Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a member 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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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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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols 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) Stocks Rise, Oil Prices Wobble on Impasse Over Reopening Strait of Hormuz
By The New York Times, May 22, 2026
Ships and tankers in the Strait of Hormuz last month. Reuters
Stocks rose and oil prices fluctuated on Friday, with few signs of concrete progress in talks to establish a peace deal between the United States and Iran.
Nearly three months since the fighting began, disagreements remain over the fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile and reports that Iran and Oman may impose transit fees on vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration has warned against charging ships for passing through the strait, a critical shipping lane for oil and gas.
Under a fragile cease-fire, negotiations over the points of an enduring peace agreement appear far from settled.
Oil prices waver.
· The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, nudged higher to around than $103 a barrel.
· West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, inched lower to around $96 a barrel.
Price of Brent crude oil
How much the international benchmark costs
Stocks gain.
· The S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent as stocks resumed trading in the United States on Friday. The index is on course for its eighth straight week of gains.
· Stocks in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas, posted gains in most major markets. Japan’s Nikkei 225 and stocks in Taiwan rose more than 2 percent. Markets in mainland China, Hong Kong and South Korea were all higher.
· In Europe, stocks rallied. The Stoxx 600, a broad-index that tracks the region’s largest companies, gained 0.8 percent.
S&P 500 index
How stocks are trading in the United States
The bond sell-off subsides.
· The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield moderated somewhat, slipping to 4.54 percent on Friday. That was a small reversal after an extended rise that pushed yields to two-decade highs this week. The 10-year yield was around 4 percent before the war started.
· The run-up in yields has fed through to a wide range of loans, including mortgage rates. This week, the average for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage hit 6.51 percent, the highest rate since August, casting a chill on the U.S. housing market.
U.S. 10-Year Treasury Yield
Gasoline prices ticked lower.
· Gas prices fell by a penny on Friday, to a national average of $4.55 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The increase has raised the cost for drivers by more than 50 percent since the war began.
· Gas prices don’t move in lock step with crude, usually trailing increases or drops by a few days.
· The average price of diesel also dropped by a cent to $5.65 on Friday, up 50 percent since the start of the war.
What they are saying: ‘What happens in Hormuz won’t stay in Hormuz’
· Analysts at S&P Global Ratings said that they assume the disruptions to traffic in the Strait of Hormuz “will ease in the second half of the year.” Still, the ripple effects will continue to be felt around the world for a long time — or, as they put it, “what happens in Hormuz won’t stay in Hormuz.”
· Even after a reopening, “later and lower volumes” of energy supplies traveling through the strait could put upward pressure on oil prices, which the analysts expect to average around $100 per barrel through the end of the year. Damage to oil infrastructure may also limit production beyond 2026, they note, resulting in “more persistent price pressures and deeper economic disruptions.”
· Instead of creating “clear winners and losers,” the energy shock has highlighted “varying levels of vulnerability” among the world’s economies, the analysts concluded, with implications for debts, deficits and credit ratings.
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2) With Deals Booming and Regulations Lightened, Bankers Are Back on Top
They played second fiddle to private equity and hedge funds for years, but 2026 is shaping up to be “the year of the bank,” one consultant said.
By Rob Copeland, May 22, 2026
“Banks are insulated from many current macroeconomic pressures, increasingly catering to richer customers, whose wealth is largely tied up in a stock market that keeps hitting records despite the fighting in the Middle East.”
It is a golden moment for banks.
Trading profits are at record highs, and so are employee bonuses. Mergers, acquisitions and other deals are piling up at the second-fastest pace in at least a decade, producing billions of dollars in fees. And after they operated for nearly two decades in what one banker described as a regulatory “straitjacket,” the Trump administration is making it easier for banks to expand and take more risks.
“The stars are aligning for banks in a way that hasn’t been seen in multiple decades,” Citi analysts wrote in a research note this month.
The good times for banks represent a flip of fortunes. Since the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street’s biggest paydays have been earned by private equity and private credit firms, making often high-risk investments with the promise of high returns.
Lately, many of those private equity firms have struggled to raise money as the industry has delivered lackluster investment returns. At the recent Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, a confab popular with the private equity set, the chief executive of one giant investment firm compared the vibe, with some hyperbole, to the final days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
It’s also a tenuous time for many international businesses, with airlines going bankrupt, global ship traffic choked, inflation on the rise and artificial intelligence roiling industries.
Many banks, by contrast, have followed the trajectory of Citizens Bank, a once sleepy Providence, R.I., institution that has been expanding rapidly, and seen its share price rise by more than 50 percent over the past year.
“I feel great,” said Bruce Van Saun, Citizen Bank’s chairman and chief executive.
Citizens has been acquiring smaller specialist firms that are helping it to capitalize on a Trump-encouraged boom in corporate deal making, hiring up swaths of financial advisers that cater to the global well-to-do and opening up branches in wealthy neighborhoods.
Banks are insulated from many current macroeconomic pressures, increasingly catering to richer customers, whose wealth is largely tied up in a stock market that keeps hitting records despite the fighting in the Middle East.
In fact, the swings in oil prices and volatility in other markets caused by the war are benefiting the banks’ trading volumes, which brings in more fees. In the first quarter alone, nearly $50 billion in trading revenue flowed to the six biggest banks in America, including JPMorgan Chase and Citi, a record high.
“It’s interesting to see,” Matthieu Wiltz, co-chief executive officer for JPMorgan in Europe, Middle East and Africa, recently told Bloomberg Television, “that, for I think the first time, we have such a big conflict with limited impact on the market.”
Last week, JPMorgan announced that balances in its “prime brokerage,” which executes trades for wealthy clients, were at an all-time high.
Deals are also making a comeback after several sluggish years during the Biden administration, when mergers and acquisitions came under intense antitrust scrutiny. Big-money corporate deals are booming, as the Trump administration waves through company tie-ups and, increasingly, encourages them directly.
And after a yearslong fallow stretch for initial public offerings — the business of listing privately held companies on stock exchanges — banks are salivating at the prospect of billions of dollars in commissions from offering shares in private companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the A.I. giants Anthropic and OpenAI.
The good times are encouraging the newest generation of bankers. In past years, said Mr. Van Saun, the Citizens chief executive, new college graduates would join banks and almost immediately begin applying for jobs elsewhere — a pattern that became known as “two and out,” a reference to the mass resignations by junior bankers after two years. Often, those young bankers were taking jobs at hedge funds, at technology firms, in venture capital or in pretty much any other career more exciting or remunerative.
But now many young bankers are taking a look at what Mr. Van Saun calls “the travails” outside banking and increasingly staying put.
Banker pay is rising, too. Alan Johnson, founder of a namesake Wall Street pay consultancy, projects that investment bank employee bonuses this year will be 10 to 20 percent higher than in 2025, when New York’s finance set pulled in $49.2 billion in collective bonuses, with securities industry employees earning an extra $246,900 on average.
Mr. Johnson contrasted the imminent banker windfall with private equity pay, which he compared in many instances to “a lottery ticket that won’t be worth anything.”
“It is the year of the bank,” he said.
Although bankers are ebullient, that could change again.
One generator of the banks’ record profits are layoffs and attrition brought on by increasing uses of A.I. Last week, Goldman Sachs’s president predicted in a television interview that he would replace his firm’s “human assembly line” with digital agents.
And much of the wind behind the banking industry can be traced to ever-fickle Washington, where securities enforcers have dialed back scrutiny of everything from antitrust issues to crypto.
The Federal Reserve, the main bank regulator, has proposed easing the annual “stress tests” that banks are required to undergo. It also suggested that a core safety backstop, known as capital requirements, be slashed by around 5 percent for the largest banks and more for smaller ones. Even that modest change could mean billions more in lending.
Bank executives say that would free them up to make more loans — to individuals through mortgages and credit cards, to other Wall Street firms in areas like private credit or to finance sweeping construction projects like A.I. data centers.
But less regulatory scrutiny necessarily requires faith that the industry will police itself, noted Anat R. Admati, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who co-wrote a book warning of escalating problems in the banking system since the financial crisis.
“I don’t think anyone has a clue how much risk is being taken,” she said.
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3) Here’s the Easy Way to Tax the Rich
By Zachary Liscow, May 22, 2026
Mr. Liscow is a professor at Yale Law School.
The United States is seeing an increasing concentration of wealth at the very top and a worsening national debt. For many Americans, taxing the rich more is an obvious move.
Ask tax policy experts how to do this, and you will often hear novel proposals to curb the many intricate ways the rich make and hide their money: A wealth tax. A tax on unrealized gains. A tax on the loans that billionaires take against their stock. These ideas, now common in progressive tax thinking, come with serious catches, legal or arithmetical. The tax code has structural flaws, and many of the ideas would be good in theory. But pursuing them could result in little or no new revenue for the government.
The boring truth is that Congress can accomplish a lot simply by raising the rates of the taxes already on the books.
Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, has proposed a 2 percent annual levy on fortunes above $50 million, rising to 3 percent on those over $1 billion. There are serious constitutional and policy arguments for this idea, but the Supreme Court’s current members would probably strike it down. (A California proposal for a state-level wealth tax would not face the same legal barriers, but it would be a partial response to problems that are national in scale.)
Then there are proposals for a “mark to market” tax, which would tax unrealized capital gains — the appreciation in the paper value of assets such as stocks — every year, not just when an asset is sold. Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, has proposed a billionaire income tax along these lines. Such a tax would raise a lot of money for the Treasury. But it faces its own constitutional hurdles. The Supreme Court has left the legal status of unrealized-gains taxes deliberately unresolved, and a mark-to-market tax’s chances at the court would be, at best, 50-50. Despite the proposal’s many appeals, building a generation of fiscal policy on a coin flip would be risky.
Another idea is imposing a borrowing tax, a policy aimed directly at the widely criticized “buy, borrow, die” loophole. The loophole allows the rich to take loans against their portfolios and use the money to finance glamorous lives. They pay no capital gains tax because they avoid selling the assets — often stock that has risen in value — that they use as collateral for the borrowing that sustains their lifestyles. When they die, they pass on their assets to their heirs, who, because of the “stepped-up basis” loophole in inheritance law, can avoid paying capital gains taxes even if they sell those assets. A borrowing tax would discourage the buy, borrow, die strategy and restore some fairness to the tax code. It’s a policy I like — I proposed my own version of it.
Except the wealthy are not using the buy, borrow, die loophole all that much. In work with Edward Fox of the University of Michigan, I looked at two decades of data measuring how much the rich actually borrow. The top 1 percent borrow an amount equal to roughly 2 percent of their economic income each year — defined broadly to include the gains on stocks they haven’t sold. Their unrealized gains over the same period were about 20 times that amount. At current tax rates, imposing a borrowing tax would raise about $50 billion over 10 years — a paltry number relative to the size of the federal budget. It’s just not where the money is.
Congress has a simpler, tried-and-true tax policy to choose from: raising the rates.
Current taxes already reach most of the rich’s economic income, which includes unrealized capital gains. The existing income tax captures about 60 percent of the top 1 percent’s economic income and roughly 71 percent after adjusting for inflation. Even for the top 0.1 percent, about 60 percent is taxed, adjusted for inflation.
Measured this way, the ultrarich mostly aren’t escaping the tax system through exotic loopholes. They mostly increase their fortunes with and spend regular taxable income — salaries, dividends, interest, business profits, realized capital gains — and they earn a lot of it.
This means the most powerful lever is also the simplest one. Restore the top marginal ordinary income tax rate to its pre-2017 level of 39.6 percent — which, but for President Trump’s tax cuts, would have applied to income over $546,750 this year. And raise the (much lower) top capital-gains rate. Increasing these rates would generate hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade. That is much more than a borrowing tax could plausibly raise, and without the legal risk that would come with a wealth tax or a mark-to-market tax.
Yes, higher rates can change people’s behavior, encouraging some to find ways to avoid paying more in income taxes. But revenue estimates already consider this effect.
In addition, raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent toward the 35 percent it had been set at historically would add hundreds of billions in revenue for the government. Congress could bring in even more by ending the step-up basis rule, which allows heirs to inherit assets and owe nothing in capital gains taxes on the amount those assets have appreciated since they were purchased.
None of this would require defending untested constitutional theories or imposing complex asset valuation systems. We’ve done almost all of it before. True, raising rates is politically hard. But the other options on this list would arguably be harder to get through Congress, for an uncertain or modest payoff. A wealth tax that gets struck down or a mark-to-market regime tied up in years of litigation would raise zero dollars any time soon. A borrowing tax would raise some money but not much.
Public outrage at billionaire tax dodging is understandable. But the country cannot afford to spend huge amounts of political capital to pass experimental tax policy that is based on exaggerated stories about how the ultrawealthy avoid paying taxes or on wishful thinking about what the current courts will allow. Raising the rates — the simple, boring answer — is where the real money lies.
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4) There’s a Way to Stop Trump’s I.R.S. Slush Fund
By Jamie Raskin, May 22, 2026
Mr. Raskin, a Democrat, represents Maryland’s Eighth Congressional District.
Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times
These days it takes a spectacular burst of corruption to get the attention of our scandal-weary nation, but President Trump and his administration have managed, once again, to transfix Americans by establishing a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund in the Department of Justice that will undoubtedly be used to line the pockets of Mr. Trump’s partisans and foot soldiers — with your tax dollars.
The creation of this fund is a stupefying feat of self-dealing — part of a “settlement agreement” between the Department of the Treasury, which Mr. Trump controls, and the plaintiffs — Mr. Trump, two of his sons and their family business — who sued the I.R.S. for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns. It will very likely result in an undeserved windfall to a legion of Jan. 6 rioters who have already unjustly received pardons from Mr. Trump.
Every part of this farce is an affront to the Constitution. It usurps both the exclusive power of Congress to legislate programs and spend money and the power of the courts to decide specific cases and controversies.
It is, quite simply, a scam.
Only Congress has the power to appropriate federal dollars. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states that “no money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” But Mr. Trump and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche seem to think they can conjure this giant slush fund into being without congressional approval.
Further, Article III, Section 1 states that the “judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Yet the settlement took Mr. Trump’s case out of the hands of the courts. And it calls for oversight by a five-member board, appointed by Mr. Blanche and whose members Mr. Trump can dismiss on a whim. Even if this fund were legitimate, that kind of setup wouldn’t be for Mr. Blanche to decide. Congress has never established a court, tribunal or board to hear pleas from people who believe they are victims of government “weaponization,” much less a fund almost certainly meant to reward supporters and allies of the president who feel they were wronged simply because their actions on Jan. 6, 2021, were prosecuted.
No matter what you think about the events of Jan. 6, hundreds of rioters indisputably broke the law that day when they stormed the Capitol trying to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election and the peaceful transfer of power.
As regrettable as it is that most of the rioters were pardoned, there’s no denying that as president, Mr. Trump has that power. But the same Constitution giving him that power also says that “neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” Jan. 6 was indeed an insurrection, and pardon or no pardon, no one can legally be compensated for taking part in it.
As James Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, a cardinal precept of our legal system is that “no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” Here, Mr. Trump’s administration “settled” a case that he brought, effectively making him the judge in his own case. He not only concocted the fund, but his Justice Department threw in a sweetener: shielding him and his sons from audits of any tax returns they have already filed.
The $1.776 billion figure is obviously meant to invoke the year of our founding. But go back and read the Declaration of Independence, which includes a long list of accusations directed at George III. Among them is the charge that the British king “has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.”
And here’s the kicker: The nearly $1.8 billion will come from the Justice Department’s Judgment Fund, a fund created by Congress that the administration has already been abusing. The Judgment Fund was set up to allow the federal government to efficiently and promptly pay for final court judgments and proper legal settlements against the United States — a process that had once been enormously time-consuming and burdensome.
For 70 years, the Judgment Fund has served its original essential purpose of settling valid, good-faith claims: Two years ago, it paid out almost $140 million to dozens of young women and girls to resolve claims that the F.B.I. had failed to protect them from the actions of the serial predator Larry Nassar.
But Mr. Trump has treated this fund as a political piggy bank.
His Justice Department agreed to pay nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt to settle its wrongful death suit against the government. Ms. Babbitt was a Jan. 6 rioter who was fatally shot that day at the Capitol. Her death was certainly a tragedy, but the suit was without merit. Meanwhile, not a single dollar from the fund went to the families of the police officers wounded and injured on Jan. 6, nor to the families of several who died in the wake of the violence.
In March, the department agreed to pay around $1.25 million to Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser, for a case that had been dismissed.
In April, the department announced another million-dollar settlement, this time with Carter Page, a former adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. Mr. Page’s lawsuit contended that he had been unlawfully surveilled by the F.B.I. during its investigation of contacts between the campaign and Russia’s government. A federal judge dismissed his lawsuit in 2022 on statute of limitations grounds.
Around 400 Jan. 6 rioters have already filed lawsuits under the Federal Tort Claims Act, with most seeking $1 million to $10 million. Another group of rioters — including Proud Boys convicted of assaulting police officers — filed a class action demanding over $18 million, claiming that officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 caused them injuries. And five Proud Boys convicted of felonies including seditious conspiracy have filed a separate $100 million lawsuit. No one should be surprised if their cases wind up being swiftly “settled” via the president’s new MAGA gravy train.
But the “weaponization” fund is a rip-off on an unimaginably larger scale. This week, I introduced legislation to put a stop to this. It would bar the federal government from paying out monetary settlements to sitting presidents. It would also prohibit settlement payments for claims involving investigations or prosecutions related to Jan. 6 or foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Members of Congress must act to reassert the exclusive power that the Constitution vests in the legislative branch — or else we will have gone a step further toward making Mr. Trump a king.
