Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a mem-ber of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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Hands Off Rick Toledo, Pro-Palestine Grad Student at Cal Poly Humboldt! Give Him His Electronics Back!
Don't forget to sign this sign-on letter for Toledo here:
https://stopfbi.org/news/hands-off-rick-toledo-pro-palestine-grad-student-at-cal-poly-humboldt-give-him-his-electronics-back/
Please email any statements of solidarity to:
stopfbi@gmail.com
On the night of March 19, 2026, University Police Department returned with a warrant to the apartment of Rick Toledo, Students for a Democratic Society organizer at Cal Poly Tech Humboldt, and seized his laptop, phone, and other electronics such as a camera. They attempted to force him to give up his passcodes, and he told them no. He did the right thing.
This violation of his privacy comes as part of their effort to charge him with four bogus felonies - false imprisonment, conspiracy, battery, and assault - related to the student protest on Feb 27. This is the latest in their string of acts to suppress any campus free speech for Palestine and divestment from Israel, along with suspending and firing him from his university teaching job.
We should be perfectly clear about it: there is nothing wrong with supporting any student action, including building occupations, that is taken to make demands of a university. Our rights to free speech and freedom of assembly are protected by the First Amendment, enshrined in the constitution. College protest is a long-time tradition, and it continues on today. Toledo committed no crime in supporting the student protest, and the university is determined to create lie after lie in order to demonize him.
In our view, what they really want to do is punish Toledo not for the one-day building occupation last month, but for the 9-day building occupation during the encampment movement in spring of 2024. That display of courage by the students in the name of ending university support for a genocide made it to millions of TV screens, and the state of California and university want someone to pay. Toledo is their target of choice, years later.
We demand that he not be charged of any crime, because he didn't do anything wrong. We demand that his devices be returned ASAP. Activists should learn from his example of not telling the police a single thing, including a passcode. The university and police are the criminals here for trying to scare activists out of speaking out against the university's continued financial support to Israeli apartheid. Now is not the time to suffer in silence; it’s the time to speak out. We need to condemn political repression, stand with Rick Toledo, and defend our rights to speak out for Palestine.
Don’t Charge Rick Toledo!
Give Him His Property Back!
Protesting for Palestine Is Not a Crime!
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
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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 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 auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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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Articles
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1) Israel’s New Death Penalty Law Is a Warning
By Talia Sasson, April 7, 2026
Ms. Sasson is a former senior official in Israel’s State Attorney’s Office and former president of the New Israel Fund. She wrote from Tel Aviv.
The prickly pear cactus, a widely recognized symbol in Palestinian culture, representing steadfastness and the ability to survive prolonged hardship while remaining rooted to the land, even in harsh conditions. Valerio Muscella
The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, last week passed a law allowing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of killings during militant attacks, using language that effectively exempts Jewish perpetrators of nationalistic violence. This legislation is both unconstitutional and discriminatory. Beyond its fundamental immorality, the law is part of a larger, accelerating effort to systematically end once and for all the possibility of a Palestinian state. That effort includes the uncontrolled surge in violence by settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and a strategic restructuring of the West Bank’s administration intended to make it easier for settlers and the state to seize Palestinian land.
An alliance of settlers and far-right politicians is the primary engine behind this radical transformation. While polls show that most Israelis support it, the legislation was pushed through by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ensure the survival of his governing coalition by indulging the vengeance narrative that serves as the cornerstone of the political goals of the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key partner in the coalition.
Its passage comes on the heels of a sharp escalation in near-daily acts of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank over the past year. Settlers have raided Palestinian villages, setting fire to homes and vehicles, harming livestock and uprooting trees. In February and March alone, settlers reportedly killed eight Palestinians.
Settlers continue to establish illegal outposts within Area A — territory that under the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s is designated for full Palestinian civil and security control. According to data from the United Nations, 36,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in the West Bank last year, 3,500 of them forced out directly by settler violence. This trend intensified in the first three months of 2026, with 1,697 Palestinians already displaced.
Historically, Israeli soldiers have been reluctant to enforce the law when Jewish settlers commit crimes, often viewing such actions as an unwanted entanglement in political disputes over the fate of the West Bank. This reluctance has evolved into radicalization among troops since Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right government took office in late 2022 — and that radicalization has sharply accelerated since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In several documented instances, soldiers have even reportedly participated in crimes against Palestinians. Conversely, in some cases where soldiers have attempted to curb settlers’ illegal behavior, they have found themselves the targets of settler attacks.
Last month, a CNN crew arrived in the village of Tayasir in the northern Jordan Valley to report on an attack by settlers and the establishment of an illegal outpost. While documenting the scene, the journalists were assaulted and detained by Israeli soldiers for two hours at gunpoint. During the detention, soldiers were captured on camera echoing settler ideology, defending the outposts and speaking of acting out of revenge. The military labeled the matter a “grave ethical incident” and took the highly unusual step of suspending the operations of the entire battalion, mainly composed of former members of the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda unit. The battalion’s commanders were reprimanded, and one soldier was ejected from the military.
Such isolated disciplinary measures fail to address a systemic, untreated malaise within the military’s ranks and the systemic discrimination against Palestinians that is embedded in law enforcement. The Israel Police rarely conducts thorough investigations into settler violence, and such cases almost never result in indictments. While the Shin Bet, the domestic security service, can issue administrative restraining orders against extremists and carry out administrative detentions of them, Defense Minister Israel Katz has moved to stop the use of such measures against Jewish settlers, although the vast majority of detainees were Palestinian. This policy only serves to embolden Jewish extremist activity in the territories.
While building a governing coalition, Mr. Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich agreed that Mr. Smotrich would take an additional role, within the Defense Ministry, to effectively administer the West Bank. Mr. Smotrich has called for one state under Israeli control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Since taking office, he has focused on expanding settlements, notably through the establishment of dozens of Israeli “agricultural farms” across the West Bank. These illegal outposts are intended to eventually become legal settlements under Israeli law. (The United Nation’s top court has deemed all settlements to be illegal under international law, which Israel disputes.)
In February, the government approved measures meant to significantly ease land acquisition for Jewish residents in the West Bank and to open the formal land registration process for the first time since 1967, making it easier to expand settlements and more difficult for Palestinians to claim ancestral property. Moreover, planning and administrative power over land use, historically held by Palestinian municipalities under the Oslo Accords, and including the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, were transferred to Israeli authorities.
Compounding this crisis are the conflict in Gaza, which has fueled deep-seated animosity toward Palestinians in Israel, and the new war with Iran, which has pushed the heightened volatility and violence in the West Bank to the periphery of public discourse. Under the cover of regional escalation, the fire in the territories burns quietly, out of sight.
And yet, amid all this, a new chorus of voices is emerging within the Israeli public — both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel — that rejects the atrocities occurring in the West Bank. Through petitions and the media, these citizens are calling on the government and security forces to act immediately to halt these acts of terror. They demand that law enforcement take a decisive stand against shameful deeds being carried out in their name, and have condemned the new death penalty law as racist, unconstitutional and immoral.
As the number of Israelis protesting these actions grows, so too does the likelihood that the government will move to halt the atrocities. Ultimately, no factor remains more consequential to Israel’s trajectory than the Trump administration, which could still use its leverage over Mr. Netanyahu to push him to de-escalate the situation in the West Bank. I believe that once the Israeli government resolves to do so, it possesses the power to bring an end to most of this violence.
Talia Sasson is a former senior official in Israel’s State Attorney’s Office and a former president of the New Israel Fund. She wrote a landmark government report on illegal West Bank outposts under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government.
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2) Texas Considers Required Reading List for Schools, Which Includes the Bible
Education officials are planning an overhaul to English and social studies in the nation’s largest Republican led state.
By Sarah Mervosh, April 7, 2026
A proposed book list in Texas includes readings from the Bible, such as the definition of love from First Corinthians and the story of David and Goliath. Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman, via Getty Images
Texas education officials are considering sweeping changes to English and social studies instruction that would put readings from the Bible on a new state-required reading list for millions of public school students.
The changes would also bring a U.S. and Texas centric lens to history, with less emphasis on world history, a shift some historians and progressive groups have opposed.
The Texas State Board of Education, an elected board with a 10-to-5 Republican majority, is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to consider the proposals, including the hotly debated required reading lists for each grade level.
One draft of the list, proposed by the Texas Education Agency, includes widely recognized classics such as “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle for kindergartners, “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle for seventh graders and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech for eighth graders.
But it also includes passages from the Bible in middle and high school, such as the story of David and Goliath from the Old Testament and a meditation on love from First Corinthians.
The list includes select texts from Black historical figures like Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglass, but has relatively few Hispanic and Black authors, a move that has drawn criticism from Democratic members of the state board.
