Help World-Outlook Win New Subscribers
(the subscription is free of charge)
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) 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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2) 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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3) 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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4) 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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5) ‘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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6) 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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7) College Student Is Deported During Trip Home for Thanksgiving
Any Lucia López Belloza, 19, was detained by immigration agents at the Boston airport before a flight to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving. She is now in Honduras.
By Amanda Holpuch and Annie Correal, Published Nov. 30, 2025, Updated Dec. 1, 2025
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza celebrating her high school graduation in Texas. Credit...Todd Pomerleau
A 19-year-old college student was about to board a flight to surprise her family for Thanksgiving when she was detained at Boston Logan International Airport and deported to Honduras two days later, her father and lawyer said on Sunday.
The student, Any Lucía López Belloza, was brought by her parents from Honduras to the United States when she was 7. Her father, Francis López, said in a telephone interview on Sunday that neither Ms. López nor her parents knew there was an order for her deportation.
“When they arrested Any, that’s when they told her,” said Mr. López, a tailor.
He said his employer had arranged and paid for his daughter’s travel to Austin, Texas, to surprise him at work.
Ms. López’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, described an opaque process for obtaining information about her case, including the grounds for her deportation.
He said she had been deported in violation of a court order that a federal judge signed on Nov. 21 that said Ms. López could not be removed from the United States while her case was pending.
Ms. López, a freshman studying business at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., was about to board a Southwest Airlines flight to Texas early on Nov. 20.
She was told there was a problem with her ticket, so she went to customer service and was surrounded by immigration agents, Mr. Pomerleau said.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in an emailed statement that an immigration judge had ordered Ms. López to be deported in 2015, when she was a child. “She received full due process and was removed to Honduras,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
Mr. Pomerleau said he checked her information in the Executive Office for Immigration Review database and could not find any record of her original deportation order.
“So I’m not convinced she has a removal order, and if she did have one, she should have been notified of it, because she’s completely unaware of this situation,” he said.
On Nov. 22, after she spent a night detained in Texas, she was put on a bus with shackles on her wrists, waist and ankles before being put on a flight to Honduras, Mr. Pomerleau said.
Ms. López, who is staying with her grandparents in Honduras, asked that her father speak on her behalf, her father said. He said she had found it upsetting to recount the details of her removal, in particular being detained and shackled.
He said his daughter told him she had not signed any paperwork authorizing her removal from the United States, as some people do to avoid lengthy detentions.
Ms. López lived in Texas with her parents and two younger siblings, who are 2 and 5, before going to college.
The family emigrated nearly 12 years ago because of the rampant crime and insecurity in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Mr. López and his wife feared for their daughter as the news was filled every week “with deaths and murders,” he said. “That’s the reason we left.” The family had applied for asylum, he said, but it was denied, and they were never told they had to appeal to avoid a deportation order.
Mr. López described his daughter as organized and studious.
“She had that responsibility — of being the first to graduate from college and being an example to others,” said Mr. López, who had sewn her business suits for interviews and internships.
Now, he said, his daughter was reeling being back in the country she left behind so long ago. “She’s trying to assimilate to her new reality,” he said.
Ms. López told The Globe she was worried about how she would continue her education.
“I have worked so hard to be able to be at Babson my first semester, that was my dream,” she said. “I’m losing everything.”
A spokeswoman for Babson College did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
At the time the López family left Honduras, migration from Central America was growing as people, particularly in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, fled violence, crime and economic stagnation.
In recent years, migration from Honduras surged, with thousands joining migrant caravans and camping at the U.S.-Mexico border.
President Trump made stopping immigration and expelling migrants a central message of his campaigns, even more so in his push for a second term.
In recent days, he again turned his attention to Honduras, endorsing a right-wing candidate in this weekend’s election and seeking to pardon a former president whom many experts blame for spurring mass migration from his country to the United States.
The president in office, Xiomara Castro, has spent the end of her term trying to balance her obligation to undocumented migrants in the United States — of which there are estimated to be more than half a million — with a need to cooperate with the Trump administration, which has come down hard on leaders who do not back its agenda.
By Nov. 20, nearly 30,000 Hondurans had been deported this year, about 13,000 more than in the same period last year, according to Honduran government data.