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5) The Civil Rights Era Is Collapsing Before Our Eyes
By Nikole Hannah-Jones, May 22, 2026
Photo illustration by Chantal Jahchan
On May 7, amid the din of protesters, Tennessee’s Republican-majority legislature met to vote on a bill that would eliminate the state’s lone majority-Black and Democratic House district, divvying its voters up between three heavily white ones. Outraged, State Representative Justin Jones of Nashville stood in the hallway of the State Capitol and set afire a paper replica of the Confederate battle flag. The words “We will not go back” were printed along the top.
But going back is precisely what the legislature voted to do, as Tennessee became the first of the former Confederate states to create and approve new congressional maps since the Supreme Court’s recent decision to eviscerate the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
A week and a day before the Tennessee vote, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, had finally achieved the right’s decades-long goal of nullifying what’s considered the most successful civil rights law in our nation’s ignoble racial history. After upholding unrestrained partisan gerrymandering in other recent decisions, the court now determined that creating congressional maps that sought to ensure political representation for racial minorities violated the Constitution.
For students of history, what Tennessee did on May 7 felt like a premonition. One hundred and fifty years ago, when this nation’s first experiment with interracial democracy began to collapse, Tennessee — a former slave state and the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan — was the first domino to drop. In 1870, the Tennessee legislature rewrote the State Constitution to disenfranchise Black men. As the historian Manisha Sinha writes in “The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic,” Tennessee “provided a template to other Southern states” for how to “overthrow Reconstruction.” Within three decades, Black representation, in Congress and in local and state offices across the former Confederacy, would be wiped out.
It was not just Tennessee that echoed history, but the Supreme Court as well. The case that felled the Voting Rights Act was Louisiana v. Callais. Louisiana is the state where in 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, another superlatively conservative Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to license segregation, setting off a race across the South to strip Black people of the franchise and codify their second-class citizenship.
The day after the Callais ruling, Gov. Jeff Landry took the unprecedented action of suspending the state’s U.S. House primary — in which tens of thousands of voters had already cast ballots — so legislators could redraw the election maps. Though one in three Louisiana residents is Black, Republicans intend to jettison at least one of two Black-majority districts. “Well, the failed narrative is actually that people in Louisiana are racist,” Landry insisted, “that basically we won’t elect Black people. I mean, I disagree with that.” In fact, since the Plessy era, Louisiana has sent only four Black people to Congress, and a Black candidate has never won in a white district there.
Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Florida quickly moved ahead with their own redistricting plans. And the governor of Mississippi — which has just a single Black U.S. representative despite having the nation’s highest percentage of Black residents, at 38 percent — announced his intent to do the same.
Voting and civil rights experts warn that America now sits at a familiar precipice. The Voting Rights Act helped transform the South: In 1965, the region had not a single Black representative in the U.S. Congress; today, it has 31. Now, Black representation may once again disappear in the South, where more than half of Black Americans live. This could lead to the largest decimation of Black political power since the fall of Reconstruction. And just like then, what is at stake is no less than American democracy itself.
In 1901, Representative George Henry White of North Carolina delivered a farewell speech for his entire race to the U.S. House. White, a Howard University graduate whose mother was most likely born into slavery, was elected in 1896. By the time he left office, he was the last of a cadre of Black men who had, during Reconstruction, integrated Congress for the first time.
As White looked out across a now all-white Congress, he said he spoke on behalf of “an outraged, heartbroken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people, faithful, industrious, loyal people — rising people, full of potential force.” His departure might be Black people’s “temporary farewell to the American Congress,” he said, but “phoenixlike, he will rise up some day and come again.” It took more than half a century.
The Reconstruction era that White was elegizing had been snuffed out with dizzying speed.
It began in the wake of the Civil War as new constitutional amendments transformed the South, then home to nearly the entire U.S. Black population. The 14th Amendment ensured legal equality for the formerly enslaved, and the 15th Amendment guaranteed Black men the vote. Black men who had been enslaved, or were born to parents who had been enslaved, flocked to the party of Lincoln, casting ballots and taking political office. Together, Black and white Republicans created representative governments that passed the most progressive legislation in the region’s history — establishing public education, investing in public infrastructure and social programs, and initiating land reform and labor protections.
But former Confederates, led by the Southern plantation oligarchy and consolidated in the pro-slavery Democratic Party, never accepted interracial democracy. Many white Southerners engaged in mass killings, assassinations, electoral fraud, terrorism and coups to overthrow it.
At first, the Republican Party tried to protect democracy. President Ulysses S. Grant created the Department of Justice in 1870, expanding the federal government’s ability to enforce Black Americans’ civil rights. Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, what Sinha calls the nation’s first federal hate-crime laws, to guard against the wanton violence of white supremacists. The laws allowed federal officials to supervise elections in towns where white supremacists were interfering and to aggressively prosecute the Klan.
But over the next two decades, starting in 1876, the all-white Supreme Court thwarted the federal government’s attempts to enforce equality. It struck down all or part of the Enforcement Acts; it nullified the part of a law that mandated punishing state and local officials who worked to deny Black voters the franchise; it asserted that the 15th Amendment did not guarantee Black people the right to vote, but only prohibited states from explicitly using race to discriminate against voters.
Then the court struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act, which had outlawed discrimination in public accommodations. Using the same logic that today’s Supreme Court did when it gutted the Voting Rights Act, the court determined, a mere 18 years after the abolishment of slavery, that “there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when” Black Americans must no longer “be the special favorite of the laws.”
White Southern officials, following the road map the court laid out for them, immediately adopted so-called race-neutral tools that could disenfranchise Black voters without ever mentioning race. They implemented poll taxes and grandfather clauses and literacy exams. And because nearly all Black Southern voters identified with the pro-civil-rights Republicans, and nearly all white Southern voters aligned with the Democrats, white racists knew they could attack Black citizenship by dismantling the Republican Party. They used partisan gerrymandering to dilute Black voting power and eliminate Black seats.
After a while, white politicians in the North grew tired of trying to enforce Black Americans’ rights, and Northern business interests saw opportunity in the South’s exploitable Black (and poor white) labor. A political deal was struck that ended Reconstruction in 1877 and along with it any federal enforcement of Black political rights.
With the assent of the Supreme Court and the ambivalence of the federal government, the South increasingly became, once again, a region with one-party, white-only and often minority rule.
White Southerners had their own name for the end of Reconstruction: Redemption. America would not see another Black man in Congress for nearly 30 years. And it would take an additional 41 years after that before a Black person represented the South again.
Black Americans would spend nearly a century after Reconstruction’s demise fighting and dying to restore the rights they had lost, especially the right that secures all others: voting. Most Americans know the culmination of this effort as the civil rights movement, which led to the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation of 1964, 1965 and 1968. But many scholars also describe this period as the start of the Second Reconstruction. If that’s the case, we may be witnessing the Second Redemption.
Today’s Supreme Court has thrown open the door for this, using the same logic as before — that efforts to ensure Black political representation illegally discriminate against white Americans.
A century and a half ago, Southern state legislatures knew partisan gerrymandering could provide cover for racist gerrymandering. While the party alignments are now reversed, the racial divide remains. “As long as Black folks have voted, there has been a party that’s basically pro-civil-rights and one that’s anti-civil-rights,” Theodore Johnson, a scholar of Black electoral politics and senior adviser at New America, told me. “Black folks have voted mostly uniformly against the party against civil rights. Most white people vote for the anti-civil-rights party.”
Since the end of Barack Obama’s second term as the nation’s first Black president, the racial partisan divide has only intensified, with Southern white voters moving even more fully into the Republican Party. White conservative politicians deeply understand this, though the court treats it as incidental.
The parallels to Reconstruction and Redemption are not perfect but they are conspicuous, the Yale historian David Blight told me. “You could argue here in big terms that Trumpism, in fact, that the modern conservative movement, has been a similar reaction to the modern civil rights revolution,” he said. Today’s rollback of civil rights relies largely on legal machinations rather than violence, but to Blight, its goal is no less radical.
Janai Nelson, who as president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund argued the Callais case before the Supreme Court, told me that the court had greenlit a sort of wink-and-nod colorblindness, where majority-Black districts are automatically suspect but a legislative body can create voting maps where no Black people are elected, and as long as they do not say they are doing that for racist reasons, the Constitution is fine with that. And it is not just in the South that Black representation is imperiled. Illinois’s Democrat-controlled State Senate was planning to put forward a constitutional amendment to protect so-called majority-minority districts. After the Louisiana v. Callais ruling, it halted the effort.
The consequences for Black representation, in Congress and state legislatures, but also on school boards and county commissions and in judgeships, could be catastrophic — not just for Black Americans but for everyone.
Black rights movements have always been democratizing movements, and history shows this country cannot deny one and maintain the other. When Redeemers stripped Black Americans of their franchise and political representation, white Southerners who did not align with the Democratic Party also lost the ability to choose their leaders. These all-white conservative governments then decreased funding for public education and public services, implemented regressive tax systems that favored the elite and helped crush labor movements.
“It needs to be emphasized again and again: What is happening is an assault on democracy, and they’re using the easiest vector, which is anti-Black racism, because it’s the easiest thing you could do, the laziest thing you can do,” Nelson said. “They are cementing absolute minority control because they do not represent a majority of this country. And when they — if they — get away with the heist, we will be locked out of multiracial democracy for at least a generation.”