“There is a mass lack of representation,” said Marisa Pérez-Díaz, a Democratic member who represents San Antonio and part of South Texas. She noted that Hispanic and Black students make up a majority of public school children in the state.
The board will also consider a second proposal, from a board member, which requires fewer books overall and includes texts from the Bible starting in elementary school.
In social studies, the board is considering a chronological version of history, with an emphasis on U.S. and Texas history in most grades.
Progressive groups and mainstream historians have criticized the proposal as promoting a vision of American exceptionalism, with a focus on Christianity’s influence, while leaving little room for world history or the contributions of other religions.
“Do we want the next generation of Texas students competing in a global economy never having really learned very much about China?” said Brendan Gillis, the director of teaching and learning for the American Historical Association, a national group representing historians, which has been critical of the proposal.
Texas is home to 5.4 million public school students, about 11 percent of the total U.S. public school population.
The proposals in Texas are part of a broader push by Republicans, including President Trump, to embrace the role of Christianity in America’s founding and promote a sense of patriotism. The Trump administration has pumped more than $150 million into history and civics education ahead of the 250th anniversary of American independence this July.
Several states, including Texas, have sought to hang the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. And lessons about the Bible are already included in an optional English curriculum in Texas.
Supporters say that the latest proposals would give Texas students something more akin to a classical education, an approach that focuses on the roots of western thought and culture and teaches classic works of literature, including the Bible as a cultural touchstone.
The approach has grown popular with conservatives, who say that it gives students an important foundation, and that recent efforts to include diversity should be rooted in academics, not inclusion for inclusion’s sake.
“Islam and Buddhism didn’t found the west,” said Mandy Drogin, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Austin, who supports the changes.
She said that while some world history and instruction about other religions is needed, Judeo-Christian values were central to America’s story and culture.
“To not know the story of the good Samaritan, for example, you’re really going to miss on not just important lessons, but rich cultural and historical significance as an American,” she said.
Many Americans appear to support a balance in history instruction. In 2022, more than 75 percent of Republicans and Democrats alike said they supported teaching about patriotism and the founding fathers, as well as critical thinking and the contribution of women and people of color.
The debate over the required reading list comes as U.S. reading scores have been on a yearslong decline and many schools have moved away from teaching whole books from beginning to end, something the list’s supporters aim to change.
The state board is expected to take a preliminary vote on the book and social studies proposals later this week, with a final vote expected in June.
Any new requirements would not go until effect until 2030.
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3) Our Vacations. Our Food. Our Mortgages. The Iran War Will Change Everything.
By Bill Saporito and David Stubbs, April 7, 2026
Mr. Saporito is a senior staff editor in Opinion. Dr. Stubbs is the chief investment strategist at AlphaCore Wealth Advisory.
When will the conflict with Iran end? President Trump’s timeline, like his military strategy, is ephemeral. But its knock-on effects are already here. This war is, in all likelihood, impacting your life — and will continue to for most of this year.
Let’s start with your summer vacation planning. The airlines are responding to high jet fuel prices by raising fares while trimming their schedules — United has already announced a 5 percent flight cut. That means fewer seats will be available at peak travel season and flight crews will work fewer hours.
Heading to or from a city such as Presque Isle, Maine, or Butte, Mont., that is served exclusively by regional airlines? Those flights will be the first to be canceled, Mike Boyd, an airline industry consultant, has pointed out. Carriers can’t run the small, 50-seat jets that serve those markets profitably when jet fuel has more than doubled to more than $4 gallon.
The value carriers that serve popular destinations such as Orlando and Las Vegas could be particularly hard hit. Florida-based Spirit Airlines, known for its yellow jets and unbundled fare structure, just emerged from its second bankruptcy; Frontier, its Western counterpart, delayed orders for new planes and canceled some leases on its current fleet to concentrate on filling the planes it has. And all this is on top of the airport chaos created by bad weather (hello, climate change), air traffic controller shortages and Transportation Security Administration staffing issues.
Road trippers won’t have it much better. For recreational vehicle owners or renters, a trip to national parks such as Zion or Great Smoky Mountains — already suffering from DOGE budget cuts — will get more challenging with R.V.s that average six to 15 miles per gallon in mileage. Motor boaters could be up a creek, too.
Expect to pay even more for food, also. Prices for meat, wheat, coffee and sugar are rising because the planting, harvesting, processing, storage and transportation of food is energy intensive. Farmers are struggling to get the fertilizers they’ve ordered from the Middle East. The price of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, one of the most used, is up more than 20 percent this year. Farmers can buy potash-based fertilizers from Canada — but those are subject to a 10 percent tariff. The other big supplier? Russia.
If the current fertilizer disruption interrupts planting season, which is already underway in many parts of the world, food prices will rise in the back half of the year.
And that’s not all.
In developed countries like ours, persistently high inflation increases the risk that the Fed and other central banks will feel compelled to raise interest rates. That lifts the price of borrowing money across the economy: not just credit card and auto loans, but also mortgage rates.
Although conventional wisdom says that central banks should look beyond an energy price shock and not change their rates, their capacity to remain steadfast is limited. Still contending with their pandemic-era inflation, Europe’s central banks may soon have to consider raising rates to protect their inflation-fighting credentials — another economic brake when we hardly need one.
At a time when rising oil prices are pressuring family budgets, E.U. governments may be forced to cut their spending. Interest rates on government bonds have risen sharply in Britain and France since the start of the war, meaning these nations will have to spend more to cover debt payments, leaving less money for price relief for the public.
The great build-out of the artificial intelligence infrastructure — which has been pumping billions into our economy — is also in jeopardy. Helium is a vital component in semiconductor production, and one-third of the world’s supply is produced in Qatar, which has been targeted by Iranian strikes. Without a reliable supply, the semiconductor manufacturers that make chips won’t be able to meet demand. So, too, is the level of financing for these projects, tied to a retrenching private credit sector and perhaps a pullback by sovereign funds in the Middle East that must now spend to repair war damage.
Most of America’s problems, and they are not insignificant, still pale in comparison with what’s happening in the rest of the world. Developing nations are in a particularly dangerous bind. The United Nations reckons that more than 670 million people were living with hunger in 2024 and, across 68 countries in which the U.N. World Food Program is active, 318 million people are projected to face acute hunger this year.
This is all assuming that everything in Iran remains as is. Things could get a lot worse in a hurry if the Houthis in Yemen decide to block the Strait of Bab al-Mandab at the mouth of the Red Sea, where ships must pass after transiting the Suez Canal. That is likely when $100 a barrel oil becomes $200 a barrel.
The worst-case scenario is impossible to predict, of course, but what’s becoming more certain is that if disruption from the Iran conflict is still significant on the day America celebrates its 250th birthday, the bill for the party is going to be enormous.
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4) Even as They Praise Iran Cease-Fire, World Leaders Are Whipsawed by Trump
Across Europe and the globe, the war has damaged economies, roiled politics and underscored a lack of options in dealing with President Trump’s whims.
By Jim Tankersley, Reporting from Berlin, April 8, 2026
World leaders expressed relief on Wednesday that the United States, Israel and Iran had agreed to a temporary cease-fire, with President Trump backing off his apocalyptic threat to escalate a war that had already set off a cascading series of global crises.
But the relief was tempered by the profound powerlessness that most countries have felt over the last six weeks as they watched Mr. Trump wage a war that has rattled their economies, their energy supplies, their domestic politics and their relationships with the world’s pre-eminent superpower.
Even if the two-week cease-fire becomes permanent, those leaders, particularly in Europe, will be left to repair the cracks this war has caused in the global economy and security environment.
They will also be left searching for better ways to navigate the new world order that Mr. Trump has brought to bear in his second term in the White House, in which the president whipsaws friends and foes alike. Other countries have found few ways to buffer themselves, even as they express alarm at Mr. Trump’s actions.
“Is the world a better place today than yesterday? Undoubtedly,” the Danish foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, wrote on the social media platform X. “Than 40 days ago? More than doubtful.”
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, an outspoken opponent of the Iran war, lauded cease-fires as “good news, especially if they lead to a just and durable peace.” But he added a harsh condemnation of Mr. Trump’s military campaign.
“The momentary relief cannot make us forget the chaos, the destruction, and the lives lost,” he wrote. “The government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket. What is needed now: diplomacy, international law and PEACE.”
Beyond Europe, the cease-fire drew praise from countries including Oman, Japan, Malaysia and Australia.
Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, told Sky News that he welcomed the agreement and hoped for an end to the war, “because this is having a big impact on ordinary citizens in Australia and in our region.”
