Help World-Outlook Win New Subscribers
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Dear reader,
Over the last month, World-Outlook and its sister publication in Spanish Panorama-Mundial have published unique coverage of U.S. and world events.
This includes the three-part interview with Cuban historian and writer Ernesto Limia Díaz, ‘Cuba Is the Moral and Political Compass of the World.’ A related article by Mark Satinoff, World Votes with Cuba to Demand an End to U.S. Blockade, included information on the campaign to send medical aid to Cuba in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa and was shared widely by the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee and other Cuba solidarity groups.
A number of readers sent their appreciation for Cathleen Gutekanst’s article Chicago Residents Fight ICE Abductions, Deportations, which provided a compelling, eyewitness account of this example of working-class resistance to the Trump administration’s war on undocumented immigrants. Some readers shared it widely on social media platforms.
The news analysis Bigotry, Jew Hatred Take Center Stage in GOP Mainstream also generated interest. It is part of World-Outlook’s consistent analysis of the danger of the rise of incipient fascism that Trumpism has posed for the working class and its allies in the U.S. and the world.
Most recently, another article by Mark Satinoff, ‘From Ceasefire to a Just Peace’ in Israel and Occupied Territories, was promoted by Friends of Standing Together (FOST NY/NJ) on the group’s website. Alon-Lee Green and Sally Abed — the two Standing Together leaders featured at the November 12 event in Brooklyn, New York, that Mark’s article covered — and Israelis for Peace sent their thanks to Mark for his accurate reporting.
This is a small sample of the news coverage and political analysis World-Outlook offers.
We ask you to use this information to try to convince at least one of your acquaintances, colleagues, friends, fellow students, neighbors, or relatives to subscribe to World-Outlook. As you know, the subscription is free of charge. Increasing World-Outlook’s subscription base will widen the site’s reach. It will also provide new impetus to improve our coverage. Comments and reactions from subscribers, or initiatives from readers to cover events in their areas, often result in unexpectedly invaluable articles or opinion columns clarifying important political questions.
Feel free to share this letter, or part of its contents, with those you are asking to subscribe. And keep World-Outlookinformed about the reactions you get from potential new readers.
In solidarity,
World-Outlook editors
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Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
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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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
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.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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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) D.C. Shooting Suspect Worked With C.I.A.-Backed Unit in Afghanistan
The C.I.A. and an Afghan intelligence official said that the shooter had been part of an Afghan “partner force” trained and supported by the agency in the southern province of Kandahar.
By Julian E. Barnes, Hamed Aleaziz, Elian Peltier and Safiullah Padshah, Nov. 27, 2025
Elian Peltier and Safiullah Padshah reported from Kabul, Afghanistan.
“An Afghan intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to comment publicly on the issue, confirmed that Mr. Lakanwal had served in Kandahar in one of what were known as Zero Units, which were formally part of the Afghan intelligence service. The Zero Units were a paramilitary force that had been trained for nighttime raids targeting suspected Taliban members, and were accused by human rights groups of widespread killings of civilians. The intelligence official said that one of Mr. Lakanwal’s brothers was the deputy commander of the Zero Unit in Kandahar, which was known as 03.”
Law enforcement at the scene of the shooting. The suspect had worked with a C.I.A.-supported military unit in Afghanistan. Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
The Afghan man accused of shooting two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday had worked with C.I.A.-supported military units in Afghanistan, the agency said.
The C.I.A. said that the shooter had been part of a C.I.A.-backed Afghan “partner force” in the southern province of Kandahar, a stronghold of the Taliban insurgency during the two-decade war there. Officials identified the suspect as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29.
After American forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021 and gave way to Taliban rule, the suspect was brought to the United States as part of a program to evacuate Afghans who had worked with the agency, according to the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe.
Mr. Lakanwal’s affiliation with a C.I.A.-supported unit was earlier reported by Fox News Digital.
“In the wake of the disastrous Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including C.I.A., as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation,” Mr. Ratcliffe said in a statement.
Mr. Ratcliffe said the alleged assailant “should have never been allowed to come here.”
An Afghan intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to comment publicly on the issue, confirmed that Mr. Lakanwal had served in Kandahar in one of what were known as Zero Units, which were formally part of the Afghan intelligence service. The Zero Units were a paramilitary force that had been trained for nighttime raids targeting suspected Taliban members, and were accused by human rights groups of widespread killings of civilians.
The intelligence official said that one of Mr. Lakanwal’s brothers was the deputy commander of the Zero Unit in Kandahar, which was known as 03.
The Afghan units trained and supported by the C.I.A. played an important role in the American evacuation as the Taliban drove out the U.S.-backed government in 2021. While many Afghan military units dissolved in the face of the Taliban takeover, the C.I.A.’s partners remained operational and helped bring U.S. citizens and Afghans who had worked with American forces to Kabul to be evacuated out of the country.
Mr. Lakanwal grew up in a village in the eastern province of Khost. A childhood friend, who asked to be identified only as Muhammad because he feared Taliban reprisals, said that Mr. Lakanwal had suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.
Muhammad said he had last seen Mr. Lakanwal a few weeks before the Taliban takeover in 2021, when he came to Khost to marry his second wife. Mr. Lakanwal had started smoking weed, he said, and ended up divorcing his wife a few days after the wedding.
He said he last spoke with Mr. Lakanwal in 2023, when he appeared to have settled well in the United States with his first wife and their children. But he said he couldn’t forget what Mr. Lakanwal told him the last time they saw each other in Khost.
“He would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure,” Muhammad said.
“When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind, even if they were from the enemies.”
Taliban officials on Thursday denounced the actions of the Zero Units during the war. Sediqullah Quraishi Badloon, a provincial official in Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan, accused the groups of looting during the chaotic fall of the U.S.-backed government.
“After that, they fled to the United States in search of a better life,” Mr. Badloon said in a social media post. “These traitors still do not let the Afghan people live in peace.”
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2) Where the Waters Are Rough, a Fishing Town Confronts Trump’s Priorities
First, Newport, Ore., lost its Coast Guard rescue chopper. Then came the swirl of rumors and evidence that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was coming to town.
By Anna Griffin, Photographs and Video by Ruth Fremson, Reporting from Newport, Ore., Nov. 27, 2025
A group of pilots have been demonstrating against ICE at the municipal airport in Newport.
The welcome signs on the edge of Newport, Ore., celebrate recent high school sports championships, point tourists toward the local aquarium and highlight two of its defining attributes — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific fleet and its designation as one of the nation’s 37 “Coast Guard cities.”
But the central coast town’s long, warm relationship with the federal government has been upended in recent weeks. First, a Coast Guard rescue helicopter was redeployed from the municipal airport to North Bend, Ore., 95 miles down the coast, with no warning to civic leaders, elected officials or the commercial fishing families who work the treacherous waters off the Oregon coast and sleep better at night knowing quick rescue is available.
Then local businesses began getting calls gauging their interest in providing basic services — like water delivery and solid waste removal — to what many concluded could only be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility at the airport, especially if it is free of the rescue chopper’s operation.
Taken with similar developments elsewhere, including Staten Island, where another Coast Guard facility is being considered for an ICE takeover, people around Newport have reached what they see as a demoralizing conclusion. To them, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both the Coast Guard and ICE, is prioritizing immigration enforcement over coastal safety, and partisan politics over a legacy of trust and communication.
“It’s mind-boggling that the decision was made to move this helicopter, but it’s just as mind-boggling that nobody bothered to talk to us about it,” said Taunette Dixon, a leader of the nonprofit Newport Fishermen’s Wives. “I don’t understand why the approach has to be adversarial here.”
Fishing and tourism are Newport’s economic pillars, and nearly every year-round resident knows someone who works on the water. They also know how dangerous that work can be.
The shoreline is notorious for king tides, sneaker waves and storm surges that can sweep people off beaches or jetties. To reach commercial crab grounds and offshore fishing runs, boaters must cross the Yaquina Bay bar, where the Yaquina River, on Newport’s southern edge, meets the Pacific Ocean. Along the bar, swells, tidal currents and shifting sand create an obstacle course of steep, breaking waves that challenge even Coast Guard rescue boats. Water temperatures off Newport average 50 degrees to 54 degrees, and the Pacific Northwest crab fleet has a higher fatality rate than crabbers more than 1,000 miles north in the Bering Sea.
“Bar crossings are the most dangerous portion of operating a fishing vessel,” said Amelia Vaughan, a commercial fishing safety expert with Oregon State University and a board member of the Newport Fishermen’s Wives. “Having close, easy response times from the Newport air facility can be the difference between life and death.”
The Coast Guard stationed a helicopter at Yaquina Bay, after the fishing boat Lasseigne capsized in 1985. Three people died when rescue aircraft were too far away to respond quickly. It was the Obama administration that first attempted to move the helicopter to North Bend, in 2014, to reduce staffing costs. Local residents sued, Congress intervened, and the Coast Guard is now required to give ample notice and provide research to support any relocation of the helicopter team — even temporary moves for maintenance.
So when rumors spread a few weeks ago that the helicopter was gone, many fishermen dismissed them. Response times from Newport average 15 to 30 minutes, from North Bend, at least 30 minutes longer.
The helicopter’s transfer turned out to be only the first clue that things were changing.
As local officials searched for answers, they discovered notices that a federal contractor had sought to lease space at the airport. Business owners began comparing notes about strange calls: requests for daily deliveries of large volumes of water, or for the capacity to remove up to 10,000 gallons of human waste a day. Online job postings soon appeared from contractors seeking bus drivers, nurses and jail guards with immigration experience for positions based at the airport.
“The evidence is becoming increasingly clear,” said State Representative David Gomberg, a Democrat whose district includes Newport. “Somebody is considering basing a large detainment facility at the airport where the Coast Guard used to be.”
The Trump administration has not confirmed plans for ICE in Newport or any other federal agency. In a statement, a Homeland Security spokeswoman called the suggestion that potential Coast Guard rescue operations have been slowed by the helicopter’s move “an insult to the hard, heroic work the men and women of the Coast Guard put in every day.”