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6) In West Bank, Latest Victim of Israeli Settler Violence Shocks in a New Way
A video of a Palestinian family’s dog being savagely beaten has spread widely in the days after the attack.
By David M. Halbfinger, Reporting from Atara in the West Bank, May 22, 2026
A dog being beaten by a settler in the West Bank village of Atara in May. Credit...Abu Rejalah family
Cruelty has become commonplace in the West Bank, where extremist Israeli settlers beat and shoot Palestinians, steal their sheep, uproot their olive groves and torch cars and homes. The settlers, outlaws in a multitude of ways, seldom face consequences for their actions.
But even for Palestinians living under the constant threat of being attacked, some violence retains the capacity to shock.
That was the case when a video went viral that showed a settler menacing a year-and-a-half-old dog with a club in each fist — and swinging hard, beating her over the head.
In the video, the dog, a Belgian Malinois named Lucy, squeals in pain and tries to scramble away. But she had been chained to an olive tree to keep her in the shade on a hot afternoon.
What follows, recorded by the dog’s owners, a Palestinian family in the village of Atara, is extremely difficult to watch, and to describe.
Until recently, the violence in Atara had followed a more typical playbook, aimed at driving Palestinians to flee for safety — abandoning their homes, pastures and farmlands to the encroaching settlers, so that Arab spaces shrink and Jewish spaces expand.
A group of young settlers established an illegal outpost, called Kfar Tarfon, last summer about three-quarters of a mile from the Abu Rejalah family’s home in hilly Atara, north of Ramallah.
They pelted Palestinians’ cars with stones along the main road into town, residents said. They harassed a Bedouin sheep farmer on the edge of Atara until he gave up and moved. Residents of the village said they felt too afraid last fall to harvest hundreds of olive trees just downhill from the outpost.
Then the settlers took an interest in the Abu Rejalah family, which is growing, and not fleeing, as the seven sons of Hassan Abu Rejalah, 50, begin to marry and have children of their own. Their expanding home, a three-story construction site, is visible from Kfar Tarfon across a small valley.
The settlers herded their sheep through the family’s small hillside plot, destroying crops, according to Mr. Abu Rejalah, two of his sons and other members of their extended family. They drove up to the family’s doorstep as if they owned the place, stealing harvested vegetables and disabling a driveway gate in plain view of surveillance cameras.
And they accused two members of the family of attacking them, according to Mr. Abu Rejalah. The family said the accusation was false. On Jan. 9, Israeli soldiers arrested his sons Ibrahim, 31, and Daoud, 26, who were beaten by soldiers, taken to an Israeli police station, imprisoned in a military prison for five days and then released without being charged, Ibrahim and his father said.
Asked about the arrests, the Israeli military confirmed that soldiers had detained Palestinians after an Israeli civilian reported that they had thrown stones at him. It did not address whether the Palestinians had been beaten. It said they were turned over to the police, who did not respond to questions about the incident.
Such experiences are all too familiar to Palestinians across the West Bank.
What was unusual was the cruelty to animals.
Last fall, a neighbor of the Abu Rejalahs’ who lives closer to the settlers’ outpost discovered a dead donkey hanging from one of his olive trees, residents said. It was cited as one of the reasons that villagers forsook the yearly olive harvest, a fixture of Palestinian life and important revenue source.
Members of the Abu Rejalah family said that on Feb. 18, they discovered a settler grazing his sheep on their property and throwing stones at another dog, Angel, a part-Malinois mixed breed. Two days later, the dog died from his wounds.
No one photographed that attack, but on May 14, when a lanky settler showed up at the family’s home and threw a stone at a window, Ibrahim recorded video from inside the house. He also called the Israeli police and Palestinian security services. Israeli soldiers soon arrived, he said, and sent the man away.
Ibrahim said that the Israeli and Palestinian officers had cautioned him: “As long as they’re around, don’t go outside.”
The same settler — whom the police said Thursday that they had identified — returned the next day at around 6 p.m. No one went outside. Two family members took out their cellphones and pressed record.
In the videos, which have been verified by The New York Times, the young man, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, holds a wooden club and is accompanied by two white dogs of his own. He paces back and forth, scanning the windows of the house. Then he walks down to the olive tree to which Lucy is chained. Nearby, another dog, Cheetah, not on a chain, is keeping her company.
The man picks up a grapefruit-size rock and throws it at one of the dogs. Cheetah, bloodied, runs away. Lucy cannot.
The man, now holding a club in each hand, begins to beat her, hard.
The dog tries to put the tree between herself and the man. But he reaches around the tree to strike her. Seeing her wounded, he moves in.
He pummels her head, swinging both clubs. Once. Twice. Only on at least the 17th double-blow does the dog collapse.
The attacker doesn’t stop. He beats her nine more times.
Ibrahim Abu Rejalah said he called the Israeli police while the attack was still underway and was told that soldiers would be sent immediately. He said that police and soldiers only showed up days later, on Sunday.
Asked about the case, the Israeli police said in a statement on Thursday that it only learned of the incident after video of the attack went viral. It said its investigation had been “intensive,” and called on the attacker to “turn himself in, as the long arm of the police will reach him.”
In its own statement, the Israeli military added that Kfar Tarfon was an “illegal outpost” and was “expected to be evacuated.”
At the settlers’ outpost on Tuesday, two men approached by Times reporters both refused to comment.
“There’s nothing for you here,” one said in Hebrew.
When shown a still image from the video of the attack on the dog and asked to identify the attacker, the man said nothing and walked away.
The dog survived, somehow. Her skull was fractured in only two places, beneath a 10-centimeter gash, said Dr. Ashraf Shiban, a veterinarian in Rama, in northern Israel. Her treatment is being paid for by an Israeli animal-rescue group.
The dog was blinded in her left eye, but Dr. Shiban said Wednesday that she was already eating again. In time, he said, she should recover.
Members of the Abu Rejalah family said they feared further attacks from the Kfar Tarfon settlers, particularly now that they have spoken up publicly. They expressed little confidence that the attacker would be punished.
But they seemed just as disbelieving that the attack had even occurred in the first place.
“I worked for years inside Israel,” said Hassan Abu Rejalah. “Every house has a pet, a dog or a cat. They love pets.
“What would make them do such a thing, if not to scare off people?”
Fatima AbdulKarim, James McManagan and Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.
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7) ‘A Pyramid of Hate’: Why Racial and Religious Attacks Are Rising in Britain
Islamophobic, antisemitic and racist crimes are being fueled by online disinformation, global instability and divisive political rhetoric, experts say.
By Lizzie Dearden, Reporting from London, May 22, 2026
Outside a mosque in Peacehaven, England, after an arson attack in October. Credit...Jamie Lashmar/Press Assocation, via Getty Images
On a cold October night in Walsall, England, last year, John Ashby followed a British Indian woman off a bus, broke into her house and then brutally raped and beat her.
During the attack, Mr. Ashby, 32, told the woman, “You are a Muslim, I know” — though she was, in fact, Sikh — and he ordered her to perform acts to degrade the Islamic faith, prosecutors said at his sentencing last month. Mr. Ashby pleaded guilty to rape, to religiously aggravated assault and to other crimes and was sentenced to life in prison.
The assault was one of a rising number of racial and religious attacks in recent years in Britain, where police data shows that antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racially motivated offenses have all increased. That reflects a broader trend in Europe, where countries including Spain have experienced anti-migrant riots and a recent election in France became a flashpoint for racial tensions.
Chief Constable Mark Hobrough, who leads the British police’s efforts to tackle hate crime, said in an interview that he thinks the problem has been fueled in part by online disinformation, combined with global instability and increasingly divisive political rhetoric.
He “passionately believes” in freedom of expression, he said, but warned of a “pyramid of hate” in which online vitriol and incitement “generate an acceptance” for real-world abuse.
Among recent attacks, a neo-Nazi teenager attempted to behead an Iranian Kurdish immigrant with an ax outside a barbershop in Bristol, southwestern England, in August. In another, also in Bristol, a 9-year-old girl was shot with an air gun in September in what the police said was a racially motivated assault. In October, a man who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State attacked a synagogue in Manchester, in northwestern England, leading to the deaths of two Jewish men. Two days later, an arson attack was carried out on a mosque in Peacehaven, on the southern English coast.
Last month, two Jews were stabbed in Golders Green, North London, and this week, a Jewish man in the same area said that he was kicked and beaten by a group of men who asked, “Are you Jewish?”
Religiously motivated crimes in England and Wales rose above 10,000 in the year ending March 2025, the latest period available. Almost 4,500 of those offenses targeted Muslims, while about 2,900 targeted Jews. (The smaller Jewish population in Britain means that equates to a far higher proportional rate.)
Racial hate crime also rose by 6 percent year on year, according to other government figures, with South Asian and Black people the most likely to be targeted.
Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a research organization in London that conducts polling on public attitudes, said that there had been a “significant change in the atmosphere” of how Britons talk about race over the past three years.