But Mr. Albanese had also directly criticized Mr. Trump’s pledge on Tuesday, before the cease-fire was announced, that “a civilization will die tonight” in Iran if no deal was reached, saying it was not “appropriate to use language such as that from the president of the United States.”
Other leaders nodded heavily to the war’s ongoing disruptions of global energy supplies, which have sent fuel prices soaring, caused shortages and pushed many governments to take costly measures to soften the burden on drivers and other consumers.
That is largely because of Iran’s efforts to snarl shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil and gas corridor. The cease-fire agreement allows ships safe passage through the strait if they coordinate with Iran’s military.
“The goal now must be to negotiate a lasting end to the war in the coming days,” Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, said in a statement on Wednesday. Those negotiations, he added, “can avert a severe global energy crisis.”
To their frustration, leaders appear to have little ability to influence Mr. Trump, in this war or any other conflict. The difficulty of parsing Mr. Trump’s bellicose and often shifting pronouncements has been a monthlong challenge. Other leaders have adopted a variety of responses, including mild support, measured pushback and sometimes just public silence, hoping Mr. Trump will change his mind on his own.
Take Tuesday, for instance, when Mr. Trump made the apocalyptic threat to Iran, saying the U.S. would wipe out its civilization. Neither Mr. Merz nor Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, responded publicly to the statement, nor did Emmanuel Macron, the French president.
That appeared to be a deliberate silence, avoiding any possible provocation of the American president, while diplomats — led by the Pakistani government — worked behind the scenes to secure the cease-fire. Instead, Mr. Macron and Mr. Merz posted unrelated comments on the social media platform X.
Officials across Europe have tried for the last month to blunt the economic and political impacts of the spiking price of oil and gas, driven by the war.
In Italy, the president of a teachers’ union has warned that students might have to return to remote learning in the final weeks of school if fuel shortages continue and made it difficult to keep buildings open. The crisis has hit Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at a vulnerable time politically, after she lost a referendum to overhaul the Italian judiciary.
Ms. Meloni’s cabinet has cut fuel taxes through at least the end of May to provide some relief for consumers. Spain has similarly cut energy taxes. German officials have limited gas stations to only one price increase per day, and they are debating further measures to help consumers. The European Trade Union Confederation estimated Wednesday that a prolonged crisis could raise energy costs by nearly 2,000 euros, or around $2,300, this year for a typical European Union household.
Experts warn more help could be needed, even with the progress in negotiations.
“What has been done so far has created deep damages to the energy infrastructure,” said Tito Boeri, a professor of economics at Bocconi University in Milan. “So even if the Hormuz Strait is reopened it will take time before these countries go back to full capacity.”
Mr. Starmer of Britain was set to travel to the Persian Gulf on Wednesday to meet with allies and discuss how to keep the strait permanently open to international shipping, government officials said. His trip was planned before the cease-fire was announced. It follows discussions on the strait hosted by Britain over the last week among diplomats and military planners from more than 40 countries.
Those talks had yet to produce a full plan of action.
Motoko Rich in Rome, Carlos Barragán in Madrid, Laura Chung in Sydney and Michael D. Shear in London contributed reporting.
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5) It Will Take Months to Get Oil and Gas Flowing out of the Persian Gulf
Some wells can be turned on in days or weeks, but bringing the Gulf’s energy system back to something akin to normal will take months.
By Rebecca F. Elliott and Ivan Penn, April 8, 2026
Rebecca Elliott reported from Houston and New York, and Ivan Penn from Los Angeles.
An oil warehouse in Erbil, Iraq, burned last week after a suspected drone strike. Dozens of refineries, storage facilities and oil and gas fields in at least nine countries have been targeted. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz — a central aim for the United States when it agreed to a cease-fire with Iran — would be the first step toward getting more energy flowing through the Persian Gulf.
But only the first step.
That is because dozens of refineries, storage facilities, and oil and gas fields in at least nine countries, from Iran to the United Arab Emirates and beyond, have been targeted in strikes. All told, 10 percent or more of the world’s oil supply has been turned off. Restarting those operations will require not only safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, but also inspecting pumps, replacing bespoke processing equipment and recalling employees and ships that have scattered across the globe.
“It’s not a case of you just flick a switch and everything’s back up again,” said Martin Houston, a longtime oil and gas executive who now serves as board member for several energy companies.
The timeline for bringing the Gulf energy system back to some semblance of normal is highly uncertain. For one thing, the war has been paused for only two weeks.
In the cease-fire deal, which President Trump announced on Tuesday evening, Iran agreed to allow ships to pass through the strait without being attacked. Earlier that day, Mr. Trump said that if the waterway remained closed, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” He has also repeatedly threatened to strike Iranian power plants and other critical infrastructure if Iran does not allow vessels to pass through the strait — acts that could be considered war crimes.
Attacks on energy facilities continued in the days leading up to the cease-fire, including on an oil refinery in Kuwait and petrochemical complexes in Iran. How much damage has already been done to the region’s infrastructure is difficult to know because many countries have shared little information.
Once companies regain confidence that their ships can transit the narrow waterway that runs between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, the first order of business is likely to be shipping out the oil and other fuels that countries close to the strait stockpiled in storage tanks. Then, as long as hostilities do not resume, some wells are likely to flow again within days or weeks, industry analysts and Gulf oil executives say.
But a fuller recovery will be a monthslong process, they cautioned. And even then, some infrastructure that has sustained extensive damage is expected to take years to repair.
For consumers, this means that gasoline prices at the pump — which recently topped $4 a gallon, on average, in the United States — are unlikely to return to their prewar levels any time soon, even though international oil prices fell considerably late Tuesday. Countries are using up stores of energy they had before the war, so the longer the war drags on, the stickier those high prices are likely to be.
The shuttering of oil wells has other consequences. Once idled, oil and gas wells can be difficult to restart, and the longer they remain closed, the more trouble companies may have turning them back on.
The pressure underground can get out of whack while wells are closed; water can build up. If the shutdowns last a long time, equipment might corrode after being exposed to hydrogen sulfide for too long. The toxic gas, which smells like rotten eggs, is often found mixed in with oil and natural gas. Saudi Arabia and Iraq inject gas or water into many of their wells to coax out more oil, adding another layer of complexity to re-establishing the correct pressure when the time comes to reopen, the research firm BloombergNEF wrote recently.
Kuwait, which is sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Iraq at the tip of the Persian Gulf, is the world’s 10th-largest oil producer. Before Friday, when its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by a drone, the chief executive of the state-owned oil company Kuwait Petroleum said he expected to be able to “bring out quite a bit of production immediately, within a few days” of the war’s ending. Sheikh Nawaf Al Sabah, the chief executive, added during remarks late last month at an energy conference, CERAWeek by S&P Global, in Houston that “the full production will come within three or four months.”
The big question is how much damage has been sustained by all the infrastructure needed to get oil and gas from wellheads to world markets. Analysts say few installations appear to have suffered catastrophic harm, but they are working with limited information about most facilities.
One of the most important energy assets in the region is Qatar’s natural-gas export plant, Ras Laffan. The site, which spans at least three square miles in a large industrial city, supplies countries throughout Asia and Europe with natural gas that people use for cooking, heating homes and generating electricity.
Before it can be loaded on a ship, natural gas must be turned into a liquid by cooling it at about minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celsius). Qatar stopped making this liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., during the early days of the war. Missiles later took out 17 percent of the site’s capacity.
The undamaged parts of the facility would be restarted first, likely over a period of weeks or months. Steps include reopening the offshore gas wells that feed the export terminal; restarting any utilities that had been turned off; restocking the inventory of fuels used to cool the gas, known as refrigerants; and then actually cooling the gas, said Mehdy Touil, who spent more than a decade at Ras Laffan and is now the lead L.N.G. specialist at Calypso Commodities, a Berlin company.
The damaged portions are another matter. QatarEnergy, which operates Ras Laffan, has said it will take several years to repair those areas and bring them online. (The company did not respond to requests for comment.) Ras Laffan has 14 L.N.G.-producing units. The strikes last month took out the heart of two of them — the mammoth structures in which gas is cooled — QatarEnergy’s chief executive told Reuters. That equipment can be as tall as an 18-story building, and the lead time for a new one can run two years or more, industry officials said.
“These facilities were custom‑engineered and integrated into the broader Ras Laffan complex, making them substantially more difficult to replace” than simpler kinds of energy infrastructure, said Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California.
Less is known about the extent of the damage to oil-processing facilities throughout the region. A refinery on the west coast of Saudi Arabia had been operating at much lower levels after a drone strike in mid-March, according to Rystad Energy, an Oslo-based consulting firm. Rystad estimated that the refinery most likely could be fully restored within a year.