Still, it’s in keeping with other reports that the administration is looking to use Coast Guard facilities in coastal communities for immigration efforts. Ms. Dixon said a local Coast Guard leader in Newport became emotional when he told her that he could not answer her questions.
“We know this is not coming from the Coast Guard commanders based here,” she said. “They’re part of this community.”
Newport has a number of factors that might make it a more appealing site for ICE than a major inland city. The airport, several miles south of downtown, can handle larger transport planes. The city sits at the junction of two federal highways, and the population of Spanish-speaking residents has boomed over the past decade or so as the fishing and fish-processing industries have grown more dependent on immigrant labor.
Newport is also not Portland, Oregon’s largest city and a place with a long history of clashes with the White House, particularly under Republican presidents. President Trump’s immigration crackdown this summer spurred daily demonstrations outside Portland’s immigration processing center — right now the only stand-alone ICE facility in the state — and an expanding legal fight over the facility’s presence and the president’s call for National Guard troops to protect it.
Like most of Oregon, Newport and surrounding Lincoln County lean Democratic, but voters here helped elect a Democrat to the state House and a Republican to the State Senate and have an ecumenical relationship to Washington, D.C.
“Newport is a community that appreciates the federal government,” said Gary Ripka, a crabber and the owner of two crab boats. “There’s no knee-jerk distrust here.”
Mr. Ripka said he wanted to keep the debate over the helicopter’s location separate from conversations about ICE because he voted for Mr. Trump and appreciates some of the president’s moves to tighten the southern U.S. border.
“You just don’t have time to get partisan when you’re in the commercial fishing business,” he said.
The tension has drawn large crowds in this city of 10,000 people. More than 300 people, many holding tiny flags reading “No ICE in Newport,” attended a town hall that Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, held Sunday at Newport High School. A City Council meeting the week before attracted 800 people.
“They clearly are saying to themselves, ‘If we go to small, rural communities in Oregon and elsewhere, we have better prospects for our skulduggery,’” Mr. Wyden said of the Department of Homeland Security in an interview after the town hall. “You can see this community will not stand for that.”
The county, the state and the Fishermen’s Wives have sued over the helicopter’s removal, and on Monday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order and demanded its return for at least the next two weeks. But the federal government has promised to fight the lawsuit and, in a statement, accused local and state leaders of attempting to “micromanage” the Coast Guard.
In a social media post Tuesday, Newport’s mayor said a federal contractor had been calling local hotels seeking up to 200 hotel rooms for a year — and that the Department of Homeland Security had not responded to the city’s requests for information.
People in the fishing and crabbing industries are already feeling strain from other federal decisions, including cuts to maritime research and the president’s trade war with Canada. Almost half of the crab caught in Newport go to Chinese markets, most by way of British Columbia, which has the facilities to store and ship them live. The trade stalemate between the United States and Canada risks driving down the prices crabbers can get in a season that starts in December.
The bulk of the crab will be caught this winter — when the weather is the worst and the danger the highest.
“It makes you question yourself: Is this what I voted for?” Mr. Ripka said. “It just doesn’t seem like these are decisions about the people who live and work here.”
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3) Intelligence on U.S. Military’s Boat Strikes Is Limited
The U.S. military has killed more than 80 people since the campaign began in early September. But it does not know who specifically is being killed.
By Julian E. Barnes, Nov. 27, 2025
Julian E. Barnes has been reporting on counterterrorism strikes for more than 15 years. He reported from Washington.
In decades of war against terrorist and insurgent groups, the military and spy agencies learned that to take down a network, they had to first understand it.
That often meant rounding up low-level people who could lead them to more important people.
While the United States had successes, it also made mistakes, sometimes hitting the wrong target or causing collateral damage, angering local populations and creating more opponents than were eliminated.
As a result of those errors, the United States worked to create detailed intelligence dossiers so that civilians approving the strikes could have confidence in who was being targeted and more clearly see the potential unintended consequences of a strike.
But those lessons of the long war against terrorism appear to have been cast aside as the Trump administration attacks boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific that it says are carrying drugs.
The U.S. military has killed more than 80 people since the campaign began in early September. But it does not know who specifically is being killed, and the strikes were not designed to take out high-ranking cartel leaders.
Instead, the military has killed, at best, low-level people, whose role in the drug trade may have been taking a payment for moving cocaine from one spot to another. (At worst, some of the people killed could have been fishermen, migrants or others who had nothing to do with the drug trade.)
“Traditionally, our counternarcotics efforts have always been targeted at the head of the snake,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “This is obviously the opposite of that. Now we’re going after the tail of the snake. We’re going after some, you know, poor ex-fishermen who took 300 bucks to run a load of cocaine to Trinidad.”
The strikes are also at odds with any effort to understand the cartels moving the drugs. Taking apart a network, experts said, requires capturing people and interrogating them to find out the financiers and leaders. By blowing up the boats, the United States is also destroying the intelligence and evidence.
“If what you wanted was to stop the drug trade, obviously this isn’t what you’d be doing,” said Annie Pforzheimer, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specialized in counternarcotics during her career. “Because you’d be capturing the people in the boats, turning them to get the next level of the organization, turning those people to the next level and getting to the top.”
The military knows that someone on the boats has a connection to a drug cartel, and it has some level of confidence that drugs are on the vessels, according to people familiar with the military’s classified briefings. But in most, if not all, of the strikes, the Pentagon does not know precisely whom it is killing, those people said.
And Democratic lawmakers say that presents a real danger.
“There are two reasons you’re really super careful about this stuff,” Mr. Himes said. “One would hope that you might have some qualms about killing innocent people — there’s the moral dimension, and I’d like to believe that still matters. And then No. 2, there’s the blowback issue.”
During America’s long fight against terrorism, the C.I.A. and the military learned that when they killed terrorism suspects, the family members of those people could become radicalized, turning against the country that had killed their brother or son.
Mr. Himes said each and every boat strike carried the same risk.
“These are guys who made a bad decision to take 500 bucks to run a fast boat up to Trinidad,” Mr. Himes said. “They’re the street-corner hustlers. And if the United States is sending the signal that life doesn’t matter, that’s coming back to us, that is absolutely coming back to us.”
Supporters of the strikes have noted that overhead surveillance by both drones and satellites has improved in recent years and that there is less chance of collateral damage from striking boats at sea compared with targets on land.
Trump administration officials have also pointed out that their Democratic predecessors approved counterterrorism strikes even when they were unsure exactly who was being killed.
During the Obama administration, the C.I.A. conducted antiterrorism strikes in cases in which the United States did not know specifically whom it was killing. Instead, the strikes were based on intelligence assessments from a “pattern of life” and other information that showed connections between the targeted people and known terrorists.
These attacks were called signature strikes because they were based on actions that looked like terrorism, or had a terrorism “signature,” but were not backed up by specific knowledge about who was at a site being targeted or what exactly they might have been planning.
The term, however, was tainted from the beginning. Critics maintained that strikes on large groups of unidentified people suspected of being militants did little to stop terrorist attacks but risked mistakes that could lead to civilian deaths and turn local populations against the United States.
Because of the controversy, restrictions were placed on signature strikes. And when the Obama administration later began targeting militants in Yemen whose identify they did not know, it started calling the operations “terrorist attack disruption strikes.”
While there are some similarities between the boat strikes and the old signature strikes, the military has rejected the idea that the attacks on the boats are signature strikes. In briefings with members of Congress, military officers have asserted that they are confident there are drugs on the boats — and that the drugs are the real target of the attacks.
But lawmakers say that means the people on the boats are, in effect, collateral damage.
“They told us it is not a signature strike, because it’s not just about pattern of life, but it’s also not like they know every individual person on the boats,” said Representative Sara Jacobs, Democrat of California and a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Ms. Jacobs said she believed the strikes were wrong.
“I didn’t hear any evidence that convinced me that these weren’t extrajudicial killings,” she said.
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4) Death Toll Rises to 128 in Hong Kong High-Rise Fire
Hope of finding survivors has dwindled, with many residents of the Wang Fuk Court towers still unaccounted for. Eight more people were arrested Friday over the blaze.
By David Pierson and Anjali Tsui, Reporting from Hong Kong, Nov. 28, 2025
Outside the Wang Fuk Court complex in Hong Kong on Friday. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
The death toll from Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades rose to 128 on Friday, as authorities struggled to identify victims and firefighters extinguished the last embers at the still smoldering high-rise apartment complex.
With hope of finding survivors fading, rescue operations have ceased, even though many residents of the densely packed Wang Fuk Court apartment towers remain missing. Chris Tang, Hong Kong’s secretary of security, said that about 200 people were unaccounted for as more bodies are expected to be recovered. More than 70 people were hospitalized, some in critical condition.
Mr. Tang said rescuers had pulled out more than 100 bodies from the complex, but some charred sets of remains were still inside the site. Only 39 victims have been identified, he said.
With many of the bodies badly burned, police said they were planning to use DNA testing to help expedite the process. Temperatures also remain too high to begin a thorough investigation of the buildings; Joe Chow, the commissioner of police, said some parts of the apartment complex are still as hot as 390 degrees Fahrenheit.
Firefighters were still dousing parts of the complex with water on Friday to prevent flames from reigniting. Smoke could be seen wafting from the charred buildings, which were crisscrossed with what remained of the bamboo scaffolding in various states of disrepair.
Family members seeking missing loved ones gathered at a nearby community center where they were shown photographs of victims, many of whom had been identified. Other people stood outside the housing complex waiting anxiously for any news.
The massive blaze started on Wednesday afternoon at the complex in the northern district of Tai Po. One of the 32-story buildings appeared to catch fire first before the flames jumped to six other towers. Mr. Tang said there were early indications that the blaze was sparked by flammable construction netting that had been used to shroud the buildings, which were undergoing renovation work at the time.
The fire then ignited combustible polystyrene foam that appeared to have been used to cover windows to protect them from damage. The foam caused the windows to overheat, breaking the glass and allowing the fire to spread, Mr. Tang said.