Mr. Katwala said that a lot of progress against overt racism and racial attacks was made in Britain during and after the 1990s, when the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, a Black teenager in London, galvanized efforts to combat prejudice across society.
But he said that “strong social norms” — the consensus around what kind of language and behavior is acceptable in mainstream society — were now being undermined and that racists were becoming more “disinhibited” both in person and online.
Changes to content moderation policies on the social media site X after Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022 had contributed to an increase in the “visibility and the normalization of overt racial slurs,” Mr. Katwala said. X did not respond to a request for comment.
Law enforcement, legislators and extremism scholars have for years warned that algorithms on social media platforms amplify hateful and outrageous content because it drives attention.
At the same time, growing resentment over a rise in immigration before and after Brexit, combined with a cost of living crisis, has led to an increasingly hostile climate for asylum seekers in Britain, and in some places stoked violent protests against their government-funded accommodation.
Chief Constable Hobrough said that he had dealt with multiple cases in which false rumors spread online that the government was moving groups of asylum seekers into particular areas, leading to threats, abuse and protests against people on the basis of their skin color or appearance. “The biggest challenge I have is misinformation and disinformation,” he said, “and sadly that is a dynamic threat that is very hard to prepare for.”
He pointed to an episode in Wales in August, when a racially diverse group of teenage Scouts visiting an activity center were filmed by local residents who wrongly thought the site was being used as a migrant camp.
In another case, Chief Constable Hobrough said that after a Black church group in northern England moved its regular Sunday family picnic to a different park, a group of people wearing balaclavas and hoods attacked them and threw bricks. The assault, which one of the suspects is accused of inciting on Facebook, left one victim in a hospital.
“They were just an African church of U.K. residents going to one of their local parks to be together,” he said.
Last month, violent protests broke out in Epsom, a town southwest of London, after a woman reported being gang-raped outside a church. Rumors that the perpetrators were migrants were amplified by far-right influencers online. Protesters then attempted to find buildings supposedly housing asylum seekers in the area.
After an investigation, including examining CCTV footage, interviewing witnesses and forensic tests, the police concluded that no sexual offense had taken place and said the woman had made “a confused report” after a head injury.
Chief Constable Hobrough said that he was concerned that an “emboldening” of expressions of hatred and racial attacks would continue if “community cohesion” did not improve.
“I thought we were moving forward as a society,” he said. “But over recent times, it does feel like we’re stepping backward.”
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8) Green Card Seekers Must Leave U.S. to Apply, Trump Administration Says
The change is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of people. It could also lead to more family separations as spouses or relatives wait for application decisions, immigration lawyers said.
By Madeleine Ngo and Albert Sun, May 22, 2026
There are various pathways for foreigners to obtain green cards, which grant them the ability to live and work in the United States as permanent residents. Libby March for The New York Times
The Trump administration said on Friday that most foreigners seeking green cards will have to return to their home countries to apply, a remarkable change that could make it more difficult for hundreds of thousands of people to obtain permanent residency.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the legal immigration system, said it would grant green cards to people inside the country only in “extraordinary circumstances.” People applying for permanent residency, which is one step away from citizenship, will have to go through consular processing outside the country instead, according to a memo issued by the agency.
“This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes,” Zach Kahler, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement. “When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency.”
The change could upend the lives of people who entered the country lawfully through temporary visas and are seeking green cards to remain in the United States, including students, spouses of U.S. citizens and a wide range of foreign workers. The process of obtaining a green card — which gives immigrants the right to live in the country permanently and provides a path to citizenship — takes months or longer, meaning families could be separated for extended periods.
The memo was immediately met with confusion and chaos as immigration lawyers scrambled to understand which exceptions would be granted. Many also expected the policy change to be met with legal challenges.
The agency did not detail which groups would be eligible for an exception, only suggesting that refugees would not be subject. Mr. Kahler said in a statement that people who “provide an economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest will likely be able to continue on their current path.”
It was unclear, though, which foreign workers would be exempt and if exceptions would extend to skilled foreign workers on H-1B visas, for instance.
The policy is a major escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb legal immigration and reflects how the president’s crackdown has broadened beyond immigrants living in the country unlawfully. Federal officials have in recent months sought to strip some naturalized citizens of their status and review thousands of green card holders to root out immigrants they believe should be deported.
The change is likely to lead to more families being separated as spouses or relatives wait for decisions on their applications, immigration lawyers and former homeland security officials said. It could also lead to longer processing times as consulates around the world manage an influx of new cases.
“Our consular processing system through which they would have to apply is already overburdened,” said Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at Citizenship and Immigration Services who is now the director of social policy at the center-left think tank Third Way. “So that means we could have families separated for months or years.”
About 1.4 million green cards were granted in 2024, with more than 820,000 approved for people inside the country through a process called “adjustment of status,” according to Department of Homeland Security data. Over the past two decades, more than 500,000 people have received green cards via adjustment of status each year, except for in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Most green cards issued in the last 10 years were to people already in the country
The majority of people who became legal permanent residents while in the U.S. were sponsored by a relative or an employer.
Number of green cards issued each fiscal year
There are various pathways for foreigners to obtain a green card. People with temporary visas can apply to adjust their status if they have spouses who are U.S. citizens, for instance. Certain foreign workers and parents of citizens who are at least 21 years old are also eligible for green cards.
More than 70 percent of people who received a green card through marriage did so through adjustment of status, totaling about 250,000 people in 2024.
Some immigration attorneys said they were inundated with calls and emails from clients on Friday asking how the new memo could affect their cases.
Robert O’Malley, an immigration attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., said several clients called to ask if their spouses needed to leave the United States, or if they would be able to stay together.
“I’ve done my best to assuage those fears,” Mr. O’Malley said. “But I’m really just trying to digest this six-page memo and wait for further guidance so that we know how to best advise our clients.”
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9) Food, Flashlights and Fans: Floridians Step Up Aid to Cuban Relatives
Months into the oil blockade imposed by President Trump, many Cubans are relying more than ever on relatives in the U.S. for help meeting their daily needs.
By David C. Adams, Andrea Zarate and David Ovalle, Reporting from Miami, May 23, 2026
People in Cuba are enduring food shortages, near-constant blackouts and suffocating heat.
For many, the only relief comes in packages from relatives hundreds of miles away in Miami.
As the island nation faces economic collapse under the U.S. oil blockade, South Floridians are rushing to ship boxes stuffed with canned meats, bags of rice and beans and other staples to hungry relatives. They are also sending mosquito nets, flashlights, fans and loosefitting nightgowns for coping with insufferable nights. Some pay off-the-books couriers known as “mulas,” or mules, who fly to Cuba to deliver goods or envelopes of American cash.
Jorge Smith, 64, who left Cuba for Miami four years ago, has been shopping for a stronger solar-powered generator for his daughter and her 5-year-old son in Havana. With electricity ever more fleeting, the 60-watt machine he bought and shipped them months ago no longer suffices.
“They only have two hours grid power a day,” said Mr. Smith, an Uber driver who, like many Cuban Americans, struggles to pay his own bills in an increasingly unaffordable Miami.
While he is deeply opposed to the Cuban government, Mr. Smith doesn’t agree with the blockade. “By cutting off the oil, they cut off the life of the people,” he said. “It’s the people who suffer.”
Cubans have long relied on relatives in the United States, who today can turn to informal couriers, multiple shipping companies in Miami and Amazon-style shopping sites that arrange deliveries to the island.
But demand has intensified as Cuba’s Communist government struggles to contain a catastrophic energy crisis. The island has all but run out of fuel for local transport, and its aging power stations are unable to keep its electrical grid running.
Oil shipments from Venezuela, Cuba’s longtime benefactor, were already dwindling before the Trump administration captured the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January and asserted control over the nation’s oil industry. To pressure the Cuban government into collapse, the Trump administration then imposed a de facto blockade barring all foreign oil from reaching the island.
Cuban officials announced last week that its fuel oil supplies had been completely depleted. As part of its pressure campaign, the Trump administration on Wednesday announced it had secured an indictment against Raúl Castro, the nation’s former leader, for his suspected role in the fatal downing of two planes piloted by Cuban exiles.
Food for sale in both state- and private-owned Cuban stores has long been exorbitantly priced, said Michael J. Bustamante, a University of Miami historian who specializes in Cuban affairs.
“If you’re in a position to have family members on the outside that can try to get you stuff, you already have a leg up on a big chunk of the Cuban population,” said Dr. Bustamante, whose family recently helped arrange delivery of a wheelchair to an older relative with dementia.
Yet Cuban Americans find themselves in a delicate position. Many support President Trump’s pressure campaign, even as their families turn to wood charcoal to cook now that blackouts are far more frequent.
“I don’t want my son to suffer, but if that’s the only way to be free, well, I have to put up with it so that Cuba can be free,” said Tania Lompard, 66, who came to Miami from Cuba nearly two decades ago.
She and her husband recently sent 105 pounds of beans, canned ground beef and powdered milk to her adult son. The goods were shipped through Cubamax, a Florida chain that also serves as an online supermarket, travel agency and remittance company.