Iran has also suffered attacks on its energy infrastructure, including strikes on oil depots in Tehran that turned the sky over the capital city black.
One concern for rebuilding is that supply chains for some specialized parts have already been stretched thin. The rush to build data centers for artificial intelligence has created a demand for gas-fired power plants and other energy infrastructure. Many of those facilities rely on equipment, like gas turbines, that may also be needed to make repairs in the Gulf.
“If you have the right supply chain, you can get things built back pretty quickly,” said Mike Stice, a University of Oklahoma professor who serves on the board of energy companies including the U.S. refining giant Marathon Petroleum. But, he added, timelines will depend a lot on what has been damaged. “All it takes is one critical piece of equipment that has a two-year delivery date.”
In the end, however the conflict plays out, analysts expect energy prices to eventually fall from wartime levels, but remain higher than they would have been in the absence of war.
Analysts at the French bank Société Générale recently said they expected oil to trade around $80 a barrel at the end of 2026, up from their earlier forecast of $65. Traders will be pricing in a greater risk of geopolitical disruption in the future.
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6) Israel Escalates Attacks on Lebanon as Iran Cease-Fire Takes Effect
Deadly airstrikes pummeled Lebanon in what Israel said was its largest bombing wave yet in the monthlong war with Iran-backed Hezbollah.
By Euan Ward, Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, April 8, 2026
Damage in a neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon, after an Israeli strike on Sunday. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Israel launched on Wednesday what it said was the heaviest wave of bombardment in Lebanon yet in its monthlong war against Iran-backed Hezbollah as a U.S.-Israeli cease-fire with Iran took effect.
The sharp escalation — with more than 100 airstrikes in the space of just 10 minutes — punctuated an announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that Lebanon would be excluded from the truce with Iran.
Shortly after lunchtime, fighter jets pummeled the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and other parts of the country, with many strikes hitting densely populated areas without warning.
Lebanon’s health ministry said that dozens of people had been killed and hundreds wounded in the attacks, and many were still trapped under rubble. The sound of careering ambulances echoed across Beirut as plumes of thick, acrid smoke rose above the skyline.
Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, accused Israel of committing a “massacre” after Wednesday’s bombardment.
The Israeli military also reissued sweeping evacuation orders for much of southern Lebanon, which it has invaded and signaled that it plans to occupy in recent weeks.
The war began last month after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Iran. It has already killed more than 1,500 people in Lebanon and displaced well over a million, according to Lebanese authorities. At least two civilians have been killed in Israel by Hezbollah attacks, and about 10 soldiers have been killed in combat in Lebanon, according to Israeli officials.
Mr. Netanyahu’s announcement early on Wednesday contradicted a statement from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, a key mediator of the Iran truce, who said that the two-week suspension of hostilities would extend to the small Mediterranean nation.
Lebanon’s leaders said on Wednesday that they were engaged in diplomatic efforts to also secure a truce, but it remained unclear whether that was possible.
For weeks, Israeli officials have publicly rebuffed overtures by Lebanon’s government to hold direct talks about a cease-fire — a significant offer given that the two countries have no formal diplomatic relations.
Earlier on Wednesday before the deadly wave of Israeli strikes, Mr. Aoun, the Lebanese president, said that efforts were underway to ensure that any “regional peace encompasses Lebanon.”
Both the Lebanese military and Hezbollah warned the hundreds of thousands of people displaced from southern Lebanon not return to their homes amid the ongoing Israeli attacks.
Many, however, were already on the road heading back to their homes.
“My family insisted on going to the south at dawn, the moment the cease-fire was announced,” said Lara Kanj, 34, who had fled amid the war to Beirut from the southern town of Kfar Melki.
“We want the Israelis to withdraw from our land. We want to live the life we used to have before the war. We are tired of this,” she said.
Like many Lebanese, Ms. Kanj expressed confusion at whether Lebanon had been included in the cease-fire deal, but voiced cautious optimism.
“We just need to wait a little longer,” she said.
Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the prevailing sentiment in Lebanon was that Washington had effectively given Israel a free hand, with Israeli officials showing little appetite for a political track to address their demand that Hezbollah disarm, and relying instead on military force.
“The U.S. is focused on Iran, and has no bandwidth,” said Mr. Hage Ali. “In the meantime, the Israeli answer to any problem is more and more strikes”
Even as Israel’s bombing campaign and expanding ground invasion weaken Hezbollah, analysts warn the conflict may endure, and with it the risk of civil instability in Lebanon.
Most of the displaced are Shiite Muslims, the core of Hezbollah’s support base, whose presence in host communities is heightening sectarian tensions.
The developments of the day left the war-weary Lebanese in a state of uncertainty and anxiety.
In the coastal village of Jadra, south of Beirut, Amir Hattoum, a father of two, said he was struggling to make ends meet. Displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, he said he was paying $500 a month in rent, which he cannot sustain.
With only limited savings and airstrikes drawing closer, he said he was trying not to think too far ahead.
“I am living day by day,” Mr. Hattoum said. “It is exhausting.”
Francesca Regalado, Dayana Iwaza and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
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7) We Are Witnessing the Rise of a New Aristocracy
By Jennifer M. Harris, April 8, 2026
Ms. Harris served as an economic official in the Biden White House.
Inequality is such a fact of American life that it’s easy to shrug off. But we are in uncharted terrain. The amassed wealth of today’s tech titans makes the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts look quaint. Over the past two years, 19 households have added $1.8 trillion to their coffers, the economist Gabriel Zucman told me — roughly the size of the economy of Australia.
Into this fragile state enters artificial intelligence. It threatens to make a bad situation much worse.
Left on its current course, A.I. could deliver a bleak picture: lower- and middle-income jobs automated away, with top earners remaining unscathed. Income shifting from middle-wage workers doing the bulk of the labor toward those wealthy enough to bankroll the technology. Growth headwinds. Worsening affordability. So, too, a federal government less able to respond, thanks to a shrinking tax base.
For any society in which this much wealth gets concentrated in so few hands, and is then so easily parlayed into political clout, the question becomes one not just of economics but of basic civic standing. At some point soon, we are no longer sharing in self-government.
Start with A.I.’s impact on jobs. Technologists are convinced that a labor apocalypse is nigh. In this story, A.I. is sometimes posited as a great equalizer, gutting white-collar jobs and salaries, giving more clout to trades like plumbing and dimming the luster of that Ivy League degree. The theory has gotten the nod from academics, industry associations and institutions such as the O.E.C.D.
In truth, whether A.I. will lead to widespread job loss remains guesswork. But the notion that it will narrow inequality by pushing downward on top earners seems far-fetched. What’s already clear: As A.I. transforms anything touching a keyboard, it will land first and hardest on the income ladder’s middle and lower rungs. The jobs most at risk, say government forecasters and economists, are administrative and office support staff, sales and lower-level computer programmers — all roles with salaries of $40,000 to $100,000.
Those losses on the lower half of the scale are underway. One-quarter of computer programming jobs disappeared in 2023 and 2024. IBM’s chief executive said in 2023 he could “easily see” 30 percent of the company’s back office roles getting replaced by A.I. in the next five years. With at least three major rounds of job cuts in 2024 and 2025, IBM appears to be following through on that idea (though it has also signaled plans to grow entry-level hiring). A Stanford study found that early-career employees in A.I.-exposed fields like customer service have seen a 13 percent drop in employment since 2022 — unlike more experienced workers and those in other sectors.
At the same time, premiums for elite graduates with hefty Rolodexes full of powerful people, and tacit knowledge (like how to generate a laugh at a cocktail party on Park Avenue), aren’t going anywhere. Chatbots are no substitute for people who can call the right people when high-stakes deals go awry.
“Goldman Sachs’s Manhattan offices aren’t likely scathed,” Justin Searls, a writer and a founder of the software company Test Double who tracks A.I. advancement, told me in an email. “But its Jersey City operations? Well, that’s likely another story.” In a recent survey, 750 chief financial officers were twice as likely to say that A.I. could lead to job cuts in low-skill office work as they were to say it would enhance this work. And a majority thought A.I. would augment, rather than replace, higher-skill roles — especially those requiring high levels of education.
When more people are out of work, those who still have middle-class jobs — the marketers, the air traffic controllers and so on — will have less bargaining power, reducing their wages. A.I. can reinforce this downward spiral by lowering the expertise required for these remaining middle-class jobs. With A.I., we can all be coders now, right? As the pool of capable workers widens, wages fall once again. Younger workers who are un- or underemployed may need to work for decades to recover the lost opportunities and wages.