Mr. Tang described the multitude of challenges that firefighters faced in trying to respond to the inferno. He said flaming bamboo poles rained down onto the ground and blocked access for firefighters and their trucks. The heat was so intense in some apartment units that flames reignited even after firefighters had extinguished a blaze.
“Firefighters had to go through each floor and each unit to put out fires and conduct rescue operations,” he added.
The disaster has stunned residents of Hong Kong, where high-rise living and the sight of construction sites covered in green netting and bamboo are part of everyday life. Many people have responded by raising relief funds and volunteering to help distribute donated goods to people left homeless by the fire.
The government is likely to come under increasing pressure to explain why the fire could not have been prevented or if the response could have been better.
Andy Yeung, director of fire services, defended the fire department’s response to the tragedy against criticism online that the agency didn’t deploy enough air units. Mr. Yeung said helicopters would have been ineffective because they would have dropped water from too high while threatening to fan the flames with their rotary blades.
He also said that there was not enough space at the apartment complex to use fire trucks with taller ladders. Mr. Yeung said fire alarms at all eight high-rise towers were not working properly at the time of the blaze.
Among the victims was a 37-year-old firefighter, Ho Wai-ho, a nine-year veteran who collapsed at the scene of the fire and later died at a hospital, the government said.
The city’s anti-corruption commission said Friday it had arrested eight more people over the fire, including scaffolding subcontractors and consultants involved with renovations at the complex.
On Thursday, the authorities arrested two directors and a consultant linked to a construction company that installed the construction materials, saying they were being investigated for manslaughter and gross negligence. The authorities said they were inspecting 11 other private residential building projects where the company had been doing work.
The disaster comes at a politically sensitive time for the local government, which was handpicked by China but is determined to show it is up to the task of running the city. Hong Kong is still semiautonomous, despite the freedoms lost when China imposed a national security law in 2020. Next month, it will hold elections — devoid of opposition parties — for only the second time since then.
The government has said in a statement that it would cancel “nonessential public activities” to devote time and resources to helping the victims of the fire and their families. It also said it would inspect all sites in the city that are currently undergoing external wall construction or renovations involving scaffolding and protective nets.
Authorities also had to address the immediate needs of those left homeless by the fire. A community center near the blackened towers has been converted into a shelter where more than 100 mattresses were strewed across the floor. Parents dug through bins of children’s clothing neatly organized by size, and makeshift signs explained how to access emergency cash provided by the government.
Cheryl Wong, a 7-year-old resident of Wang Fuk Estate, sat barefoot on the bleachers with an aunt who was trying to keep her entertained with sketch pads, origami and a Pokémon activity book. Cheryl said her mother had left the shelter to find her a pair of shoes. She said she has been struggling to sleep since arriving.
“I don’t like sleeping on the floor,” she said. “My pillow kept rolling off the mattress.”
About 500 residents are currently dispersed across nine temporary housing shelters. The government said it would provide a subsidy of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars, or $1,284, to affected households and set up a separate $38 million fund “to assist residents and support all relevant work.”
The government also said it might accelerate the phasing out of bamboo scaffolding in favor of fire-resistant metal scaffolding. So far, the authorities have not indicated that bamboo played a major role in the rapid spread of the fire on Wednesday.
The fire was the deadliest in Hong Kong since 1948, when nearly 200 people were killed in a blaze at a warehouse. That fire took place when the city was still a British colony.
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5) VIDEO: Goodbye, Price Tags. Hello, Dynamic Pricing.
Video by James Robinson and Binyamin Appelbaum, Nov. 28, 2025
Mr. Robinson is a producer and editor for Opinion Video. Mr. Appelbaum is the lead writer on economics and business for the New York Times editorial board.
In the Opinion Video above, we tell the story of a little piece of technology that has delivered enormous benefits to consumers — and is in danger of disappearing. It’s called the price tag. Yes, the price tag.
Businesses increasingly are using algorithms to determine prices, and to rapidly adjust those prices throughout the day. This new technology is called dynamic pricing, and it’s poised to change the way businesses set and advertise their prices. Think of the ever-changing electronic signs at gas stations, but for everything.
Businesses can use dynamic pricing to deliver better deals to customers. But they also are using the new technology to jack up prices. As the video says, the humble price tag “was like a little handshake. It represented an agreement, one price for every customer. But now that agreement is breaking.” And we are all going to pay.
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6) Israeli Forces Kill Two Palestinians After They Appear to Surrender, Video Shows
The Israeli authorities said they were investigating the shooting, which came amid days of extensive military operations in the West Bank.
By Adam Rasgon, Sanjana Varghese and Fatima AbdulKarim, Nov. 28, 2025
A still from Palestine TV of two Palestinian men kneeling on the ground shortly before they were shot dead during an Israeli military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday. Palestine TV, via Associated Press
Israeli security forces shot dead two Palestinians in the West Bank on Thursday after they appeared to surrender, according to videos released by an international news agency and two Arab television networks.
The Israeli authorities said in a statement that they were examining the shooting and that the two men were involved in militant activity. Palestinian officials condemned the killings as a “field execution.”
The shooting came amid days of extensive Israeli military operations and raids in the Israeli-occupied northern West Bank. It prompted fresh accusations from Palestinian officials that Israel was using excessive force there.
Footage showed two men emerging from a garage in Jenin, who then lift their shirts, seeming to indicate they are carrying no weapons, and raise their hands. They are seen kneeling, while Israeli security forces point their weapons at them.
The Israeli forces kick the men, who shuffle back toward the garage. Moments later, gunshots are fired and, shortly after, the body of one of the men can be seen slumped on the ground. In one of the clips reviewed, Israeli forces can be seen continuing to shoot into the garage.
Palestinian authorities in the West Bank said the two men were killed and identified them as Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah, 26, and Yousef Asasa, 37.
Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group, said Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Asasa were members of its military wing.
Ahmad Nazzal, a reporter for Palestine TV, one of the channels that shared the footage, said he was at the scene and watched the shooting unfold. He said in an interview that Israeli forces were operating in the area for hours before the shooting.
The channel is run by the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank.
In a joint statement, the Israeli military and police acknowledged that the Palestinians had been shot at, saying “fire was directed toward the suspects.” They said the shooting was being reviewed by commanders on the ground and transferred to the “relevant professional bodies.”
The statement also said that the two Palestinians had previously been involved in militant activity, including throwing explosives at security forces and opening fire on them.
Eitan Ilan, a spokesman for the Department of Investigations of Police Misconduct, an arm of Israel’s justice ministry, said his office was investigating the shooting.
Israel’s far right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, offered his support for the security forces. “The fighters acted exactly as is expected from them — terrorists need to die!” he wrote on X.
On Thursday, Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights chief, expressed outrage at the “apparent summary execution” of the two Palestinians.
The foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority condemned the killing as an “ugly field execution” and called on the international community to act.
“The ministry sees this crime as directly extending from an official, systematic, and widespread Israeli policy based on intentionally killing Palestinians outside the framework of the law,” the ministry said.
Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, said the killings were “part of a pattern across the occupied territory.”
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said the shootings were the result of “an accelerated process of dehumanization of Palestinians and the complete abandonment of their lives” by Israel.
Since January 2025, the Israeli military has taken control of parts of Jenin in an operation that officials have described as a crackdown on militancy. Palestinian rights groups say that has led to the killing of civilians, the destruction of homes and the displacement of thousands.
The military intensified operations in a number of towns near Jenin in recent days, detaining and questioning dozens of people. Palestinians have reported Israeli security forces destroying roads and taking over homes.
Aritz Parra, Nick Cumming-Bruce and Monika Cvorak contributed reporting.
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7) Israeli Raid in Southern Syria Kills at Least 13, Syrian Officials Say
The raid appeared to be one of Israel’s deadliest cross-border incursions since Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s former dictator, was ousted last year.
By Reham Mourshed and Euan Ward, Nov. 28, 2025
Reham Mourshed reported from Damascus, Syria, and Euan Ward from Beirut, Lebanon.
Damage in Beit Jinn, a town in southern Syria, after an Israeli raid on Friday. Ali Ahmed Al-Najjar/Reuters
An Israeli raid into southern Syria on Friday killed at least 13 people and left several Israeli soldiers wounded, according to Syrian health officials and the Israeli military, in what appeared to be one of the bloodiest cross-border incursions since the fall of the Assad regime last year.
Israeli ground forces carried out the overnight raid in Beit Jinn, a Syrian town near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the ground forces were moving in to detain suspected Islamist militants when they responded to fire from armed gunmen. The Israeli troops were assisted by air support, it added.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, citing the head of the health directorate in the Damascus countryside governorate, said that at least 13 residents were killed and at least two dozen were wounded in the Israeli attack. Two children were among the dead, SANA reported.
Several Israeli reservists were injured, three of them severely, the Israeli army said.
The Israeli raid was the latest in a series of steadily escalating cross-border incursions into southern Syria since Bashar al-Assad, the country’s longtime dictator, was overthrown by Islamist rebels last year.
Since the collapse of the Assad regime, the Israeli military has seized a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and territory in southwestern Syria. The Israeli military has also launched hundreds of airstrikes on military targets across the country, including on the Syrian capital, Damascus.
In interviews, residents of Beit Jinn described scenes of carnage after they were awakened in the early hours of Friday morning by heavy gunfire and the roar of helicopters. Many were unable to flee amid Israeli bombardment, residents said.
Asala Daher, 36, said her husband was struck by shrapnel when he opened the door during the bombardment. “We were terrified,” she said as she stood beside him at a Damascus hospital on Friday.
The attack underscored how Syria’s new government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, still faces significant security hurdles as it tries to rebuild a nation reeling from a bloody 13-year civil war and decades of authoritarian rule.
Israeli officials have defended the incursions and bombing campaign as an effort to ensure that hostile forces do not entrench themselves along the Israeli border. The Israeli military said the operation on Friday had successfully detained a number of militants belonging to Jamaa Islamiya, a Sunni Islamist political party and armed faction based in Lebanon that fought alongside Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, during Israel’s war against the group last year.
Syrian officials reacted with outrage to the raid.