Honduran officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case of Ms. López.
Her father said he felt it was important to share his family’s ordeal at a time when so many are facing deportation amid Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“I’ve decided to speak because it’s a reality we are facing right now,” he said.
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8) The Transgender Cancer Patient and What She Heard on Tape
Jennifer Capasso had endured multiple tumors. She wondered what might be said during her next cancer surgery. So, she hit record on her phone.
By Joseph Goldstein, Dec. 1, 2025
Jennifer Capasso was about to undergo another cancer operation. It frustrated her that she was unconscious as the surgeon removed each tumor. Sarah Blesener for The New York Times
Jennifer Capasso, a 42-year-old transgender woman, figured there was a good chance she would be dead within 18 months. Since her diagnosis of metastatic rectal cancer, her life had become a succession of treatments and surgeries as more tumors were found. On her liver, and her lungs, and her large intestine, and again on her lungs.
At her apartment in Long Island City, Queens, she read cancer research papers and estimated her chances of survival, updating the odds after each scan, each tumor, each treatment. She tried to remember exactly what her doctors had said, and the tone they had used.
It frustrated her that she was unconscious at the most crucial moments — as the surgeon removed each cancerous mass. What if the surgeon said something important, a stray comment that no one bothered to tell her about after the anesthesia wore off? She decided to record her next surgery, on March 7, 2022, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the renowned Manhattan hospital.
“I wanted to know what’s going on,” she recounted. She turned on the audio recorder on her phone before the anesthesia hit. “Knowledge is power.”
The surgeon removed part of her lung. She did not get around to playing the recording until a few weeks later. Though the audio was muffled, she could follow some of what the surgical team was saying before the procedure began. Someone was going out for coffee — did anyone want something from Starbucks? The conversation then shifted.
“ — still has man parts.”
It seemed to Ms. Capasso that they were talking about her genitalia.
On the recording, the health care workers express a variety of opinions about transgender identity more generally. “Not that it’s not right, but — ” one person can be heard saying. “I don’t get any of it,” another says.
And in the middle of the conversation, one person suggests updating Ms. Capasso’s medical file. “Yeah, it needs to say ‘male,’” the person says.
Ms. Capasso said it appeared that hospital staff had in fact changed her electronic medical records, all while she was unconscious.
With her records now marked “M” for “male,” some hospital staff members called her “sir” during weekly appointments for blood draws. Others made a big deal about her being transgender. One person, perhaps taunting her, perhaps trying to be supportive, said things like “Yes, queen” — also unwelcome, Ms. Capasso said.
Ms. Capasso said that when she asked hospital administrators to switch the “male” designation back to “female,” she received a surprising answer: It couldn’t be done, not anytime soon. She recounted the interaction in court papers, part of a lawsuit she filed in March in State Supreme Court in Manhattan accusing the hospital of discrimination. Ms. Capasso’s lawyers shared the surgery recording with The New York Times.
The hospital, in its own court filings, has denied discriminating against Ms. Capasso and suggested that Ms. Capasso’s “secret” recording invaded the privacy of its health care workers. The hospital denies changing Ms. Capasso’s sex designation in medical records and “denies that plaintiff has been misgendered and misidentified in all of her records since 2022.” In response to questions from The Times about Ms. Capasso’s lawsuit, Memorial Sloan Kettering said in a statement that it “does not comment on ongoing litigation.”
Ms. Capasso said that long before she made the recording, she had experienced discriminatory treatment at the hospital.
The year before, during an endoscope exam of her rectum and colon, the colorectal surgeon kept referring to Ms. Capasso as “he” when mentioning her to other medical workers, Ms. Capasso said in an interview.
It was, she said, among the worst interactions she had experienced as a trans woman in years, resurrecting old anxieties.
Two Medical Journeys
Ms. Capasso began her gender transition in 2015, in her mid-30s. She formed a tight circle of friends, and was dating. Life made more sense to her.
And then, in 2019, she was diagnosed with cancer.
Over the years that followed, Ms. Capasso was on two medical journeys: one, at Memorial Sloan Kettering, to keep death at bay; the other, with a plastic surgeon’s help, to look more feminine. Starting in 2021, she underwent a half-dozen procedures to feminize her face.