And that’s just the job market. Now let’s turn to how the A.I. investment boom seems poised to further grow the top end of the income scale. Thanks to years of handsome returns from the stock market, the top 1 percent holds more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
Most new technologies tilt the scales toward investors and away from workers, but A.I.’s thumb is particularly heavy. Look at all the companies blaming A.I. for job cuts. While some argue that this explanation may just be a convenient cover for cuts that were going to happen anyway, investors are buying the story, rewarding these firms and their investors handsomely with surging share prices. Workers are losing, and stock prices are soaring, with the gains most benefiting wealthy investors. Inequality widens at both ends.
What’s worse, much of the trillion-plus-dollar investment in the A.I. boom isn’t happening in the stock market at all — it’s happening in private funds out of reach to all but the wealthiest, most connected among us. In earlier technology-fueled booms, companies like Amazon sold their shares in the public markets. As the value of its shares soared, they enriched Amazon’s early investors, yes, but thousands of employees also benefited, as did millions of other Americans, through pension funds and retirement accounts.
That isn’t the case with A.I. Anthropic and OpenAI, the two best-known A.I. companies, raised over $150 billion, mostly from venture capitalists, private equity firms and foreign sovereign wealth funds — funds mostly inaccessible to the vast majority of investors (let alone ordinary Americans).
With ownership of these firms concentrated in so few hands, any wealth they produce widens the gap between the richest households and everyone else. Also consider the fact that today’s A.I. firms employ far fewer people than established tech companies. OpenAI and Anthropic, which are already operating globally, employ only a few thousand people. Microsoft employs more than 200,000, and Amazon employs 1.5 million. The picture that emerges isn’t of just a deepening of the current divide. The A.I. story is one of more extreme concentration of wealth — at most likely not more than 3 percent of households, the very few who hold ownership in these A.I. companies or in the mostly private firms financing them.
Perhaps that doesn’t matter. So what if A.I. boosts inequality to new heights? Isn’t the more important question whether everyone has enough?
Start with economic growth itself. When inequality gets extreme enough, it starts to exact a cost on the whole system. Economists have shown that if the income share of the top 20 percent rises, growth in the gross domestic product actually declines over the medium term. That’s partly because lower- and middle-income households, which spend a far higher share of their earnings than wealthier ones do, have less money to put back into the economy. It’s also because inequality tends to make the most valuable skills more expensive and harder to access. (Think of the price of a house in a top-rated school district.)
This brings me to the fact that growing inequality worsens the affordability crisis. In 2025, for the first time since data collection on the statistic began regularly in 1989, the top 10 percent of earnings supplied nearly half of consumer spending, and those earners’ expensive tastes are already warping markets for essentials, from housing and health care to cars.
In San Francisco, where both OpenAI and Anthropic are headquartered, the median home price has surpassed $1.5 million amid soaring valuations. One home was recently listed for around $3 million and sold almost immediately for almost $5 million. As a small handful of winners supply an ever larger share of consumer spending, companies will mold their offerings to cater to their preferences, placing many essentials further out of reach for most Americans.
Next to fall are the fiscal dominoes.
Well-meaning policymakers often turn to federal spending to prop up our labor markets or address the affordability crisis. But they don’t factor in the tremendous debt load our government is currently servicing nor the negative impact A.I. is poised to have on the government’s coffers.
Because investment income is taxed at lower rates than wages — and because the wealthiest often find ways to defer or avoid those taxes altogether — A.I. will significantly shrink the tax base. Economists estimate that as $1 of value creation shifts from workers to owners, total tax revenue falls on the order of 10 to 15 cents. You don’t need to squint to see the resulting cuts to safety net programs like work-force training and Head Start that low- and middle-income families rely on — cuts that will, in turn, also worsen inequality.
None of what I have just described is a foregone conclusion. As M.I.T.’s Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and David Autor note, A.I. could be designed to increase the value of human expertise, by building tools that make workers more capable, rather than replacing them outright, or even by creating whole new kinds of tasks requiring human involvement. But as they readily admit, so far A.I. is doing the opposite.
So what can we do?
A growing roster of economists suggest simply taxing investment profits more on par with labor income. Right now, the fruit of our labor is taxed at rates up to 37 percent, yet the tax rates for investment income top out at 23.8 percent.
Or we could follow the lead of other countries and make an effort to more evenly distribute investment profits. The sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, for example, which manages the country’s foreign currency reserves and uses the revenues for crisis funding and affordable housing, happens to be invested in Anthropic, which is why you are more likely to reap the upside of A.I. if you are in Singapore City than in Syracuse.
Another idea, so far still confined to think tank circles, proposes innovative tax structures to create public equity stakes in large A.I. firms; these stakes could then fund a better safety net or simply put money in workers’ pockets. After all, the “intelligence” in A.I. was ours to begin with. One especially promising fix is to incentivize more firms to convert into worker-owned cooperatives, building on modest federal support passed in 2022. If we put more workers in charge of the firms deciding how to use A.I., the odds climb that they will figure out how to use A.I. so as to increase their own value.
All of these fixes are made harder as the wealthiest parlay their economic clout into political sway. Billionaire contributions more than doubled as a share of total contributions from the 2020 election to the one in 2024. The largest A.I. companies are spending exponentially more to influence state level races this year compared with previous years.
The flywheel that turns wealth inequality into democratic backsliding is already churning. If we want to keep the “democratic” in democratic capitalism as A.I. takes hold, we’d better get to work. Fast.
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8) U.S. Forces Stand Ready to Resume Combat. The President May Not Be as Enthused.
President Trump knows that even if a cease-fire runs out with no final agreement on the issues dividing Washington and Tehran, the political risk of renewing hostilities is high.
By David E. Sanger, April 8, 2026
David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents over more than four decades at the Times. For the past 20 years he has written about the efforts to negotiate with Iran, and to sabotage its nuclear facilities.
At the Pentagon on Wednesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that the Iranians had been “humiliated and demoralized” over the past five weeks, and that the United States would get ahold of the country’s nuclear stockpiles — by persuasion or by force.
The more soft-spoken chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, told reporters that U.S. forces would remain in the Middle East and were “ready if ordered, or called upon, to resume combat operations with the same speed and precision as we’ve demonstrated over the past 38 days.”
But just a few hours into the fragile cease-fire that President Trump announced on Tuesday, it was clear that while resuming combat operations may be a viable military option if negotiations go nowhere, it is not a particularly viable political choice for Mr. Trump. And, with talks scheduled to start in Islamabad on Friday, the Iranians know it.
If shipments actually resume through the Strait of Hormuz, the price of Brent crude oil, which has already dropped about 14 percent, hovering around $95 a barrel, could keep falling. Gas prices should follow, even if no one is expecting them to go back to where they were before the war broke out. Major stock indexes rose over 2 percent.
These are the measures of instant success that register with Mr. Trump. And he knows that even if the two-week cease-fire runs out on April 21 with no final agreement on the long list of issues that have divided Washington and Tehran for decades, the political risk of renewing hostilities is high — particularly with the midterm elections looming and an upcoming summit with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
“The feature of these negotiations that may extend the cease-fire is that there is a bit of mutually assured destruction between the U.S. and Iran right now,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and the vice president of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.
She added: “The U.S. can resume military operations at any moment. But the Iranians have shown they can turn around and threaten attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, with all the predictable effects on the price of oil and fertilizer. And these are all the levers that the president is acutely aware of.”
Most of the big mistakes Mr. Trump made in what he called his “excursion” into Iran he made at the beginning of the operation. He did not consult his closest allies ahead of the Feb. 28 attacks, and then was shocked to discover that they were uninterested in backing him up.
Some of the goals he articulated at the beginning of the conflict — including encouraging the Iranian people to rise up against the clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — were soon dropped.
The Gulf states had no warning, and found their most valuable facilities, from oil rigs to desalination plants, essentially undefended when the Iranian missiles began to fly. Congress was cut out, the MAGA base was fractured, and even some Iran hawks on Capitol Hill chafed at the $1 billion-a-day price tag and the fact that no administration officials came to testify about the war or the administration’s goals.
That damage is now done. And all of it will weigh on Mr. Trump if he threatens to resume combat operations.
Mr. Hegseth pointed to what could well turn out to be the test of Mr. Trump’s willingness to go back into Iran.
Briefing reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday, he said that one outcome of the negotiations must include an agreement by Iran to give up the 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade uranium the country has been storing deep underground, mostly at its Isfahan nuclear site.
“They will either give it to us,” Mr. Hegseth said of the enriched material, “or we’ll take it out.” Such a mission would at a minimum involve hundreds of U.S. Special Operations troops and would come with the risk of high casualties, current and former commanders say.
When asked exactly how the enriched uranium would be removed, Mr. Hegseth said: “That’s something the president is going to solve.”