“What happened in Beit Jinn is a crime in every sense of the word and an assault on our people and safety,” Asaad al-Shaibani, Syria’s foreign minister, said in a statement.
“The persistence of such aggression threatens regional peace and security and demands a firm international response,” he said, adding that the attack had “deliberately targeted innocent civilians.”
Dayana Iwaza contributed reporting.
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8) VIDEO: Trump’s Aid Cuts Are Replacing Fresh Food With Junk
The Trump administration has cut nearly a billion dollars in food aid, creating a scarcity crisis at food banks across the country. We traveled to Georgia to observe how a decades-old emergency food system supported by the U.S.D.A. is being eroded by government spending cuts.
By Bethlehem Feleke, Jeremy Raff, Ben Laffin and Jon Hazell, November 28, 2025
Transcript:
We cut the eggs in half so that it stretches. We used to give out a whole dozen of eggs. Now we cut the dozens in half so they each get a half a dozen. We’re in Georgia, where Jennifer Deal has been operating this food pantry for more than a decade. Now, for the first time, she’s running out of food. You’re welcome. There you go. The amount of people who need it here is up 40 percent compared to last year. —Thank you so much. —Yes, Ma’am. As inflation has gone up, more people in her community say they can’t afford groceries. For example, coffee. In three weeks, it went up seven dollars. The average cost of food in America is 28 percent higher today than it was in 2020 and for Jennifer, that means doing more with less. So this is where we keep our produce. We used to be able to give out a whole pack of lettuce, but now we have to break it down so that we can feed everybody. A few weeks ago, we ran out of food. Despite rising demand, the Trump administration has cut nearly a billion dollars in federal aid for programs that ensure low-income families are fed. Not having enough funding to know that I can feed all the people that need it. I think that’s frustrating and it’s scary. Food pantries where people can pick up food source much of their inventory from larger food banks that act as a wholesaler. The cuts have disrupted that supply chain. For decades, the federal government, through the U.S.D.A., has sent billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of pounds of food to food banks across the country. Private businesses and individuals also donate money and food, and farms sell food banks’ produce at a steep discount, like this box of fresh vegetables. In March, the Trump administration cut funding for a U.S.D.A. program that sent food from farms to low-income Americans, and it also canceled a pandemic-era aid program designed to make sure that food banks had fresh food. In a statement to The New York Times, the U.S.D.A. said the cuts were needed to correct what they described as a Biden-era slush fund. In May, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins defended the cuts in Congress. Our team has sought to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in all U.S.D.A. programs. Soon after, the U.S.D.A. announced more than $300 million in additional food aid spending. But food banks like this one in Atlanta, which sends food directly to pantries across Georgia, say it’s still not enough. We have to be creative and innovative and go out and find other sources of support to offset any changes that might happen at the federal level. At the Atlanta Community Food Bank, demand is up 70 percent from just three years ago. We would prefer it to be the reverse, where resources are going up and demand’s going down. Okay. Just take it and unload it and bring it back right here. Alrighty. All right, sweetheart. Have a happy Thanksgiving. You too. And thank you. Canned foods, things like that, aren’t as many as they used to be, as well as the meat. We used to get, I think, two to three sometimes. And sometimes it’s been down to one to none. Tamara Kuhlman has been unable to work since being diagnosed with cancer and Parkinson’s disease. She’s depended on this pantry to feed her family for the past few years. We rely on this. If we miss it, we wouldn’t eat. —Thank you so much. —You’re welcome. It hurts a little bit not to be able to give her fresh produce, fresh fruit, things that’s gonna help her heal in her journey. So we used to give out onions and apples and things like that, but now we’ve reverted to the junk food. Chips, candy, things that’s not, you know, a hundred percent nutritional. It’s not good for them, but it’s kind of this or starve. We need relief somewhere. We need something to give. We need to know that it’s gonna get better. And right now it doesn’t look — it looks like it’s getting worse. It’s just bleak. More cuts are coming next year. More than two million Americans are set to lose access to food stamps under the president’s new domestic policy agenda. The largest tax cut in American history, the largest spending cut, 1.7 trillion dollars. Meanwhile, Jennifer is bracing to feed even more hungry neighbors, many of whom she says voted for President Trump. A lot of people went by what Trump said. Now people want to change their mind and it’s too late. You know, we have to suffer the consequences. More people are going to depend on us, but we don’t have anyone to depend on to get the food from or to get the funding from.
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9) Trump Announces Pardon for Honduran Ex-President Convicted in Drug Case
Juan Orlando Hernández was accused of receiving millions in bribes and partnering with cocaine traffickers. He was convicted in Manhattan in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
By Annie Correal, Jeff Ernst, Shawn McCreesh and David C. Adams, Published Nov. 28, 2025, Updated Nov. 29, 2025
Annie Correal reported from Mexico City, Jeff Ernst from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Shawn McCreesh from Palm Beach, Fla., and David C. Adams from Miami.
Juan Orlando Hernández, then the president of Honduras, speaking at the United Nations in 2019. President Trump announced Friday he would pardon him. Credit...Brittainy Newman/The New York Times
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.
The prosecution stretched across Mr. Trump’s first term and concluded during Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s time as president. In the end, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Federal District Court in Manhattan, capping what prosecutors had presented as a sprawling conspiracy.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, where Mr. Hernández was tried, declined to comment. A Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who worked on the investigation into Mr. Hernández and spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, called the pardon “lunacy.”
Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the same agency, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.
“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil said on Friday.
Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. That campaign has so far killed more than 80 people since it began in September.
The president has also put intense pressure on Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, deploying troops and warships to the region. Mr. Trump has accused him of being the boss of a drug organization called Cartel de los Soles, though specialists in Latin American criminal and narcotics issues say it is not a literal organization. Mr. Trump has also authorized covert C.I.A. action in Venezuela. The end goal, American officials say privately, is to drive Mr. Maduro from power.
The pardon announcement came in a social media post on Friday evening by Mr. Trump. “CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” he wrote, minutes after he returned to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he is spending the holiday weekend and took time out to visit his nearby golf club. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Mr. Hernández’s lawyer, Renato Stabile, said that he had not known about the pardon until his client’s wife called him on Friday afternoon, in tears, and read Mr. Trump’s social media message. Mr. Hernández was supposed to have his appeal heard the week of Dec. 8.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump has also weighed in on Honduras’s upcoming election, set for Sunday. He has endorsed a candidate, a former mayor named Nasry “Tito” Asfura from the conservative National Party, the same one that Mr. Hernández belongs to. Mr. Asfura had spent much of a highly contested race courting leaders in Washington, including members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle.
This week, Mr. Trump wrote: “Tito and I can work together to fight the Narcocommunists, and bring needed aid to the people of Honduras.” Mr. Asfura did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Hernández, a major figure in Honduras’s National Party, served as president from 2014 to 2022. When he won, he was seen as a willing, albeit flawed, ally by the United States. But his first term was plagued by corruption scandals that led to widespread protests.
His tenure was also defined by the contentious election of 2017, when he secured a second term despite a constitutional ban on re-election. Widespread accusations of fraud set off demonstrations and post-electoral violence involving the military, and nearly two dozen people were killed.
During his second term, Mr. Hernández’s rumored connections to drug traffickers escalated after his brother, a former lawmaker, was arrested on drug-trafficking charges in 2018 while visiting the United States. A lead investigator in that case was Emil Bove, then a prosecutor for the Southern District of New York and later one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers.
Less than a month after leaving office, in 2022, Mr. Hernández was arrested and later extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking and weapons charges. During the trial, prosecutors asserted that Mr. Hernández had received millions in bribes from drug traffickers, including $1 million from Mr. Guzmán, the former Sinaloa cartel leader who is imprisoned in the United States.
Mr. Hernández denied that he had trafficked narcotics, offered police protection to drug cartels or taken bribes. But in the end, he was convicted in March 2024 of the drug charges and of possessing and conspiring to possess “destructive devices,” including machine guns.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said at the time, “As president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world, and the people of Honduras and the United States bore the consequences.”
Since Mr. Trump took office this year, Mr. Hernández’s family has attempted to portray his conviction as political persecution by the Biden administration. But the investigation into his ties with drug traffickers took place primarily during Mr. Trump’s first term.
His cause was taken up by figures like Roger Stone, the conservative political operative and Trump ally. Mr. Stone claimed that Mr. Hernández had been “trapped” and was a victim of a conspiracy tied to the U.S. government.
Honduras is now governed by a left-wing party, Libre, which was formed by another former president, Manuel Zelaya, after he was ousted in a coup in 2009. His wife, Xiomara Castro, is the current president. The Zelaya-Castro family has itself faced allegations of drug-trafficking ties and was painted by the opposition in this year’s election as pro-Venezuela. Mr. Trump, in one of his recent posts, called the family “the Communists.”
As word spread on Friday about Mr. Hernández’s pardon, Todd Robinson, who served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs at the State Department, said online: “We blow up ‘alleged’ drug boats in the Caribbean but pardon actually convicted drug traffickers in the U.S. Someone help me make sense of this.”
Mr. Zelaya, the progressive former Honduran president, wrote on social media, “@POTUS, by absolving JOH, protects the looter of the state and now orders people to vote for Asfura: the direct heir of the narco-regime.”
On Friday, Mr. Asfura posted an image of himself, Mr. Trump and Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, on social media.
Opponents of Mr. Asfura in the upcoming election denounced the pardon, with Libre’s candidate, Rixi Moncada, linking it to the string-pulling of Honduran “elites” in Washington. Another top candidate, Salvador Nasralla, proclaimed in a post that, unlike his rivals, he had “clean hands.”
Many in Honduras wondered how Mr. Trump’s pardon would affect the elections this weekend.
“It will, obviously, stir up the same powerful negative sentiment seen in the 2021 elections that pushed Juan Orlando out of power,” said Leonardo Pineda, a Honduran analyst.
He added that, by linking Mr. Asfura to Mr. Hernández, Mr. Trump could actually hurt Mr. Asfura’s chances of winning.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
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10) Trump Declares Venezuelan Airspace Closed
President Trump said days earlier that the United States could “very soon” expand its campaign of killing people at sea suspected of drug trafficking to attacking Venezuelan territory.