Her brow ridge was sanded down. Her orbital bone was shaved to give her eyes an upward tilt. Her square chin was softened. There were cheek implants. Changes to her nose, too.
“I needed radical surgical intervention,” she said. And she wanted it fast. The clock was ticking, maybe not for much longer.
“I wasn’t going to die looking like the way I looked, especially getting treated the way I was getting treated,” she said. “Like, not a chance.”
She had decided on an open-casket funeral.
“I was going to be a pretty corpse,” she said.
Even while preparing for death, she found that the feminization procedures gave her more confidence. “I wanted to blend in and be able to go out in public and just kind of be ignored,” she said.
Ms. Capasso believes that her transition — and her new life as a woman — is what has kept her alive.
But her newfound confidence was fragile.
Whenever she went to Memorial Sloan Kettering, she felt dread, and not only the mortal kind. “I was constantly being reminded, every time I went, that I am different,” she said. “It immediately brought me back to earlier days when I was very visibly trans, and it was rough.”
A Secretive Environment
It is unusual for patients to record their own surgeries, or for such a recording to become key evidence in a lawsuit.
But it is not unheard of.
One man who recorded audio while sedated during a 2013 colonoscopy in Virginia sued over the anesthesiologist’s remarks. The doctor told other medical staff members that she found the patient so annoying that she felt like punching him. She said a rash on the patient’s genitals was probably “penis ebola.” The patient, who was awarded $500,000 by a jury, said he had hit record on his phone because he wanted documentation of what the doctor said. He worried that the sedation would leave him too groggy to remember.
Ms. Capasso insists that she was not trying to catch the medical staff speaking disrespectfully about her. She said she was motivated by curiosity and a desire to know exactly what the surgeons discovered. It may not be such an unusual impulse.
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9) Netanyahu, Seeking Pardon, Borrows From Familiar Playbook
In many ways, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request mimics how President Trump has assailed his perceived enemies and attacked legal proceedings against him.
By David M. Halbfinger, Reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 1, 2025
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request on Sunday for a pardon that would short-circuit his long-running corruption trial was made in the dryly polite terms of a legal brief, not in the provocative language of a social-media post.
In its sheer audacity, however, it seemed ripped from the playbook of another leader who did not let multiple felony charges, or even a conviction, stop him from seeking power: President Trump.
Mr. Netanyahu’s petition to the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, admitted nothing and expressed no contrition. In a one-page letter that he himself signed, he did not use the word “pardon,” instead stiffly requesting an “end of the trial.” It came a little more than two weeks after President Trump sent a letter to Mr. Herzog urging him to pardon Mr. Netanyahu.
Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers, in a 111-page filing, assailed the way he had been investigated, the timing of his indictment and the substance of the charges against him, and insisted that he would be acquitted in the end.
There, too, were many similarities in the filing to tactics favored by Mr. Trump, including demonizing the law enforcement system, portraying Mr. Netanyahu as a victim and appearing to hint at the prospect of retribution.
The lawyers argued that for the good of Israel, its leader should be freed from wasting valuable time defending himself in court. (No matter that Mr. Netanyahu had rejected calls when he was indicted in 2019 that he step down to face trial rather than be distracted from running the country.)
The pardon request immediately hijacked the Israeli political conversation. It had been dominated by criticism of the Netanyahu government’s highly unpopular bill to exempt many members of the ultra-Orthodox community from military service and of his efforts to sidestep a national commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack.
Opposition leaders had been assailing Mr. Netanyahu on those issues, on which polls show that the government is out of step with the public. Now they were forced to pivot to Mr. Netanyahu’s pardon request, arguing that it could not be granted without steep concessions from the prime minister.
Naftali Bennett, who served a year as prime minister in 2021 and is planning a comeback in the next election, supported a pardon as long as it came with Mr. Netanyahu’s “respectful retirement from political life.”
The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, declared that the president could not legally pardon Mr. Netanyahu “without an admission of guilt, an expression of remorse and an immediate retirement from political life.”
Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that Mr. Netanyahu’s request was intended to distract.