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9) A Cease-Fire for Now in Iran, but a Blow to American Credibility
Critics wonder if this is America’s “Suez moment,” when a leading power signals the start of its international decline.
By Steven Erlanger, April 9, 2026
Steven Erlanger writes about European, Middle Eastern and American diplomacy and security.
Iranian demonstrators burning a U.S. flag in Tehran on Wednesday after the announcement of a two-week cease-fire. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Historical analogies are never exact. But with the tenuous cease-fire deal in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, some are asking whether this is a “Suez” moment for the United States, marking the waning of American power and credibility in the world.
The Suez crisis took place in October 1956, when Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt to force open the Suez Canal. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, with an election days away, ordered them to stop. Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britain resigned. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt became a hero of anti-colonialism.
Suez became shorthand for the moment that Britain, exhausted from World War II, gave way as a global power to the United States.
There are differences from that time. The Suez Canal is man-made and wholly in Egyptian territory, unlike the international waterway of the Strait of Hormuz. There is no other global power capable of replacing America in the region, let alone ordering President Trump around.
But the two-week cease-fire leaves the Islamic Republic in place and still in command of the future of the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran’s nuclear stockpile and ballistic missile program unresolved. After Mr. Trump’s declaration of victory, however hollow, it is difficult to imagine a resumption of full-scale war.
For the rest of the world, the war “is starting to look like a military defeat, more serious than Iraq or Afghanistan,” said Bruno Maçães, former secretary of state for European affairs for Portugal.
“The myth of America as all-powerful is important,” he added, “and it’s the basic requirement of a global hegemon to keep the oil flowing, to open up the strait and keep it open. This belief in an all-powerful America that can solve anything is disappearing.”
Keeping sea lanes open for American goods and global trade is one of the few permanent interests the United States has in the Middle East, as well as in Asia.
The war in Iran shut down the strait. Now, the Iranian military is still in control of the passageway and is likely to demand large tolls. “The strategic rationale for the American military presence in the region has taken a huge hit,” said Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington.
The Suez analogy works, Mr. Wertheim said, in that the war in Iran demonstrated “in a single incident the danger of American misgovernance and poor judgment.”
The war itself and its uncertain outcome, he said, “just accelerates an existing worry shared by countries around the world about what America’s declining quality of governance means for what they can expect from the United States.”
America’s allies may be unhappy, perplexed and even angry about Trump administration policies, but many of them, especially those in the Persian Gulf and Asia suffering the impact of energy shortages and restrictions, have few other options for security partners.
But the war and cease-fire deal have diminished American influence and will affect how the allies of the United States view its reliability, said Charles A. Kupchan, a political scientist and director of European studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The war against Iran was not begun in consultation with allies. And it came after a series of events that have confounded them. Mr. Trump’s tariff wars were an unpleasant shock, but his threat to take Greenland by force if necessary from Denmark, a European and NATO ally, is seen as an inflection point about American predation, unreliability and contempt for traditional friends.
“The Iran war and its economic impact are piling on and reinforce this sense that the U.S. right now has become unpredictable and undependable,” Mr. Kupchan said.
International relations and alliances work on trust. But as Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University wrote on Tuesday, “There has never been a time when the United States was more distrusted, by both traditional friends and by rivals, as at the present.”
A successful dealmaker, he said, needs to generate a minimal amount of trust that he will uphold his end of the bargain. “But reciprocity is a virtue that Trump has never understood or practiced,” he said.
The war had challenged Washington’s argument that its global primacy was vital to the safety of international trade and the world order. This has been the main justification for the many American bases around the world, and especially in the Middle East.
But the war has shown the United States instead acting as a force of disorder and disruption.
“By engaging in a war of choice in a critical region for global trade and utterly ignoring the probable consequences for the economies of its closest allies, the Trump administration has destroyed the legitimacy of American power,” asserted Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
The impact of a diminished United States is strongest in Europe, which has relied on NATO and the American security guarantee implicit in membership, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella. But Europeans drew a distinction between faith in America and faith in Mr. Trump. The former remains because it is vital for European security.
Still, Mr. Trump’s policies are inevitably producing a response that will outlast him. The rest of the world is trying to organize itself and derisk from an America that treats its allies as enemies and its traditional enemies, like Russia and China, as friends.
Asked if American hegemony has been diminished, the foreign minister of Poland, Radoslaw Sikorski, said, “We hope not, but we fear it might be.”
NATO has taken a hit from Mr. Trump’s overall policies. He continually calls it “a paper tiger,” despite successfully pushing its members to spend considerably more money on the military. During the war in Iran, he lashed out at the Europeans for not acting to open the strait even though the more powerful U.S. Navy was unable to do so.
Allied resistance to his desires rankles him the most. “It all began with, you want to know the truth, Greenland,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday. “They don’t want to give it to us, and I said, ‘Bye-bye.’”
The cumulative impact on NATO is significant, said Rajan Menon, professor emeritus of political science at City University of New York. In the long run, China looks to be the bigger winner.
“While we look crazed and talk about bombing a country back to the stone age, China looks like a peacemaker and agent of stability,” he said. All the while, Beijing got a chance to watch how the U.S. Navy operates.
“China is looking on with a great deal of glee, and when Trump goes there” for a summit meeting now scheduled for mid-May, “he will be much diminished.”
China, which gets so much of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, pushed Iran to agree to the cease-fire, and it is expected to participate in keeping the strait open and guaranteeing safe passage for others.
Much depends on how the war ends, cautioned Mr. Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations.
If the cease-fire leads to a deal that imposes significant constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and its ability to cause trouble, he said, that would be much better in the longer run than a frozen conflict or one that “just burns on month after month,” with all the accompanying impact on the energy market and American allies.
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10) How Trump Purged Immigration Judges to Speed Up Deportations
Judges are ordering an unprecedented number of people deported after coming under significant pressure from the administration to do so or risk losing their jobs.
By Nicholas Nehamas, Allison McCann, Steven Rich, Jazmine Ulloa and Hamed Aleaziz, April 9, 2026
The reporters interviewed more than 85 people, including immigration judges, administration officials, asylum seekers and lawyers, and analyzed data on millions of immigration court cases dating back to 2009.
Holly D’Andrea in Conroe, Texas. Credit...Desiree Rios for The New York Times
The Trump administration has systematically pressured the nation’s immigration judges, threatening them with disciplinary action if they do not deport more people and firing those seen as insufficiently supportive of the president’s aggressive enforcement agenda, a New York Times investigation has found.
The overhaul of the immigration courts has been far less visible than the militarized deportation raids that President Trump scaled back after public protest. But the effort has helped reshape a hugely consequential, if little-known, corner of the government that the administration is harnessing to advance its mass-deportation policies.
Although they wear robes and are required by law to exercise “independent judgment,” immigration judges are not part of the judicial branch. Instead they work for the Justice Department, under Mr. Trump’s ultimate command, and can be fired. One of their main duties is deciding whether undocumented immigrants should be deported or granted a form of legal status like asylum and be allowed to remain in the country.
So far, the Trump administration has dismissed more than 100 immigration judges out of about 750 in place when Mr. Trump returned to power, an unprecedented purge.
At the same time, the administration has reshaped the immigration bench, announcing the appointments of 143 permanent and temporary judges, including many who previously worked as immigration prosecutors for the Department of Homeland Security or as military lawyers.
By many measures, the administration is achieving its goals. The number of people being ordered deported has risen sharply, while judges have approved asylum claims in fewer than 10 percent of cases this year, the lowest rate for which data is available, The Times found.
In interviews, more than two dozen immigration judges who have served under the second Trump administration described feeling a consistent sense of pressure to deport immigrants or risk losing their jobs.
“All of us are looking over our shoulders,” said Holly D’Andrea, an immigration judge in Texas who was appointed during the first Trump administration. She spoke with The Times in her capacity as president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, a labor union.
The transformation of the courts reflects how the administration, under the watchful eye of Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser, has tried to fundamentally rewire an immigration system that Mr. Miller has long argued is too welcoming.
The effort stems from the administration’s view — as articulated by Mr. Miller — that many undocumented immigrants should no longer receive a constitutional right of due process as they seek legal status.
“The only process invaders are due is deportation,” Mr. Miller wrote on X last year.
During Mr. Trump’s second term, White House and Justice Department officials have carefully monitored judges’ rulings, examining statistics showing how often they have granted asylum, according to two federal government employees with knowledge of the activity who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The administration has instructed judges to stop granting bond to immigrants who crossed the border illegally, a change from decades of practice. The new policy has required people to remain in detention for extended periods even if they do not have a criminal record and have lived in the country for years.
Immigration lawyers say that many of their clients have agreed to leave the country rather than stay locked up. The Times found that the number of people in custody abandoning their cases has risen sharply.