By Helene Cooper and Julian E. Barnes, Reporting from Washington, Nov. 29, 2025
President Trump spoke with Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader, last week, according to two people with knowledge of the discussion. Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
President Trump warned airlines and pilots on Saturday that the airspace near Venezuela was closed, ratcheting up what his administration has characterized as a war against drug cartels.
In a post on social media “to all airlines, pilots, drug dealers and human traffickers,” the president wrote that the airspace “above and surrounding Venezuela” should be considered “closed in its entirety.”
Mr. Trump did not go into further detail in his post, but it came after he warned on Thursday night that the United States could “very soon” expand its killings of suspected drug traffickers in the waters off Venezuela to attacks on its territory.
As president of the United States, Mr. Trump has no authority over Venezuelan airspace. But his social media post could deter airlines from flying into and out of Venezuela and is bound to cause havoc with air travelers, further disrupting Venezuelan commerce and economic traffic.
The United States has built up a substantial military presence in the Caribbean aimed at Venezuela. Administration officials have said their goal is to deter drug smuggling but have also made clear that they want to see Mr. Maduro removed from power, possibly by force.
On Friday, The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump had spoken by phone last week with Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, and discussed a possible meeting between them, even as the United States continued to threaten military action against Venezuela.
The conversation took place late in the week, two people with knowledge of the discussion said. It included a discussion about a possible meeting in the United States between the two men, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. There are no plans at the moment for such a meeting, one of the people said.
People briefed on the Trump administration’s Venezuelan strike deliberations have said that the initial targets could be drug-related facilities, including production or storage facilities used by Colombian cartels that ship cocaine through Venezuela. American spy agencies have given the military intelligence about the location of such facilities in both Venezuela and Colombia.
But U.S. military officials have developed a range of target options for Mr. Trump, including Venezuelan military units that profit from the drug trade or support Mr. Maduro.
Other options have included oil-related facilities. Those strikes could be justified as part of a counterdrug initiative, though they would likely be an attempt to weaken Mr. Maduro’s hold on power by cutting off access to his funding and dramatically ramping up the pressure on him.
Mr. Trump has consistently talked about Venezuela as a source of drugs and illegal immigration into the United States.
But in reality, Venezuela plays only a small part in the drug trade in America. Cocaine produced in Colombia does pass through Venezuela, but most of it goes to Europe. Colombian cocaine that is headed to the United States is exported through the Pacific Ocean. And U.S. agencies have determined that fentanyl is produced almost entirely in Mexico, not in Venezuela, with chemicals imported from China.
The immigration story is more complicated. Large numbers of Venezuelans have come to the United States. But many have fled Mr. Maduro’s authoritarian government. While the Trump administration has accused a Venezuelan prison gang of fueling violence, it has ignored assessments saying that Mr. Maduro does not control the group, Tren de Aragua, and instead has tried to manipulate the intelligence.
The phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maduro last week, which included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came days before a State Department designation of Mr. Maduro as the leader of what the administration considers a foreign terrorist organization, the Cartel de los Soles, went into effect.
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11) I’m a Concert Pianist. This Is Why I Seek Imperfection.
By Jonathan Biss, Nov. 29, 2025
Mr. Biss is a concert pianist.
Rory Doyle for The New York Times
“As a performer, one has a mission, like Coltrane, to take your solo out to talk to God.”
That’s from Patti Smith, a great and uncategorizable artist, describing the saxophonist John Coltrane’s influence on her. In my head, I hear it in Ms. Smith’s South Jersey twang, the delivery blasé and slightly weary. To her, it is a self-evident statement.
Classical musicians are not trained to talk to God. We are trained not to make mistakes.
There are many reasons for this. Few of today’s classical music performers have written music; ideally we strive to be creative in our interpretive work, but primary creation is a thing we’ve only studied, not experienced. That can lead to paralysis. If you don’t understand how something is made, you fear you might deface it merely by engaging with it.
The problem is made worse by the vast recorded history that precedes us. Marketers like to use the word “definitive” to describe venerated recordings, turning them into part of the canon, as much as the pieces themselves are canonical. For young musicians, it is tempting to sidestep the complicated work of discovering and internalizing these works, blood and guts and all. It’s simpler to declare a specific performance sacrosanct and aim to reproduce it.
Playing an instrument well is phenomenally difficult. It takes a lifetime of arduous work and can become all-consuming, making it easy to forget that technical mastery is a means to an expressive end, not the goal. Mastery is a prerequisite if one is to communicate the essence of a piece of music. In and of itself, it is uninteresting.
This fetishization of perfection might not be surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. You cannot learn or grow while trying to appear as if you have everything figured out. You cannot talk to God by trying to avoid doing something wrong. Perfection is stagnation.
It is not only musicians who are stunted by the search for perfection. The need to be, or seem to be, perfect is harming many aspects of our lives and sectors of our society.
Take education. The debate over grade inflation usually centers on whether today’s students are working hard and performing well enough. More worrying to me is the notion that a G.P.A. of less than 4.0 represents a failure — that the purpose of an education is to accumulate credentials, rather than to learn. The realization that there is more to know about a particular subject should inspire excitement and curiosity; instead, for the performer or student who wants to seem invulnerable, it might inspire shame.
Social media might well be ground zero for this phenomenon. The obsessively curated and controlled Instagram profile has become so ubiquitous that it has birthed a new profession: the influencer. Like just about any societal development, this has some upside. Some voices social media have elevated are genuinely interesting and would have struggled to make themselves heard in an earlier era.
More often, they peddle a lifestyle without the messiness of life. We see idealized homes, idealized bodies, idealized dinners on idealized tableware. What we do not see is the struggle that forms the core of the human experience, that forces us to think in new ways and encourages us to forge connections with people who might see the world in ways we so far have not.
Predictably, this attitude has affected our politics as well. In a culture in which erring is unforgivable, inaction is incentivized. Our society faces serious, complex problems that cause real suffering and that pose serious threats. Finding solutions to those problems will involve imagination and courage, qualities that flourish only when we embrace uncertainty and acknowledge all that we do not, and perhaps cannot, know.
True perfection is an illusion, just as true safety is an illusion. Seeking perfection keeps us from exploring, even when we sense that we would be happier and more fulfilled if we did so. It makes us live smaller lives and stymies our creativity, both as individuals and as a society. It is the enemy of art.
I am a musician, so it is in the musical arena that this phenomenon disturbs me most. The point of a concert is for performer and audience to share something genuine and unrepeatable. A great performance is one in which the player has absorbed the music so deeply that their choices seem not like choices, but inevitabilities. This inevitability can and should change from performance to performance. The preparatory work should be freeing, not constricting, revealing and making accessible the music’s limitless possibilities.
The player should discover the work anew in each performance, and make the listener feel the full wonderment of that discovery. I have been to many such concerts. Each has included wrong notes, or other events that the performer might rue the next day; each has been exhilarating, consciousness-altering. I have been to many more concerts where I felt that the player’s primary goal was to avoid mishaps, to play the piece exactly the way it went in the practice room the day before. I remember little to nothing.
You can hear the virtues of imperfection in a live recording of Alfred Cortot playing Chopin’s Preludes, Op. 28. Four measures into the first prelude, his fingers have already landed on several wrong keys. The performance is riveting not despite the wrong notes but because he was willing to risk them. Lose that element of risk, and you also lose the urgency and inexorability of Cortot’s performance, which gives us access to Chopin’s strange and turbulent world.
Recently, midway through a chamber music tour, I played a concert in which I felt absolutely connected to the music. This is not an everyday occurrence: Usually, a chirping cellphone or my overactive brain interferes, if only for a moment. That evening, though, something magical happened. I felt that I had found the essence of the pieces I was playing, that they and I were in total alignment, even if the performance was far from perfect. Afterward, I floated on air.
I awoke the next day with a knot in my stomach. A lifetime in classical music had conditioned me to clamp down, to aim to reproduce everything that had gone so well the night before. I suspected this was impossible. The concert was no longer a source of joy; it was a noose around my neck.
Then the colleague I had played with texted me: “Last night was special. We have to find the truth of tomorrow.”
The concert the following day was once again, by any measure, quite imperfect. We erred often but we sought the truth and, at times, we found it. Maybe we talked to God.
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12) Several Arrested as Protesters Block Federal Agents in Manhattan Garage
The confrontation appeared to foil a possible ICE raid nearby, underscoring the numerous challenges the federal government faces in trying to stage raids in a dense city like New York.
By Maia Coleman, Wesley Parnell and Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Nov. 29, 2025
The scene of the protest was just blocks from where a large-scale immigration raid took place last month. Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Several protesters were arrested on Saturday amid scuffles with police officers outside the entrance of a parking garage in Lower Manhattan where dozens of federal agents had appeared to be gathering for an immigration raid nearby, according to the police and witnesses.
The confrontation, which appeared to foil the raid, underscored the numerous challenges the federal government faces in trying to stage raids in a dense city like New York, where pushback from protesters in a largely liberal city appears inevitable.
The standoff began just after 11 a.m., when a handful of protesters gathered outside a garage on the edge of Chinatown, on Centre and Hester Streets, where agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security had been arriving.
As the agents’ vehicles moved to leave, protesters blocked them, forming a barricade at the mouth of the garage with their bodies and piling mounds of garbage bags beside them. The standoff continued for the better part of an hour as more and more protesters arrived.
By the early afternoon, nearly 200 people had gathered on the street outside, chanting and yelling at the agents, who peered out from inside the garage.
Police officers soon arrived on the scene, arresting a handful of protesters and placing metal barricades between the agents and the group outside. But the presence of local law enforcement did little to ease tensions.
Just after 1:15 p.m., the confrontation erupted into chaos when agents burst from the garage in their vehicles and protesters chased them down Canal Street, hurling planters and trash cans after them. At one point, a protester ran in front of one of the moving vehicles and a masked agent sprayed something at protesters from the open windows.
On the street, police officers and protesters continued to clash, shoving each other in the middle of incoming traffic while the vehicles sped away.