Such businesses are contentious in Miami.
They have described themselves as vital to delivering the type of humanitarian aid permitted under the decades-old U.S. embargo, which prohibits most exports to Cuba. The new oil blockade briefly disrupted the companies’ deliveries on the island this winter, but they resumed after the Trump administration began allowing private businesses to procure their own fuel.
Some Cuban Americans, including a number of elected officials, have criticized the companies, arguing that their business helps prop up the island’s Communist regime, and that the goods they ship include luxury items prohibited by law.
“Using those services means supporting the regime,” said Lázaro Campos, 42, who instead buys plane tickets for friends to visit Cuba with goods packed in long black duffel bags known as “gusanos,” or worms.
Cubamax executives did not respond to several requests for comment.
In South Florida, Mr. Campos scrapes by on whatever jobs he can muster: handyman, construction worker, delivery driver.
He supports three children in Cuba, one a 17-year-old who said that his school had stopped providing food, and that classrooms had become unbearable without fans. Mr. Campos also sends medicines for his elderly mother, who relies mostly on rainwater to drink and bathe after her town’s water pump broke. She lives on Isla de la Juventud, an island province where ferries delivering supplies have been cut back because of the lack of fuel oil.
Mr. Campos’s living conditions aren’t easy, either — he can’t afford rent, so he sleeps in his white Mitsubishi S.U.V. or crashes with friends.
For Ivis Cladera, the soaring price of gas has crimped her ability to send cash every week to her parents in the Matanzas province. She drives about 20 miles each way between her apartment in Hialeah, outside Miami, and her job at a casino in Hallandale. She earns less than $11 an hour, or minimum wage for servers in Florida.
On a recent afternoon outside a Cubamax in Hialeah, Ms. Cladera was sending sterile syringes to Havana so her mother can inject her blood circulation medication. In Havana, her parents have virtually no electricity — but she doesn’t want to invest in solar panels to send them, as other Cuban Americans have done.
“It’s too expensive,” she said. “Besides, I’m hoping Communism will fall soon.”
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10) Once Trump’s Co-Pilot Against Iran, Netanyahu Is Now a Mere Passenger
A partner in the war, Israel has been largely left out of the peace talks, a humbling setback for its prime minister with significant risks for the country.
By David M. Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman, May 23, 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in December. Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
In the run-up to the Feb. 28 attack on Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was not only in the Situation Room with President Trump, he was leading the discussion, predicting that a joint U.S.-Israeli strike could very well lead to the demise of the Islamic Republic.
Just a few weeks later, after those sanguine assurances proved inaccurate, the picture was starkly different. Israel was so thoroughly sidelined by the Trump administration, two Israeli defense officials said, that its leaders were cut almost entirely out of the loop on truce talks between the United States and Iran.
Starved of information from their closest ally, the Israelis have been forced to pick up what they can about the back-and-forth between Washington and Tehran through their connections with leaders and diplomats in the region as well as their own surveillance from inside the Iranian regime, said the two officials. Like others for this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The banishment from the cockpit to economy class has potentially significant consequences for Israel, and especially for the prime minister, who faces an uphill re-election battle this year.
Mr. Netanyahu has long sold himself to Israeli voters as a kind of Trump whisperer, uniquely capable of enlisting and retaining the president’s support. In a televised speech early in the war, he portrayed himself as the president’s peer, assuring Israelis that he talked to Mr. Trump “almost every day,” exchanging ideas and advice, “and deciding together.”
He had led Israel to war in February with grand visions of achieving a goal he has pursued for decades: stopping Iran’s push for nuclear weapons once and for all. As the war began with a stunning decapitation of much of the government in Tehran, it seemed as though an even more grandiose dream might come true: the toppling of the regime.
But many in Mr. Trump’s inner circle had always viewed the idea of regime change as absurd. And it wasn’t long before American and Israeli priorities began to diverge more, especially after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring and pressuring Mr. Trump into agreeing to a cease-fire.
Far from vanquished, the Islamic Republic has behaved as though it won the war, merely by surviving it.
Israel, by contrast, has seen its biggest objectives for the war elude its grasp.
Mr. Netanyahu set three goals at the start of the war: toppling the regime, destroying Iran’s nuclear program and eliminating its missile program. None have been realized.
Instead of burying Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a recent American proposal called for a 20-year suspension of, or moratorium on, Iranian nuclear activity — and that time frame may have gotten smaller in subsequent proposals. That raises the prospect that an eventual deal could resemble the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear accord, which Mr. Netanyahu fought against at the time and Mr. Trump exited from three years later.
With the Trump administration excluding Israel from the negotiations, Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles may have been left off the table, as far as Israeli officials know. In that respect, any deal would fail to improve on the 2015 agreement, which Mr. Netanyahu assailed in part because it did not address Iran’s missiles.
It would also be a dismaying setback for the Israeli public, for whom life largely ground to a halt as the nation was bombarded by Iranian missiles in March and April.
There are other concerns for Israel about the possible contours of a U.S.-Iran agreement, including a lifting of economic sanctions against Tehran. Doing so could amount to an economic lifeline, flooding Iran with billions of dollars that it could then use to rearm and to help its proxy forces, like Hezbollah, replenish their own arsenals with weapons to use against Israel.
While little is certain yet about the shape of an eventual deal — and any agreement could still be postponed by a renewal of fighting — what seems clear is that Israel’s partnership with the United States has come at a steep price. A country that for generations prided itself on “defending ourselves by ourselves,” and whose leaders exasperated a succession of American presidents with their hardheaded recalcitrance, is now making little secret of its need, and willingness, to submit to Mr. Trump’s demands.
As Defense Minister Israel Katz said on April 23, as President Trump threatened to resume the war and bomb Iran back to the “Stone Age”: “We are only waiting for the green light from the U.S.”
That admission was a humbling climbdown from the heady first days of the war, when the two countries achieved air supremacy and were so confident of success that they urged the Iranian people to topple the regime and secure their future.
At the time, they spoke proudly of achieving an unprecedented degree of cooperation, their militaries knitted together intricately, with Israeli officers assigned to Centcom’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and U.S. officers embedded in “Fortress Of Zion,” the so-called Pit deep beneath the Kirya, Israel’s military headquarters in downtown Tel Aviv. Moment-to-moment decisions like how to respond to incoming Iranian missiles were being made jointly, officials said.
Within two weeks, it became clear that the war would not produce instant victory, as Mr. Trump had hoped. The White House, and some Israeli leaders, put aside their hopes for regime change, and Mr. Trump turned his attention toward ending the fighting. He had viewed Mr. Netanyahu as a war ally, but not as a close partner when it came to negotiating with the Iranians, American officials familiar with his thinking said; in fact, he considered Mr. Netanyahu someone who needed to be restrained when it comes to resolving conflicts.
Israel soon found itself demoted from equal partner to something more akin to a subcontractor to the U.S. military.
Israeli intelligence had proposed sending Kurdish fighters into Iran from Iraq, and supported the plan by bombing targets in northwest Iran to help pave the way for such an invasion. Mr. Trump, after publicly supporting the idea, reversed himself two days later, on March 7. “I don’t want the Kurds going in,” he said on Air Force One. “I don’t want to see the Kurds get hurt, get killed.”
That same weekend, Israel bombed oil facilities in Tehran and the nearby city of Karaj. The Americans, who had approved of the operation in advance, expected a small but symbolic strike that would signal to the Iranians that their vital energy industry could be targeted, according to two Israeli officials.
The burning fuel caused vast clouds of black smoke carrying dangerous chemicals that hovered over Tehran for days, prompting concerns that Gulf countries could face Iranian retaliation against their energy facilities. The Trump administration let it be known that it disapproved and that it had asked Israel to stop striking such infrastructure.
It was not the only time that Israel cleared plans with the United States, only to have the Trump administration throw it under the bus after those plans were executed.
A similar sequence of events played out when Israel later struck the South Pars natural gas field and oil facilities along the Persian Gulf in southern Iran.
The aim of that March 18 strike, which was also coordinated with the United States, was to press Iran to agree to much better terms in an eventual cease-fire.
Instead, Mr. Trump gave the order to call off such bombings, but not before a head-spinning series of statements. He at first denied advance knowledge of the South Pars attack, then criticized Israel for having “violently lashed out,” and finally suggested that he had, in fact, spoken about the strike beforehand with Mr. Netanyahu, but had urged him not to carry it out.
That night in Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu took full responsibility. “Fact No. 1, Israel acted alone,” he told reporters of the strike on Asaluyeh and South Pars. “Fact No. 2, President Trump asked us to hold off on future attacks and we’re holding it.”
Mr. Trump even pressured Israel to bring a premature halt to its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon within days after the cease-fire on April 8, forcing Israel to accept restraints on its fighting with a hostile adversary right on its border.
The sidelining is particularly hard to take for some Israeli officials, who, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that the country willingly shouldered some of the war’s more controversial assignments. That included the extrajudicial killing of the leader of a sovereign nation, something that the United States has never openly done itself.