Administration officials have expressed their expectations in stark terms, according to several current and former judges.
Last June, a senior Justice Department official published a memo accusing some judges of tolerating bias as long as it was “in favor of an alien” and against the government. The official warned that judges who favored one side “may be subject to corrective or disciplinary action.”
Other officials are said to have instructed judges to grant asylum only in the most extraordinary circumstances. In a previously unreported whistle-blower letter to Congress, one fired judge quoted an official remarking on the standard for asylum: “Maybe if you were Jewish and escaping Nazi Germany in 1943, you should get it.” The whistle-blower is a military lawyer who was detailed to serve as a temporary immigration judge and subsequently dismissed.
The administration has also made its priorities clear in recruitment ads, seeking applicants who wish to work as “deportation judges.”
Supporters and critics of immigration have agreed for years that the courts have become dysfunctional as more immigrants have entered the United States asking for asylum. Under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., claims piled up as his administration made it easier for asylum seekers to cross the border, helping generate a total backlog of more than three million cases.
Last year, as judges resolved claims more rapidly under Mr. Trump, the backlog fell for the first time in at least two decades. It has continued to decline.
“Biden’s open border policies effectively turned the asylum system into a broken revolving door,” said Chad Gilmartin, a Justice Department spokesman, adding that many entrants under Mr. Biden had “no legitimate claims of government persecution.”
The Trump administration, Mr. Gilmartin said, was conducting “re-evaluations of personnel and processes to deliver a better system.”
In response to the whistle-blower’s account, Mr. Gilmartin said the comment that asylum should be limited to people facing a crisis like Jews who fled Nazi Germany was “unverified.” He also said it “does not represent an official position of this D.O.J.”
He did not explain how the Justice Department chose which judges to fire.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that “the American people elected President Trump based on his promise to enforce federal immigration law.”
Presidents from both parties have tried to bring immigration court decisions in line with their policies. But typically no more than a few judges have been fired in a given year, according to interviews with union officials and immigration experts. In 2022, the Biden administration fired at least six Trump-appointed judges, drawing outrage from Republicans.
The Times’s analysis found that judges ruling against Biden-era arrivals explained only part of the dramatic decline in immigrants receiving asylum. Under Mr. Trump, judges have ruled more aggressively against people who came to the United States before then, too.
The job of an immigration judge is hardly glamorous.
There are more than 70 courts around the country, some located in detention centers, others in modest federal office buildings. Some are entirely virtual.
“You’re a bureaucrat,” said David Koelsch, who retired last year. “You’re not a lofty judge sitting in some sort of oak-walled chamber. You’re doing a bread-and-butter job on an assembly line.”
The Justice Department established the courts in their current form in 1983. They are administrative, not criminal, similar to the handling of tax disputes. There are no juries, and immigrants often represent themselves.
Under the Refugee Act of 1980, judges can grant asylum only to those fleeing persecution on account of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in “a particular social group.”
But many migrants today are fleeing situations that may not qualify them for asylum, such as poverty, climate change and violence. They have few other legal pathways to seek status in the United States.
Asylum seekers often wait years for a hearing on their claims. The delays have created an incentive for more migration, as people are allowed to work — and establish roots — in the country before their cases are decided, immigration experts across the political spectrum have said.
Judges ultimately deny many of their claims.
“Our asylum system is fundamentally broken,” said Blas Nuñez-Neto, a former senior Department of Homeland Security official under Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump started firing immigration judges almost as soon as he returned to office, removing four top court officials, including the chief judge, on the day of his inauguration.
Over the following year, the Justice Department regularly fired waves of judges with little notice or stated reason. Some have sued, claiming discrimination or that their civil service protections were violated. Dozens of others have quit or retired.
The overhaul is unfolding in real time: More dismissals happened last week, while the administration announced 32 hires on Wednesday.
Shuting Chen, an immigration judge fired last November, said the administration wanted judges to act as “puppets for the administration with a singular goal of deporting as many people as possible as quickly as possible.”
The Times analysis found that many of the judges fired under Mr. Trump shared a similar profile. Almost all had been appointed under Democratic administrations. More than half had previously worked as attorneys representing immigrants. And the vast majority had granted asylum at higher rates than their peers who kept their jobs.
Before being dismissed, fired judges granted asylum to 46 percent of applicants during the current administration, well above the 15 percent grant rate for those who have remained. The president’s new hires have granted asylum even less often, in roughly 6 percent of cases.
The administration has focused especially on courts seen as more friendly to immigrants. After firing more than half of San Francisco’s 21 judges, the Justice Department moved to shut down the main courthouse there.
In another courthouse in Massachusetts, there were so many goodbye parties that a black banner imprinted with colorful balloons was left up in the break room. It read: “We will miss you.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, many judges said they were pushed to rule faster, with officials setting quotas on how many cases they heard. But none of them described experiencing anything like the current pressure.
“It’s a dismantling of the court system,” said Jeremiah Johnson, one of the fired San Francisco judges.
Judges told The Times that they were particularly alarmed by communications from Trump officials, including a series of memos from Sirce Owen, who served as the acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the unit at the Justice Department that runs the courts.
Ms. Owen wrote the June 2025 memo threatening disciplinary action against judges she accused of exhibiting “bias” against the Department of Homeland Security, which represents the government in court.
Carla Espinoza, a Chicago judge fired two weeks after the memo was sent out, said that she and her colleagues interpreted it as “telling us: ‘You should be more friendly to the government.’”
Mr. Gilmartin, the Justice Department spokesman, said the memo “does not tell judges to rule in favor of either party.” Ms. Owen declined to comment.
The message has also gone out to newly hired judges, according to Christopher Day, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s Corps who was appointed as a temporary immigration judge last October but fired within two months.
In a whistle-blower letter to Congress, Mr. Day claimed that Daren Margolin, who replaced Ms. Owen as the director of the courts, had pressured new judges during training sessions to deny claims. “Mr. Margolin stated that while immigration judges (IJs) had ‘judicial autonomy,’ they had fired almost 100 judges to date and were watching new judges very carefully,” he wrote.
Before his firing, Mr. Day, who had served as an associate general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission during the Biden administration, granted asylum at a far higher rate than every other temporary judge, the Times analysis found.
Through his attorney, Mr. Day declined to comment. The Justice Department did not comment on his description of Mr. Margolin’s statements. Mr. Margolin did not respond to a request for comment.
Some of the new hires have had little if any experience in immigration law, a change from past appointees.
Robyn Ross worked on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign team. Before that, she served as the research director at Children’s Health Defense, the vaccine-skeptical organization founded by Mr. Kennedy, who is now the health and human services secretary. Ms. Ross could not be reached for comment.
One of the administration’s most significant changes has been denying bond to many immigrants, as those in custody are more likely to accept deportation.
Under Mr. Trump, immigration judges have been directed to not hold bond hearings for virtually everyone who entered the country illegally.
Previously, judges would grant bond to people they believed were not public safety threats or flight risks. The Times analysis found that since 2009, more than 75 percent of people who were released from custody have attended all their court hearings.
Many detainees have gone to federal court to challenge their detentions. In those courts, judges have repeatedly ruled that the detainees had been unlawfully locked up. The issue could reach the Supreme Court.
Immigration judges can still grant bond hearings to people who entered the country legally, such as those who overstayed visas.
Teresa Riley, the chief immigration judge, has received daily reports about bond rulings, according to a Justice Department official. Her office has sometimes emailed judges asking for an explanation about their decisions to grant bond, three people said. Ms. Riley declined to comment.
One current judge said the “pressure to deny bond is overt.” The judge said that there was a requirement to inform a supervisor every time bond was granted, underscoring how closely the administration was monitoring decisions.
Shahrokh Rahimi, 53, has spent the last nine months in immigration detention in Texas under Mr. Trump’s new mandatory detention policy. Mr. Rahimi entered the country illegally in 2003. In 2010, an immigration judge ordered him deported, but also prohibited the government from sending him back to his native Iran, saying he would be tortured or persecuted there.
He was allowed to live in the United States under supervised release, if he checked in regularly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and stayed out of trouble. He is married to a U.S. citizen, has a 12-year-old American-born daughter and does not have a criminal record beyond a speeding ticket, court filings show.
But during Mr. Trump’s enforcement crackdown last summer, ICE revoked Mr. Rahimi’s release and arrested him. An immigration judge denied him bond.
If he wants to continue his fight for legal status in the United States, he could spend months or even years in immigration detention — a prospect that has convinced many others in his position to give up.
Mr. Rahimi is not ready to make that choice, and not just because he fears imprisonment or worse in Iran.