The Police Department confirmed that officers had made arrests during the altercation, but did not confirm how many. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request to confirm whether a raid had been planned.
The parking garage, which was part of a government building, is just blocks away from the scene of a large-scale immigration raid in Lower Manhattan last month.
During that raid, more than 50 federal agents swept through the area near Canal Street, arresting nine people, mostly men from West Africa, on a stretch of sidewalk long known as a marketplace for counterfeit goods.
The raid in October, which had been expected to include more than 100 federal agents but was scaled back at the last minute, led passers-by to confront the agents.
A spontaneous crowd of protesters chased many of the agents down Lafayette Street as the agents returned to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency offices at 26 Federal Plaza. The commotion led to the deployment of even more agents in tactical gear, along with an armored vehicle, resulting in a similarly chaotic scene as agents pushed back protesters. The Police Department also got involved to provide crowd-control assistance.
On Saturday, the confrontation took place as New York leaders have been preparing for an escalation in ICE activity after the mayoral election of Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and democratic socialist who has vowed to fight back against President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Trump and Mr. Mamdani held an apparently friendly meeting at the White House earlier this month, seemingly lowering the possibility that Mr. Trump would deploy federal troops to New York, as he has in other cities.
But ICE and other federal agencies have nonetheless carried on with their immigration enforcement operations in the city. They have continued to arrest migrants showing up at the city’s immigration courts and, recently, began to escalate arrests in immigrant-rich neighborhoods, including Corona in Queens and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
Officers arrived in the area shortly before noon on Saturday, responding to reports of a disorderly group on Centre Street, according to the police. There, officers saw a group blocking the street and throwing debris and, after instructing them multiple times to disperse with no success, arrested “multiple individuals,” the police said.
Jessica Tisch, the head of the New York Police Department, vehemently criticized the actions of the federal agents during a phone call on Saturday with Ricky Patel, the special agent in charge of New York’s Homeland Security Investigations office, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. She told him that the raid was “unacceptable” and that such shows of force had put New Yorkers, federal agents and her officers in harm’s way, the person said.
After the tumult on Saturday afternoon, the mood on Canal Street was somber and angry, while some protesters headed home and others lingered, recovering from the effects of an irritant sprayed at them.
Many of them said they were furious not only at the presence of federal agents in their neighborhood but also at the police officers who had helped manage the crowd.
The Police Department is barred by the city’s so-called sanctuary laws from assisting the federal government in conducting immigration arrests. But police officers in New York and other sanctuary cities have been typically called on to provide crowd-control assistance.
“It’s really despicable,” said Christopher Marte, a New York City Council member whose district covers Lower Manhattan and who was at the protest since it began Saturday morning.
“It seems like the N.Y.P.D., specifically the S.R.G., is working to clear the way for ICE agents to go out in our city to do arrests and put people in the process of deportation,” he added, referring to the department’s Strategic Response Group, a unit of several hundred officers often deployed to protests.
Jay W. Walker said he and other protesters had learned about the protest after it spread on messaging platforms.
We’re going to have to “keep improving tactics and we’re going to have to do what communities all over the country have done, which is to stand up,” he said, adding: “This did not end up being a great photo op for ICE. If they were planning on doing something on Canal Street, they did not get that opportunity.”
In the afternoon, the morning’s chaos was still evident on Canal Street, with broken slats of wood, garbage bags and trampled flower bouquets strewed along the street. But the agents were gone, having driven off in the direction of the Holland Tunnel and toward New Jersey.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.
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13) Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends
David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments.
By Cecilia Kang, Tripp Mickle, Ryan Mac, David Yaffe-Bellany and Theodore Schleifer, Nov. 30, 2025
Mark Harris
In July, David Sacks, one of the Trump administration’s top technology officials, beamed as he strode onstage at a neoclassical auditorium just blocks from the White House. He had convened top government officials and Silicon Valley executives for a forum on the booming business of artificial intelligence.
The guest of honor was President Trump, who unveiled an “A.I. Action Plan” that was drafted in part by Mr. Sacks, a longtime venture capitalist. In a nearly hourlong speech, Mr. Trump declared that A.I. was “one of the most important technological revolutions in the history of the world.” Then he picked up his pen and signed executive orders to fast-track the industry.
Almost everyone in the high-powered audience — which included the chief executives of the chipmakers Nvidia and AMD, as well as Mr. Sacks’s tech friends, colleagues and business partners — were poised to profit from Mr. Trump’s directives.
Among the winners was Mr. Sacks himself.
Since January, Mr. Sacks, 53, has occupied one of the most advantageous moonlighting roles in the federal government, influencing policy for Silicon Valley in Washington while simultaneously working in Silicon Valley as an investor. Among his actions as the White House’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar:
Mr. Sacks has offered astonishing White House access to his tech industry compatriots and pushed to eliminate government obstacles facing A.I. companies. That has set up giants like Nvidia to reap an estimate of as much as $200 billion in new sales.
Mr. Sacks has recommended A.I. policies that have sometimes run counter to national security recommendations, alarming some of his White House colleagues and raising questions about his priorities.
Mr. Sacks has positioned himself to personally benefit. He has 708 tech investments, including at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to artificial intelligence that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis of his financial disclosures.
His public filings designate 438 of his tech investments as software or hardware companies, even though the firms promote themselves as A.I. enterprises, offer A.I. services or have A.I. in their names, The Times found.
Mr. Sacks has raised the profile of his weekly podcast, “All-In,” through his government role, and expanded its business.
No event better illustrates Mr. Sacks’s ethical complexities and how his intertwined interests have come together than the July A.I. summit. Mr. Sacks initially planned for the forum to be hosted by “All-In,” which he leads with other tech investors. “All-In” asked potential sponsors to each pay it $1 million for access to a private reception and other events at the summit “bringing together President Donald Trump and leading A.I. innovators,” according to a proposal viewed by The Times.
The plan so worried some officials that Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, intervened to prevent “All-In" from serving as the sole host of the forum, two people with knowledge of the episode said.
Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump and a critic of Silicon Valley billionaires, said Mr. Sacks was a quintessential example of ethical conflicts in an administration where “the tech bros are out of control.”
“They are leading the White House down the road to perdition with this ascendant technocratic oligarchy,” he said.
Mr. Sacks has been allowed to serve in government while working in private industry because he is a “special government employee,” a title the White House typically confers on experts who temporarily advise the government. He is not paid for his work for the administration.
In March, Mr. Sacks received two White House ethics waivers, which said he was selling or had sold most of his crypto and A.I. assets. His remaining investments, the waivers said, were “not so substantial” as to influence his government service.
But Mr. Sacks stands out as a special government employee because of his hundreds of investments in tech companies, which can benefit from policies that he influences. His public ethics filings, which are based on self-reported information, do not disclose the value of those remaining stakes in crypto and A.I.-related companies. They also omit when he sold assets he said he would divest, making it difficult to determine whether his government service has netted him profits.
A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said Mr. Sacks had addressed potential conflicts. His insights were “an invaluable asset for President Trump’s agenda of cementing American technology dominance,” she said.
Jessica Hoffman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Sacks, said that “this conflict of interest narrative is false.” Mr. Sacks has complied with special government employee rules and the Office of Government Ethics determined that he should sell investments in certain types of A.I. companies but not others, she said. His government role has cost him, not benefited him, she added.
At a White House dinner for tech executives in September, Mr. Sacks said he was grateful to work in both technology and government. It was “a great honor to have a foot in each one of these worlds,” he said.
‘David’s House’
Mr. Sacks’s road to the White House began in Silicon Valley.
He arrived in the tech heartland in 1990 as an undergraduate at Stanford University, where he met fellow students including Peter Thiel. Mr. Sacks later joined Mr. Thiel at a start-up that became the electronic payments firm PayPal, alongside Elon Musk.
After eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, the men invested in one another. Mr. Sacks helped fund Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, as well as Palantir, the data analysis firm co-founded by Mr. Thiel. In turn, Mr. Thiel backed Yammer, Mr. Sacks’s business communications start-up that was sold to Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion.
In 2017, Mr. Sacks began Craft Ventures, a firm that has invested in hundreds of start-ups, including some owned by his friends. He also started the “All-In” podcast three years later with friends and fellow investors Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Friedberg.
Mr. Sacks became a major player in Republican politics in 2022, when he donated $1 million to a super PAC supporting the Senate run of JD Vance, a former tech investor who worked for Mr. Thiel.
Last year, Mr. Sacks hosted a $12 million fund-raiser for Mr. Trump at his San Francisco mansion. The dinner made an impression on the presidential candidate.
“I love David’s house,” Mr. Trump said on “All-In” two weeks later. “What a house.”
After the election, Mr. Trump’s team asked Mr. Sacks to join the administration. He said he would, as long as he could continue working at Craft — and got his wish.
“It’s exactly what I requested,” Mr. Sacks said of his dual position in December.
Allying With Nvidia
Mr. Sacks opened the door of the White House to Silicon Valley leaders. Among the most prominent visitors was Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive.
Mr. Sacks and Mr. Huang, who had not met before Mr. Sacks joined the administration, forged a tight bond this spring, said three people familiar with the men, who were not authorized to discuss their interactions.
Both stood to benefit. Mr. Huang, 62, wanted government clearance to sell Nvidia’s highly coveted A.I. chips around the world, despite security concerns that the components could bolster China’s economy and military. Mr. Huang argued that restricting exports of Nvidia’s chips would push Chinese companies to develop more powerful alternatives. And spreading Nvidia’s technology would expand the A.I. industry, aiding the A.I. investments owned by Mr. Sacks and his friends.
In White House meetings, Mr. Sacks echoed Mr. Huang’s ideas that the best way to beat China would be to flood the world with American technology. Mr. Sacks worked to eliminate Biden-era restrictions on Nvidia and other American chip companies’ sales to foreign countries. He also opposed rules that would have made it difficult for foreign companies to buy U.S. chips for international data centers, five people with knowledge of the White House discussions said.