“He threw this out there to have us do what we’re doing right now, which is talk about this and not those other issues,” Mr. Hazan said. “He moves the agenda. And there’s no one in Israeli politics that can do it as well as he can.”
There also may be no one in Israeli politics with as much chutzpah.
In a video statement released with his pardon request, Mr. Netanyahu portrayed his gambit to escape trial as a public-minded sacrifice.
“My personal interest was to continue the process to its end, until full acquittal on all charges,” he said. “But the security and political reality, the national interest — these require otherwise.”
Of course, for two years, Mr. Netanyahu said he was too busy prosecuting Israel’s war in Gaza to be bothered defending himself against prosecution on graft and breach of trust charges. By that logic, he should have plenty more bandwidth now to handle his criminal defense.
But his lawyers instead pointed to unspecified “golden opportunities” for Israel in the Middle East. This was presumably an allusion to expanding the Abraham Accords to include normalization with Saudi Arabia, a much-dangled possibility — if only the prime minister were “able to devote all of his time and energy” to capitalizing on them.
The trial began in 2020 and has moved slowly, with the prime minister frequently asking for delays. His lawyers say they expect to call as many as 100 witnesses in his defense, and some estimates now suggest the trial might not conclude until 2028.
Mr. Netanyahu testified on Monday but successfully asked to cancel his scheduled appearance on Tuesday, a court spokesman said. He is next due in court on Wednesday.
In the video on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu warned that going ahead with his trial “tears us apart from within, fuels fierce disputes and deepens rifts.” He suggested that aborting it would “greatly help lower the flames and advance the broad reconciliation our country so urgently needs.”
Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster who worked for Mr. Netanyahu in the 1990s, called the reference to societal rifts laughable.
“He’s the one that caused the divisiveness, and he continues to cause it,” Mr. Barak said.
Still, Professor Hazan saw the move as a brilliant ploy. If Mr. Netanyahu’s petition works, he escapes criminal liability. If it does not, and his trial proceeds, he has a new issue to run on in next year’s election — a supposed witch hunt against him.
“The whole letter is written in a way that allows him to campaign on this if he’s not given a pardon,” Professor Hazan said.
In portraying himself as a victim of an out-of-control law-enforcement system in his pardon request, Mr. Netanyahu again bears more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Trump, who howled over his own victimhood during his criminal and civil trials and made it a central campaign theme in 2024.
The self-praise rings a bell, too: Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers note that they couldn’t possibly recount all that the prime minister has done for Israel over his lifetime. Then, they spend more than 1,300 words doing just that, from his military service as a commando in his 20s, to his economic stewardship and infrastructure investments, to his national-security record in fighting enemies including Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
In fact, in their zeal to make every plausible argument for a pardon, Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers invoked an Israeli law that offered amnesty to some people convicted of nonviolent crimes, in which special consideration was to be given to those who “contributed to the security and resilience of the state,” especially in the two-year war against Hamas. The implication was clear: Mr. Netanyahu himself was one such soldier deserving of forgiveness.
Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s promises to unify the country if pardoned, critics saw an air of menace in his statements on Sunday.
Mr. Netanyahu noted that, if pardoned, he would be free to resume making policy on the judicial system and the media. He was forced to recuse himself from those issues because of his trial on charges that he arranged favors for media tycoons in exchange for gifts and sympathetic news coverage for himself and his family.
That could pave the way for Mr. Netanyahu or his allies to try to exact retribution against those he holds responsible for putting him on trial, some critics suggested.
The parallels with Mr. Trump may end with Mr. Netanyahu’s reliance on Mr. Trump’s backup for his pardon request, said Gayil Talshir, a lecturer in political science at Hebrew University.
Mr. Trump wrote to Mr. Herzog two weeks ago urging that he “fully pardon” Mr. Netanyahu and calling the case against him a “political, unjustified prosecution.”
Mr. Netanyahu cited Mr. Trump’s appeal to Mr. Herzog in his video statement on Sunday.
Ms. Talshir pointed to that Trump letter as a sign of Mr. Netanyahu’s sheepishness — a significant point of departure from the American president.
“This is his main argument: that Trump has put forward the letter which Bibi, of course, asked him to put forward,” she said. “So he leans on Trump to excuse his own behavior.”
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