“My wife is from here,” Mr. Rahimi said. “My daughter has a future in this country.”
About the Data
Reporters analyzed immigration court data published by the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (E.O.I.R.). The reporters used records from 2009, which The Times determined was the first full year with reliable records, through February 2026, the most recent month of data available.
The analyses focus on removal proceedings, which make up 97 percent of all cases initiated since 2009. Asylum grant rates in the analysis refer to the proportion of asylum applications, among completed removal proceedings, that were granted. Because E.O.I.R. data do not include the dates of asylum application decisions, the analyses use a removal proceeding’s completion date as a proxy.
The Times also examined changes in case characteristics over time, such as the immigrants’ date of entry into the United States, their nationality and their detention status. The Times found that broad declines in asylum grant rates persisted even after adjusting for these factors.
Reporters identified fired, newly hired and temporary judges through interviews, public rosters of judges and Department of Justice press releases.
Christopher Flavelle and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting. Research was contributed by Kirsten Noyes, Emily Powell, Kitty Bennett and Georgia Gee.
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11) Emperor Penguins Are Now Endangered, a New Assessment Finds
Populations are declining as climate change causes the sea ice the birds need for survival to retreat, according to researchers.
By Rachel Nuwer, April 9, 2026
Emperor penguins near the Dumont d’Urville Antarctic research station in 2012. Credit...Martin Passingham/Reuters
Emperor penguins, the world’s largest and perhaps most recognizable penguin species, have joined the list of wildlife endangered by global warming, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced on Thursday.
In an update of its Red List, a comprehensive and authoritative listing of global species based on their extinction risk, the group also said that Antarctic fur seals had moved into the endangered category and that southern elephant seals had moved to vulnerable.
In the case of penguins and fur seals, the changes were largely driven by shifts in sea ice levels and food availability linked to global warming, researchers said.
For species in the Antarctic region, “this is the first clear evidence of climate change’s influence pop up in a big way,” said Kit Kovacs, a marine mammal researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute who leads the I.U.C.N. seal project.
Here’s what to know about the updates.
Emperor Penguins
Scientists know of 66 emperor breeding colonies, exclusively in Antarctica, many of which were only recently revealed by springtime satellite imagery. Images taken between 2009 and 2018 showed an overall population decline of nearly 10 percent. Another recent study suggested that, between 2020 and 2024, seven colonies in the Ross Sea had declined by 32 percent.
“Looking further into the future, various studies predict quasi-extinction in many of the colonies,” said Philip Trathan, an emeritus marine ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey who assisted with the I.U.C.N. penguin assessment.
The penguin declines largely boil down to sea ice, which has hit record-low levels in the past few years. Emperor penguins rely on sea ice for breeding and to avoid water during their annual molt, when they essentially loose waterproofing and insulation. It also forms habitat for their aquatic prey.
The birds will not be able to survive without sea ice, which in turn depends on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, something that needs to happen “urgently,” Dr. Trathan said. In the meantime, he added, protecting the places where emperor penguins breed, molt and forage could help sustain the species.
Xiao Cheng, director of the Polar Research Center at Sun Yat-sen University in China, who was not involved in the I.U.C.N. assessment, agreed that “much evidence suggests that emperor penguins are experiencing increasing pressure.”
He added, though, that it’s premature to assume the fate of the species is sealed based on relatively short-term satellite observations. “While strengthening conservation actions is important, it is also important to carefully evaluate and maintain confidence in the species’ resilience,” Dr. Cheng said.
Emperor penguins are capable of diving to 1,750 feet in search of squid, fish and krill. Males handle egg incubation during the continent’s long, dark winter, forgoing food as they huddle together to conserve heat. Before Thursday’s update, they had been in the near-threatened category.
Antarctic Fur Seals
Once killed by the millions for their soft pelts, Antarctic fur seals quickly rebounded to a conservation status of least concern after a hunting ban was adopted in 1972.
Since 2014, however, populations have plummeted to fewer than one million adults from an estimated two million. The magnitude and speed of this decline was surprising, Dr. Kovacs said.
The main reason seems to be sharp shifts in the availability of krill, especially around South Georgia. As waters warm, krill are moving deeper and farther offshore in search of colder temperatures.
Disruption of the krill supply is catastrophic for breeding female seals, which depend on ample nearby supplies of the crustaceans to rear their pups, according to Jaume Forcada, a marine mammal scientist at the British Antarctic Survey who contributed to the updated assessment.
Krill distribution shifts are “unlikely to be reversible,” Dr. Forcada said, unless the world curtails greenhouse gases soon.
A number of other factors might also hasten the decline of fur seals, he added, including increasing levels of commercial krill fishing, competition for krill from recovering whale populations, plastic and other pollution, and disease outbreaks.
“However, there are no good data to assess these threats and assigning causality remains a challenge,” Dr. Forcada said.
Southern Elephant Seals
Southern elephant seals are 8,800-pound behemoths that take their name from the inflatable, trunk-like proboscis that males use like a megaphone in their competition for breeding privileges with large harems of females. But this gregarious lifestyle made the species, previously listed under least concern, especially susceptible to avian influenza, Dr. Kovacs said.
Since the virus first emerged in southern elephant seals in 2023, it has caused “huge and profound” losses to three of four major populations, she said, resulting in overall declines of more than 30 percent.
The high mortality might have been exacerbated by climate change, Dr. Kovacs said. In general, viruses and other pathogens do not proliferate well in the cold, so animals that live in polar regions have historically enjoyed some protection. As temperatures warm, though, diseases are finding their way to wildlife populations with no prior immunity, she said.
The situation underlies the cumulative nature of threats to wildlife, according to Dr. Kovacs.
“Everyone talks about one issue at a time,” she said. “But many are impinging on animals at the same time, and many are related to climate change.”
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12) F.B.I. Arrests Ex-Army Employee Who Detailed Harassment to Journalist
Courtney Williams, who worked at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, was accused of leaking classified information to a reporter.
By Jonathan Wolfe, April 9, 2026
Fort Bragg in 2025. Courtney Williams worked in a support role there from 2010 to 2016. Kenny Holston/The New York Times
A former U.S. Army employee was charged on Wednesday with leaking classified information to a journalist who published some of her disclosures in a book and article, federal prosecutors said.
The employee, Courtney Williams, 40, worked in a support role for the Special Operations unit Delta Force at Fort Bragg in North Carolina from 2010 to 2016, the Justice Department said. In a book and article published by a journalist last year, she described experiencing sexual harassment and gender discrimination during her time there.
The F.B.I. arrested her on Tuesday and she was indicted by a grand jury the following day on a charge of “alleged transmission of classified national defense information” to a journalist, the department said in a statement.
She faces a punishment of up to 10 years in prison.
Ms. Williams held top secret security clearance while working for the Army, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court. Between 2022 and 2025, after she had left the Army, she communicated with a journalist who published an article and book that included experiences from her time working with the military, including classified information, according to prosecutors, who did not name the journalist.
Ms. Williams was featured prominently in a Politico Magazine article by Seth Harp published last August that detailed alleged misconduct in Delta Force. The article was adapted from Mr. Harp’s book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” which was published the same month and examined unsolved murders and other problems at the military base.
The criminal complaint details phone calls and text messages that Ms. Williams exchanged with the journalist and states that she “revealed classified national defense information.” She also mailed documents, photographs, notes and other materials to the journalist that likely contained classified information on a thumb drive, the complaint said.
In the article, Ms. Williams was quoted as speaking about sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit, describing some of her time there as a “living hell.” In one instance, she said she was asked to undergo a dress code check and was told to turn around and bend over in front of senior officers to “to assess whether her underwear could be seen through the fabric.”
In announcing the charges against Ms. Williams, federal officials described her behavior as putting the United States and its soldiers at risk, and suggested that she revealed “tradecraft, tactics and techniques” used by Delta Force, without providing further details.
The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, congratulated his colleagues on the arrest of Ms. Williams in a social media post on Wednesday.
“Let this serve as a message to any would-be leakers: We’re working these cases, and we’re making arrests,” he wrote. “This F.B.I. will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and put Americans in harm’s way.”
Mr. Harp, the journalist, strongly condemned the charges in a statement on social media. He called Ms. Williams a “courageous whistle-blower” who helped expose “rampant gender discrimination and sexual harassment” in Delta Force.
He accused the Justice Department of prosecuting Ms. Williams to retaliate against her for her critical comments about the unit, adding that officials had not detailed what specific classified national defense information she had leaked.
Ms. Williams was appointed a federal public defender, according to court documents, which did not include a lawyer’s name.
The Justice Department and Mr. Harp did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Thursday.
Ms. Williams was being detained until a preliminary hearing set for April 13, according to court documents.
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