Free of those restrictions, Mr. Sacks flew to the Middle East in May and struck a deal to send 500,000 American A.I. chips — mostly from Nvidia — to the United Arab Emirates. The large number alarmed some White House officials, who feared that China, an ally of the Emirates, would gain access to the technology, these people said.
But the deal was a win for Nvidia. Analysts estimated that it could make as much as $200 billion from the chip sales.
Ms. Hoffman said Mr. Sacks developed his thinking by talking to many people, not just Mr. Huang, and “wants the entire American tech stack to win.” None of his holdings benefited from the Emirates deal, she said.
Mylene Mangalindan, an Nvidia spokeswoman, said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was the company’s primary contact for A.I. chip sales abroad.
Mr. Sacks trumpeted the Emirati deal on “All-In” in May. “I would define winning as the whole world consolidates around the American A.I.” companies, he said.
There was one last obstacle to that goal: removing a U.S. ban on direct chip sales to China.
In the White House, Mr. Sacks promoted the idea that the ban inadvertently helped China by diverting chip sales to Huawei, a Chinese rival to Nvidia, four people familiar with the discussions said.
In July, Mr. Sacks and Mr. Huang took their argument to an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Trump. Before the meeting ended, Mr. Trump cleared Nvidia to sell its chips to China.
The Sacks Portfolio
The White House has praised Mr. Sacks, saying he minimized his financial conflicts of interest.
The ethics waivers that Mr. Sacks received said he and Craft Ventures had sold more than $200 million in crypto positions, including investments in Bitcoin, and were divesting stakes in A.I.-related companies including Meta, Amazon and xAI.
Mr. Sacks had started or completed sales of “over 99 percent” of his “holdings in companies that could potentially raise a conflict of interest concern,” the White House said.
Ms. Huston, the White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Sacks was “recused from participating in any matters that could affect his financial interests until he was able to divest of conflicting interests or until he received a waiver.”
But Mr. Sacks’s waivers provide an incomplete picture of his wealth and do not say when he sold his holdings in Meta, Amazon and other companies.
What is clear is that Mr. Sacks, directly or through Craft, has retained 20 crypto and 449 A.I.-related investments, according to The Times analysis.
Of the A.I.-related investments, 11 were designated in one waiver as “A.I. Interests.” The other 438 were classified as software or hardware makers, even though they promote A.I. offerings or services on their websites. In one example, the waiver categorized Palantir as “software as a service,” while the company’s website says it provides “A.I.-Powered Automation for Every Decision.” Forty-one of the companies have A.I. in their names, such as Resemble.AI and CrewAI.
In one of the waivers, the White House said many of the software companies “do not currently use A.I.-related applications in their core business in any material way,” but added that “many of them are likely to at some point in the future.”
Policies that Mr. Sacks supported at the White House have laid the groundwork for his investments to flourish.
The A.I. Action Plan promoted domestic production of autonomous drones and other A.I. inventions for the Pentagon. Mr. Sacks has stakes in defense tech start-ups such as Anduril, Firestorm Labs and Swarm Aero that make drones and other products, according to his filings. In September, Anduril announced a $159 million contract with the U.S. Army to build a new type of night vision goggles with A.I.
Shannon Prior, an Anduril spokeswoman, said the company had a relationship with the Army before the A.I. Action Plan and that it received the contract because its founder, Palmer Luckey, is “the world’s best virtual reality headset designer.” Ms. Hoffman said it was an “obvious idea” to include the military use of A.I. in the policy plan.
This spring, Mr. Sacks also backed a bill called the GENIUS Act to regulate stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant price of $1. Mr. Sacks promoted the legislation on CNBC and worked to advance it through Congress.
After the bill passed in July, Mr. Sacks called it “historic” and “momentous” on “All-In.” It is poised to significantly expand the stablecoin business.
One of Craft’s crypto investments is BitGo, a company that works with issuers of stablecoins. BitGo celebrated the GENIUS Act on its website and promptly capitalized, declaring that its service “fit perfectly” with the new guidelines. “The wait is over,” the site said.
In September, BitGo filed for an initial public offering. Craft owns 7.8 percent of the company, according to financial filings, which would be worth more than $130 million at BitGo’s 2023 valuation.
BitGo declined to comment. Ms. Hoffman said the GENIUS Act’s passage “contained no specific benefit for BitGo.”
Since Mr. Sacks joined the White House, A.I. companies have continued to announce new investments from Craft. In July, Vultron, a start-up that develops A.I. software for government contractors, celebrated $22 million in new financing and heralded the contribution of “Craft Ventures, co-founded by White House A.I. adviser David Sacks.”
The funding was secured before Mr. Sacks joined the administration, said Mac Liu, Vultron’s chief executive. “We mentioned David in the announcement because he’s a big name in A.I.,” he said.
Mr. Sacks remains on the board of Glue, a start-up that he helped found that offers an A.I.-assisted chat platform. In October, Glue announced $20 million in new funding, including from Craft.
Mr. Sacks had left corporate boards before joining the Trump administration, but stayed on Glue’s because “it was allowed,” Ms. Hoffman said. The funding was completed last year, she said. Glue did not respond to a request for comment.
Going ‘All-In’
In an “All-In” episode in March, two of the podcasts’ hosts, Mr. Friedberg and Mr. Palihapitiya, stood outside the East Wing.
They had been “running around” the White House, Mr. Palihapitiya said, as the show spliced in photos of them walking through wainscoted rooms and joining Mr. Sacks in the portico dividing the East and West Wings.
The podcasters then interviewed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about economic policy. Days later, they returned with a nearly two-hour interview with Mr. Lutnick. Two months after that, they interviewed the secretaries of agriculture and the interior. In September, “All-In” posted a video of a private Oval Office tour with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Sacks’s government work has boosted the profile of the podcast, which is downloaded 6 million times a month. Its annual conference in Los Angeles generated roughly $21 million in ticket sales this year, up from $15 million last year, based on its $7,500 ticket price and public attendance estimates. In June, the podcast introduced a $1,200 “All-In”-branded tequila.
Mr. Sacks has forgone A.I. and crypto-related revenues, such as from sponsorships, but can share in sales from tequila and event tickets, Ms. Hoffman said. Jon Haile, the podcast’s chief executive, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Sacks’s personal business and policy work came together at the July A.I. event in Washington, which he tapped “All-In” to host.
But Ms. Wiles, the White House chief of staff, did not want the administration to appear to endorse the “All-In” brand, two people with knowledge of the summit said. They said she called for the addition of a co-host. Mr. Sacks went to the organizers of the Hill and Valley Forum, an annual conference for tech and government officials, Ms. Hoffman said.
Visa and the New York Stock Exchange sponsored the A.I. summit. The organizers declined to disclose what the companies paid. Ms. Hoffman said “All-In” lost money hosting the event, and that “no V.I.P. reception occurred.” The New York Stock Exchange declined to comment, and Visa did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Sacks opened the event by describing his White House experience as “incredible” and hailing the administration’s work on A.I. and crypto. Then he handed off hosting duties to his “All-In” partners, who interviewed Mr. Huang of Nvidia and White House officials onstage.
In the keynote speech, Mr. Trump described Mr. Sacks as “great” before signing executive orders to speed the building of data centers and exports of A.I systems.
Then he handed Mr. Sacks the presidential pen.
David McCabe contributed reporting. Teresa Mondría Terol and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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14) ‘The New Price of Eggs.’ The Political Shocks of Data Centers and Electric Bills
Democrats zeroed in on utilities and affordability to win Republican support in upset elections in Georgia and Virginia. Can the same playbook work in 2026?
By David W. Chen, Nov. 30, 2025
David W. Chen talked to voters and Republican and Democratic activists in Hogansville, LaGrange and Valdosta, Ga., to unpack the recent elections for the Georgia Public Service Commission.
As loyal Republicans, Reece Payton said that he and his family of cattle ranchers in Hogansville, Ga., had one thing on their minds when they cast their ballots in November for the state’s utility board — “to make a statement.”
They were already irked by their escalating electric bills, not to mention an extra $50 a month levied by their local utility to cover a new nuclear power plant more than 200 miles away. But after they heard a data center might be built next to their Logos Ranch, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, they had enough of Republicans who seemed far too receptive to the interests of the booming artificial intelligence industry.
“That’s the first time I ever voted Democrat,” Mr. Payton, 58, said.
Message sent.
In some of Georgia’s reddest and most rural counties, Republicans crossed party lines this month and helped propel two Democrats, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson, to landslide upsets, ousting the incumbent candidates on the Georgia Public Service Commission. No Democrat has served on the five-person commission, which regulates utilities and helps set climate and energy policy, since 2007.
Across the country, Democrats have seized on rising anxiety over electricity costs and data centers in what could be a template for the 2026 midterm elections.
In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger pledged during her campaign to lower energy bills and make data centers pay more. In the House of Delegates, one Democratic challenger unseated a Republican incumbent by focusing on curbing the proliferation of data centers in Loudoun County and the exurbs of the nation’s capital.
In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill promised to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rates. And in Memphis, State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who is challenging Representative Steve Cohen in a high-profile Democratic primary next year, has vowed to fight a supercomputer by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, that would be located in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Strong opposition by citizens forced the Tucson City Council in August to pull the plug on an Amazon data center slated for that Arizona city, and then in September forced Google to call off one in Indianapolis.
“Electricity is the new price of eggs,” said Charles Hua, executive director of Powerlines, a nonpartisan organization which aims to modernize utility regulations and reduce power bills. “This is a defining moment for politicians of all stripes — what’s your answer to lowering utility bills? Because I think consumers and voters are looking for leadership on this.”
After meeting recently with Virginia legislators, Mr. Hua said he was struck by how “the nexus of data centers and utility bills actually came up very consistently.”
In 2022, a spike in natural gas prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine fueled a rise in energy costs around the U.S. Utilities have also undertaken costly projects to modernize the power grid and improve the infrastructure to guard against extreme weather and absorb an anticipated surge in demand from data centers.
As the price of electricity has risen, more American customers have fallen behind on their utility bills, or have had their power cut off.
Georgia ranks 35th in energy affordability, in part because of cost overruns and delays associated with its new Plant Vogtle nuclear generators in Waynesboro, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, an influential conservative policy group.