For Mr. Netanyahu, it has meant repeatedly recalibrating his rhetoric, and even adjusting his description of Israel’s war objectives, in response to Mr. Trump’s frequent vacillations.
After initially telling his citizens that Israel’s goals were to “remove” the existential threats of an Iranian nuclear weapon and of its ballistic missile arsenal, by March 12 Mr. Netanyahu was articulating a new idea. This one downplayed the fact that those threats had not been removed, and instead exalted Israel’s close partnership with the United States.
“Threats come and threats go, but when we become a regional power, and in certain fields a global power, we have the strength to push dangers away from us and secure our future,” he said. What gave Israel such newfound strength in the eyes of its adversaries, Mr. Netanyahu asserted, was his alliance with Mr. Trump — “an alliance like no other.”
Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
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11) Iran Meets Mediators for Talks as Cease-Fire Hangs in Balance
People across the Middle East were bracing for the possibility of renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran as mediation efforts continue in Tehran without a clear sign of a breakthrough.
By Aaron Boxerman and Leily Nikounazar, Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, May 23, 2026
A handout picture from the Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency, showing Syed Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief of staff, left, meeting with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and parliamentary speaker, on Saturday in Tehran. Credit...Islamic Consultative Assembly News Agency
The cease-fire between Iran and the United States hung in the balance on Saturday, as Iranian leaders met with Pakistani mediators for rounds of talks in an effort to stave off a renewed American assault.
Syed Asim Munir, the Pakistani Army’s chief of staff, met with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and parliamentary speaker, in Tehran, according to Iranian state media.
Mr. Munir, who has played a central role in his country’s mediation efforts, left Tehran on Saturday afternoon, a day after his arrival in the country, Iran’s state television said.
During the meeting, Mr. Ghalibaf said that Iran’s military had been rebuilt during the cease-fire, according to Iranian state media. “If Trump acts foolishly and the war resumes, the response against the United States will certainly be more crushing and bitter than on the first day of the war,” Mr. Ghalibaf reportedly said, referring to President Trump.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump spoke with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, to discuss “regional and international efforts to stabilize the cease-fire,” according to a statement by Sheikh Tamim’s office. A Qatari delegation had joined Pakistani mediators in Iran on Friday, two diplomats with knowledge of the mediation efforts said. There was no immediate comment from the White House.
The United States, Israel and Iran agreed a cease-fire in early April after more than a month of war. The truce was intended to allow for talks on Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil and gas shipping that Iran has effectively closed since the early days of the war, causing energy prices to soar worldwide.
After about six weeks of on-and-off negotiations, however, the United States and Iran appear to still be far apart on several sticking points.
With talks at an apparent impasse, Mr. Trump has frequently threatened to resume strikes on Iran, although military analysts are skeptical that further aerial attacks would force Iran to compromise. He has just as frequently pulled back on his threats as he pursued a resolution to the war.
On Friday, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, accused the United States of “excessive demands” in a call with António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. Mr. Trump recently denounced one Iranian counterproposal as “totally unacceptable.”
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12) How $6 Gas Prices Are Affecting the Lives of Californians
California is the nation’s most expensive state for gasoline. The latest spike has forced more residents to change their habits.
By Orlando Mayorquín, Jill Cowan and Soumya Karlamangla, May 23, 2026
Jake Michaels for The New York Times
California is a huge state, with both sprawling metropolises and vast rural areas. And getting around isn’t cheap.
Californians have historically paid more for gasoline than the rest of the country because of high gas taxes and state requirements for cleaner, more expensive fuel blends. Refinery closures have increased costs by forcing the state to import more gasoline. And that was before the war with Iran sent oil prices soaring.
This week, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in California was about $6.15 a gallon, up from about $4.90 a year ago, according to the AAA motor club. The U.S. average is $4.56.
We talked to people all over the state to understand how higher fuel prices were affecting their lives and businesses. Here is what they told us.
Patrick VanHorn, 71, of Ventura, and his wife decided against flying to visit relatives in South Carolina this summer, because a round-trip ticket would have cost more than $1,500 per person.
Instead, he said, they are planning to drive their new Kia EV9 electric sport utility vehicle across the country. The car’s range is 300 miles, he said, so they will be stopping frequently to recharge.
Santiago Peralta, 41, of West Covina, owns a landscaping business and had to raise prices on his lawn maintenance services because the cost of gas to power his tools has risen. He pays about $200 daily to run his equipment, and $80 to fuel his truck. He’s going to wind down the maintenance part of his business if prices stay high, he said.
Maria Moreno, 42, of Los Angeles, owns a food truck and is buying fewer ingredients to stock her mobile kitchen because it costs her $20 more to fuel up her vehicle.
She has laid off her helper, seen a decline in customers and contemplated shutting down her business if gas prices don’t come down this summer.
Cheryl Rogers, 89, of Goleta, is a retired city planner who used to car-pool with friends to lectures, theater productions and music classes. But she has a 20-year-old Buick sedan that gets less than 20 miles to the gallon.
She recently asked her friends to chip in some money for her to buy gas — a conversation that went “not well,” she said. So now she’s staying home more often.
Paco Flores, 40, of Oxnard, is a strawberry farmer who has seen the price of biodiesel, which powers his tractors and other machinery, skyrocket. It used to cost $800 to $900 to fill his equipment. The last time he filled up, it was $1,500.
He has also been buying fertilizer in bulk to try to get ahead of price spikes that have occurred because supplies have been constrained through the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East.
Iris Levitis, 46, of Santa Rosa, is an engineer who stopped driving her electric vehicle to work and started commuting 14 miles on her bicycle.
That’s so her husband, Dan, 48, can now use her car to take their children to school. He would normally use their larger, gas-powered minivan to do that, but a full tank now costs $110.
Cara Meredith, 47, of Oakland, and her husband, James, 58, just bought their first electric vehicle to replace their S.U.V. because their gas bills had gotten way too high.
With one car for their family of four, and with the need to shuttle their children to school and soccer practice, they were spending $500 per month on gas. They have to pay $400 to install a charging outlet at their home, but hope to quickly recoup those costs.
Tyler Holybee, 27, of Oakland, takes Bay Area Rapid Transit to work in downtown San Francisco five days a week. He has been a longtime transit user and has noticed that others seem to be crowding onto the trains as gas prices have gone up because the BART cars have been more packed lately.
Joshua Ashenmiller, 54, of Los Angeles, has been driving an electric vehicle for 12 years. Whenever he drives past a gas station advertising fuel for $6 a gallon, he said, “I get a smug feeling.”
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13) Firing Prevention Experts Will Not Make Us Healthy Again
By Michael Silverstein and John Wong, May 23, 2026
Drs. Silverstein and Wong are former chairs of the United States Preventive Services Task Force. Dr. Wong was fired in May 2026.
Ken Cedeno/Reuters
Last week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the two leaders of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a powerful expert panel whose recommendations shape preventive services, like cancer screenings, for millions of Americans. They were given little explanation for their firing, besides a vague pronouncement in a letter they received from Mr. Kennedy that it had been done “to protect the integrity of the task force’s work.”
One of us (Dr. Silverstein) served as the task force chair until March, when he left, as planned, when his term was up; the other (Dr. Wong) was one of the two individuals fired.
We had worried that something like this could happen ever since the Supreme Court affirmed almost a year ago that U.S. health secretaries can remove task force members at will. Mr. Kennedy had made it clear, repeatedly, that he had no love for the organization. He postponed all three of its scheduled meetings, blocked it from beginning work on new topics, suppressed new guidelines (including critical new recommendations on cervical cancer screening) and, most recently, accused it of being “lackadaisical and negligent.”
This is not the first time Mr. Kennedy has fired health experts without cause or injected politics into the mission of what is supposed to be an independent health advisory panel. The consequences here could be particularly wide-ranging. The U.S. Preventive Task Force is hugely influential in determining what types of counseling, screenings and preventive medications doctors recommend to Americans — and what insurance companies are required to cover, with no co-pays from patients. The screenings it recommends for cervical, colon, breast, prostate and lung cancer save tens of thousands of lives per year. Our recommendation for medication to prevent H.I.V. transmission could help eliminate as many as 90 percent of new H.I.V. cases among those at highest risk.
Our fear is that a task force beholden to political interests could roll back evidence-based recommendations and coverage. Or it could start recommending screening tests or other prevention strategies that are unproved, harmful or better for corporate profits than they are for patients. Mr. Kennedy has already promoted dubious treatments for autism spectrum disorder and measles. It is easy to imagine him calling for prevention strategies that propagate his views on dietary supplements or consumption of red meat. Or offering recommendations that bolster the financial interests of the myriad individuals in his circle who profit from fitness and nutrition products.
Traditionally, our organization is made up of 16 members — all unpaid, highly qualified experts with experience in primary care. But for the better part of the past six months, vacancies have been building up, as members finished their allotted terms and Mr. Kennedy and his director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality did not appoint new members. With the recent firings, there are now eight open spots. Only within the past weeks has Mr. Kennedy moved to fill them.
