generally falling apart. Mr. Rubio conceded on Sunday that the war was not yet over and that there was work to be done, but he said this time could be different.
“What gives you hope here is that at least there is now a framework for how all this can come to an end,” he said.
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13) Greta Thunberg Among Hundreds From Gaza Aid Flotilla Deported by Israel
Israel intercepted the boats at sea and detained the participants for days before expelling them. Some of the activists say they were mistreated, which Israel denied.
By Ephrat Livni, Oct. 6, 2025
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist, arriving at an airport in Athens on Monday after being deported from Israel. Aris Messinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israel on Monday deported the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and about 170 other participants in a flotilla that tried to deliver aid by sea to Gaza but was intercepted by the Israeli authorities, the foreign ministry said.
The widely publicized mission, involving dozens of boats and hundreds of activists, aimed to breach an Israeli blockade of Gaza, where hunger is widespread and a U.N.-backed panel of experts has declared that famine afflicts hundreds of thousands of people.
Israel, which has limited deliveries to the territory for almost two decades, has imposed stringent restrictions on the entry of food and other aid since the war there began two years ago. For more than two months earlier this year, it prevented any food from being brought in.
Flotilla participants say that Israeli forces illegally intercepted their boats last week in violation of maritime law and international humanitarian law. Israel says the activists violated a legal blockade.
Some who were arrested and then released over the weekend reported that they had been mistreated in Israeli custody. Israel’s foreign ministry denied the accusation in statements on Monday and over the weekend. “All the legal rights of the participants in this P.R. stunt were and will continue to be fully upheld,” the ministry said, accusing activists of spreading “fake news.”
There had been reports from activists and others over the weekend that Ms. Thunberg was mistreated. Ms. Thunberg confirmed those reports on Monday. She was among the participants deported to Greece and addressed crowds waiting for the activists upon their arrival in Athens.
“I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment, trust me, but that is not the story,” she said, according to a video of her remarks posted by flotilla organizers.
Ms. Thunberg turned discussion to the plight of Palestinians. She accused Israel of committing genocide and attempting to erase a population before the world’s eyes. A United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza last month concluded that Israel was committing genocide, allegations that Israel has repeatedly rejected.
Those deported on Monday were sent to Greece and Slovakia, the Israeli foreign ministry said. “The deportees are citizens of Greece, Italy, France, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Austria, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland, Norway, the U.K., Serbia and the United States,” it said.
On Sunday, the ministry said that Israel had sent to Spain 29 flotilla participants from Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. On Saturday, 137 people from the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Malaysia, Bahrain, Morocco, Switzerland, Tunisia, and Turkey were deported to Turkey, it said.
A livestream posted by the flotilla organizers showed crowds of what appeared to be hundreds of people waiting for the activists at the airport in Athens. “Free, free Palestine,” they chanted. The flotilla participants were greeted warmly by the crowds.
Miriam Azem, a spokeswoman for Adalah, a legal organization for Arab minority rights in Israel that is representing the flotilla participants, said in an interview on Sunday night that lawyers who met with activists were told they had been kept on their knees with their hands bound for many hours. They were held in overcrowded cells and denied adequate drinking water, she said, and some said they had also been denied food and critical medications in the initial days and were deliberately deprived of sleep.
Some flotilla participants were on a hunger strike while in custody, Ms. Azem and the group’s organizers have said.
Ms. Azem said that there had been numerous due process violations, with lawyers for the group not notified that hearings were taking place and activists denied access to counsel. She said that Israel’s process was “entirely illegal,” with activists forcibly taken to the country, then treated as having entered illegally and detained in a security prison. She spoke of “a cycle that is meant to intimidate and to deter.”
On Monday, Ms. Azem said that about 140 flotilla participants were still being detained, but said that the organization could confirm the number and that it was receiving little information from the Israeli authorities.
Relatives of some of the American participants on the flotilla — there were about 20 — met in Capitol Hill on Monday to press lawmakers for their release.
Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, was drafting a letter to be sent on Monday afternoon to Secretary of State Marco Rubio inquiring about four Californians aboard the flotilla who were detained, along with other Americans.
The participants were on a “nonviolent mission to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza,” Mr. Khanna wrote, according to a draft of the letter shared with The New York Times. He called for more aid to enter Gaza in addition to protection of flotilla participants.
“The U.S. has an obligation to protect its citizens abroad and must act immediately.” Mr. Khanna wrote.
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