So it wasn’t a surprise when Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — candidates in the Republican primary to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp — called November’s results a referendum on affordability. “You’re a fool if you don’t recognize that,” Mr. Carr said.
Some Georgia Republicans have cautioned against reading too much into the 25-percentage-point losses suffered by the utility board incumbents, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson.
This year’s elections stemmed from a 2020 federal lawsuit, which contended that the statewide elections for commission seats, which represent geographic districts, were unfair to Black voters. An appeals court eventually ruled against the plaintiffs, but the legal battle delayed the elections — setting the stage for November’s two races, the only statewide ones this year. (Two more utility seats will be contested in 2026.)
Democratic turnout was also boosted, Republicans said, by municipal elections in strongholds like Atlanta.
“I think it’s a complete anomaly,” State Senator Greg Dolezal said at a Republican event in Valdosta to tout his candidacy for lieutenant governor next year. Noting the comfortable margins racked up by President Trump in 2024 and Mr. Kemp in 2022, he added, “There’s no planet on which a 65-35 split is representative.”
One plaintiff in the lawsuit was Brionté McCorkle, executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters. She said the lawsuit enabled advocacy groups to develop a plan to help people “connect the dots” between the bills they were receiving and the commission’s role in approving six rate increases for Georgia Power, the state’s largest electric provider, over the last two years.
The group’s political action fund spent $2.3 million, sending half a million texts, plastering 92 billboards across the state and producing an anti-incumbent website.
That outreach made a difference, she said, pointing to Lowndes and Brooks counties on the Florida border. In previous races for federal and state offices going back to 2018, including the public service commission, Republicans won there by 20 points.
This year, Mr. Echols and Mr. Johnson each lost by 20 points.
At a weekly food pantry run by South Street Care House in Valdosta, Ga., where dozens of cars had lined up to receive a box full of fresh fruits, vegetables, breads and other staples, several people said they had heard about the election through texts and social media.
Barbara Lehman, 66, is typically a reliable Republican, but not this time, according to her daughter Angela and granddaughter Shelby, who were among those waiting for food.
“If the power companies want to expand their business, then that should be on them, not the consumer,” Ms. Lehman said in a text message. “Some people are just barely making it as it is.”
At the event attended by Mr. Dolezal and two other candidates for statewide offices, Gary McMillan, a former chair of the Lowndes County Republican Party, said that he, too, knew Republicans who bucked the party.
“They said my electric bills keep going up, and Republicans control the public service commission, and I’ve got a problem with that,” Mr. McMillan recounted. “I told all of them, elect a Democrat, and your bills will go up some more.”
Data centers have been a prominent issue in Atlanta’s rural exurbs. Mr. Trump wants to accelerate their growth in the battle for A.I. supremacy. At least 26 are under construction within 60 miles of Atlanta, and another 52 are planned.
But some Georgia Republicans — including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is resigning her seat in January — have questioned the facilities’ use of resources. Some residents say local wells have been damaged, and the cost of municipal water has climbed.
Good Jobs First, a liberal group that tracks tax breaks for corporations, has said the state has done a poor job disclosing subsidies for data centers. The public service commission’s own staff has also warned that monthly residential bills could climb by $20 a month or more (a figure disputed by the utility) if the commission approves Georgia Power’s proposal to add almost 10,000 megawatts of power to accommodate data centers — the equivalent of nine nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.
Only one-third of that proposal should be approved, the staff recommended.
In Troup County on the Alabama border, the victorious Democratic utility candidates whittled 24-point romps enjoyed by the Republican candidates in 2020 and 2018 down to 10, thanks to voters like the Paytons.
The Paytons had never been to a Hogansville City Council meeting before they heard about a proposal to build a data center on 437 acres next to their ranch, and across from their Georgia Untamed Zoo, which houses animals like sloths and capybaras and is popular with school field trips. Now they’ve been to two, and counting.
Mr. Payton and his wife, Tina, stressed that they didn’t mind data centers, as long as they were placed in industrial areas, and the public had input. But in nearby LaGrange, Ga., he noted, residents were blindsided by an $8 billion project now under construction.
So when a Democratic candidate for Congress recently posted on the Troup County Anti-Data Center Coalition’s Facebook page pledging to be “an ally in this fight,” Tina Payton urged her to attend an upcoming Hogansville forum on the issue.
“I blame Trump for what’s happening here, because Trump is pushing the data center,” Mr. Payton said. “Kemp jumped on the bandwagon, and these guys that were in there were doing nothing more than what Kemp was telling them.”
Also attending the council meeting was Chance Williams, 56, who owns an auto repair business a half mile down the road from the Paytons, within earshot of the zoo’s cackling lemurs.
During a tour of the data center’s footprint in his truck, Mr. Williams described himself and his wife Barbara, 58, as common-sense conservatives who treasure rural rhythms.
“I want to hear the crickets when I go to bed, not the hum of a fan up the road,” Ms. Williams said.
When voting for the utility races started on Oct. 14, she automatically chose the Republicans. Then she and her husband learned about the data center.
“We probably voted wrong,” she said.
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15) Netanyahu Asks Israel’s President to Pardon Him in Corruption Cases
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the contentious appeal weeks after President Trump had made the same request to the Israeli president.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Nov. 30, 2025
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speaking in November at the Knesset in Jerusalem. Credit...Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked its president on Sunday to pardon him in his long-running corruption trial, a request that the president called “extraordinary” and that critics said would run counter to the rule of law.
Mr. Netanyahu’s unusual pre-emptive appeal to President Isaac Herzog, while his trial is still underway, came about two weeks after President Trump sent a letter to Mr. Herzog urging him to pardon the Israeli prime minister.
A statement by the Israeli president’s office said the request would have “significant implications,” and that he would “responsibly and sincerely consider” it after seeking expert opinions.
Mr. Netanyahu said he believed that canceling his trial would help heal the divisions in Israeli society. But the immediate effect of the request appeared to amplify the rifts that have intensified over two years of war and his long battle with the judiciary.
Mr. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in connection with three separate, but interlocking cases, and he has been on trial for five years. He has denied any wrongdoing in the cases, which center on accusations that he arranged favors for tycoons in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage for himself and his family.
Soon after his request to the president was made public, Mr. Netanyahu explained his reasoning in a video statement. He said that he would have preferred to prove his innocence in court, but that the national interest demanded otherwise.
Citing Israel’s “security and political reality,” he called the requirement that he appear in court to testify three times a week “an impossible demand,” and he referred to Mr. Trump’s equally extraordinary interventions on his behalf as justification for seeking a pardon.
“President Trump called for an immediate end to the trial so that I may join him in further advancing vital and shared interests of Israel and the United States,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
Israeli legal experts said such a request by a sitting Israeli prime minister was without precedent and subverted the principle of equality before the law, a cornerstone of Israeli democracy.
“The general rule is that the president pardons those who have been convicted,” said Prof. Suzie Navot, an expert in constitutional law and vice president of research at the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.
She said Mr. Netanyahu’s plea included none of the conditions that might have made it more palatable, including some admission of guilt or acceptance of responsibility and a readiness to remove himself from the political system.
Mr. Netanyahu was “trying to bypass all the usual procedures” and was asking Mr. Herzog to do the same, she added.
“For me,” she said, “this is a request for the abuse” of the president’s authority to grant pardons.
The cases against the prime minister have deeply polarized Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu said he believed that ending his trial would help foster national unity at a time when Israel urgently needs it, after two years of war.
But the request for clemency, like the graft trial itself, is more likely to prove divisive ahead of national elections scheduled to be held by late October. By law, Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, may run in the next election as long has he has not been convicted after exhausting an appeals process.
While Mr. Netanyahu’s political allies welcomed the request for a pardon and urged Mr. Herzog to grant it, his opponents recoiled from the idea of the trial being canceled without Mr. Netanyahu expressing any remorse or agreeing to quit public life.
Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of the parliamentary opposition, appealed to Mr. Herzog in a video statement.
“You cannot grant Netanyahu a pardon without an admission of guilt, an expression of remorse and an immediate withdrawal from political life,” he said.
Another political opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief, addressed the prime minister in a statement, saying: “Netanyahu, Israel is a state governed by the rule of law. There cannot be one legal system for ordinary citizens and another for you.”
Mr. Trump first raised the issue of a pardon publicly when he spoke in the Israeli Knesset, or Parliament, during a visit in October. He made the suggestion directly to Mr. Herzog, who was standing alongside him on the podium.
Like the American president, Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative, has long asserted that his legal troubles are the result of political persecution and the work of a liberal “deep state” that is trying to oust him by judicial means after failing to do so at the ballot box.
The country’s defense minister, Israel Katz, expressed support for the pardon request in a statement, calling on Mr. Herzog to “bring an end to the legal charges that were born in sin.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s current governing coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history, has further divided Israelis by leading an effort to overhaul the judiciary to curb the authorities of the courts and give more power to elected lawmakers.
His government is pushing ahead with more highly unpopular legislation. That includes a bill that would formalize exemptions from military service for many members of the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox community, leading some Israelis to view the pardon request as an attempt to divert attention.
Benny Gantz, another political rival and former military chief, described the pardon request as a “complete fake,” saying it was “designed to distract the public’s attention from the draft exemption law.”
Mr. Herzog’s office said the request would be sent to the authorities at the Ministry of Justice for their expert opinions, which would then be considered by the presidential legal team.
A former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, requested a pardon in 2017 from the previous president, Reuven Rivlin, but only after he had already been convicted and jailed for corruption. Mr. Olmert’s request was refused, though a parole board ultimately reduced his 27-month prison term by a third.
Mr. Olmert had resigned from office while he was under investigation, before being charged.
“A pardon in the middle of a legal process constitutes a fatal blow to the rule of law and the principle of equality before the law — the lifeblood of Israeli democracy,” Eliad Shraga, chairman of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an advocacy group critical of Mr. Netanyahu’s government, said in a statement on Sunday.
Granting such a pardon, it said, “would send a clear message that there are citizens who are above the law.”
Lia Lapidot and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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