We understand that the Supreme Court has conferred on the health secretary the power to appoint task force members, but typically, the task force chairs play a significant role in this process; now that Dr. Wong and his fellow co-chair have left, Mr. Kennedy will be able to reconstitute the organization without any guidance (or as he may see it, interference) from people who understand it most intimately.
If Mr. Kennedy tries to influence task force decision making, the next leaders of the task force cannot be truly independent — and trust in the institution from doctors and other health care providers will crumble.
We do not yet know who will replace the dismissed leaders or if the other eight members of the task force will remain. But we do know that for the foreseeable future, they will be working in service of an administration with little respect for scientific processes. The American people can trust disease prevention guidance only if it’s produced by people who are not influenced by political ideology, corporate dollars, advocacy organizations or preconceived notions of what we should do to promote our health.
Mr. Kennedy and Roger Klein, the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, should be called to testify before Congress about their rationale for these firings. And the task force should be allowed to continue its work.
Patients across the country deserve to be guided by advice from primary care clinicians with the best and most up-to-date science at their fingertips. Without a trusted and independent task force, the health of our country will worsen.
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14) Xi Calls for All-Out Rescue After Coal Mine Explosion Kills at Least 90 in China
The death count rose drastically on Saturday as the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, called for an investigation and emphasized the need to “hold those responsible to account.”
By Catie Edmondson, May 23, 2026
Rescuers at the site of a deadly explosion at the Liushenyu coal mine in China’s Shanxi Province on Saturday. Credit...Cnsphoto, via Reuters
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, called on Saturday for a redoubled rescue mission in northern China after a gas explosion in a mine there killed at least 90 people, the Chinese state news agency said, in what appeared to be one of the deadliest Chinese mining disasters in years.
Mr. Xi “stressed the need to make every effort to treat the injured, organize search and rescue operations scientifically and properly handle the aftermath,” the agency, Xinhua, reported. He also called for an investigation into the explosion, which happened Friday night, and emphasized the need to “hold those responsible to account, according to the law.”
Mr. Xi’s decision to quickly, and personally, issue a statement was significant and may have indicated that Chinese officials expected the situation to worsen. The Chinese government often holds back details of accidents while it gathers information and prepares to issue a response. But soon after Mr. Xi’s statement on Saturday, the official death count began to rise drastically, with new tolls announced every few minutes.
Xinhua initially reported eight deaths and said that more than 200 of the 247 workers who had been underground when the explosion occurred, on Friday night, had been safely recovered. The agency did not explain the jump in the death toll.
As of Saturday morning, the cause of the explosion was still unknown, according to CCTV, the Chinese state broadcaster. Xinhua reported that local authorities had been alerted on Friday night that an underground carbon monoxide sensor at the site, the Liushenyu coal mine in Shanxi Province, had set off an alarm, indicating that levels had exceeded safety limits.
Live coverage from CCTV on Saturday showed emergency personnel massed on site, pulling out stretchers from ambulances alongside what appeared to be workers pushing mine carts.
The mine, operated by the Shanxi Tongzhou Coal Group, was listed in 2024 among 1,128 mines that had been cited for “severe safety hazards” by China’s National Mine Safety Administration. The Liushenyu coal mine was specifically cited for high gas levels.
“Provincial-level mine safety supervision departments must urge severely disaster-prone coal mines to implement measures for regional disaster management,” the National Mine Safety Administration said in a statement when it released the list.
China has a long history of industrial disasters, though in the past 10 years, the government has tightened safety regulations and reduced the number of industrial and mine accidents.
The explosion in Shanxi appears to be among the deadliest in recent years, and comes only weeks after a fireworks factory blast killed 26 in Hunan Province. It seems to be the deadliest mining disaster since 2023, when 53 people were killed after an open pit coal mine collapsed in Inner Mongolia, a region of northern China.
In 2020, 16 people died of carbon monoxide poisoning after they were trapped in a coal mine in southwestern China.
Chris Buckley contributed reporting. Li You contributed research.
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15) As Ebola Rages in Countryside, Congo’s Capital Strives to Carry On
Kinshasa residents continue to pack markets, bars and public transportation, despite growing international concern about the spread of the virus.
By Justin Makangara and John Eligon, May 23, 2026
Justin Makangara reported from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, and John Eligon from Johannesburg.
A crowded market on Saturday in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. Justin Makangara for The New York Times
Nations around the world are imposing strict entry restrictions on people who have been to the Democratic Republic of Congo recently because of a deadly Ebola outbreak in the country’s northeast.
But in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, most of the 20 million residents are carrying on as usual.
Open-air markets where vendors sell cassava, fish, fruit and clothes remained packed. Workers continued to cram themselves into taxis or hop on their motorcycles for morning commutes on the heavily congested roads. Patios and bars were full of patrons drinking beer and eating grilled chicken with mayo.
“I don’t know and don’t see why we should be afraid,” Malula Richard Esambo, the president of a soccer fan group in Kinshasa, said at an event in the city this week organized by the Congolese Football Association. “Kinshasa is safe for now.”
Spanning more than 900,000 square miles, Congo is nearly six times the size of California. The distance between the center of the Ebola outbreak, Ituri Province in the northeast, and Kinshasa is roughly 950 miles, about the distance to Orlando from New York.
And there is not much travel between Kinshasa and Ituri because of poor roads, reducing the likelihood of the outbreak spreading to the capital, said Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
That is why, Dr. de Oliveira said, the United States would be better served by supporting the affected countries in order to stem the outbreak at its source, rather than “establish a travel ban or isolation of all patients who come from such a large country.”
“I don’t think that’s a good public health response,” he added.
Still, some public health experts warn that because the virus spread unchecked for weeks, faraway places may not yet be in the clear. There is no vaccine for this species of the virus, called Bundibugyo, and health officials are still struggling to set up clinics in Bunia, the capital of Ituri.
On Friday, the governor of Ituri banned gatherings of more than 50 people and suspended a soccer match in Bunia.
So far, there have been 177 suspected deaths and about 750 suspected cases of the virus, which has spread into Uganda and South Sudan. If it were to reach a megacity like Kinshasa, which has a population of about 20 million people, it could present significant challenges because its dense urban environment and large population offer ripe conditions for rapid spread.
What eases the minds of many Congolese is the fact that they have been here before.
This is the 17th Ebola outbreak to hit the country since the virus was discovered 50 years ago. For all of the challenges that Congo might have, its health authorities are well experienced in responding to Ebola.
“Here, people think it doesn’t concern Kinshasa,” said Christine Nlandu, 37, a vendor at a suburban market. “They think it’s a far-off story.”
Petronella Mugoni, a social and behavioral epidemiologist who has worked in Congo, said she feared that some in Kinshasa had become complacent about Ebola because the city had not been heavily affected by previous outbreaks.
It is critical for the government to step up its targeted public health information about Ebola, she said. But that can be difficult in a city where there are so many diseases that kill more people annually than Ebola has, and residents face an overload of health information, she said.
It may also be hard for many people in Kinshasa to focus on Ebola prevention when they have to rely on informal work in order to feed their families, Dr. Mugoni said.
“Even in the midst of challenges, earning money takes precedence,” she said. “Closing markets down would be more catastrophic than Ebola for many.”
But residents of Goma, another major city, are not taking the Ebola outbreak lightly. Goma is the largest city in the eastern part of the country, and there is a lot of travel between Goma and Ituri. On top of that, Goma is currently under the control of M23, a rebel group.
“I am overwhelmed by the news,” said Joëlle Koko Zihindula, 28, a youth worker in Goma. “It is depressing, how the situation is all mixed with conflicts.”
The Congolese government has posted a message on social media stressing “the importance of adhering to preventive measures in response to the Ebola outbreak declared in Ituri.”
But there have been no public awareness campaigns targeting Kinshasa. There are no bans on large gatherings. Schools remain open.
The government has told educators to maintain vigilance and conduct awareness campaigns for their students, said Sister Elysee Ntoto Mazoba, the principal at Madame Lecandele School in northwestern Kinshasa.
One student at Madame Lecandele, Christopher Ciribagula, 9, has taken the awareness campaign to heart. He said he and other students were told to avoid touching dead animals, to tell their parents immediately if they have a fever and not to go close to someone with a bloody nose. “That means they have Ebola,” he said.
They have also been encouraged to wash their hands frequently, Christopher said. He is not excited about an upcoming family trip because he does not want to come into contact with someone who might be sick, he said. “I am very afraid of this disease,” he said. “If this disease ever reaches Kinshasa where we live, it could be dangerous for the whole city.”
Not all of the concerns surrounding Ebola are about life and death.
Some soccer fans fear that they may be denied entry into the United States to support their team in the World Cup. Congo is scheduled to play its first game on June 17 in Houston. Mr. Esambo, the president of the fan group, has tried to allay those fears, saying that the visa process was already underway and that he was confident the American authorities would allow them into the United States.
“America is a great country,” he said. “Making such groundless decisions would not be a good move.”
Arlette Bashizi contributed reporting from Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lynsey Chutel from London, and Zimasa Matiwane from Johannesburg.
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